Purpose of attending a marketing conference?

Affiliate Summit is coming up and I wanted to address some important reasons to go to a marketing conference.

A lot of people just think that it’s a big networking opportunity, and it is. But, it’s also so much more.

A lot of the booths that are setup have some sort of give-away or free coupon or some other sort of incentive to get you using their traffic source, product, network, etc.

A lot of the time traffic sources that you otherwise would never have discovered will be at the events.

Why would your affiliate friends tell you about their best traffic sources? They wouldn’t. That’s another reason why you should really go to the marketing conferences and find those sources yourself. All the big ones will be at the event.

I typically avoid bringing business cards with my phone number on them. If someone asks me for my phone number and I want to give it to them, then I will. But, I’m just as fast to say no if it’s some shady startup network that plans to call me 5 times a week until I sign up. I hate that stuff.

A note for affiliate networks: Don’t approach me like you’re my biggest fan and then try to convince me to join your network. I won’t join if you try to buddy up with me then drop the pitch to join your network. If you really want to tell me about it, then tell me about it, but don’t try to sell me. If I’m interested I’ll join. I’m not the only person that feels like this. I will actually never join a network that tries a pitch or use a tactic to sell me at an event.

Last year I walked away with all sorts of goodies at the event. Free coupons to get free traffic from Facebook and a bunch of mid level traffic networks. I won a prize in some raffle. I did a few interviews. I had a handful of contacts that were actually good contacts and not just random people that wanted to make money off of me. And a bunch of other cool stuff.

In fact, this year if you see me at ASE I’m going to be handing out something valuable myself. I won’t say what it is, you must find me there to find out. And no I won’t be wearing a giant Daily Conversions or List Playbook shirt.