My ‘One Man Wolfpack’ quickly grew as Matthew Wood, Kieron Donoghue, Chris Clarkson and Chris Brown joined me for some civilised drinks at Gatwick Hilton before we were met in the Palazzo, Las Vegas by Chris Frost and then conference and party hoppers Duncan Pollard and Jim Banks.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you likely followed our experiences via Twitter and Facebook. We had a ball but it was a business trip after all.� I later caught up with Chris Clarkson, of Sunshine.co.uk, who kindly supplied the limo Airport Transfers to our hotel and who was an ever present during the 3 days of sessions from breakfast until close.

* I gave away one business card to a pretty lady, how much networking did you do?

In all honesty not as much as I would have liked. If you weren’t in “Lead Generation” no-one seemed that interested! I did get to meet a chap with the moniker “Danger Brown” which was kinda cool, sort of.

* If an American turned up at your lunch table with an empty notepad and a lot of questions, what one piece of advice would you give?

That Affiliate Marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. There is no short cut, stop reading bullshit bloggers.

* I found the opening keynote session interesting but it seemed to be targetted to a print audience. Did the sessions hit the spot for you?

The Doctor was in the house. The first 15 minutes were fairly interesting, but then he seemed to wander into the promotion of the infamous one page website, big headlines, lots of arrows, highlighting, adding a “notary seal” because it made the page look official, and obviously lots of head shots. The PC he was using for the presentation went into hibernate mode twice and a sharp wit in the audience tweeted “even his computer has gone to sleep”, which summed it up pretty well.

* The Wil Reynolds session seemed to be 10/10 for content. Anything to takeaway for your 2011 projects?
I think the Wil Reynolds session was worth the ticket price alone. One of the takeaways from that session – Social Linking currently accounts for no more than 5% of ranking influence, so he only spends 5% of his time on it. Dear UK conference organisers, please arrange for this man to be a speaker at your next conference, thank you.

* I fortunately got a Press Pass so avoided having to pay for expensive passes. Were the prices justified?

Flying from the UK and staying in a decent hotel meant the actual ticket price was fairly small in comparison. Was the Summit worth the price? As above, for Wil Reynolds and the Dave Taylor closing keynote I’d grudgingly say yes. Lots of other sessions that seemed to be fillers or self promotion. The most packed sessions seemed to be those involving the bullshit bloggers flogging their get-rich-like-me BS.

* I’m personally disappointed that I didn’t attend Matt’s EuroSphere event as I caught up with sleep. Any disappointments for you?

The first session we attended on the first day about “Mastermind Groups” held great promise, but was easily the worst conference session I’ve ever had the privilige to attend. The speaker spent 20 minutes telling us how successful he was and how cool his super secret Mastermind Group was. Then spent another 20 minutes encouraging the audience to start their own (“you can charge for it you know”). I left still none the wiser as to what a Mastermind Group was, but safe in the knowledge I could sign up to the speaker’s website for only a few bucks to find out more…

* Our tweets and images seemed to capture the imagination of our UK online followers. What was your favourite tweet and picture during ASW11?
My favourite tweet sadly was one of my own. Egotistical or what?

My favourite picture. The group sprinkler shot from the balcony of the Voodoo Lounge!

* The planning for our trip started four months prior with flights, hotels and show tickets. What should any UK affiliates prepare and watch out for if they’re attending in 2012?

I think the decision we made to get their earlier this year paid off. Also, bring lip balm and try and get outside every couple of days

* I could have spent all day in the new AllSaints store. I did spend all day at AVN Expo. Did you get to enjoy any other new sights whilst in Vegas?

Places that stick with me are the VooDoo Lounge balcony, Blue Man Group and of course iloveburger!

* I only walked away from the casino tables once with a profit. Did you get lucky?

I had one bet on roulette, $100 across 4 numbers. Didn’t come in but at least I had a go this year.

Thanks Chris. These are great answers and I hope the ‘Wolfpack’ will see you in Vegas again. In the meantime I look forward to seeing you in Leeds for ThinkVisibility.

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Meanwhile downstairs porn legend Ron Jeremy was hosting his own themed soiree.

ASW11 started a week earlier this year and hotels were full as all niche and mainstream stars of the adult film industry were in town for their annual Adult Video News Awards and plenty of geeks were here for the Consumer Electronics Show.

For many of the UK contingent of affiliates who made the trip over, this was the third back-to-back party. The previous two were hosted by adult stars Jessica Drake and Sasha Grey.

There’s plenty more parties to come over the next few nights but it is a business trip
after all so for the next three days we’ll be inside the Wynn listening to US speakers and doing a bit of networking.

