If you follow this blog you’ll know that one of the shows I always recommend going to is Affiliate Summit. That show and a couple of forums are what helped me launch my company and Missy and Shawn have helped me grow and learn to run my business for years. Over the years the show has grown and changed pretty dramatically and this year was the same.
I’ve always met at least one great person for my business at Summit. It is either a new client, a great partner or someone I can outsource things to like design work or copywriting. This time it was a new influx of content sites that were ready to try adding Affiliate Links to their sites, and were opened to guest posting and allowing a backlink.
I hadn’t seen the growth of content sites in attendance at this high of a level for a few years at Affiliate Summit (as far as the growth in volume of content sites) and it was awesome to see. Many of these sites are established and already have a following which makes them even better. The show has always had a variety of partners from Parasites and Adware who steal from you, to value adding partners who drive new customers or send back old customers who may have forgotten about you.
Affiliate Summit has definitely done an awesome job with reaching new value adding partners. The only negative thing was in the expo hall where there were a much larger number of adware companies exhibiting and turning legit partners into parasites. The adware that was at the show will give these once legit partners the ability to steal from merchants and other Affiliates making them go from value adding to part value adding and potentially turn them into more theft than value.
Unfortunately theft and bad practices are part of this industry and as long as the networks allow it, promote it and encourage their partners to steal from the merchants on their networks; or as long as attendees at industry shows (not just Affiliate Summit), attendees don’t say we don’t want this in our industry or at our shows, it will continue to be at all of the industry shows and continue to damage the Affiliate industry. If you are opposed to seeing adware and theft and want to help build a value adding industry and keep all of your commissions, you should write to the different show owners and say you don’t want it there anymore.
Because people stopped complaining, adware has been allowed back in and it is in full force. Because commissions are stolen or poached, sites that would have made a decent income off of Affiliate Marketing are chased away and say that it doesn’t work. This hurts all of us and ruins our industry’s name. Affiliate Summit does not promote or endorse negative behaviors and I have yet to see an Affiliate show that doesn’t allow it at all anymore, so please don’t think this is about their show. I am just venting about the growth of it across the networks, etc… Affiliate Summit is actually probably the cleanest of the shows out there and probably the only one that would eventually ban many types of adware from attending again.
They are very opened to feedback and when people complained about adult and relationship cheating companies exhibiting and promoting cheating on your husband or wife on the expo hall floor, they were banned (at least that is what I heard). If people complain about adware and bad practices being pushed in the expo hall, they will hopefully be banned again as well. It takes people letting the show know what they want and don’t want though to make any changes. One last highlight of the show was the Share a Sale masquerade party.
Tons of people showed up in costumes, everyone was dancing and it seemed like everyone had a great time. Share a Sale always throws an amazing party and this years was probably their best yet. I thought it would be almost impossible to top them recreating Studio 54 at the NYC Hilton with a complete light up dance floor, but they definitely did it this year by having hundreds of people in Victorian masks, costumes and more. The party was amazing and they definitely outdid themselves. It’ll be hard to beat it again for the next summit, so I’m excited to see what they do. They always have awesome themes so if you didn’t go, you should definitely check it out at the next Affiliate Summit.
Affiliate Summit is an awesome show and if you haven’t gone, I highly recommend you go. They have a new show called Performance Marketing Summit which you can find by clicking on the banner at the top of this post and the next Affiliate Summit will be in Philadelphia this summer. I highly recommend going and will definitely be excited to see you there if you go. It is probably early enough to get the early bird pricing, so now is the perfect time to get your ticket. If you wait to long they get a lot more expensive.
