Affiliate Marketing: The Shirt Off My Back

Here I am at the end of day two of AffiliateSummit East 2008, back in Boston after quite a number of years and the keynote is not even for another eight hours. Yes, the show really does start two days before the keynote kicks off. Actually, it might be three days. I arrived early Saturday morning and I missed a few unofficial gatherings on Friday. Note to self: arrive in Vegas extra early for ASW ‘09.

I can’t really talk about the show because it has not really started. Today may have already been the Highlight of the show. If you look at the schedule there was really only the Meet Market. I’ve always said that the Meet Market is one of the best networking opportunities and the best deal for anyone who wants to exhibit. But it was not the only event, and not even close to the first one of the show. Saturday morning was Affiliate Classroom Live, a high level training session where I was invited to speak about the New York Tax laws. Thanks to Melanie Seery of NYAffiliateVoice, I was able to get the last minute updates and the Two Steps to Comply with the New York Tax Law post I was able to give people some great information.

After that was a four hour meeting for about 20 volunteers to talk about some of the PMA issues and try to make a few decisions. I think we actually did make some progress and one really good decision on the start of the membership process. I had just enough time to go up to my room and clean up a bit before the Affiliate Dinner roasting/honoring Connie Berg. After dinner was the amazing Buy.at party, which I ducked out of early to attend the disastrous attempted taping of the Geekcast show. I have no idea if any of it is even usable, but if it does make it to the public for dissemination I’m not really sure if there will be much of value. Maybe next time they should try it in a larger room where security does not have to break up the party.

Finally in paragraph four I get to the official day one of the show. Considering I’m on West coast time and only got an hour of sleep on the plane out, I slept in and got up in time to make it to the Meet Market, the first official event of the show. Now, I volunteered to be a mentor for the Affiliate Summit Mentoring Program, and had two people assigned to me. Of course with all the partying, I neglected to put their cell phone numbers into my own phone and figured I blew my chance to meet with them and show them the ropes.

But what do I hear when I get to the Meet Market? “Oh, Brad, I met your mentee on the CAMA Cruise.” Next booth: “Brad, have you met your mentee yet? He’s really cool.” Then “I just talked to yourmentee, he ws right over there.” This seemed to go on at every third booth I went to and I never was able to meet up with him. I did meet the other guy I was assigned to help out, but not the one that everyone seemed to know.

After another PMA meeting I was able to make it to the legendary ShareASale party on the Odyssey, docked nearby. I came to the realization that there were more people on that ship than on any other affiliate marketing cruise ever.

Then a near miracle happened. A guy walked up to me and asked if I was Brad Waller. It was Patrick, my semi-famous mentee! We got a chance to sit down and talk. He was amazed by the people in our industy and their generosity of spirit and information. He was surprised that people were so open about what they do and how they do it. Then I heard something that really made my day, if not week. Turns out that he really liked the shirt that Joel Garcia of GTO Management was wearing on the CAMA Cruise. He asked where Joel bought the shirt.

So what do you think happened? Joel showed this perfect stranger just what we are made of. He gave him the shirt off his back.