Going to Affiliate Summit Like It Is the First Time

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This weekend Affiliate Summit will be held in Las Vegas. I can’t remember how many Affiliate Summits this is for me…maybe 17? I’ve written so much about Affiliate Summit that it has its own category on my blog! Each time I try to set specific goals for what I want to get out of it (see What’s Your Plan for Affiliate Summit).

Early on I focused on getting as much as I could from Affiliate Summit as fast as I could, including education and networking. As the years went on I focused more on using my time there to build my own brand and credibility. My days were planned down to the minute including meetings with both new and old partners. There was little time allotted to just absorbing what was around me.

This year I want to take a step back from all of that. I’m going to approach Affiliate Summit like I haven’t already been there 15+ times (with the benefit of knowing some of the things that I know!). Here are some of the things I am planning:

• Attend sessions. That seems like a no-brainer, right? Nope. Every year I end up saying that I can skip the sessions and watch them on video. But then I never get around to it. This year I am going to prioritize some of the sessions I want to attend, block them on my calendar, and make the most of them. There are some INCREDIBLE speakers that I know will help me make my business better.
• Leave open meeting spaces. I have a tendency to say “yes” to everyone who wants to meet with me, even if I think there is no potential for us to work together. I end up doing a whole slew of meetings basically just because other people want me to. When I meet someone new at the conference and they want to chat for a bit, I have no time because I have prescheduled it all. This time, I am intentionally blocking out spaces in the schedule to give me time to talk to new people.
• Visit booths. Again, this is something you would think I regularly do. In reality, I have gotten into the habit of quickly running in and out of the Meet Market and Exhibit Hall and only visiting friends or current business partners. I forget that the people I met in the Exhibit Hall at my first Affiliate Summit in Orlando helped me triple my business in one month.
• Introduce myself to new people. It’s easy to get into a rut of only talking to my friends. Or even sitting at a table and waiting to see if anyone new is looking for someone to talk to. I’m going to be sure to go out of my way to introduce myself to people I haven’t met.

Those all seem so basic and yet I feel like I have not done nearly enough of them the last few years.

While I have your attention, there’s just one more thing I want to throw out there.

On Sunday I will be giving a presentation with Todd Farmer and Eric Nagel about our Wine Club Group site (Case Study: Drinking Wine and Making Money(The Full Monty)). It’s unlike any that I have ever given before in a few ways:

• We’ll be sharing secret tricks and giving actual numbers of how we went from an idea at Affiliate Summit to a site that profited over $10,000 just last month.
• The presentation itself is almost all images showing search terms, analytics, merchant research, etc.
• At the end we will be sharing a Resource Guide that lists all of the tools and services that we have used to build the site and make it successful.

I’m really looking forward to sharing it all because I think a lot of people can learn from what we did right AND what we did wrong. And there’s no hype. We’re not saying everyone can make $10K a month doing exactly what we did. But we’re showing how to build a legitimate content-based website that can make you residual income over time.

So that’s it…time for me to get packing! I’m drinking my Emergen-C every day, counting my business cards, and loading up blog posts to go out while I am gone.

Will I see you at Affiliate Summit? How is your plan the same or different than mine?