The agenda is subject to change - please check back for updates. See the exhibit hall map for Affiliate Summit 2006 East.
Saturday, July 8
The KowaBunga! Open
Location: Eagle Pines golf course
Tee time: 2:00pm
Banquet time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Join us for the KowaBunga Open on Saturday, July 8th (the day before Affiliate Summit begins) on Disney's beautiful Eagle Pines golf course for 18 holes of fun and networking.
Treat your affiliates, your staff or your favorite industry supporters to a day of golf by sponsoring a cart. Cart/Team Sponsors receive golf for 4, banquet for four and your logo on the cart flag. Your logo will also appear on select event Web pages, email messages and on an item that you place in the event bag.
Affiliate Meet Market & Vendor Showcase
Location: Salon VI-VIII and West Corridor
Time: 2:00pm - 6:00pm
Exhibitor Move In: 11:00am
Affiliate Summit kicks off with an extended session of structured, face to face networking. Merchants will have tables set to meet with affiliates to discuss their affiliate programs and cut deals. Vendors that cater to affiliates and merchants will also have tables to share information about their products and services. Each table is a meeting spot for teaching, learning, closing deals, creating partnerships and finding new opportunities.
Ice Breakers Networking Session
Location: General Session
Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm
You'll spend time with a variety of people in group mixers and playful activities to get your networking efforts jump-started. Bring your business cards, ideas, sales sheets, and a willingness to learn, share, grow and profit.
Opening Remarks & Keynote from Emcee Jeff Molander
Location: General Session
Time: 9:45am - 11:00am
Jim Bouton, New York Yankee 20-game winner, best selling author, TV Sportscaster, actor, inventor, and businessman.
Jim Bouton believes in focusing on the process as a way to achieve goals. He will encourage you to think of your affiliate marketing business like an athlete, to get into the fun of the enterprise, the challenge of long odds, the satisfaction in details, the thrill of extraordinary effort, and the joy of work.
Following the keynote, the recipient of the Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend Award will be announced.
Merchant track Panel: Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Merchants
Location: Palm I-II
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm
Science Kit, a 50 year old catalog company was running a niche affiliate program for their Edmund Scientifics brand (science and hobby products) on one of the major affiliate networks, but they wanted more. They have a number of other niche sites in the science, education and hobby arena and in 2005 they predicted that if they could expand their product offering through affiliates to include more of their sites, they could not only grow their original Scientifics affiliate program, but also boost sales for their other sites as well. The problem: not all of the sites have enough volume to warrant individual affiliate programs, in terms of technology or management. The solution: Science Kit, who was already partnered with affiliate management agency Converseon, decided to move away from the network and build an in-house program where all of their brands could live together in a "mini-network," the Science and Education Affiliate Network (SEAN). Converseon transitioned the Edmund Scientifics program onto a platform that they customized for Science Kit and SEAN, and brought four (soon to be five) niche sites together with one login for affiliates. From SEAN, affiliates can promote a wide variety of products across all of the Science Kit sites from one place, through banners, text links, data feeds and PPC marketing. Costs for managing the SEAN program are now shared across all of the participating Science Kit sites, which enables great flexibility with regards to affiliate commissions, bonuses, and incentives. The program was fully launched with four sites in November 2005. Sales for November were up 100% from the previous year, and December was up 356%; January continued the trend with 421% growth. Affiliates love the new program: the wide variety of products available, the tools and creative, the exceptional customer service, and the enhanced commissions levels and bonus programs. This case study will provide solid examples of what to do (and what not to do) when promoting a niche program and building a multi-brand program, including all of the affiliate tools and resources used for SEAN, recruiting tips, communications materials, and stats and conversion rates.
Affiliate track Presentation: SUPER Affiliate Strategies for Sustainable Businesses
Location: Grand Salon VI-VII
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm
Are you tired of spending long days and lonely nights researching and building one affiliate site after another, and frustrated by those tiny commission checks? Are you afraid you may have to scramble to make your mortgage payment the next time Google changes its algorithm? Does paid advertising make you see red? Would you like to secure a richer, more rewarding future by working with a sustainable affiliate marketing business model instead? Then attend Rosalind Gardner's presentation to learn the strategies Super Affiliates use to earn hefty six-figure annual incomes from just one or two Super Sites.
