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I have just returned from Affiliate Summit East 2014 in New York and let me tell you, this was the most fun Affiliate Summit yet with all the sessions, partys, food, drinks & pranks!
I’ll reveal all of the dirty details, my huge regret & more in this post!
This year it was held across 3 floors of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square which provided for some epic views.
Affiliate Summit East 2014
The Affiliate Summit events are always a blast and provide the perfect blend of learning, networking, drinking, eating, laughing and creating memory’s you will never forget.
This Affiliate Summit was a little different than Affiliate Summit west though. This time I was speaking and had to behave – sort of.
You can only imagine the chaos that is caused when thousands of affiliates that have broken free from the traditional world of employment come together.
My Session
Affiliate Summit East 2014 marked my first time publicly speaking at an event.
I hadn’t done anything like this before and would love to be able to say I spent lots of time preparing & practising for it but that would be a lie.
I reached out to people like Brian Littleton & Rae Hoffman for advice and decided it was better to speak from the heart & go with the flow rather than trying to memorise and rehearse a script.
So that is exactly what I did – I prepared my slides, got on the stage & winged it speaking from the heart.
Here are the slides from the presentation if you want a sneak peak-
I think it went pretty well overall from the feedback I have had. The session grew in numbers, no one left and lots of people had questions at the end.
We get the full feedback in the next couple of weeks though!
You can get access to all of the sessions including mine with a virtual pass.
The Other Sessions
There were also some other great sessions to attend from a range of speakers in pretty much every niche you can think of.
You can view a full list of the sessions here.
Here are some of the ones that stood out to me-
Six-Figure Mastery: The Cure for the Common Blog
This session was hosted by 4 of the biggest bloggers in the industry – John Chow, Zac Johnson, John Rampton & Syed Balkhi.
The 4 member panel discussed a range of topics around starting a blog & building your authority.
There are no slides available for this one and I’ve stolen this picture from John’s blog-
Surviving the SEO Evolution
Rae Hoffman also known as Sugar Rae hosted a great session about the evolution of SEO.
Her straight down the line talk lifted the lid on what has changed and how SEO has evolved over the past year.
Monetizing Your Site – Missed Opportunities & Live Reviews
This session was hosted by Adam Riemer teaching people how to tweak their site for more profits.
The talk specifically focused on how to identify missed opportunities and capitalise on them followed by live audience site reviews.
Blueprint to Hit 7 Figures in 12 Months on Facebook
An awesome session teaching how to go from zero to 7 figures in 6 to 12 months with Facebook marketing.
The panel was hosted Ian Fernando, Derek Lester, JJ Alan & Bryant Hussey.
Link Building Reboot – Hot Strategies for More Traffic
This session taught a range of cutting edge link building tactics that anyone can apply.
It was hosted by Roger Montti & Scott Polk.
YouTube Video Optimization
Akiva Ben-Ezra went all in showing people a range of advanced YouTube marketing tricks.
He showed how to take advantage of YouTubes features and how to rank videos easily in Google’s search results.
Watch All Of The Sessions
Those were just my favourite sessions, there were over 40 live sessions to attend!
The problem was if you were at the conference you couldn’t actually attend all of them because 4 ran simultaneously through the whole day.
Lucky for me I have a pass to access them online but if you don’t have one you can just pickup a virtual pass instead which is much cheaper & more convenient than attending the show.
The Party’s
There were a few parties at Affiliate Summit East but as always with the Affiliate Summit parties it was a case of go big or go home.
Clickbank
The Clickbank party was hosted at Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s famous restaurant Lambs Club.
We had a range of awesome food brought to us while we networked along with one of the fanciest buffets I ever did see!
Affiliate Ball
The Affiliate Ball was hosted at the Copacabana Club in times square with live performances from Grammy Award winners Bone Thugs N Harmony & Academy award winning Juicy J.
Like I said – these internet marketing types really know how to throw down a party!
Affiliate Nation
The Affiliate Nation party featured a live performance from Twista who has recorded tracks with Kanye West, Lady Gaga & Ludacris to name a few.
It was an open bar hosted in the middle of New York after a long day of sessions everyone was ready to unwind!
Looking to join affiliate networks? Check out my list of high ticket affiliate programs.
The Food
Along with all the partys were some more sophisticated events where we got to eat some of the finest food hosted by a range of companies.
Avangate Dinner
Avangate hosted an awesome dinner at Del Friscos Double Eagle Steak House in New York.
They delivered a 3 course banquet including one of the best steaks I have ever had!
Thank’s to Andra & Chuck for making that happen!
BCD Tofu House
After the Affiliate Nation party we ended up in BCD Tofu with the help of JunJun Li.
