Just Denied Affiliate Registration For The Show

I have not once not paid for a ticket and as a content producer, I was neither one of the rich people throwing around champagne (like those who made bank from stealing my content), nor did I ever benefit from everyone try to crawl up my ass to get my traffic.

Barely any invites to dinners, parties, no cash put in my hands to go gamble or buy hookers.

And still I paid for my tickets. Plus travel from Europe.

Stupid me.

1: How to make traffic without buying it
2: How to check if a sponsor is long-term and honest
3: How to make a blog post and score better than the program you are selling
4: What is linkspun and how to use it?
5: How to check if your webmaster partners are not out to screw you behind your back
6: How to make a w/b label and make it work for you
7: How to use analtics and how to read Ahrefs to become informed

etc etc ...

Ya know, the stuff that frightens the sponsor programs who consider you as traffic tools and do not want you to outperform them.

Yeah, I spend hours, days, and long nights to impress those who paid my salaries. I got the "no one is paying for that shit" replies.

I lost countless so-called friends by being honest, so I am not really surprised that affiliates are the one and only people being battled by their biggest paying sponsors.

Anyway, hoping to have answered your question.

Asshole.

Pillsbury boy is scared to find out that internet has different rules than the real life. He isn't likely to run his mouth about "falcons" with Columbian boys who run webcam market for people who aren't allowed to enter US of A.

seriously?

You are just being mean right now. Attending a show is not that difficult; it even gets better when you have an ounce of snif to give away and become the hero of the toilet area.

Any sucker can attend a show, but if a show did what it promised, any fool with decent work ethic would be a millionaire.

oh yeah... thats a burn.

Cartagena (lalexpo) was... an experience. Affiliates would be taken for a ride, deep into the jungle, just to be hailed as heroes.

It's official:

WTF??? I guess they are not wanting affiliates to attend?

Yeah, it is crazy since most of the big OFM agencies are benefiting my traffic.

I spoke to a few people who will just go to do business at the round bar. They are not interested in attending any of the seminars or looking at tables.

Guys, I love you both, and you know it! But let's be honest, you're both business owners stretching the definition on "affiliate" and giving it a higher weight than the fullness of what you actually are in order to justify getting a free badge under norms that were acceptable 18 years ago. By your desired definition, everyone that is receiving affiliate checks should qualify for an affiliate badge... and that would be everyone, wouldn't it? It would, because everyone is getting affiliate checks.

The whole idea of a free affiliate badge is outdated, I think. Even offering a free affiliate badge is clinging on to the past because the numbers have changed. This was relevant when there were hundreds of programs spending millions in sponsorship and thousands of affiliates that those sponsors wanted to meet - but that was 2005.

They just shouldn't do it anymore in my opinion because it results in the general unhappiness I'm seeing in this thread. When really, everyone needs some skin in the game, no different than every other kind of business conference, to take their event expectations and contributions more seriously.

Don't shoot me. Drinks are on me

Brad

And that sir is just people who want a free ride. They'll be bitching about things when they're at the bar and probably not paying for their drinks there, either.

Brad

Full agreement. It's an outdated concept. Affiliates don't drive the business and haven't for over a decade. The amount of "affiliates" I've heard complain about this who also happen to operate their own affilate program with affiliates of their own...

They should charge everyone the same fee to attend, if they aren't selling enough badges then maybe they should lower prices or provide more value?

By the way...we left our affiliate program 6 years ago. So I no longer am part of that.

My paysite runs off of my own social media promoting.

As for being an affiliate...yeah, there ain't nothing left there anymore.

But I still update 10 different free sites by hand and put in my work as an affiliate every day. Also use our social media platforms to promote as an affiliate.

I am as authentic an affiliate as there has ever been.

And yeah...the price is way too high for the value provided.
Hell, last year the entire AVN show was in a fucking perma-tent attached to the side of Resorts World and was about 1/4 the size of the 2001 Internext show.

And the Internext "show" itself was a small partitioned off "room" in the tent with a few couches in it.

Hopefully it's on the rebound this year since they will have the old "The Joint" space again at The Virgin (formerly the Hard Rock).
But no...I guess we won't be going. There's no way that 2 tickets costing a total of $700 is worth that.

What I’m about to say is not a personal attack on you, please keep that in mind. I’m just sharing my experience from attending shows over the past 2 decades.

The topics you listed are for beginners. Any affiliate that can send decent traffic should already know these things as they are very basic skills.

Having said that, I’d like to point out that shows are meant to be networking events between service providers (programs, billers, hosts) and people who can send them sales.

The people financing these shows (service providers) have no interest in dealing with Joe Schmo whom is still learning the basics. They want to meet the people that can actually drive significant amounts of sales.

So if you start catering to newbies, you lose the people who are paying big money to attend. The show organizers business model would fall appart.

Now, having said that, let’s also acknowledge that times have changed. The lion’s share of traffic has been consolidated between a few dozen companies and the odd one-man-army.

Its hard for businesses to justify buying big packages while show organizers are dealing with shrinking profit margins.

Do I have the answer to their problems? No. But I definitely know that encouraging the growth of everybody’s business is the way forward, even if that means paying for tickets that used to be free

I sold my paysite affiliate program over 20 years ago to DeeCash. So I am not a program owner anymore.

All I do is work on traffic, so maybe they should rename it to a "Traffic" badge if they want to attract the traffic suppliers.

TES gives me an "affilate" badge without a problem. I already booked my flights and hotel for TES Seville.