General track Presentation: eBay Web Services for Affiliates
Location: Grand Salon VIII
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm
As excitement around affiliate programs grows, people are constantly looking to increase the effectiveness of their offerings. eBay has taken affiliate needs seriously and has opened their platform in ways that allow affiliates to successfully leverage the popularity of eBay. Specifically, the eBay Developers Program allows people to join the Affiliate Tier, which gives members access to eBay's API to create more powerful solutions that enrich their already robust business models. In fact, the APIs can help create innovative solutions for any of the primary business models leveraged by the most successful affiliates including paid search and content sites. Alan Lewis, Technical Evangelist with the eBay Developers Program, will help explain how affiliates can easily incorporate and utilize eBay's API into their existing programs. In addition, Lewis will show how affiliates who have joined the Developers Program have been able to earn greater commissions by retrieving real-time price and product information for all of eBay's listings, optimizing search marketing practices with access to product details, and through access to other important resources. By combining the benefits of the Affiliate and Developer Programs, eBay is putting the full force of the company's technological resources in the hands of affiliates. Lewis will demonstrate how being an affiliate member of the eBay Developers Program can give a competitive advantage by helping keep costs low using reliable, scalable technology. Affiliates can also learn how to expand into new, untapped markets through leveraging the eBay marketplace and moving quickly through development and testing with Developers Program resources.
Merchant track Debate: Benefits and Liabilities of Coupon Affiliates
Location: Palm I-II
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm
This is a moderated debate on the pros and cons of coupon affiliates for an affiliate program.
Affiliate track Presentation: How to Minimize Leakage/Maximize Commissions
Location: Grand Salon VI-VII
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm
Paul Wallerich, Group Vice-President oneNetwork, Digital River
Every day affiliates drive sales to merchant's Web sites and don't receive the proper credit for the traffic that they drive. These points of leakage can be simple ads that direct traffic away from a site to overt attempts by parasitic affiliates to steal commissions.
This session will focus on the things that an affiliate should know before deciding on what affiliate program/merchant to work with and what questions to ask. As an overview we will discuss the different areas where leakage might occur for an affiliate such as competing advertisements on pages such as Google AdSense (which can pull your traffic away) to items such as separate carts or payment options that may not be tracked properly by the merchant. Another area of concern is phone orders which are a large source of leakage for some programs, especially B2B programs.
We'll also cover what you need to do as an affiliate to maximize conversion and AOV to ensure your commission check is as large as possible. Items that we'll cover include the importance of testing every aspect of your program from landing pages to PPC ads.
General track Presentation: Loyalty Affiliates: Loyal Allies or Evildoers?
Location: Grand Salon VIII
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm
Discussion of the positive role that loyalty affiliates play in a merchant's marketing program. Recently the conversation has reached a fever point with many affiliates feeling vilified for being successful in helping merchants retain customers. Kimathi will have an open conversation on this topic.
Bingo Networking
Location: General Session
Time: 5:00pm - 6:30pm
As you enter the General Session room, you will drop your business card in the Bingo Networking box. You will then be given a bingo card where you will write your name in the center square.
Next, you circulate with everyone throughout the room. To complete the bingo card, you will need to meet 24 other people, collect their business cards and have them write their names in the open squares.
Then, we will call off the names on the business cards that everyone dropped in the Bingo Networking box when they arrived. Regular bingo rules apply thereafter. The winner is the first person with five names in a row, either across, down or diagonally.
In addition to the prize for the winner of Bingo Networking, everybody that participates will walk away a winner, because everyone will be making new contacts while playing the game.
Day 2 Wrap-up
Location: General Session
Time: 6:30pm - 6:45pm
oneNetwork Pure Imagination Party
Location: Club Motion, Pleasure Island, Downtown Disney Marketplace
Time: 8:00pm - Midnight
Get All Lit Up At The Show's Hottest Party!
We invite you to trip the light fantastic at the hottest event of this year's show, The Pure Imagination Party. You'll be glowing from head to toe as you indulge yourself in a pleasure-trove of sensations. Seduce your taste buds with unusual and delicious hors d'oeuvres... Decorate yourself with all things that GLOW... Replenish your complementary light-up tumbler with exotic drinks at our open bar. Then really let yourself glow as you dance the night away to Tremors and the Earthquake Horns and their electrifying and infectious blend of Top 40, Classic Rock and R&B. Don't sit out the party of the year... get up and glow!
Day 3 Remarks and Rotating Roundtables
Location: General Session
Time: 9:45 am-11:00am
Four consecutive 10-minute roundtable sessions running concurrently. The speakers will move from table to table after each 10-minute session to run a quick discussion, where you can give your opinion and learn a bit.
Yes, these sessions are very short (some might say too short) - they are meant to be. Meet lots of people in a brief period of time, exchange business cards, and speak in more depth later.
Best Practices for Effective Search Engine Marketing and Affiliate Marketing
This session will focus on best practices for effective search-engine and affiliate marketing. We will explore (1) how merchants can effectively use select search marketing affiliates to "cover" more search-engine real estate, (2) develop bid strategies to more effectively compete against an increasingly expensive and aggressive search landscape (Winning Bid Wars), (3) utilize internal / external linking structures, circular navigation and other white hat SEO techniques to capture higher organic rankings, and (4) examination of the long-tail theory of search-engine marketing and how merchants can develop effective strategies both internally and externally using affiliates to capture long-tail market share.