Normally there is a huge queue to get in and they don’t take reservations but when you’re drunk at 4am on a Tuesday morning there is a table!
Joe’s Shanghai
On the last day before everyone was leaving Andrea Fontebasso, Yeison Kim, John Chow, JunJun Li, Terry Lamb, Carolina Milan & Brian Swichkow headed to Joe’s Shanghai.
I’m not sure how it happened but we ended up with wave after wave of dishes. It was like playing zombies on call of duty but with food.
The Speakers Cruise
Just before we get onto the pranks & my biggest regrets I want to talk about the awesome speakers cruise.
Anyone that has spoken to Missy Ward for more than 60 seconds knows she loves wine and she put together a fantastic cheese & wine tasting cruise for the speakers.
We went down the Hudson River past Ellis Island and the Statue Of Liberty. The boat then passed under Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge before returning.
It was an awesome event and I wish I had a lot of pictures to share but I was too busy causing trouble sat on the naughty table.
The Pranks
While I was at the show a couple of pranks happened inadvertently. One on the speakers cruise and one in the meet market.
WP-Engine Prank
I knew that WPEngine would be at Affiliate Summit but over dinner with a couple of people (who will remain anonymous) we decided it would be a good idea to prank them.
The plan was simple, swap passes with someone else, get a wireless lavalier microphone and someone to record from a distance while I asked them about this post as a potential customer.
Unfortunately it didn’t go that well – first of all the only free rep was Evan Lacivita who I had a good relationship with. He instantly knew who I was but played along anyway – kudos to him for that!
I’m not actually in control of the video for that prank but we’ll see if it surfaces soon!
Speakers Cruise Prank
On the speakers cruise I was sat with Adam Riemer & Heather Diamani – we were left in charge of Kenny Hyder’s bag.
After a few glasses of wine we decided the best thing to do was to hide the bag and replace it with a cheesy sailor based riddle which would lead to a badly drawn treasure map to find the bag!
We spent a while preparing it and finding the right locations to hide everything but in the end Heather messed it all up in the final stages getting caught hiding the bag.
I think Kenny appreciated the effort when we revealed the full plan to him though!
The Only Regret
During the speakers cruise I wanted to thank Brian Littleton from ShareASale for everything he had done for me. Take a look at my previous Affiliate Summit post and you will see why.
On top of that he provided some solid advice around speaking that really helped me get a feel for things – he has done a lot for me and I wanted to say thank you for that.
Unfortunately I was doing that after a little bit too much wine and on a rocky boat hitting bumpy waves.
The result – half way through thanking him I threw an entire glass of wine over his face/down his sweater.
I was MORTIFIED! The timing couldn’t have been any worse! Luckily for me Brian is a great guy and someone else had already done it to him earlier in the night.
See You At The Next Summit
The next Affiliate Summit takes place in Las Vegas January 18th-20th at the Paris hotel.
Given how awesome Affiliate Summit was this time around you can be sure I’ll be going to the next one!
See you all there!
54 Responses
Thank you for having fun sharing all this useful content for me, I will try to refer to stars, quality images and good luck in the following articles.
Glad I could help.
Thank you for sharing !! Awesome slide shows matthew..
No worrys :)
love your positivity mate!
Thanks Lev!
Affiliate Summit East is a leading and wonderful avenue of information for affiliate marketers, new and existing. Who didn’t have fun at ASE14? Opportunity was everywhere. And, being at Affiliate Summit East New York re-energized affiliates to get more creative with their marketing. Overall, it was another successful event and glad to hear you enjoyed it too. :-)
Bring on Vegas – that city is built for Affiliates :)
Great to finally meet you Matthew!
Goes both ways Luke, I sent you an email btw :)
You’ll be back home in no time :)
Great post sounded like fun, surprising how you went against the grain when doing your presentation, I mean from what you have done with this blog, “winging it” wasn’t the norm, that must have been scary enough ? Not an easy task I would think fair play. Will you have a look through your emails and give me a reply to a msg I sent, just to clarify if you got it.
Cheers
Well by winging it I mean speak from the heart and when I watch presentations like TED I always noticed when someone was speaking from the heart/about their passion and I wanted that to shine through. I feel rehearsals and scripts would take that away/tone it down if that makes sense.
I haven’t got an email from the address you used in this comment?
I’m fairly certain that it was Brian that spilled the wine on himself earlier in the night…
Had fun at the naughty table with you, even if I only got to join for a while.
See you at the next summit?
Ahh I didn’t know that! Well at least I don’t feel quite as bad now ^^
The naughty table was the best table :) I’m sure we can recreate it next time! Drop me an email https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/contact-me/
Thanks again for coming and speaking. So glad you had a great time on the Speaker’s cruise. And yea… I may like wine just a little ;-)
No thank you for having me it was a great experience all round and you couldn’t have put together a better event! Tu eres de vino reina!
