The speakers have been pretty good and the interest in OfferForge has been phenomenal!

At times our booth’s been crushingly busy, but I’m not complaining!

if you’re in the area stop by and have a drink with us! look out for the snappily dressed Forge team

It’s not all fun and games at the Summit. It’s really hard work networking with the old-timers. As you can clearly see we’re hard at work putting the final touches to our devious plans.

On the positive side, I did get to connect with Skip Graham owner of the Old Timers Association and brother to the ever-engaging Chris Graham’s. Finally had the pleasure of meeting Steve from Adrants.com (who took the picture). Hard work indeed.

He made everyone admit ‘Their Baby is Ugly!’ and then got down to business!

Tim’s rules for conversion optimization.

1. Have your visitors design your website. Ask them how they want to access information.
2. Subtle changes lead to big gains. There are thousands of on-page variables that affect your visitor’s behavior.
3. Landing Page testing is not Optional. If you’re doing head to head tests you don’t need tons of traffic. Implement AB testing on everything you do. Just because it converts well doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

The Seven Deadly Sins for Landing Page Design.
1. Unclear call to action.
2. Too many choices.
3. Asking for too much information.
4. Too much text. mea culpa.
5. Not keeping your promises
6. Visual distractions.
7. Lack of trust.

My quote of the day was aimed at site designers: ‘Don’t take your creative urges out at work. Go pierce your nipples or get a tattoo!’

If you think you might be a sinner visit sitetuners.com and check out Tim’s blog!

It’s unusual for us ‘tech folks’ to actually arrive on time, but unbelievably the queues had formed forty minutes before the scheduled opening time. Eventually the securitycouldn’t hold the crowd back any further and they swarmed into the room. The venue was abuzz with affiliates, merchants, agencies & networks mingling and networking as I’ve never before seen!

I have a long tradition of association with The Affiliate Summit and after 6 hours of high energy charged networking I was truly exhausted! It’s a testament to the growth of our industry that so many first-timers attended.
It reminded me of an African open air market as people jockeying for position at tables, grabbed swag and of course did business!

The Forge table did phenomenal trade and it was great to connect with so many of our affiliate friends and make new connections.
We launched 2 new products at the show including ForgeInsight, our analytics package for Affiliate Managers & the Offline Coupon Generator, a free offline affiliate marketing tool.

Of course, the most sought after man for the day was the ever popular Brian Littleton, who handed out highly sought invites to the ShareASale Party under the Stars!

That’s the subject of another post though, as it’s now Monday and it doesn’t seem as if everyone has actually returned from the party!

If only Tylenol had an affiliate program their booth would be swamped this morning!

forge meet market table at the affiliate summit

Crowds at the Affiliate Summit

I’m speaking on affiliate marketing of course!

Gillian Meier from jobs.co.za gave a great seo presentation followed by Brett Sinclair from Admob with some really interesting mobile ad insights.

I’m currently listening to sa guru/blogger Louise Marsland on reputation management. Wow!

I’m up next and will be sharing some insights on affiliate marketing as a business model. I’ll add the slideshare presentation here later!

Gareth Ochse & Craig Corte from BuzzFuse, Jo Duxbury from Freelancentral, our own Jonathan Miller CEO of ForgeBusiness and Brian Carl Brown of Blue Catalyst who bought desert for everyone that nicely complimented the Stormhoek wine. Sadly Graham Knox didn’t make it.

We were very impressed with some of the presentations, as Mike Stopforth pointed out Jo showed what were arguably some of the most entertaining slides ever to grace a powerpoint presentation. Both Her and Jon’s presentations contained a lot of useful information supporting their understated but successful pitches. As for the body-parts video clip… nha…

I am truly looking forward to the next installment of 27dinner.

If you are interested in e-business in the SAfrican context, you might also enjoy attending one of our Online Marketing “Speed Briefing” sessions, details below and then on to a few snapshots I managed to grab on the night.

“South African e-Commerce – Hype or Sound Business?” 8:30 AM – 9:30AM.
“The wrong e-commerce strategy could kill your business.”

“New Media Masterclass workshop” 10:00 – 11:30 AM
“Understanding what drives media pricing online, how to negotiate better online marketing rates and ensure your online marketing delivers guaranteed results.”

Sign up here

Perhaps you’d like to suggest some captions?

Join us each month for action packed 3 hour “Speed Briefing” covering topics relating to Online Marketing, e-Business, Social Media and the Technologies that drive them.

NEXT EVENT

“South African e-Commerce – Hype or Sound Business?”

8:30 AM – 9:30AM.

“The wrong e-commerce strategy could kill your business.”

e-Commerce is not just accepting payments. It’s about extending your brand beyond your mortar. Jonathan Miller, expert online marketer, will discuss e-commerce for South African and international markets, provide insight into must-know facts for building or improving your own e-commerce business and showcase products that enable e-businesses.

This workshop is specifically designed to benefit the Retailer, Wholesaler or Entrepreneur that has an established business and needs to expand either through new retail space or online sales.

“New Media Masterclass workshop”

10:00 – 11:30 AM

Whether you’re new to online marketing and brand building or a seasoned veteran you’ll benefit from this round-table discussion on New Media placement for South African businesses.

If you’re currently exploring or using Paid Online Media, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay per click advertising (PPC) or performance based Affiliate Marketing, you should not miss this essential industry update.

You’ll gain an understanding of what drives media pricing online, learn how to negotiate better online marketing rates and ensure your online marketing delivers guaranteed results.

This workshop is specifically designed to benefit the Business Executive, Entrepreneurs, Brand Managers, Sales and Marketing Directors.

Shawn Collins, organizer of the Affiliate Summit just mailed me and let us know there are only 50 passes left! This year’s going to be the biggest get-together yet with 2,500 attendees at the 3 day event.

Of course Forge will be there in full force, exhibiting at Booth #424. We’re also key sponsors of the Monday Night Official Summit Party, being held at Tao, after the Gala Dinner – remember to rsvp if you want to mix it up with us and be entertained by the Blue Man Group.

Till vegas!

Jonathan

See you there!

The coffee’s free and so is the conversation!

Whether you’re looking to outsource your affiliate management or looking for reporting tools to simplify your management – especially in the fragmented UK affiliate market – chat to us about the solutions we’re using.

We’ll be showcasing our new ( community preview ) multi-network affiliate marketing analytics software suite, ForgeInsight, which aggregates reporting from most major affiliate networks such as CJ, OfferForge and other DirectTrack based networks, Zanox and Webgains and any other network with Merchant API’s.

Simply put, it enables merchants and their affiliate managers to consolidate reporting and gain a deeper understanding of how their affiliate channels are performing in real time. It saves us DAYS consolidating reports for our clients – and soon it’ll be available commercially.

So stop by and take a look at it! Be the first to become a beta user!