Guide to Affiliate Summit 2012 & Sessions (Including Mine)

I can’t believe Affiliate Summit is only a few weeks away.  That means its time to get my slides done, prep my business cards and get ready to see everyone that I have grown to become great friends with over the years.  If you’ve never been or want to know which sessions may be worth attending, here is my list of sessions and things to prep, pack and do for Affiliate Summit West 2012. (I didn’t list every session that I think is great, just some of the ones I will try to attend.)  If you haven’t booked your ticket yet, feel free to use my Affiliate Link through the banner to the right.

New things to bring and prep.

The Loso App. I already have it downloaded on my phone and am ready to use it.  What’s unique about this geo location app for Affiliate Summit is the What’s Up feature.  It allows you to record video messages and other people to find them or your friends to retrieve them.  This way if you are party hopping and about to leave, you can leave a video message at the location for your friends who haven’t shown up yet with where you are going.  You can leave a video message at a meeting spot when you are meeting with clients or new potential partners so they know what you look like and where you are and you can help your friends find your table at lunch by leaving a quick video.  There is a lot more to the Loso app, but it is a new definite for me for conferences like Affiliate Summit.

Cards for each of my sites. This time I think I am going to bring cards for each of my websites.  Not only will it help Merchants to remember why to contact me, but it helps me remember what to look for on the showroom floor.

Flyers for my new Affiliate program, Pagemodo (no longer managed by us).  This program completely kicks butt.  I highly recommend you join and use it yourself to build a free Facebook Fanpage.  It is a seriously easy to use tool complete with apps and more.  It is part of the webs.com program on Share a Sale.

Here is a checklist of what to pack for Affiliate Summit and here is my list of how to prepare for Affiliate Summit.

Sessions to attend at Affiliate Summit West 2012.

My Session called Are Your Affiliates Adding Value. It is on Sunday in the Emperors I room and from 12:30pm – 1:30pm.  I’ll be covering everything from coupon sites to PPC trademark bidders, adware, theft, SEO and everything in between.  I am also redoing my slides from the last show a bit to be able to get through them all as well as the adware video shot by Kellie Stevens from Affiliate Fair Play and have time for questions.

Sunday:

25 ways you can improve your website by Vinny O’hare.  Vinny is an awesome speaker and someone who more than knows his stuff.  He is one of the people that always teaches me something new at these shows and I highly recommend going to his session from 11am to noon.

Recruiting Non Traditional Value Adding Affiliates with Angel Djambazov and Robert Glazer.    I was originally on this panel until I got my own session and it is one I am very excited about.  Angel and Robert are both excellent at recruiting incredible Affiliates and are both all about showing where the value comes from.  I will definitely be at this one after my session is over.

SEO Clinic with Rae Hoffman, Michael Gray and the usual group.  This is always a fun session to watch and scary to submit your sites too.  The people on this panel will help you figure out why you aren’t ranking and also give you a ton of great advice from link building to design and more.

Affiliate Improv.  If you don’t want to go to the SEO site clinic above, I recommend Affiliate Improv.  It is sort of audience participation and can help you to generate new ideas for your own sites, programs, etc…

Monday:

Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel.  If you aren’t to hungover or you have the energy to get out of bed, Eric’s whiteboarding session at 8am is perfect for you.  You’ll get to learn a lot and have people help with your ecommerce sites, affiliate sites and affiliate programs.

Masterminds Groups Exposed from 11:30 to 12:30 with Tricia Meyers, Todd Farmer and Eric Nagel.  These three are experts at networking and learning how to get the most out of a crowd.  This session is a must attend if you want to learn how to Network to find partners, sites for backlinks and work a room of internet marketers.

Affiliate Under Fire from 2pm – 3pm.  This session is an important one to attend if your company is worried about Nexus laws that effect Affiliates. It is being presented by Venable Law.

If you don’t want to go to Affiliates Under Fire, try Stop Doing it Wrong.  Eric, Liz, Kim and Erik are all expert long time industry veterans.   They’ll go over why you should sell honestly and stop the whole spam/scam websites and tactics that are causing the Affiliate Industry to not always look that clean.

12 out of the box Affiliate promotions.  This should be a great panel to learn some ways to get your Affiliates active and motivated to promote your program.  It’s from 3:30 to 4:30 and features Missy Ward, Jared Saunders and Lindsy Savoie.

Tuesday:

8am whiteboarding with Eric Nagel.  I probably won’t be awake for this one, but I highly recommend going if you are up.

I really don’t know which session I would attend from 11:30 to 12:30, but the two you may learn from are Does your program have Juice and the one about driving calls from mobile search.   I’m torn between them.

Affiliate Marketing in the Age of Social Media with Dave Taylor from 2 – 3.  Dave is a great speaker who you can always learn from.  This should be a good one.

Anyways, those are my recommendations for Affiliate Summit West 2012.  Hope to see you all there!