Hey Matthew, it’s great. Affiliate summit is the world’s largest summit of the affiliate marketer. Great to see you there buddy. Keep it on.
Thanks Nikhil =D
Great write-up and review Matt … enjoy the tropics. See you in Las Vegas
Great blog post! It was great meeting you and had fun with you on the speakers cruise.
No problem perhaps I will see you in Vegas in a couple of months eh :)
Thanks so much for coming out and speaking – great to see you.
No thank you for having me :)
looks like mad fun!!!!
See you at the next one then :)
I hope so but doesn’t seem realistic for me… I’m having trouble getting motivated with starting my blog…
Well getting started is the hardest part, the addiction will take control after that :)
Nice post! That was great advice from Brian and Rae to “speak from the heart & go with the flow”. We enjoyed reading your recap and seeing the photos. It was also a great idea to share the slides in here. We hope to see you in Vegas for ASW15.
Thanks :) I’ll be submitting my speaker proposal this month!
Amazing !! Wish to be there one day !! he he…
The next one is only a few months away :)
Matthew Woodward…
This is an awesome post. You’ve shared a lot of insiders content that happening in Affiliate Summit.
Your slide is totally out of mind. Thanks for sharing those tactics and strategies publicly.
Not to say it just works. But it has helped me to grow my online business drastically.
Thank you, once again. :D
Thanks :) Actually what I shared at the summit I have never shared anywhere else before nor is it on the slides :)
Looks like you all had lots of fun! Hope I can make it to one soon!
Congrats on a successful presentation. You will most probably be doing a lot of them in the future! Well Done!
Thanks Munir – be great to meet you :)
Oooh MG, that looked like loads of fun, Matt.
I don’t know what happened or if you changed the newsletter campaign time but I’m receiving this in the afternoon, which means I can actually get some sleep tonight and get ready for my trip. *happy face*
I hope one day I’ll make it to one of those summits, there’s loads of stuff to learn and great people to meet.
I went through each presentation. Loved it how you pointed out the essentials in yours, and always playing with those colours. I remember you used that trick in your other presentation a while ago. Please use that in the next one, too. :D
The bad-good links is a great presentation, too. I’m actually helping my UK friend recover from her penalties, as someone did quite a lot of negative seo on her, out of pure stupidity. It’s hard to imagine there’d be people out there targeting not only the big brands, but also the small ones.
Oh, regarding HARO, I have my doubts on them. I tried using them in the past 2 years without any luck. Then, one day I get this email and I see a friend’s site, so I emailed her asking if she needs help with contents for an interview and told her I saw her ad on HARO. She then said she never sent it and she’s not sure if it was a guest blogger doing that or someone trying to use her brand. So you see, HARO has their flaws. I might get angry and play a prank on them, too. ^^
Mind if I link to your post on a blog article that’s been drafted for Ages about Topical Approach and Link Building in 2014? I think the presentations about Link building will be really useful.
Catch up soon. Gotta pack for my love wolf adventure to the seaside. :D
Cheers,
Rox
Hahaha actually I wrote this on Friday but it was too late to publish so saved it for first thing this morning today :)
It’s a shame I can’t make the actual video of the presentation public because I said a lot more than you can see in the slides and gave away a lot of stuff I’ve never mentioned anywhere before.
Feel free to link as you wish :) Have a fun trip!
Wow that is so awesome. I would love to be there next year. I know it takes a lot of hard work to get it done, so we all have a lot of work to do, lol.
It would be great to network with don! See what I did there? :P
Great seeing you there man…! Killer writeup, good to know some of the sessions that I missed were good as well.
Good to catch you :) See you at the next summit!
Great summary and usage of slides for anyone who couldn’t make the event or attend all sessions. Always great to meet up!
See you at the next one Zac!
Thanks for the mention and it was great meeting you in person! We’ll have to do it again!
We will cause trouble everywhere we go!
I look forward to it! =0)
It’s a good job Vegas isn’t built for causing trouble right?
Good to hear that you attend the summit and enjoyed it.
Thanks Inzamam!
This is very motivating Matt!
Thanks for compiling most of the slides into one post. made it a lot easier.
Hopefully, one day I will be able to join the fun with you guys! (Maybe in Vegas!!)
Apart from the food that looks tempting, what makes me even more motivated is to be able to meet so many influential internet marketers all at once!
There are slides from most sessions available but I just picked out the best ones. Really you miss most of the information with just the slides though =/
Vegas is built to party…. jus sayin :P
Thats why I am working hard so I can join the fun :)
Everybody hustlin’