the j. botter weblog

Just wanted to point out that I’ve created a Flickr set containing all my Affiliate Summit West 2008 photos. I took over 500 photos, and culled them down to the best 86 I had. Hope you enjoy them.

Now that I’m back home in Houston, I wanted to put together a list of my thoughts on attending my first Affiliate Summit. I learned a great deal of awesome stuff, met some totally cool people, and basically had an all-around great learning experience.

Here we go:

• As far as location goes, I cannot imagine a better venue than the Rio. Great casino, great conference center, and very nice suites. The casino staff was very helpful (for the most part, but that’s another story for another day) and went out of their way to make sure our time was enjoyable. This was my first time in Vegas, and it was very enjoyable — especially since I came home with over $3,000 in my pocket that wasn’t there when I arrived. I enjoyed all the eateries, but my favorite (by far) was McFaddens; I had a bleu cheese bacon burger there that I would have to rate as one of the top three burgers I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.
• The Rio’s conference center was outstanding. Great rooms, great seating, and very good sound systems in most of the sessions. The daily luncheon food was good; on Monday they had a buffet line with steak that was absolutely awesome, especially for a buffet, and a potato/tomato salad with champagne mustard dressing that was divine. Oh, and I can’t forget the twice-baked potatoes! The convention hall layout was nice in that it wasn’t gigantic and every booth was close to each other, which allowed for some great networking between companies.
• The Affiliate Summit staff was very helpful, especially Shawn Collins. As I discussed in my post about the Wil Reynolds SEO session, I tried three separate times to get a blogger pass to the conference, and had zero luck. I understand where they were coming from; my blog didn’t have a ton of posts about the affiliate marketing industry, but I did expansive coverage of Ad:Tech NYC and thought that would be enough to get me a pass. Apparently not, as I was denied three times. But I decided to do coverage anyway, and Shawn noticed that I was blogging non-stop from sessions and posting constant updates on Twitter about the conference. He gave me a blogger pass, which allowed me access to all the sessions and the BlogHaus — he even sent a message to the registration desk with my details. I went to the reg desk and Yvonne set me up with my new pass, which gave me freedom to go into all the sessions and provide live coverage, which I was happy to do. Shawn was very helpful, and I extend a warm thank you to him for making me feel at home.
• The sessions were great. From the Affiliate Classroom Live class and the keynote speech with Jason Calacanis to the Super Affiliate Strategies panel, everything I attended was full of great information and lots of takeaways. My only wish is that I’d been able to attend more sessions, but you can’t be everywhere at once and it’s a testament to the setup that Shawn and the gang did that there were so many great sessions to choose from. My two favorite sessions were the Calacanis keynote and the Super Affiliate Strategies panel; Jason made some valid points in his grating style that really gave a lot of people in the industry food for thought, and the Super Affiliates panel was just one great piece of information after another. Kudos to the Affiliate Summit gang for putting together a great event list.
• Networking was awesome. As mentioned before, I met so many great people who I can either do new business with or learn something from. While the sessions were great, I think the true value of Affiliate Summit comes from the ability network easily. All you have to do is walk around the conference and you’re bound to meet great people with great insight into the business. It would take years to do the kind of networking you can do at Affiliate Summit in just a few days, and that’s worth any price tag they put on the conference.
• It was good to meet some of the “super affiliates” (and even one “uber affiliate”, Paul Bourque), but it was most heartening to meet people like myself, who don’t make $500,000 a month. It was great to sit down with people who are trying to make a living from this stuff and discuss strategy, offers and the various affiliate networks. I seem to get more insight from talking with people in person than I would by spending years on ABestWeb (which I finally joined over the weekend). I found lots of new RSS feeds to subscribe to and lots of Twitterers to follow.
• The Affiliate Summit Twitter action was hot and heavy. The choice of having a “master” Twitter account (asw08) for everyone attending the event to tweet on was an awesome idea, and I’m almost positive they’ll bring it back for Affiliate Summit East. I personally used Twitter at this event more than I ever have; I posted 84 updates during the conference, the majority of those to the AWS08 Twitter account, and it was very interesting to get real-time feedback from various people on the sessions. My phone was going crazy during the Calacanis keynote due to all the Twitter action, to the point where I had to turn off my SMS and just read the updates every few minutes via the web browser. I’d never seen the real power of Twitter until Affiliate Summit, but I sure see it now.

