Affiliate Summit wrap up–whole new world and we can learn from each other

Back home now from Affiliate Summit and I’m still processing what I learned.  Some of our pre-conceived notions are correct.  There are some affiliate marketers who are just out for the quick buck and don’t care about how it’s done, however I feel that they are in the minority of folks.

I also know now that we of the social media/Web 2.0 crowd can learn a lot from affiliate marketers, and they from us.  In many ways we’re after some of the same things (traffic and a living), and like Jason said in his keynote these folks are smart and creative. They could do some amazing things if they tried.

The social media panel I was on with Sam, Steph, Justine, and Deb went really well I thought.  All predictions for fun and humour were bang on the mark.  I often forget how freakin’ smart these folks are.  Man.  I love Deb’s 10,000 foot level stuff and Justine’s tech perspective (remember she hand-coded her first site in sixth grade).  Sam and Steph bring that bridging between the affiliate world and social media that was key to our panel.

There weren’t as many questions as I would have liked.  I think folks might have been a little skittish.  Not knowing us, I don’t think people knew that we love to be asked the tough questions.

I also got the feeling that people were disappointed that we couldn’t give folks that “magic formula” for social media success.

Before you start thinking “oh they just want to game the system”, remember all the business who wanted the same thing when business blogging started?

They wanted the secret sauce to success.  While there aren’t shortcuts, people want a solution and they want it now.

In the panel we all repeated the mantra of learn, listen, connect, participate, and contribute, but this isn’t satisfying to folks.  Answering the question “how long does it take…” with … “it depends…” isn’t satisfying, but I don’t think we have better answers right now.

Really I think we’re only now getting to the point where we can say something is a “best practice”.  Deb has started working with Proctor & Gamble developing a social media lab, her job has been made so much easier by all the things we’ve tried over the last three years of business blogging.

As a final note, I’d like to thank Shawn and Missy for hosting such a great conference and being awesome hosts.