Okay, enough of the serious stuff (last post). Affiliate Summit West was a blast!

Except for all the smoke in the Rio!

Was it just me or was it impossible to breathe in there??

Inhaling all the smoke must have weakened my immunity, because now I have a fever…no joke.

Being that I’m ill, I’m going to give a quick recap…

On the first night of the Summit (Sunday) a bunch of us headed off to the ShareASale Party, which is always a major highlight of every Affiliate Summit. Afterwards, we headed to the Revenuewire party.

Affiliate parties are a great time to talk shop, maybe it’s because people are more laid back and relaxed at parties, or maybe because they’re drinking alcohol, people at parties are much more open to sharing their methods and strategies than they would otherwise be.

Anyways, I had a chance to talk to a number of super affiliates and SEM experts including : my buddy Felix Leshno, Heather Paulson, a fellow from Clicks2Customers, a fellow making $300k/month through Clickbank.

Don’t worry I’ll share what I learned in future blog posts…one thing I did learn is that there are a number of super affiliates who are making a KILLING with direct linking, contrary to what some of the ill informed comments and feedback I got from my “How to Get Started as an Affiliate” post would suggest.

A lot of what I learned that night not only confirmed what I had suspected, but has forced me to rethink some of my affiliate marketing strategies.

The best part of my trip to Vegas was meeting Melanie Tuinstra (and her husband Hank), my long time business partner, for the first time.

Here’s a picture of me, Tom, and Melanie, all equal shareholders of Performance Marketing Worldwide :

We had a chance to have our very first shareholders meeting ever since we incorporated a year ago. We plan to shift gears and jump into info marketing, in addition to the affiliate stuff we’re already doing.

Here’s Paul, Kristen (Paul’s wife), Vanessa (Doug’s wife), Doug, Tom, Sheila (Tom’s wife) :

Here’s Melanie, Sheila, Shilpi (my wife), and me :

DAY 2

The highlight of Day 2 was none other than the Affiliate party at the Venetian hotel, featuring the Blue Man Group!

Unlike the Rio, the Venetian is actually one of the classier hotels in Vegas, when you walk in it feels like you’re in Venice. Check it out…

The Affiliate party at the Venetian was in the coolest night club I’ve ever seen. The night club had a slick modern design with Buddhist statues and flowing water.

The Blue Man Group only performed for about 10-15 minutes, but it was pretty cool, here’s a 2 minutes excerpt :

Afterwards, upon Felix’s recommendation, several of us headed off to an AWESOME Italian restaurant in the Venetian. I had pasta with black squid ink, check it out :

DAY 3

On the third day I was speaking on a panel with Super Affiliate Zac Johnson, Top Blogger John Chow, and CEO of Pepperjam Kris Jones.

I was flattered to be on a panel among such industry heavy weights, it was quite an honor to say the least.

Zac summed up the panel very well in his post.

I also had a rare chance to have lunch with internet marketing extraordinare Joel Comm, one of the top bloggers in the world, John Chow, and my buddy Andrew Wee :

I wish I had a tape recorder while talking to Joel Comm, he was sharing some really awesome strategies on how I can take my business to the next level.

Hope to see YOU at the next Affiliate Summit in Boston.