Affilate Marketing Conferences Add Value

The hour and forty-five minute journey from Richmond to the Docklands was the only negative experience I had on Wednesday when I visited and spoke at the Affiliates 4 U conference and expo.

Well organised, busy (even after a 4am bedtime for many the night before) and choc-a-block full of great content.

My session on PPC and ROI was attended by about 150 folks who came to hear some tips from Dixon Jones and my colleague Tor Crockatt – thanks for the great feedback everyone!

There’s no doubt that affiliate marketing is thriving and even more so in these lean economic times where merchants are looking for more performance driven options and lower costs.

Kieron Donoghue, Doug Scott and Jamie Wood from UK Web Media in the “Meet the Super Affiliates” were certainly very aspirational. Keen to expunge the traditional image of affiliate marketers as being spotty back-bedroom spammers they have proved that being professional, adding value and having a keen entrepreneurial spirit can pay dividends. Not sure Jamie liked it being called out that he’s worth £18m but I managed to get a beer out of him later that evening anyway!

That said, there is a divide between those doing it on a larger scale and some of the guys out there who are just starting out.

During the “Affiliate Doctors Live” session, where website owners put their websites up for scrutiny to a panel contain such SEO experts as Dave Naylor, Joost de Valk, Marcus Tandler and Chris Garrett, some of the sites suggested were quite frankly appalling. They had bad navigation, layout, design and content but were unfortunately ranking well in the search engines. When several of the website owners were asked for the most basic metrics they didn’t know and I wondered where they’d been for the last few years.

But I guess that’s why they were there at the conference, to get some advice on how to be better marketers and improve the user experience.

Hats off to Matthew Wood and the team for a great show!