It is estimated that by 2010 the call tracking ad market will reach upwards of $4 Billion annually! Pay-Per-Call and Click-to-Call technologies provide advertisers the ability to integrate a multi-channel marketing approach to help decrease client drop off rates. This session will provide merchants an understanding of what they need to know about Pay-Per-Call and Click-to-Call technology. The presentation will begin with an overview on call tracking methods and statistics. Included will be the potential market capacity, cost savings figures, and details on the various types of call tracking programs that can be applied. This session will continue with an analysis on the potential applications that call tracking can be used for (i.e. as a compliment to CPA programs or alternative to web based ordering). Participants in this session should walk away with ideas how they can incorporate or expand upon a call tracking strategy for their business.
Driving International Sales - Keys to Success
Pete Olson, Senior Director of Product Management, Digital River
By definition, selling on the Internet ensures a global audience. Once you open a digital storefront, you're e-commerce site is immediately available to customers from all reaches of the globe. Are you prepared? This session will focus on some of the e-commerce requirements that merchants need to address when selling on an international level. From simple currency displays, payment options and storefront localizations to export compliance, fraud rings and delivering goods on a global scale, you'll quickly learn about the complexities involved in selling across borders. Plus you'll gain insights into affiliate markets - what they need - and how these global networks can add more value to your bottom line. Attendees of this session will gain a broad exposure to the challenges involved in running an international online sales operation and receive a check list of items that they need to address within their own business.
A look inside what makes super affiliates tick. This session explores the science behind affiliate recruitment and retention. It will include detailed specifics on what affiliates are seeking and how their needs are best met. Topics Covered: how to put together a deal affiliates will love, where to find great potential affiliates, how to create a super affiliate, the keys to superior affiliate support and what every manager needs to give their affiliates to thrive. The presentation will guide affiliate managers in a new direction in their recruitment efforts and offer valuable insight into the minds of affiliates.
Search engine marketing provides a tremendous opportunity for affiliate marketers. Done right, there are tremendous gains to be made in traffic and revenue. Done wrong, it provides a money pit to throw your commissions into. Making Search Engine Marketing Work will provide a comprehensive overview of the challenges that affiliate marketers face when entering the paid search space as well as an examination of the tools and best practices available to help affiliates achieve success in paid search.
Seasonal programs can earn affiliate publishers a lot of commissions in a very short period of time. Todd will discuss how to maximize an affiliate's performance when running a seasonal program. Precise messaging at specific times to the proper demographic is essential. Todd will examine a seasonal timeline to demonstrate how this can be achieved.
New businesses are invented, new Web sites go up every day, and companies spend thousands of dollars every day driving traffic to their new Web sites. All for nothing. Any discussion on driving traffic must include landing page conversion. Without conversion, advertising dollars become an expense, not an investment. I'll discuss 6 quick landing page optimization techniques that can increase conversion from 2 to 200%.
Top 10 things that One Side Doesn't Know About the Other
Affiliate Marketing, at its core, represents two very distinctive and different points of view: that of the Merchant, and that of the Affiliate. Merchants have unique issues and problems which need to be addressed, and likewise for Affiliates. In this session we will attempt to describe "hot-button" issues of the Affiliate, which are often unknown or misunderstood by the Merchant- and visa versa.
This roundtable discussion will be focused on the disconnect between what Affiliate Managers think their Affiliates want and what factors Affiliates actually use in determining an Affiliate Program to work with. I'll use examples from my experience as both an Affiliate Manager and Affiliate to highlight the different perspectives of each party. From my experience, many Affiliate Managers don't understand what Affiliates actually do to generate traffic. Too often, they view Affiliate relationships as traditional business development deals where traffic can be bought for the right price. Affiliate Managers assume that Affiliates can simply flip a switch to change the size and flow of their traffic. This is rarely the case. A focus on the needs of Affiliates as individuals will be the common theme throughout this presentation as Affiliate Marketing from the perspective of the Affiliate is revealed.
Advertisers are always asking how their program is doing relative others and we know that affiliates compare programs with other advertisers. "How can we benchmark our progress" is a very common phrase uttered by marketers. Performics is currently compiling research and metrics that will truly enable advertisers and affiliates to conduct critical "benchMarketing" or better marketing through benchmarking. Chris will present data, case studies and best practices around how merchants can and should benchmark their programs.
Blogging guru Dave Taylor will take you on a controversial and entertaining tour of blog technologies, explain which are considered "critical" by the blogging community, and talk about the pros and cons of each. Then he'll tell you what really works and why. Should you moderate comments? Should you allow trackbacks? Should you timestamp your entries? Do you need to even use the word "blog" to have a weblog? All this, and more, will be addressed in this session. Don't miss it.