Overall, I really enjoyed my first Affiliate Summit. And it won’t be my last — I’m already booked for Affiliate Summit East in August, which takes place in Boston. I’m going to try to buy tickets to a Red Sox game while I’m there; just have to check the MLB schedule and see if the Sox will be in town while I’m there. I’ve always wanted to go to Fenway.

I’ll also be attending Ad:Tech in San Francisco in April, and I’m looking forward to that one as well.

– John Chow talks about his start on the web. Talks about the first site he created in 1999, which was a content site, and then moved to affiliate sales on that site. Says his blog came along because he wanted a place to write about stuff that interested him. Never intended for it to make any money, just wanted a place to talk about what was on his mind. Says his blog is now the biggest personal blog in the world. I doubt that.

– Kris Jones introduces himself. He’s the CEO of PepperJam and talks a little bit about the history of Pepperjam.

– Zac Johnson talks about his history on the web. Started with Amazon doing content sites and selling affiliate links. Kris Jones tells him what everyone really wants to know is how he makes $800,000 a month. Zac says he hates it when someone attacks the industry (no doubt talking about Jason Calacanis) and wants everyone to succeed. Says he loves the industry and wouldn’t give it up for anything else.

– Kris Jones talks about Zac’s reference to Jason Calacanis’s comments yesterday. Says Jason is a flamboyant speaker, that he says things as HE sees them, and doesn’t really speak the entire truth all the time because he doesn’t know anything about it. says that each of the panelists today have a story and that they are all a success. Says that Zac is one of the most humble people he knows.

– Speaking of people who are NOT humble, Amit starts talking. Amit has a PHD in physics and used to work at MIT’s lab. Talks about his start in affiliate marketing, says that PPC arbitrage (direct linking) was the way he started making real money. He used his physics knowledge to do PPC and started making 10 grand a month. Quit his job a few months later and went full time on affiliate marketing.

– Kris asks John how he got the large readership he got. John says he started by creating content, but the real break was getting a post on the front page of Digg. He eventually had almost 30 posts hit the front page of Digg, and decided to put advertising on the blog. Made $350 the first month from AdSense, and this past month he made $30,000 from the blog.

– Kris says that Amit’s approach to blogging is different than Chow’s. Amit is more selective about what offers he talks about and uses. Says that everyone uses a different strategy to become a super affiliate. Amit finds a niche and builds unique content, optimizes for SEO, and uses highly segmented and targeted PPC traffic. Says he has a long term goal for everything he does, tries to figure out how to make money from an offer 6 months to 2 years from now. Tries to figure out how to maintain a niche without doing much work instead of working 80 hours a week, thus giving him more leverage.

– Kris talks about Zac’s check from Yahoo for several hundred thousand dollars and the huge profits he gets. Zac says his website is myspacenow.com, says he walks readers step by step through how he makes money. Says he was pushing over 180,000 uniques per day on the site, all the ads on the website were bringing in ton of revenue. Hasn’t touched the website in a year and a half and it’s still generating huge profits for him every month.

– Kris asks Zac if he’s a programmer and Zac says no. Says that MySpaceNow has over 10,000 pages of content and all were created by hand. I find this hard to believe.

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION

Q: For Amit, a question about PPC and how Amit uses PPC. How does he balance selling with creating great content?

A: Says that he does split testing, that creating great content for his landing pages makes conversions go through the roof. Says that his PPC keywords represent a problem that the reader has, and his landing page presents the solution. The landing page talks about the keywords and tries to help the user solve his problem.

Q: PPC is a great way to make money out of the gate. Are the panelists fearful of the PPC space becoming more restrictive in the near future, with trademarks being banned, etc.

A: Amit says that agencies focus on trademarked terms because they rely so well, but that affiliates can’t do that because it’s already restrictive. Says that his campaigns are long-tail focused and his trademark term conversions are very low, he makes all his money from long tail groups of hundreds of keywords. Kris adds that Google is already very restrictive on what affiliates can do, so focusing on long tail terms is the way to go. Ultimately it’s a very challenging issue. John Chow says he barely does PPC and does content more. Zac says he also doesn’t do PPC very much.

Q: Question about black-hat stuff, how will it hurt him.