So far the parties have been the highlights of the trip. This first session I
am sat in right now is very very dry.

I’m a UK affiliate. Get me outta here and bring on the Strawberry Daiquiri’s and
blackjack.

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Affiliate Window Darwin message

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Even before I got to London I’d invested �900 in attending, with my half price affiliate ticket, 3-night stay at the Ramada hotel and first class train tickets.

I also had to take time off as holiday and so with working part-time it meant being away from the office for a week.

Whilst it is expensive, my business has grew year on year as a direct result of this networking. Meeting network account managers, agencies, merchants and competitor affiliates, sometimes for the first time, brings plenty of new opportunities and ideas.

I’ve previously blogged of how a chance ten minute conversation with a gambling site paid for my trip to a4uexpo Amsterdam 15 times over. I am still today benefitting from that meeting.

The twenty minute meeting I had in London with a Texan could drawf that.

He represented a US� company with over $30m of funding, with the purpose of acquiring profitable voucher code sites.

I’ve got to sit up and listen. This year Kieron sold his discount site, Pete Anderson wanted �171k for his and more recently a discount voucher domain was purchased by an affiliate to protect his brand for �100k.

I had a very detailed honest chat about my site, how I operate and my current turnover and traffic.

Whether I sell during 2011, 2012, or next week, I’d be looking at four times my annual profit.

Would someone pay �500,000? Could be an interesting journey to find out.

I’ve already purchased my a4uexpo Munich ticket for June 2011. Maybe some affiliates could speak on the practicalities of selling a website.

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In the day job I’ve experienced a change of managers, team, office, a split to a new company, responsibility and ways of working.

And I love it. It feels good to have that motivation back, that I was lacking during early 2009, as I continued to perform two roles as a tester and another as Director of my own business.

Significantly I’ve been doing the day-job as a part-time employee for two months now.

I only work in my career role for three days a week.

This means that the time spent in the office are focussed and demanding.

I get asked all the time how part-time life is treating me.

Generally I’ve found that I don’t like working at home alone for consecutive days in a row. I can handle two or three back-to-back but beyond that I yearn to get back in the office atmosphere around people.

And mentally I am still fine tuning the balance of my working weeks. Starting the weekend early on Thursday doesn’t make for a productive Friday.

When I started working part-time I pinpointed three areas that I would focus on and look at over time to see how successful it had been. I also had hard numbers for each so could actually measure any progress.

• Sleep
• Profit
• Engagement

Sleep

Having two jobs is very time consuming and I found that the thing sacrificed the most was my sleep.� Updating voucher codes or fixing WordPress issues at 1am isn’t pleasant. Basically I wasn’t getting enough sleep.

Now with the aid of the Sleep Cycle iPhone app I can measure my sleep and I target the prescribed 7 hours. After 67 nights my average sleep per night is 6 hours 15 minutes. A huge improvement and I now have more energy to get me through the day and a few extra gym sessions.

I rarely do work beyond midnight now. Work can often wait until one of the four days I’m at home. I use my last hour of the day to wind down at the casino.

Profit

With all the changes at work I felt I had to make the decision to leave completely, do a sabbatical for up to nine months or work part-time. Carrying on as was, wasn’t practical. I couldn’t squeeze everything that needs doing in my own business into evenings and weekends.

Staying as was, also meant that profits would have nose dived as the sites that make money were updated infrequently.

A six month review of this year shows my commissions are up �5,000 on the first six months of 2009 from the retail side plus a few grand more from gambling merchants. The total figure makes for a nice salary.

I have the spent the last couple of weeks just auditing how efficient I am at working and with a simple spreadsheet I’ve found that I’ve only got 50% of the available voucher codes on my ShopCodes site at any one time that I could have. That’s actually really good to know and provides focus.

Engagement

There are lots of benefits of networking. You learn new skills, tricks, get new contacts and have an excuse to party in new places.

I specifically chose to have a Friday off work so that I could use the long weekend to travel around more and get to more events.

Previously visiting the a4UAwards or Affili.net poker evening would mean taking one or two days holiday and I’d find that by the time I get to the second half of the year I’d run out of holiday days to attend late summer or christmas events.

Now with an extra 104 days in my armoury I can get to a few more.

Also by engagement I’m thinking of� the relationships that I have with people online.

I’ve always got up to 3,000 unread emails.

I’m always dealing with my accountant, weeks after he wants to.

Now I measure these. Focus on them. Improve on them.