General track Panel: Affiliate Marketing Legal Issues
Location: Grand Salon VIII
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm
98% of people who visit your site do NOT buy from you! Let them go? Hell No! Co-opetition is a strategy derived from an adult industry practice of leading non-buying visitors to competitor's offers and profiting in the process. This session will explore how brands, merchants and affiliates can effectively use online co-opetition strategies to improve their edge over their competition, get paid for doing market and optimization research and lead to additional revenue generating opportunities. The second half of the session will explore the Comparison Site Strategy in which a merchant or affiliate employs a "ranking and rating" Web site to dramatically improve PPC and organic search campaign conversion percentages. First used in online adult affiliate circles, merchants and affiliates in almost any niche can benefit from using a Comparison Site model to entice users to convert to customers with fantastic success. WARNING: Prolonged use of these high level strategies will lead to intense profits.
General track Presentation: Straight Talk on Search Engine Optimization
Location: Grand Salon VIII
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm
Brief presentation on Search Engine Optimization with a heavy focus on Q&A. A very open, honest and straight to the point discussion about search engines that covers some common myths and will leave you with some information and action items as it relates to search and your business.
Merchant track Presentation: Seeds to Stalks: Cultivating your Affiliate Program
Location: Palm I-II
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm
The vast majority of us do not manage affiliate programs for multi-billion dollar companies. Our monthly advertising budgets might, in a good month, break into four digits. We know the names of way too many of our affiliates and how much they made last month without having to look it up. We walk to a co-worker's office to ask a question because we can. With careful management and organization we still successfully compete on the highest level with Household Name Companies for the attention of affiliates; and they love us. The basic principle for running a small affiliate program is controlling only what you can and ignoring the rest. You can control your conversion rates, your payouts, where you find affiliates and how they feel about you--so control the heck out of them. From October 2005 through March 2006 we have been (are) running six simultaneous studies to answer six questions that are key to not only our company but any other small/medium sized affiliate program. 1) Showing them the money: Does raising the payouts really increase affiliate signups? Is "the magic formula" for determining the dollar-value accurate? 2) The Map of Doom: What do you do when something is broke and you can't fix it? 3) SEO versus Affiliate Managers: Do more affiliates signup because you're in the top 5 for their keyword or because one of your affiliate managers contacted them personally? 4) Custom Landing Pages: Personnel costs versus amount of revenue from affiliates with custom pages. Is it worth the trouble? What about affiliate-hosted forms? Can you trust the affiliates? 5) Transparency: How did we screw up when affiliates weren't paid or tracked accurately? How can we fix it and ensure it wouldn't happen again? What can you do to prove your trustworthiness in the often-deceitful world of affiliate marketing? We have a 1200 member in-house affiliate program that we've been developing since 2003. The leads they provide supply about 20% of the leads we process.
Affiliate track Panel: How PPC is Used by Affiliates
Location: Grand Salon VI-VII
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm
Corey Newhouse, Founder and the Chief Marketing Officer, ICG America (moderator)
Interactive discussion on how affiliates leverage pay per click search engines.
Affiliate Summit Lessons Learned
Location: General Session
Time: 5:00pm to 6:00pm
A succession of affiliate marketing thought leaders and visionaries will share topline tips. Each speaker will take the stage for a minute or two and provide attendees with some useful and innovative take away to wrap up the conference.
Day 3 Wrap-up
Location: General Session
Time: 6:00pm to 6:15pm
Last Fandango Networking Cocktail
Location: Hilton Pool
Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Finish up Affiliate Summit 2006 East at the poolside cocktail reception. Beer, wine, sodas, snacks will be served. Come out for some free form networking to send off the conference.
Affiliate Summit Blog
News and information about upcoming Affiliate Summit conferences
Affiliate Summit Social Media Recap 6 Oct 2008 at 9:17pm
I just got back from Affiliate Summit Social Media in New York. This was our first niche event, where the content was focused on leveraging social media in affiliate marketing.
The keynote was delivered by social media and blogging expert, Don Crowther.
Tons of great information jammed into Don’...
Add an Affiliate Summit West 2009 Badge to Your Site 6 Oct 2008 at 3:11pm
If you’re going to Affiliate Summit West 2009, taking place January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas, we’ve got a variety of badges you can display on your site.
There are two options for each size: “Meet Me at Affiliate Summit” or “Meet Us at Affiliate Summit”.
Grab the code at http://www.affiliatesummi...
Sam Harrelson on Leveraging Social Media 4 Oct 2008 at 7:30am
This session, Leveraging Social Media, took place Sunday, August 10, 2008 at Affiliate Summit East 2008.
Session description:
This session helps affiliate marketers, networks and merchants recognize the power of adapting and adopting social media platforms into their programs for increased traffi...
