Affiliate Summit East 2009 (ASE09), the biggest of any Affiliate Summit East with 3,076 attendees, kicked off in New York City on August 9, 2009.

The previous peak attendance for an Affiliate Summit East show was 2,341 in Boston last year.
Day one of ASE09 featured a series of educational sessions and the Affiliate Meet Market, where six hours of networking took place.

After we experienced some long lines this past January at Affiliate Summit West 2009, a number of things were changed to alleviate the time for picking up badges and registration materials, and lines were low throughout the day.

The second day started with the keynote address from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of the New York Times bestselling book, “Trust Agents”.

The capacity crowd was engaged as the keynote ran beyond the end time with the entertaining banter between Smith and Brogan.

After the keynote, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith signed copies of Trust Agents for a line of Affiliate Summit attendees.

The day also marked the opening of the exhibit hall, which spanned two floors and was crowded until closing.
There were also a series of packed educational sessions on the second day.

Towards the end of the day, there was a progression of roundtables hosted by a dozen experts on various topics related to affiliate marketing.

Day two wound up with a four-hour session of networking and karaoke at TechKaraoke, where a long list of folks in the industry sang their hearts out.

The final day of Affiliate Summit started with a keynote address from Peter Shankman, who had the crowd laughing and thinking with his talk.

The day also featured a series of educational sessions and the final day of the exhibit hall.

The final session was GeekCast.fm Live, where podcast hosts answered questions from the audience on podcasting and a host of other issues.

Finally, ASE09 wound up with the Affiliate Triathlon, where participants contributed $100 each to Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City for the chance to win a booth or five Platinum passes at Affiliate Summit West 2010.

The three sports in the competition were toilet racers (motorized toilets on wheels), Skee-ball, and Whack-a-Mole.

As things drew to a close, I was chatting with a number of people about the syndrome that hits attendees as they leave an Affiliate Summit (or any other conference).

After several days of networking, we strengthen our bonds, and there is a sense of emptiness when everybody goes their separate ways.

But it doesn’t have to be that way – we’ve got YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, the Affiliate Summit Social Network, and other venues to stay together.

Then again, there is no replacing Affiliate Summit West 2010, taking place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas. We look forward to seeing everybody again next January.

Shawn is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 8 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/20220412/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-8
FeedFront issue 8 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/10

The seventh issue of FeedFront, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, is at the printer and it will be hitting mailboxes in late July and early August 2009.

Issue seven will also be distributed at Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York City next month.

The cover story is an interview with Lauren (aka Turbolapp on WickedFire) on doing her affiliate work on a treadmill desk, as well as articles by Chris Brogan, Will Martin-Gill, Mari Smith, and Ted Murphy.

Plus, there are also pictures of affiliate workspaces, profiles of affiliate fatbloggers, and the program for Affiliate Summit East 2009.

Issue 7 of FeedFront can now be viewed online, downloaded, and printed from Scribd.

Get the FeedFront RSS if you’d like to get all of the articles as they are published to the feed.

If you haven’t subscribed, you can get the magazine for free at http://feedfront.com/free-subscription/.

Also, become a fan of FeedFront on Facebook to see past issues, covers, etc.

I was recently reading a post that my business partner, Shawn Collins had up on his blog, AffiliateTip.com, entitled “Cynical Marketing.”

In the post, Shawn talks about how there are some marketers out there that simply don’t get the fact that not everything they do has to revolve around making money. They forget that sometimes, it’s more important to just give back.

The content of his post was dead on and the timing in which I read it, couldn’t be more ironic.

You see, earlier that day, I was approached by a marketer who read a post on my blog, MissyWard.com, that discussed me coming out of affiliate management retirement to help support breast cancer research and treatment – a cause that is very close to my heart.

This marketer had the chutzpah to ask me “what my angle was and why on earth would I bust my a** to grow someone else’s company when there was absolutely nothing at stake for me”.

Rather than chastising him for his ludicrous implications, I simply told him how I felt.

Giving is in my DNA and since affiliate marketing is what I do best, it seemed like a natural fit.

He followed up with a “you’re nuts.”

You know what, Mr. Cynical Marketer? Maybe I am.

But I keep very good company.