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It was an opportunity to catch up with late night Vegas friends @ChrisClarkson, @KieronDonoghue and @BonyToad on my doorstep whilst also welcoming @ClarkeDuncan and his mate @ukstripclubs to sample the delights of Leeds.

It was again hosted in my local, Alea Casino, which is a great choice of location, particularly for the early Saturday morning start, which unsurprisingly I still missed.

I didn’t get to see all the talks, as the Peroni and chat was flowing at the Royal Armouries square but I did get to see my voucher code site on the Alea cinema screen.

ShopCodes on the Alea cinema screen with the Think Visibility SimpleUsability results

Thanks to @SimpleUsability for dragging people off the street to use my “very busy” site.� It was insightful to see how the users actually interacted and copied the voucher code and which links they clicked.

There were a few surprises and so I’ll be re-installing Crazy Egg, as there’s 7 Things Affiliates Can Learn From Heatmaps, writes @GetVisible.

At the end of the evening I signed up to a No-Limit poker tournament. I finished in the money but it was no compensation for my disastrous blackjack play earlier in the afternoon. Plus poker is a very long game, too long, when you’re missing out on a free bar and VIP entry to a local strip club!

Chip stack when 2 tables remaining

I’ve been to all three Think Viz’s and it was good to see people venture to and have a great time in Leeds.

Well done to @TheHodge and to all these people for another great conference and if you’re able to handle 5am finishes, then see you in September for the next DrinkVisibility.

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I’ve plugged mine in as seen here:

There’s a choice of black or white and subtle and bold and you’ll need to select one as your old button will link to a “Sorry, we couldn’t find that.� We’re not sure what you were looking for” page.

Clicking the new buttons will take you to a submit page to the new ‘The Pool’.� Here you specify a title and summary and it’s worth expanding on the 250 character limit summary as this is what will prompt people to read and potentially vote for your content.

In the new system you can’t see which supporters you have for your content, the voting is all anonymous, which takes away part of the appeal and fun of it. But it does mean you can “slap” a post and hide.

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Knowing that I’d referred a $3,500 paying customer I logged into the NeoGames Partners account to check on my total commission. The Scratch2Cash email included the caveat:

“If the amount is less than 100 EUR, we are not obligated to pay, as disclosed on the affiliate agreement listed on the website. Any amount under the “Minimum Amount” (100 EUR) will be written off.“

I’ve never read anything so ridiculous. Now I owe lots of companies less than 100 Euros and I just can’t write that off.

“Fitness First, you know that �38.75 you want off me for the couple of times I enter your gym, well I’m writing that off!”

“British Telecom, you know that �39.47 I owe you just to have a landline, well I’m writing that off!”

When I questioned this via email , they replied that they were closing my account.

“Since you unfortunately were not able to bring us �100 or more of traffic, we will close your account.“

Imagine if a reputable affiliate network chose not to pay you because you’d only made one sale – but not only that, not give you the opportunity to make more sales so that you could reach their self imposed payment tier?

Affiliates, you have been warned. I’d write-off the Scratch2Cash affiliate program today.

Still have that itch? Don’t Apply Now!

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2009 has been a good year for my site ShopCodes, such that my accountant said to me before Christmas, “You need to lose your comfort blanket”. He was referring to my full time day-job.

To put it into context the turnover and profit, since Halloween passed by and the gift shoppers arrived, is exactly the same as what I earn as salary in my well paid day job.

For my business over 91% of my turnover is profit as I don’t withdraw a salary as a Director and the 9% goes on Internet and networking costs.

And with not withdrawing even much as dividends from the business, there’s enough in the rainy day pot for my accountant to say, “you can pay yourself a substantial salary for at least four years”.

And what if the business starts to suffer from more competition or other threats? “Start looking for work after two years”.

During early 2010 it’s all change in my full time job. Change of boss, job title and location. The office we’re moving to is on the same street I currently live. I’ve a fear that I’ll get cabin fever working, living (also exercising, drinking and gambling) in the same place.

But that’s also now the fear I have if I decide to leave my ‘comfort blanket’. I’ve never liked change and previously it was about financial security. Now, it’s about cabin fever.

So there’ll be more reflecting from me for a few months yet.

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If you search for “argos voucher codes” or some other combination like “argos promotion code” within Google, my ShopCodes Argos page is either bottom of page one or mid page two but what is striking is that the search engine has chosen to display an Argos video clip integrated into my results listing.

So even on page two, it stands out from the crowd. And if the result were say fourth on page one, those below would probably get ignored as your eye is drawn towards the image.

So merchants start making those videos available as I’ve a feeling a few more affiliates shall take my lead and display them.

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