A: Amit says the biggest way it can hurt him is he can wake up one morning and his income is gone and then he’ll have to go back to working a real job. Chow asks if the guy wants to make money long term or short term, and the guy says he just wants to make money, period. Chow says it’s just a business decision. Jones says it was a startling question and encourages the guy to keep in mind that there’s an incredible amount of risk to black hat marketing. Google has rules in place that really make it tough to make long term money using black hat techniques, says that he encourages everyone to stay in the gray and white areas. Says that people should follow Zac’s method of hard work and long-term planning. Amit says that black hat is complicated and that white hat takes the same amount of effort but is more long term.

Q: Paul Bourque asks for suggestions on combating black hat guys, talking about the famous ringtone guy who basically stole entire pages of Adsense for certain keywords and talking about people stealing content.

A: Chow says he stopped counting how many sites scrape his RSS feed. Says that he sends an ad into his RSS feed, might as well monetize the people who are stealing his content. Amit says the way he combats it is by developing a very sophisticated business system. Yeah, we get it — you’re brilliant.

Q: Asks Amit about his domain strategies for BlueWidgets.com.

A: Amit has an umbrella domain that houses all his domains and niches. For his segmented traffic, he gets targeted domains as subdomains or alias domains.

Q: Kris Jones asks the panel what’s hot right now.

A: Zac says social networking, Facebook, MySpace. Amit says he and Zac are working on a Facebook app, says that Facebook apps are the hottest thing out there right now, demand is out of control. Create a game, create something interactive that people will want to share with their friends, and monetize it with a PPA offer. Chow says he’s hiring Facebook developers, so it seems like that’s a consensus among the panel. Talks about people making 1 million on Facebook apps in seven days.

Q: What are the best PPC engines besides the obvious ones?

A: Amit says to stick with Google, Yahoo and MSN. He’s tried out other ones and they’re just total junk traffic. Conversion rate is highest from MSN, then Yahoo, then Google, but Goog sends the most traffic. Says that Yahoo and MSN convert better because Google users tend to be more web savvy about online purchases. Zac agrees that MSN and Yahoo convert better than Google.

A: Amit says that positions 3-5 are the sweet spot for conversions. Talks about WinnerAlert.com, says it’s a great tool for PPC guys. Says that constant split testing of ads is the way to get huge profits. Talks about his physics background again, blah blah.

Q: Question about what days of the week are the most profitable.

A: Amit says it depends on the niche you’re in. This is pretty much the Amit Mehta Show at this point.

Q: How do these guys get higher paying offers?

A: Zac says it’s all about relationships. Work with an affiliate manager than you know and trust, and provide them with a lot of volume, and you’ll be rewarded. Amit agrees.

Q: Does Amit see affiliates adapting to quality score?

A: Amit says savvy affiliates adapt to the quality score. Amit is adding fresh content consistently, most of the time has a blog on his site that is constantly updated. Quality Score has to do with how involved people are on your site, how many times they’re visiting and how many links they click on while there. Kris talks about Quality Score factors, including CTR, relevance, etc. Quality Score is critical — the lower your quality score, the more costly it’s going to be to rank on any ads. The higher your Quality Score, the higher your profit margin. Seems like good math to me. Amit uses one keyword per ad group, uses Efficient PPC to do his ad groups.

Q: Do any of the panelists use stand along software? And do sites like WinnerAlert keep keywords and use them?

A: Amit says that he trusts WinnerAlert. Says he uses AdWords Editor to manage his ad campaigns, it’s absolutely free.

And that’s a wrap. More thoughts later.

I went down to the casino floor earlier today to do some gambling. I figured I’d take the $20 I still had allotted for gambling and play the dollar slots. Even if I didn’t win a single thing, I figured it would be a good time and I could drink a few Kaluha/milk cocktails (my favorite drink of the moment).

I walked off the casino floor twenty minutes later with $290 in my pocket.

Tonight I decided to head back down to the floor at midnight. I took $20 with me again, and went straight to the dollar slots yet again. I blew through 19 of those dollars pretty quickly, and was on my last bet. I haphazardly pulled the handle, figuring that I could wrap things up, head upstairs and go to sleep.

Suddenly, the machine started beeping crazily, with lights flashing and all manner of sound effects coming out of it. The little screen said CALL ATTENDANT, so I pressed the service button, thinking that I’d probably broken the machine or something. The attendant, a very pretty girl named Christie, comes over, takes a look at the machine, and then tells me “congratulations!”

