I thought it would be an interesting idea to try and get my Expo ticket competition winner to write up his experiences from the big event through the eyes of a novice. So without further ado, I’ll hand you over to Rich, newbie affiliate reporter extraordinaire!

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? The A4U Expo this year was such a highly anticipated event, and it certainly didn’t fail to impress. Well, that’s partly true for me. Thanks to Kirsty and Chris Clarkson from Sunshine.co.uk, I didn’t have time for the anticipation to build up! Having only found out that I was actually going to A4U Expo, just a week before it, meant that everything up to the starting evening was a mad panic.

Whilst on the train on the way down to London I had so many thoughts running through my head – what if people don’t talk to me because I’m a newbie? What if the networks don’t want to know as I don’t currently promote them? What if the content of the expo is way over my head? What if Kirsty and Duncan aren’t as nice as they seemed from the emails and Kirsty’s blog? Needless to say, none of those questions were an issue (ok, so maybe one was slightly, but more on that later!).

Ignite Party

Walking into the ignite party on the first night was impressive – there were a lot more people than I expected to see there, and the male-female ratio was much higher than I thought it would be too, but, I didn’t realise that most of the girls were from networks and agencies.

After a long night at the bar (everyone seems to have so much stamina!!), I finally headed off to bed at around 2am, pleased in the knowledge that I’d met a lot of new people, even if one of them had managed to convince me they needed a domain that I own (yes Ray, that’s you!).

One thing I did notice from my first night chatting to everyone was that most affiliates tend to have a very strong software development background, rather than a marketing one. Perhaps it’s a natural progression to go from a technical side of the web to a more creative side?

Day One

Day one of the exhibition started off badly for me – I somehow slept through my alarm (couldn’t possibly have been the late night and copious amounts of alcohol) and ended up getting to the first session just in time for it to start, rather than being there nice and early as I had planned!

The keynote session by Michael Nutley from New Media Age was, although interesting, slightly irrelevant I felt. Yes, perhaps for the networks and agencies it may have been, but for the general affiliate I felt that the keynote should have been by someone from Google (where were they??), or MSN.

The next session that I went to was the Wordpress SEO optimisation one, held by Joost De Valk. Although there wasn’t anything new as such here, mainly due to the fact that I read his blog on a regular basis, it did help by making a lot of the areas that he covers sink in. The plug-ins that he covered are incredibly useful, and often simply make common-sense!

Following Kirsty’s recommendation, I headed off to the SEO 101 session next, this time held by Judith Lewis. It was a great introduction to SEO, and helped me to understand what it was all about! The key thing that came from this session was that relevant, contextual links are very critical to getting ranked within search engines.

Obviously, attending “So You Don’t Do Travel?” by Chris Clarkson and Alan Gilmour was to be the next session, and wow, what a surprise they had in store! SunPress is their WordPress plug-in to enable their holiday information to be put directly into your WordPress site. I have already started researching domains for this fantastic tool to be put onto, so within a week or two I’ll have a couple up. This alone makes day 1 fascinating!

After the session had finished, I decided to wander around, and chat to some of the merchants, and networks, and see what they had to say. I decided to be honest with the networks and agencies and let them know that I was just getting started out in the world of affiliate marketing, to see how they judged me (and so I could report back on here!). Most of them were ok with that, but didn’t really want to spend much time chatting to me, but there was one that pretty much said that they can’t do anything for me. Kirsty knows who they are, and I’m pretty sure that most of you can guess too, but if you want to find out, simply leave a comment and we’ll tell you!

<editors rant>

Note from Kirsty - Don’t be so soft Rich, stick it to them!!!  It was CJ, and bloody well shame upon them for not wanting to take five minutes to have a wee chat with a new affiliate.  We all started somewhere, and for them to not have the foresight to actually realise that todays beginner could be tomorrows super affiliate (or even just a decent performer) is pathetic to say the least.  Imagine, just imagine how it would make anyone feel to have someone just walk away from them at a networking event like ours - “Nah sorry mate, you can’t do anything for us, so we’re not interested.”

Pathetic!!

</editors rant>

Unsure about which session to attend next, I took some advice from Kirsty and Duncan; get the traffic to your site before you start optimising! This in hindsight seemed to be common sense (pretty much like everything in affiliate marketing!), and so I headed off for the Extreme SEO session with the panel of SEOs. The session gave us an insight into what goes through their minds, although there was a lot of talk about negative SEO which I’m not too sure is much use for a beginner (well at least one who wants to stay to white-hat methods!). Still, it was a pretty entertaining session.

Following on from this I attended the link-building session at the end of the day, which, although informative, wasn’t as controversial as some of the other sessions!

The cruise along the Thames later on that evening aboard the Silver Sturgeon proved to be really enjoyable, and was a fantastic chance to network again (and to take advantage of the free bar!). This really seems to be the most rewarding part of the whole expo, with the chance to network with other affiliates and merchants.

Day Two

Day two was a bit of a late start for me after leaving the bar at 4am (it’s all Chris Clarkson’s fault!!), so I missed the first session on SEO and PPC which I really wanted to attend. After that, I headed off in search of the next session which was the Practical PPC strategies for better ROI one, with Mel Carson and Tor Crockatt from MSN, and Dixon Jones. Although it was entertaining, I feel that my time would have been better spent in the Effective Voucher Code session, as I gained very little from the PPC Strategies one, with it seeming to be aimed at more experienced PPC affiliates.

Al Carlton’s Million Dollar Blogging Strategies in session 3 was one that I was looking forward to, having spoken to him on the night before. I knew that he was not looking forward to it as he was very nervous, so to actually take something away from it that has stuck in my head must’ve meant he did a pretty good job. It’s amazing how much attention a WordPress blog can generate!

The final session that I went to was the Super Affiliates session (the same as almost every other affiliate it seems!). Although I didn’t gain much from this in terms of technical knowledge, it was great to get some quotes from the three guys, and to hear snippets of their stories. It definitely served as an inspiration, and shows that no matter where you are, there is always room for improvement.

The final night of the expo led us to the Fox @ Excel bar, where Sky had commandeered a section of the bar for their VIP room. Luckily I had the pleasure of gaining entry thanks to Teresa at Stream 20 (She promised me if I went back on Day 2 of the expo she’d give me a wristband, and true to her word, she did!). It was good to meet the celebrities (even if I had no idea who one of them was!), and certainly made for a different kind of evening.

I guess the 2 words that sum up the expo for me would have to be Links and Action! Links seem pretty much integral to getting anywhere in the search engines. Action is required to get anywhere within affiliate marketing, so just get out there and do it and not hesitate!

I owe so many thanks to Chris Clarkson from Sunshine.co.uk and Kirsty for this amazing opportunity. I know I’ve rambled on a bit, and I’ve missed out so much too, I could just go on for days telling you about every little part of the experience, but, if you didn’t go this year, then all I can say is that you missed out on so much! I know for sure that I will be going next year, if not to Amsterdam in the Spring!