Affiliate Summit Real Deal

Welcome to the Real Deal - the Official Newsletter of Affiliate Summit. Please white list realdeal@affiliatesummit.com to ensure that your weekly copy will make it to your inbox.

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Articles in the Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter are the opinions of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views of the newsletter, or its owners. The Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter always welcomes opinions of an opposite nature.

Register Now for Affiliate Summit 2008 East at the Boston Seaport Hotel (August 10-12, 2008).

Save the dates:
Affiliate Summit 2008 NYC - October 5, 2008
Affiliate Summit 2009 West - January 11-13, 2009

Read past issues of the Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter in the newsletter archive.

Topics in this issue:

1. Affiliate Summit NYC in 2009?

We are always looking for feedback on cities where we should host Affiliate Summit, and New York City is routinely a favorite for the east coast.

But we have traditionally gone elsewhere, because our feedback also indicates that attendees don’t want to spend more than $199/night for a hotel room. Since that’s not a realistic range for a block of rooms in NYC, we’re gravitated to other spots.

However, we’ve finally found a nice hotel in New York City (Hilton) that could fit the conference next summer, and they are willing to go down to $269/night for the hotel rooms. That's cheap for NYC.

What do you say… does that work for you? We need some feedback ASAP if we want to secure the space.

Vote now at http://blog.affiliatesummit.com/2008/03/26/affiliate-summit-nyc-in-2009/.

2. Affiliate Summit Dinner on April 3 in Boston

We are going to be getting together for dinner at Cheers in Faneuil Hall on April 3 at 7:00 PM. Care to join us?

Missy Ward and Shawn Collins will be in Boston for some business leading up to Affiliate Summit 2008 East and they’d love to get together with other affiliate marketers for some dinner, drinks and shop talk.

RSVP now - limited space available.

3. How the Affiliate Spammers Beat the FTC

Earlier this week, the FTC lost a CAN-SPAM case in Washington state to Impulse Media Group.

I was surprised, disappointed, and confused by the verdict. I hate seeing the bad guys in affiliate marketing stick around for another day.

Anyhow, I came across an explanation for the whole thing from Anne Mitchell, who wrote the affiliate spam section of CAN-SPAM: The Impulse Media Group Lawsuit Decision Explained.

And, the bottom line is, the FTC couldn’t prove their case.

That’s because that section of CAN-SPAM requires either actual or constructive knowledge of the affiliate’s spamming. The actual language of that section requires that the vendor (in this case Impulse Media Group) “knew or should have known” that the affiliates were spamming. And they had to stand to profit from it. And they had to do nothing to stop it.

This language had to be in the affiliate spamming language of CAN-SPAM, because otherwise you could send me email, advertising Joe’s widgets, with Joe never even knowing, and suddenly Joe would be sued for affiliate spamming.

The bottom line is that in order to sue (and prevail) under the affiliate section of CAN-SPAM the vendor has to stand to profit from the spam, and has to have been on notice of the spamming, and done nothing to stop it.

Read Anne’s full commentary at http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-impulse-media-group-lawsuit-decision-explained.

Follow Anne on Twitter - she knows her stuff!

Thanks a lot for sharing your insight, Anne.

4. Affiliate Marketing Classifieds and Other Stuff

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5 Star Affiliate Forums
Affiliates :: Discover supportive affiliate forums, filled with great ideas and discussions. Affiliate Managers :: Promote your program in the forums. All :: Find the latest blogging tips and tools in our new blog marketing forums. Visit the 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums today.

Affiliate Buyer's Guide
Looking for an OPM, Web hosting, blog software or other products and services to help your business? Visit the Affiliate Buyer's Guide from Affiliate Summit. Submit a free listing for your business. More information at http://www.affiliatebuyersguide.com/.

Daily Affiliate News
Stay on top of the latest issues in affiliate marketing with Shawn Collins' blog. Visit http://blog.affiliatetip.com/ to read the news of the day and subscribe by e-mail or RSS to receive updates.

5. Affiliate Summit Videos from 2006 - 2007

We started filming the sessions at Affiliate Summit back in the summer of 2006 in Orlando. Initially, the videos were intended to be shared only with conference attendees, but now they are open to all.

Currently, sessions from the following Affiliate Summits are available to view online:

Affiliate Summit 2006 East, July 9-11, 2006 in Orlando, FL
Affiliate Summit 2007 West, January 21-23, 2007 in Las Vegas, NV
Affiliate Summit 2007 East, July 8-10, 2007 in Miami, FL

The sessions include a variety of presentations and panels featuring a wide array of experts with folks from eBay, Google, Microsoft, and Walmart.com, as well as super affiliates and executives from the affiliate networks.

Videos from Affiliate Summit 2008 West, which took place February 24-26, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV will be up shortly.

Go to http://www.affiliatesummit.com/videoaccess.php to access the videos.

6. Vote in the Annual ABestWeb "Best of" Awards

Voting started a couple days ago for the Annual ABestWeb “Best of” Awards, and it will stay open until April 7th. at which time the winners will be officially announced.

You can vote for your favorites in the following categories:

Vote now at http://forum.abestweb.com/forumdisplay.php?f=490.

Advertise in the Affiliate Summit Real Deal Newsletter
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Pay by Credit Card. We accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.

Book now at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/advertise.php

We'd love to hear from you! Drop us a line at realdeal@affiliatesummit.com and let us know if you have any suggestions, questions, or would like to advertise in future issues.