I’m sitting there wondering what the congratulations are for. Christie smiles and tells me I’d hit the jackpot! I looked at the wheels for the first time and saw this: 5 Times Pay, 7 Bar and 5 Times Pay. Christie asked me for my ID, and I give it to her. She goes to the bank and comes back with a LOT of money and hands it to me. I’m not gonna reveal how much, but I had to sign a tax form and get a Player’s Club card. I’m apparently getting some comps, too; I’ll find out in the morning what they are, although I doubt they’ll do me much good since we’re leaving tomorrow night.

Once I got my cash, I immediately quit gambling and came upstairs. I’m WAY ahead, something that I never thought I’d be Saturday when I lost nearly all my allotted gambling cash on blackjack. I figured I’d go ahead and quit, because I don’t feel like losing any of this money. I’m perfectly content and happy; my first trip to Vegas was a highly profitable one.

Man, I love slots.

This was a session I was very excited about, as I’m starting to do some SEO stuff for the company and Wil is highly respected in the industry. Chase and I arrived a few minutes early and got one of the prime table seats at the front. I set up the laptop to do some live blogging, but unfortunately my battery died within a few minutes, so I had to take notes by hand.

John Chow was sitting a few rows in front of me, sporting a flaptop the likes of which I haven’t seen since about 1989. It was totally fantastic. Jason Calacanis was sitting to the right of me, which was exciting because I know how much Jason despises SEO guys and it would be interesting to see how he interjected himself into the conversations. He did not disappoint in the least.

Wil started off by talking about paid links, i.e. buying links in directories like Yahoo. Jason spoke up, talking about how Google tells you not to do paid links, and how Wil was basically telling people to cheat even though you’re not supposed to. He made a reference to an accountant urging clients to cheat on taxes, and Wil responded by saying that he wasn’t an accountant, he was an SEO guy.

One guy asked about keyword stuffing, which Wil totally debunked. The keyword meta tag is completely useless in Google, and he said so. Calacanis sent out a Tweet saying that people were talking about keyword stuffing and buying links and that it felt like 1998 all over again, to which Shawn Collins responded that it was merely one guy who asked about keyword stuffing. Shawn’s right — nobody but the one dude asked about keyword stuffing, but Wil was talking about buying links.

At this point, Wil started telling us NOT to buy links. I was confused, so I sent out a tweet saying so. Shawn Collins responded to me by saying that he thought Wil meant to say that creating great content was the ideal situation, but that paid links can help. I understand that; my focus will always be creating great original content, but if paid links can help with organic results, then I guess I’m all for it. The only requirement, at least for me, is that you’re getting reputable paid links, such as Yahoo’s directory and not stuff like Pay Per Post or paid reviews.

Shawn helped me land a press pass after I’d been denied three times while applying before the conference. The thing is, this blog is my personal blog, so I talk a lot about all kinds of stuff that I’m interested in: baseball, affiliate marketing, music, movies, and life in general. But I also did in-depth coverage of Ad:Tech NYC, and it seemed like they didn’t even take a look at that stuff before denying me the press pass. Shawn saw how much coverage I’ve been doing of Affiliate Summit via this blog and Twitter, and he set me up with a press pass. It was very nice of him to do so and I thank him very much.

After the session, I talked to Calacanis about making Mahalo more user-friendly for people like my grandmother who want to help contribute but can’t figure out the Wiki coding needed. He said they are working on a WYSIWYG system that will make contributing a lot easier for their target demo, and I told him that once he does that, my grandmother and others like her who are looking for hobbies will be able to contribute in a big way.

I’m now sitting in the press room, writing this post and checking up on some email and whatnot. John Chow is sitting next to me and uploading vids to YouTube and Google Video. I’ll be heading out in a few minutes to go back to the conference hall, so if you’re interested in talking to me, come by the eComLeads booth and and say hello.

I’m sitting in the Rio Pavilion 9, waiting for Jason Calacanis’ keynote speech to begin. They are fashionably late, as per the usual, but this is my first time to hear Jason speak in person and I’m very excited about it. I’ve got my camera ready with zoom lens attached, and I’m ready to rock and roll.

Stephanie Agresta is standing in front of me talking to two guys. She’s even prettier in real life than she is on her website, Internet Geek Girl.

* The projector is super, super blurry, so much so that it’s a pain on the eyes to even watch. I’ll just focus on taking pictures.

* They’re showing some kind of intro video. It’s blurry as well.

* The intro video was pretty cheesy. The emcee is doing some reminders and notes for the conference. The video talked about Twitter and the Twitter accounts for the conference, which I already knew and have been using.

