One of the most profitable things I have done in my business is attend conferences.
Although they typical only last for 2 or 3 days, the value of the relationships you make and knowledge you learn serves you a lifetime.
Well:
That’s not strictly true for all conferences and trust me, I have been to some terrible pitch fest based conferences in my time.
So when I flew out to Affiliate World Asia I was skeptical especially with a total travel time of nearly 30 hours!
But they did not disappoint.
Affiliate World was one of the most organized and well thought out conferences I have ever been to and it’s setup in a way that forces people to interact.
On top of that the quality of information coming from the speakers was incredible which I will talk more about that later on.
The Biggest Problem With Affiliate World Asia
But let’s start with the bad.
Affiliate World Asia is hosted in Bangkok and I can’t tell you how much I hate cities.
That isn’t really anything to do with the conference at all but its the only issue I had and it’s an issue I have with nearly every conference.
I’ve flown home early from Vegas, New York and London just because I don’t like the volume of life a city delivers and Bangkok was no exception.
But at the same time, it did allow me to do some pretty awesome things like spend some days in the Thai Cooking Academy, got some custom shirts tailored and went to see some traditional Thai based fisty feety cuffs-
And for those of you that have been making the same mistake as I have all these years.
This is the correct way to use a toilet for number 2-
I can’t believe I’ve been doing it wrong all these years but they say you learn something new everyday.
The Real World Value Of Affiliate World
One of the greatest things about Affiliate World was how the conference was setup in a way that forced people to interact.
In the public lobby area they had food, drinks, tons of tables and overly comfortable chairs all backed with fun things like ping pong and free massages.
The lobby area was always buzzing with conversation and that is one of the major things that separated Affilaite World from other conferences because that is where the magic happens.
Networking Beer Garden
Continuing on that social path, the Affiliate World team also put together a great networking party.
All of the speakers attended and were roaming around ready to answer anyones questions.
These are people that typically charge thousands of dollars for their time. People like Neil Patel, Charles Ngo and Matt Diggity were fully accessible.
Not only that but endless amounts of incredible food was being delivered to you along with various a la carte cooking stations and of course, lots of bars-
The Secret Society
While I probably shouldn’t talk about this, a select number of attendees received an email like this-
As you can imagine, this event was a little different.
But magically things happen when you throw a bunch of elites in a room and serve them food and alcohol.
I cant really share much else about the event other than this photo-
All Of This Resulted In One Thing…
And that is lasting business relationships.
Not only did I get swarmed by readers of the blog asking me questions, we also did live interviews, I sat down with some people 1 on 1 to help them.
All of that resulted in emails like this four months after the conference-
That is the real world difference attending good conferences can make to your business.
In fact that conversation I had above lasted for around 10 minutes while we were hanging out at the beach bar in deck chairs-
Sat on the right is Jitendra Vaswani who later grabbed me in the lobby to tell me he had written about me in his book.
Not only that, but he handed me a copy of the book and threw me straight into a live Facebook interview/Q&A with his audience-
This guy was an absolute networking genius.
He was speaking to everybody and listening to what they had to say. I’ve never seen anything like it at a conference before, he was everywhere speaking to everyone.
I also had the opportunity to sit with a ton of different people and discuss their SEO problems in small settings-
That really allows me to help people with specific advice and that is where the real value in a conference lies.
And that isn’t just a 1 way street.
While I was dishing out my own knowledge I was absorbing it from everybody else that work in some of the more obscure niches in the world all the way through to 7 figure T-Shirt sellers.
The Affiliate World team have made significant investments in creating environments and events that naturally spark conversation.
And when conversation is sparked with people you wouldn’t normally speak to, anything is possible.
Setting The Stage For An Incredible Learning Environment
One of the other things that I was highly impressed with was the level of production end to end.
Not from just the socially engineered networking events but all the way through to the production of the actual talks themselves.
I mean, just stop and take a look at this for a second-
That is some high end production right there folks and that atmosphere made for an incredible learning environment that enabled 2 way feedback between speaker and audience,
But these were the talks that stood out the most for me-
Neil Patel: How To Create A Digital Product That Generates $100,000 A Month
Neil never fails to deliver in his presentations and he didn’t disappoint here.
He took us through all of the stages he uses personally to build digital products and talked about everything from research to price point.
After the talk he gave a stage based Q&A and was then mobbed for the rest of the conference answering peoples more personal questions.
How Marketers Are Building Million Dollars eCommerce Businesses With TeeSpring
This talk really peaked my interest because I’ve always seen those personalied T-shirt ads all over Facebook.
The panel of experts shared everything you needed to know to get started and I was most impressed with what Ronnie Mckenzie shared-
He took us behind the scenes of his actual campaigns from Teespring and Facebook, showing us what worked and what didn’t work.
Then he guided us through his entire process from research, to testing to scaling end to end and this talk left me brimming with ideas.
My Presentation
My session was called “The Content Blueprint I Used To Generate $423,559 In Affiliate Commissions”
I shared the 3 stages of building profitable content that I have developed with my affiliate sites-
And I also shared 2 secret strategies that I use to boost the performance of every content piece I publish.
That was followed by some live Q&A-
And honestly that is my favorite part because you really get to drill down into peoples problems and provide specific advice.
If it was up to me I would just do a full day of Q&A!
Wrapping It Up
The next Affiliate World Asia conference is in Bangkok 6th-7th December 2017 and is generally held in the first week of December every year.
They also have another even in Europe every year if you don’t want to head out to Thailand (you should) but I haven’t attended that one personally.
Either way if you have never done it before, I highly suggest you get out to a conference like Affiliate World no matter what stage your business is at.
Newbies will receive excellent guidance and seasoned pro’s get their perspectives challenged. It’s a powerful combination for success.