Entries Tagged as 'Affiliate Summit 2008'

How I Use Twitter

I started using twitter at Affiliate Summit West 2008. But I didn’t really start using it till after that. I used it via SMS for a while (imagine having your cell beep every 3 minutes with a twitter update…). Then I moved to just web. Finally I got it to work via IM (the gtalk wouldn’t work with my google for domains account, but it did work with the fresh jabber account I made for it)..

So.. when I use twitter now, it is pretty slick. It more or less is like a chatroom for me. If I see someone I know talking to someone I don’t know I can follow them right from IM w/o even going to twitter’s site.

Twitter via IM

And somehow I have it setup so when I log out of IM it sends new messages via SMS, and when I log back in it turns SMS off automatically. (Maybe it just does that automatically :) )

So.. thats how I use twitter. I usually have it on, so a @johnhasson twitter will usually get my attention pretty quickly.

Affiliate Summit 2008 West Wrap Up

My thoughts on Jason’s thing, all the other things and the PPC Ask an Expert session I hosted.

Affiliate Summit Day 2 - Notes From Domain Session

GeoTarget Domains..
CityNameAuto.com (for example)

Check the latin market

Affiliate Summit Day 2 - Notes From Keynote

Notes From Keynote:
-KeyNote (unimpressive speaker, but I found one good ides from it)
How to do well
1) Find Spammy Site
2) Make a non-spammy version

When asked about what kind of affiliate marketing he doesn’t think is spam. He said:
I like ads to be labeled ads, and said in the same breath “I don’t know alot about your industry.” (when talking about affiliate summit) If he doesn’t know much about the industry, why is he telling us we are garbage?

Hey! I won $100

Affiliate Summit Day 1 - Meet Market, Parties

Wow, quite a day. Spent several hours at the Meet Market (where you stop by everyone’s desk to say hi and get to know people)–this is different from the booths and so on that all the exhibitors will have tomorrow. I met a ton of people there, traded cards with everyone. I had a few meetings already scheduled through contacts I made with the affiliate summit confab networking thingy.

The ShareASale party was a blast. I meet a lot of the “famous” guys in the industry. I’ll post daily pics for a while when I can. But right now, I am finally tired, and am going to crash.

Today was essentially running around saying hi to people I don’t know and finding out what they do and just trying to be a nice guy. It was the first time I have ever had to go and network at an event. Usually in the past I was just the tech guy and others were the networkers. It was a first for me and I completely enjoyed it.

My guide to networking (at a networking event–this won’t work at, say the movies):
1) Find someone who isn’t talking to someone else (they will usually be standing around looking– sometimes they are looking for a friend, other times they are just lonely)
2) Say Hi, I am John (use your real name, duh) and shake their hand.
3) Ask them what they do.
4) Care what they do, and just chat with them about it. (If you don’t care it is obvious– you can’t fake caring about people)
5) Ask them for their card, trade cards if it is appropriate.

Where else can I talk about subjects such as Snow in Minnesota, whether a guy with my same name looks like me (our noses are identical), Why the US and Iran have issues with each other, the finer points of industrial printer drivers, ways to drive PPC traffic, European affiliate marketing, video chat and holy cow.. so much other cool stuff I am probably leaving stuff out. Anyways it was fun, and much thanks to shareasale and everyone who helped in hosting it.

Dumb Idea For Business Cards

Ok, so I am going to Affiliate Summit 2008 in Vegas in a week. I thought I’d try and be creative and make some unique business cards for handing out to people.

I researched all sorts of creative ideas. I looked at the plastic cards (more then I want to spend), the see through cards.. same. and so on.

I settled down on what I thought would be a neat idea.

See how it looks like I just grabbed a card and hand wrote all of my information? What a neat idea! Yeah, it looks kinda pathetic and sad.

Is it unique? Yes
Will it get attention? Probably not, they look like trash. When I first opened the box of cards I though, WTF?! Someone wrote All Over My Cards!!… oh wait. This is my writing. Man does this look bad… Even worse, I put a slight gradient on it that makes the card look old and dirty. LMAO (you have to see these things in person, the picture above doesn’t do them justice).

Oh look, I found coupon for 25% off my next order… With rush delivery I’ll get them the day before I leave.

I’ll bring the new cards and these and let you decide which is better.

As a bonus, I suppose I can enter all the business card contests twice.