* He’s introducing Jason Calacanis now. Jason is sitting a few rows in front of me. Long spiel intro going over Jason’s history from Silicon Alley Reporter to Mahalo. Oops: he says Jason started both Gizmodo and Engadget, which is not true. He stole Peter Rojas from Gizmodo to start Engadget, but he most certainly didn’t start Gizmodo (and is probably glad he didn’t).

* Jason has his own intro music. It’s Bad To The Bone. Fitting.

* Jason starts off talking about Usenet. About 80% of the audience was on Usenet before 1995, and Jason calls everyone a “very seasoned” audience. Talks about Usenet being useless today. Says 1.3% of links in Google are malware links. This is all setting up Mahalo talk, which is totally fine with me because I love Mahalo.

* Talking about Squidoo spam. Pretty much every link on Squidoo is affiliate spam. Jason says people are cringing because of “affiliate spam”, but it’s true. Why would a smart person like Seth Godin pollute the internet with Squidoo?

* Now he’s talking about Dave Sifry and Technorati and Ev Williams of Blogger/Twitter. Talking about ego feeds/searches. Now he’s talking about Ted Murphy from Pay Per Post. Tells people from Pay Per Post that they should kill themselves. Ha. Awesome. Says bloggers who use Pay Per Post are pissing in the well.

* Says affiliate companies have culpability for enabling people to piss in the well. Asks people who work for affiliate companies to raise their hands, and NOBODY does so. Hilarious.

* Curation is coming, because it’s good business. People are starting to police business, bad people are being punished, anonymity is being reduced. Brings up Citysearch, Yelp, Angie’s List (never heard of this one). People are using Facebook because it’s less polluted than MySpace. LinkedIn is even more curated than Facebook. Hulu is more curated than YouTube.

* Says Bloglines Blog Search is the best blog search out there. I don’t think I’ve ever used it. Says that it won’t be the best blog search anymore because affiliate marketers will start gaming it now that he’s said it’s good. This is probably true.

* Does an effort vs. monetary reward graph that is genius. I’ll have to draw this out later or find out wherever Jason found it on the web.

* Makes an Austin Powers reference.

* Jason is talking about Shoemoney and Zac Johnson, making fun of them for their check pictures. Awesome.

* Says that it takes 2-3 years for blogs to reach their natural traffic levels. That’s heartening.

* Talks about his SEO Is Bullshit comment. Talks about the history behind it and what made him say it. Anyone can rank well by PRODUCING GOOD CONTENT.

Arguments against gaming:

- Human powered search can’t be gamed
- The semantic web is impossible to game (theoretically)
- Increasing number of niche high-quality sites will make it impossible to compete with a TAS/low-quality site

FOR GAMING

- Any system can be gamed
- Gamers are getting smarter and smarter
- Social networks, social news, and search are the ultimate covert marketing system

THE BRUTAL TRUTH

* We think small. Holding up a six figure check is just pathetic. That’s the biggest success you have? Really?

* SEO’s and affiliate gamers are some of the smartest, most resourceful people in the world.

* He’d love to hire the top 10 SEO’s/affiliates to work for him because they’re so smart.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO (selfish version)

* someone makes a comment about Dave Winer not being here, telling Jason he doesn’t have to hold back

* Stay the course
* Keep polluting the web with terrible sites
* Increase the amount and complexity of the gaming
* Find new ways to covertly advertise unsuspecting users
* be more creative in the use of malware, adware and click fraud.

UNSELFISH VERSION

* realize you’re the bottom of the food chain and fight up
* create long-term relationships with users based on high-quality content and services
* give up life of crime and stop holding up checks with $100,000. instead hold up checks with two more zeros.
* we are smarter than half of the folks working at large internet companies
* we don’t think big enough

BOTTOM LINE

* someone can create the next digg, stumbleupon, flickr instead of bullshit affiliate sites. He’s really starting to quiet the room down at this point.

* we’re wired for making the quick buck. TRY TO DO GREAT THINGS. failure is part of it.

Q&A

Q: How does Mahalo scale?

A: Point them back to Weblogs Inc and the scaling they did there. Talks about the Mahalo Greenhouse for a bit.

Q: What kind of affiliate links does Jason think aren’t spam?

A: He likes ads to be labeled as ads. Hates deceptive marketing.

