Besides Search Engine Strategies New York this was the first real show I went to since I started doing affiliate marketing back in 2006. SES NYC was pretty cool, also because it was my first trip to the Big Apple, but MAN, ASW was THA bomb! I almost went last year but because of a last minute cancellation from a friend that was supposed to go with me, I decided to drop out as well. Now I know what I missed! These are the guys that went with me this time.

Hein van der Wielen, director of BlueMango.nl, Frank Rovers, CEO of Feltron.nl, Me and Frank Raaijmakers, CEO of Amdir.nl

So, I know this shows have to be about doing business, learning a thing or two and especially networking, but what impressed me the most are the insane parties we went to. But more about that later. So we came in at wednesday but the show didn’t start untill sunday, so we had some time to spare. We checked in in the Venetian and we had a pretty nice room. It was called the ‘Rialto suito’. Altough it was nice and spacy, it was sooooo noisy! When the party people came in around 4′ish when we were doing some serious sleeping to overcome our major jetlag, my sleeping was over and I was tired the entire next day. Happened to me 2 times, then I decided to wear earplugs at night. Shame on you Venetian.

Anyway, we played some poker at O’Sheas which is an AWESOME place if you want to play FUN poker or craps! Everybody is having a good time overthere and they do not take things too serious like they would in other big casino’s. Definitly go there to play some 1-2 Texas Hold Em, you won’t regret it! Also we did some tasteful dinners and nice clubbing around the city.

Then sunday the show started. Because one of us had to leave on tuesday for a meeting we decided to get gold passes instead of platinum passes because we had to miss the tuesday anyway. So on sunday we attended 3 sessions. One about effective social media techniques, one about monetizing blogs for affiliate marketing and SEO and one that was called ’start monetizing your blog today’. Well, I can say, those sessions didn’t help me one bit and I think most of the people were quite dissapointed about these sessions. Even for a beginner this was pretty basic stuff and nothing new or revealing. Especially the first one, which I had high expectations for, was very dissapointing. ‘Don’t spam twitter’. Come on guys, we want want to hear techniques that can be applied to social media campaigns that drive your bank account to insane figures. But nothing of that. Unfortunately. From what I’ve heard the platinum sessions were a lot better, so the next Affiliate Summit I’ll be sure to hang around for the full 3 days.

We also went to the meet market, but it was SO packed that you couldn’t even say hello to the people you knew overthere. Crazy time! I did get to meet Markus Frind, Founder and CEO of PlentyOfFish.com though, the biggest online dating site in the world.

At night we had Copeac’s ‘Party like a rockstar’ party at the Tryst in the Wynn. Beautiful club, not too big, just right, but not too many people there unfortunately. The party was good and we got to meet 2 other dutch marketeers (which you don’t come across too often in the USA). They are with 4people.nl and do a lot of emailing. It was nice hanging out with you for a bit guys!

After that we went to the XS in the Encore. My god! This nightclub was INSANE!! Decorations were sooo beautiful, the sound was good and the atmosphere was just amazing. What more can I say. We had a GREAT time there!

Monday was a hard day for us. We were sleepy from all the partying, but we had to go out networking on the show again. So this day we mainly exchanged cards with various companies and people and I got inspiration on many new projects by just walking along the booths. I already got a lot of emails and calls from people who want to do business, so that’s good!

After the show we were so sleepy that we decided to take a little powernap. This turned out to be a 5 hour sleepfest. Markus Frind invited us over to a party at the Palms in the early evening. Missed that. After that there was this amazing party thrown by Azoogleads in the Hugh Hefner Skyvilla. Unfortunately we couldn’t go there as we had another party by Clickbooth right at the same time. As you can see by Steve Hall’s picture’s, this was a HOT party.

The Clickbooth party was crazy too. It was called the ‘Hangover party’ and it was shot in one of the 4 rooms the actual movie was shot in. Like the movie there was even a chicken in it. Awesome! We had a really good time there with our friends over at Clickbooth.

And that ended our trip to Vegas. We headed down O’sheas for a quick round of craps and then we headed out to the airport and had a 16 hour flight home. YUCK!

It was an amazing time and show and I hope to see you all at the next Affiliate Summit East from August 15 – 17!!!

6 CommentsPost by Gioom