Aside from the folks that Shawn mentioned in his post that give back to the online marketing community without ever asking for a thing back (Haiko de Poel, Jr. of ABestWeb.com, Scott Jangro of Jangro.com, Jim Kukral of JimKukral.com, Melanie Seery of NYAffiliateVoice.com and Kellie Stevens of AffiliateFairPlay.com), I can think of dozens of marketers, including Shawn, who neglected to name himself) who do the same.

Chris Brogan who takes the time to answer every single questions he’s asked on Twitter; Brian Clark who provides amazing free content on CopyBlogger.com everyday; Brian Littleton of ShareASale who takes the time to educate his merchants and affiliate marketers to both make the affiliate marketing industry better and push it forward.

Also, all of the folks that walked 60 miles with me to raise money for breast cancer research on behalf of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com ; Jeremy Schoemaker who provides dozens of case studies and tips to marketers to grow their businesses — the list goes on and on.

Now, it’s not to say that I’m averse to making money. I think I do a pretty good job at it. So do all of the people that I’ve mentioned above.

Maybe I’m just an idealist, but I believe that when one does well, there is an inherent responsibility to give back to the industries that have helped us get to where we are today and to help the less fortunate.

So, to all of the other idealists out there that give so much, with no strings attached – I salute you. Please keep doing what you’re doing. You ARE making a difference.

Luke 12:48 “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked.

Missy Ward is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine. She also manages the ThesisAffiliates.com program in which all of her management fees are donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 5 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue5.pdf
FeedFront issue 5 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00category/issue-5

There’s a huge difference between someone saying that you’re amazing and you saying it about yourself.

On the one hand, you sometimes have to explain your credentials. For instance, if I’m asking you to think about what I’m saying, you might want to know my credentials, my qualifications, where I’m from. That’s why blogs have an “About” page (or at least, that’s the best way to use an about page, in my not nearly humble opinion).

But, there really is a huge difference between explaining your perspective versus outright bragging about yourself. No, you can’t really cheat by restating what others have said about you. That’s still basically going to come off as bragging (to me). And this works on the personal scale as well as the company scale.

Which works better? An ad about how awesome you are, or an ad about how awesome your customer is?

Keep the Conversation Focused on Your Customer

In advertising and marketing and all business communications, think about your customer. One way the iPod won the MP3 war was they came up with a way for customers to think easier about the product. It fits 1000 songs. That was way easier to understand than number of megabytes. Thus, the conversation was from the perspective of the customer.

Think of the old cheesy car salesperson. “Can you see yourself in this baby?” There’s a reason they say that. It works. People think from their own perspective.

In talking about yourself, talk instead about others, if you can.

I really loved what John Andrews was doing with his customer of the day blog posts for his little bistro. (Then again, I just read that John’s shop closed down, so does that make it a bad strategy?) John had the perspective that by praising his customers, they’d feel motivated to return. Seems reasonable to me.

Mick Galuski, who I wrote about as a small town superhero, earns and keeps my business because he customizes his communication to me to make it about my interests. In turn, I praise Mick all the time, and talk with him about business, and give him potential ideas for future efforts.

What This Means to Personal Branding and Self-Promotion

In situations where you’re talking with others, do your best to talk more about them. Learn about them. Ask questions. The smartest people are those who plumb the depths of the other person, and come away knowing them deeply. We seem to fear, as humans, that the other person in a situation won’t hear us. We get worried that we’ll leave a conversation somehow unequally.

Strangely, the most “important” people (in at least the public business sense) I have ever met in my life have all asked me more about myself, and even with me trying hard to turn it around, they were gracious and interesting and still worked hard to know more about me than themselves. People like Vinod Khosla, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and many more have always started with more questions about me than about themselves.

If that’s how they roll, why wouldn’t you do the same yourself?

It’s certainly something I notice more often when meeting people, or learning more about them on the web. While writing this post, I was distracted twice to do other things, and in one case, I read someone’s about page on their blog and choked on how self-important they seemed (and hey, read mine and call me out if you think I seem stuck-up). The other was a request from someone whose event I once attended, where he spent the first 10 minutes doing a strange “you love me, you really love me” type performance. Great guy. Super smart. Off-putting as all hell to start an event that way.

What do you say?

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a social media agency and education company and blogs on ChrisBrogan.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 5 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue5.pdf
FeedFront issue 5 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00category/issue-5