* I told Jason I was the guy who wrote the story about my grandmother using Mahalo, and he thanked me for it, saying it was his favorite Mahalo story to date. I asked him if his target market would continue to be non-web users, and he said that eventually they would have stuff for the “top 5%” of users, guys like me who spend a lot of time on the internet. They are eventually going to have to do a lot for that top 5%, because those are the people who will really make the site sticky and get great word of mouth going.

* Sam Harrelson writes in his live blogging that he thinks I’m a plant because I gave Jason a “softball”. The problem is that the question I asked was the one question I wanted an answer to: what the target audience for Mahalo would be going into the future. To me, that didn’t seem like a softball at all — it’s a very viable question, because no one seems to understand what the target for Mahalo is, and now they know. Sam says he’s never seen me before, so I must be a plant. I leave a comment on Sam’s blog explaining who I am and the reasoning behind my comment.

And that’s the end.

After it’s over, Sam approaches me and we talk for a bit. He asks me if I have a blogger pass, and I tell him that I don’t. I applied three times for one, and was denied every single time. The truth is that I don’t think they even checked out my blog, because if they did, they would have seen my Ad:Tech NYC coverage and known that I do pretty in-depth blogging. Regardless, Sam gets me a blogger pass, so I’ll be spending some of the afternoon in the BlogHaus doing some coverage.

A quick recap of events from today:

• We moved over to the Rio this morning, registered for Affiliate Summit and then set up our booth. We’ve got booth set-up down to an art form, so it took about 10 minutes. We’re right by the CX Digital booth and next to Commission Junction, so I’m pretty stoked about the networking possibilities.
• After the booth was completed, we did a little bit of the old meet and greet. The Affiliate Summit Meet Market was a complete madhouse, with an open bar and an absolute mess of people. There were little booths with companies advertising the products that affiliates can sell, which was neat. I registered to win a PS3, which I will not win, because I NEVER win any contests at conferences such as this one. I made a few good contacts and grabbed some business cards, and this was generally a productive little hour.
• After the Meet Market, we drove over to the Wynn and went to the buffet. OH MY GOSH…this was one of the more amazing food experiences of my life. It was very, very pricey, but the food was top-notch and completely gourmet. I started off with Alaskan snow crab and drawn butter and HUGE shrimp. The snow crab were tasty and the shrimp were absolutely perfect. After that plate was destroyed, I moved on to prime rib, and THAT was also amazing. It felt like there were about 40 layers of flavor that unfolded as you ate each bite. After eating the prime rib, I got another small slice of it, along with cheese ravioli topped with perfectly aged parmesan and a small salad featuring a sun dried tomato, roasted garlic and shaved ricotta. After that, it was back to the snow crab and shrimp, finished with a piece of the most amazing tuna I’ve ever had in my life. For dessert, it was absolutely divine bread pudding, cheesecake and a glass of whole milk. Yeah, I totally gorged myself, but the buffet was expensive and I wanted to make sure I ate enough to justify the money my boss paid for it. Plus, I don’t get many chances to eat food that’s gourmet like that. And besides, I had to redeem myself after the horrid Circus Circus buffet on Friday.
• I sure do write a lot about food on this blog.
• I had a pass to the Shareasale party tonight at the Palm, but decided to give the pass to Abishai and stay at the Rio, relax and watch the Oscars. I’ll have thoughts on the awards tomorrow at some point. I may go downstairs and play penny slots in a few minutes, but probably not for long.

I’ve posted over 50 updates to Twitter over the past 3 days, so that’s definitely the place to go if you’re here at Affiliate Summit and want to keep up with what I’m doing.

If you’re looking for other Affiliate Summit blog posts, then this is the page for you: it pulls in the latest Summit-related posts from Technorati, pictures from Flickr, YouTube videos, and other media from around the webz and presents them on one page.

In a related note: Diablo Cody just won best screenplay for Juno! I’m so excited for her.

Well, you know how the old saying goes. And in this case, what happens to stay in Vegas is MY MONEY.

I’m a slots player. Not big on cards, although I do occasionally slip into a little Blackjack just for a change of pace. Last night, I went on an incredible run and ended the night up by $300. I started with penny machines, moved up to nickels and made a good profit, and then switched to the 25 cent machines where I made an absolute killing. I cashed out, knowing that my good luck couldn’t continue all night. I try to be smart like that.

Or at least I thought I did.

