The Missing A4UExpo Round Up!
Posted under: So A4UExpo London is over for another year and whilst many will be nursing hangovers or implementing new business relationships, I’m not as I wasn’t there. There are plenty of valid reasons for my absence. I’m moving house soon and there’s 101 things to do. Whilst many people were tucking into sausage and mash at London’s Excel on Day 2, I was with Jude and disposing half the garden at the local tip.
The worst thing about not being at the 2010 A4UExpo, especially after going to the last ones, is that inevitably you see blogs and tweets announcing that it was the best one yet. It’ll be interesting though to see how Lammo.net and Kirsty report the event – perhaps from an “old school” affiliate point of view.
The good news for A4UExpo absentees, however, was that you could follow some of the proceedings via Twitter. The #a4uexpo produced some useful snippets of information, although there definitely seemed to be less tweeting going on on Day 2. Whatever could have happened to cause that?
Live blogging was also in action and a massive thanks to the guys at Distilled who produced some quality blogs during the proceedings. I get easily distracted in seminars so to be fair I think I got more out of following twitter and reading Dave Naylor’s Three Pillars of SEO and Negative SEO than actually being there!
There wasn’t much tweeting or blogging about other seminars though. Michelle Dewsberry’s session got a few mentions, although one saying something like “there’s a lot of guys here” did make me laugh.
Affiliate Armageddon, which I think was the last session of Day 2 was another that sadly lacked twitter commentary, but it did produce one of the most telling tweets for me from the whole two days. Pete Sipple wrote “Last session will certainly make me rethink strategy with networks and merchants who only value their top 10s”.
When I asked Pete to expand he replied “as a small affiliate, my ability to influence the big boys/girls has diminished too much, so I need to rethink who I talk too”.
Perhaps a sobering thought for many who are reflecting upon the events of the last two days?
All in all I kind of missed being at Expo, mainly because it’s nice to catch up with people and share a beer or two. Of course, there’s no hangovers to recover from, no backlog of work and no bags of freebies to find in 7 months time. By the way whilst packing things we found a Buy.at chunky chocolate bar from Expos gone by – tasted awful!
But there is good news as I still learnt stuff by following proceedings virtually and in fact implemented a coding change at the same time in response to one of the seminars. The garden is clear too!!
And there’s always next year… maybe.
It’s something I’ve been aware of – for all the niceness from networks and agencies they have to look at the bottom line.
Recent re-admission by big merchant of a certain vouchery site has certainly made me think about who is actually calling the shots these days.
I am not even sure it’s networks anymore.
I did read a lot of expo-tweets during the day and found some nice snippets.
When you have an affiliate buying £100,000 domains to tie up voucher code stuff… imo it’s a good indicator that perhaps networks/agencies etc have bigger fishes to talk to.
We get more users, add more links, send more traffic and get less revenue from networks. Which makes them talking to us and us talking to them a bit of a non-event lol.
Hi Jason,
I was on the panel of the Affiliate Armageddon session talking about the role of networks and am surprised by the comment from Pete re Top 10 affiliates as the point I was trying to make was exactly the opposite, but perhaps I didn’t get this across quite right., so I shall attempt this again
I strongly believe that our growth will come from the affiliates outside of the Top10 in the next year, they already account for a bulk of our sales and I have changed our strategy of management at Sky so that Affiliate Window can dedicated their full team to managing affiliates outside of the Top10. I truly believe that all affiliates will benefit hugely from this separation as we have thought very carefully and planned this out over several months. We are investing significant resource into managing our longtail and also investing in new tools, such as a product feed that has just been built – this is for longtail affiliates to use and be able to drive more sales.
As an affiliate this is the time to be really engaging with large merchants like us as this is where our focus is, in long term, sustainable growth.
Helen
HA! Glad you liked my comment on Dewberry’s session, it was really funny to see the audience so mesmerised
I also kept the 3 rows around me entertained with my live commentary on her session…
I went to 1 session at each period so tried to follow the rest on twitter but it was quite difficult, as the hashtags were different for each room so you have to search for each individually. Maybe we should all have used the generic #a4uexpo one in hindsight.
There was actually more people on day 2 as there was a day pass available and many opted for that, and they more than compensated for all the no-show hangovers! However, they did not have access to the seminars, which would explain the lack of tweets.
Wow. I didn’t expect my tweet to be noticed in amongst all the show chatter, and I certainly didn’t intend to create the “sobering note to end the show on” comment.
With regards to Helen’s comments – Yes, Sky is certainly one merchant that acknowledges the role that affiliates play in their chain. Sky’s very pro-active (as demonstrated by Helen’s involvement on-stage and from the audience during the Expo).
My comments certainly weren’t intended as any kind of dig at Sky specifically (despite recent issues I’ve experienced with the Sky programme). My point was intended to be a general observation from the junior affiliate position… In my recent dealings with some merchants and networks, I’ve noticed a subtle balance-of-power shift.
During the Armageddon session, with its downbeat talk of the diminished value of content sites, aggressive merchant de-dupe policies, transparency issues, and the risks (DGM/iLevel), it was Helen’s “it’s up to affiliates to know who they’re dealing with” that started me thinking about ways that I, as a small affiliate, can get my voice heard amongst the noise.
Key point for me was that many of the smaller networks at A4U were very willing to engage and talk openly, but can sometimes be dismissed as they don’t carry the lion’s share or the larger merchants. Whilst I strongly value my relationships with the larger networks and merchants, the show demonstrated that, at least for me, looking further afield could yield some big wins too, and that’s something I need to focus on.
Pete
Thanks for the comment Pete.
I found your tweet quite interesting amongst the usual euphoria which accompanies the climax of Expo. Everyone is energised and excited – which is nice – but your tweet struck a reality chord for me at least…. and that’s good.
Definitely looking at other options – be it networks or independents (as we did) can be productive and rewarding.
I think larger networks/merchants don’t always have the time to look beyond the codes, MSE’s and cashback these days – they want sales & volume and you can’t blame them for doing that… it’s tough times and everyone’s busy.
In fairness to the networks/merchants we also know we can’t do volume despite mailing lists, active community, brand etc… and I don’t have time for the “pitching” almost (e.g. prizes, codes, extra bits and pieces) when there are other things that are much easier for them and for us.
In the end you follow the money I guess?
Hi Jason,
I’m glad the tweet caught your attention. As a result of that tweet, and your highlighting of it, I managed to catch the attention of the large network in question (I didn’t even name them). Mails from three different people there today, and I don’t feel quite as unloved as I did on Wednesday.
Good to know that where emails, support tickets, forum messages and pulled links fail to get someone’s attention, a humble 140 characters can yield results!
The unexpected consequence was the other contacts from a couple of favourite merchants worried that because I didn’t get to chat to them at a4u, they thought I might be referring to them, and wanting to share some love. Thanks chaps!
Thanks also to the network that’s already implemented something that I discussed at the show with a smaller merchant… another win!
Have a good weekend, y’all!