Pubcon 2007 - Final thoughts

Well it’s great to be back at the CDF Networks world headquarters after 3 days in Vegas. I ended up cutting the trip short by one night, and getting back late last night. A little Vegas goes a long loooooong way. I have been there many times over that last few years and the pattern is always the same: I’m really happy to get there, but then even happier to leave. I made some great new contacts and have some new techniques that I am anxious to try out. Rather than a coherent post, here are some final random thoughts from the show.

• When you are a little hung over, getting French toast and a huge glass of orange juice from room service is great. Dumping the entire full glass of orange juice directly on the keyboard of your laptop is not so good. Talk about sticky keys.
• I found a couple new PPC networks to try out. These guys always claim their traffic is the cleanest, targeted traffic on the planet. The next PPC challenge we do should include 15 PPC networks.
• I went to a couple of the domaining sessions. I’m not into this currently, but I have always wanted to try it. It was interesting to hear some of the techniques people use and more importantly, how to use domains to drive traffic to affiliate offers. They claim that type in and direct traffic converts even better than search. I can definitely see the attraction of paying one fee for a domain and getting unlimited traffic, rather than paying for every click like PPC.
• The Google reception was fun. An open bar for 2 hours and a room full of Internet Marketers is a dangerous combo. The only thing we go after harder than free T-shirts if free booze. One small comment though to Google. What’s up with the chips and salsa? You have 100 billion in the bank, how about putting out a deli tray at least?
• I am really exited to test sending traffic to a new merchant that I met in Vegas. This is traffic I was previously sending to a CPA network type offer. I hope to eventually be sending most of my PPC traffic to companies like this. The flexibility and of course payouts can’t be beat when you go direct. Thanks for the awesome dinner guys, you know who you are!
• $12.99 for 24 hours of WiFi, sucks.
• There was a lot of focus and buzz on video. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how video can be used in the affiliate marketing world effectively. I have a few ideas of things to test, including video landing pages for certain offers. If done right, it could be great but there are some technical challenges as well.
• If I’m going to be a proper blogger I really need to take pictures at these things. I had every opportunity to take pictures with all the important guys but I didn’t do it. I’m not the biggest “networker” in the world, but luckily my business model doesn’t depend on who I know in the industry.

All in all it was a worthwhile trip. I met a few new clients, and learned a few new tips, which should pay for the conference easily. Now back to the real work.

Here are a few of the pics I did remember to take.

You could land a 747 in there.

The expo area, Yahoo had the biggest booth.

Not sure what a Ferarri has to do with domains, but there is was.