We had a 10-hour Affiliate Classroom LIVE training session today. It was horrendously long, but I learned a lot of good stuff and met some cool people (including Trish from PsPrint) We went to dinner at PF Chang’s, where I got the most disgusting seafood dish I’ve ever eaten: the shrimp in candied walnuts. It sure looked good on the menu, but what I got on my plate was far different than what I’d imagined. The best way I can describe it? It was like fried shrimp with ice cream, sugared walnuts and honeydew melons. Yeah, disgusting. I ate about a quarter of the plate and stopped because my stomach was hurting quite badly.

So I’m in a bad mood as we head to Caesar’s Palace, but I figured I’d do some gambling and lift my spirits. Over the course of four hours, I lost all my profits. I lost in slots, I lost in Blackjack, I lost in slots some more. I did, however, see Frank Mir working as a bodyguard at Pure; yes, the very same Frank Mir who will challenge Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera for the UFC Heavyweight Championship sometime this summer. That made my night a little brighter.

After losing all my money, I decided to walk back to our hotel. I did a little photowalking, which cheered me up greatly — I took about 300 shots, which I’ll sort through when I get back to Houston and post to my Flickr account along with everything I take during Affiliate Summit.

The good news is that I get to sleep in tomorrow, and then we move over to the Rio, which is where we’ll stay for the next three days. I probably won’t be gambling too much anymore; the thought of losing $300 makes my head hurt. We’ll be setting up our booth tomorrow and then doing a bit of the old networking, and I’m going to try to score some passes to the Shareasale party at the Palms Villa. I’ll be relaxing the rest of the day, most likely curled up in bed with the laptop and some work.

Now it’s off to sleep for this poor gambler.

We landed in Vegas about 30 minutes ago, grabbed our bags, and now we’re waiting by baggage claim for the rest of our crew to get here. We were all supposed to be on the same flight, but something happened in the confirmation process and so Mike and Khalil had to find another flight. They shouldn’t be too far behind us, but I thought I’d take a few minutes and catch up on some blogging and emails while I’ve got time.

Tonight we’re headed to one of the world’s famous Las Vegas buffets for dinner, and then I’ll probably do some walking around the Strip and take pictures. I’ll be making a new set on my Flickr account for my Vegas photos, and I’ll post a link to them as soon as I have some photos up. Outside of that, I don’t think we have any plans for tonight, so I’ll probably relax and play some penny or nickel slots.

I’m not a big gambler whatsoever; I like my money and I prefer to keep it. Yeah, I know there’s a chance I could make a lot MORE money by gambling, but there’s also a chance I could lose the money, and I’m the type of person that would rather not take chances with my cash. Which is why you’ll only find me playing the penny and nickel slots. I love slot machines and playing the cheap ones pretty much guarantees that I can play a long time with no worries of losing a ton of money. And hey, I think my mom actually won $300 one night on nickel slots…which I’d be perfectly happy with.

Tomorrow morning is Affiliate Manager Live Training. Affiliate Summit proper doesn’t start until Sunday, but I’m going to assume that we’ll be setting up our booth and taking care of some odds and ends and networking tomorrow.

I’ll check back in later. I’m constantly updating my Twitter, so if you’re looking for lots of updates it would be in your best interest to follow me on there. I’m going to try to do at least one blog post a day (to point you towards new photos, if nothing else), but my Twitter will be updated at least 20 times a day. Chase also has a Twitter account, so follow him as well (if he can figure out how to use it).

See, this is smart: the folks from Affiliate Summit have created two AS Twitter accounts. The first is a general info Twitter, with news and real-time info. They’ve got an incentive for people to follow that Twitter account, as well; they’re going to randomly send out directions to everyone following them on Twitter, and the first person to arrive at the destination indicated by those directions will get $100 in cash. Yeah, I already followed them and turned phone notifications on.

There’s also the ASW08 Twitter account, which is a group account. Anyone who puts “asw08″ into a tweet will automatically have their tweet included on that page, which means that anyone who follows that account will get their message. It’s a great way to keep up on parties, giveaways and good keynote and class times. And yes, I followed this one with my phone as well.

It’s good to see the guys from Affiliate Summit using powerful tools like Twitter to communicate. This is my first Affiliate Summit, and I already feel a little bit at home due to the Twitter usage and all of the podcasts done by Shawn Collins and crew. It’s going to be fun.

Anyone want to follow me on Twitter? Here’s my URL.