The girls over at AKMG put together a Meetup202 event for the Los Angeles area.  I have a real great working relationship with my affiliate manager, Eleah Portillo and Amber Paul.  Eleah had this great idea that I should speak at the Meetup202 gathering.  I’m terrified of public speaking, but I agreed to it anyways.  I was worried that I couldn’t find any good material, but I calmed down and decided I would speak on buying banner inventory on websites.  I rehashed the post where I lost $250 on my first media buy and went into more detailed information about what things you need to know before signing an insertion order.  I’ll make another, more detailed post about this in the coming week or two.

Friday

One of the things I always wanted to do was visit Los Angeles, but I have yet to do it.  I was so excited about the trip,  I didn’t get any sleep the night before and I flew out at 5am Friday morning without much hassle.  Once I got there and got my rental car I headed over to the AKMG office in Santa Monica.   Missed an exit or two and ended up East LA.  Oops!  But the trusty iPhone got me where I needed to be.  Once I got there I got to meet the whole AKMG crew and worked out of their offices for a few hours until I could go check into my room over in Marina Del Ray.

Once checked in, I took a desperately needed nap.  The girls with AKMG all had their plans that night and that was fine by me because I had a rental car and I won tickets on Twitter to a Crooked I concert in Pasadena.  I’m a huge fan of Crooked I and he just happened to live in Tulsa for a few years.  I was able to talk to him when he came to Tulsa back in November with his group, Slaughterhouse.  Anyways, after the show was over I got up on stage and was able to chop it up with him for a few years.  This night set the whole weekend off for me.  I knew it was going to be great.  You can see a some footage of the show below.  Too see my cameo, skip to 6:21 in the video.

Saturday

I finally was able to get around Saturday and start getting prepared for Meetup202 LA.  I had to live it up while I was out there so you know I had to eat at In-N-Out Burger.  That’s my favorite place to eat on the west coast.  So, I knew my presentation was drawing near and I was starting to get nervous.  Finally after eating Eleah Portillo came and picked a brother up and took me to Meetup202 LA.  Thank god there was a little bit of alcohol there to calm my nerves.  Good ol’ Lennisse Ambriz,  Amber Paul and Eva knew I was nervous so they had a great idea for all us to take a shot and Lennisse was a little hesitant until Amber gave her a little whisper.  Well, it came time to take a shot and I requested to trade cups with Lennisse and of course she wouldn’t.  Guess who had water and who had liquor.  I politefully informed them that, “You can’t play a player!“  Silly AKMG girls!

I was the first speaker and I spoke on how to buy banner inventory on websites.  I’m not going to get into much detail here because I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to this.  Even though I was fairly nervous, I settled in rather quickly.  After I was done, I had great feedback from a number of guys, which really made me feel like I had accomplished something. I hope everyone that was there was able to take something away from it.

Next up was Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor, the network owner of Ads4Dough and Nana Gilbert from Tracking202.  They were put up there without much notice for a Q&A session.   There were a number of good questions that both were able to answer and some very specific questions that wouldn’t be answered.  For everybody that was there, take a hint!  There’s probably some gold somewhere around those questions.  You just have to figure out the answer!

After Meetup202 we all went out to some restaurant/bar in Venice.  I think it was Hal’s.  There was probably a good 15 of us or so crammed into a corner.  It was a good time to relax and have a couple drinks after the event.  As far as I know, business was on the back burner and we were all out to have fun.  I, personally, was still tired from the night before and was ready to head home, which I did after we finished eating.  Most everybody else went to another bar in Venice called The Brig, I think.  I chunked the deuce and headed home with Eva and Amber.

Sunday

Today was my day to go have fun and go sightseeing.  To start it off I ate at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles.  Everybody was hating on my picture on Facebook because the fried chicken was smothered in gravy.  Who doesn’t like gravy on their chicken anyways?  Weirdos.  Once I was done eating Eleah Portillo came and picked me up from the hotel and unfortunately for her, she got to drive me all over Southern California. To start out I had her drive me down Wilmington Avenue which is right in the middle of Compton, California.  We proceeded to hit the 710 Freeway down to Long Beach.  We took Ocean Boulevard, which was beautiful, to the Eastside of Long Beach and drove through the heart of it.  Then I had her take me to Inglewood where we drove down Crenshaw and finally hit Slauson and Crenshaw.  After we were tired of seeing all the ghetto parts we decided to liven up the drive and hit Rodeo Drive and took Wilshire over to the Pacific Coast Highway and headed north to Malibu.  We ate at  Dukes, got a table outside and was able to watch the sunset on the Pacific.  We were even lucky enough to watch some dolphins swim by.  Then it was time to head home and crash!

Monday

Monday I was able to get up and head over to the AKMG office for a few hours before my departure.  In those few hours, I was able to get a lot more work than I thought done.  Maybe I need to get a office here in Tulsa, who knows.  Before I knew it, it was time to head home and was ready for it.

Thanks to Steven, the AKMG Girls, Kim, Amber, Eleah and Lennisse for all letting me come out to beautiful Los Angeles, California.  I had a blast!

Day 1

As soon as I landed in San Francisco and checked into The W, I met up with Shawn Smith from Optimal Web Works, my buddy Tony Tsai and his wife, Jasmine.  We went and checked out Fisherman’s Wharf and was treated to dinner by NDemand Affiliates.

XY7 and NDemand also sponsored the evening by renting a yacht to take us around San Francisco Bay for three hours.  It was a great idea, but it was hella cold if you got on the deck of the yacht.  I did go out there a little bit and snapped a few pictures.  I was kinda bored at first, but as the party went on and everybody got some alcohol in them I started having a lot better time.  I must say that Jon Fondy, host of InboxedRadio is awesome.  He can liven up any party!

We were done with the yacht around 11:00pm and itzbert’s girl said she knew a club/bar that was a good place to go.  Caught a cab ride over there and it was time to par-tay!  I was kinda disappointed I had to request some west coast music.  I requested some songs by local Bay Area artists, Ya Boy and Clyde Carson and they had no clue who I was talking about.  So they eventually played California Love and the place got crunk.  They should’ve let me DJ, just sayin… l had a blast with XY7, NDemand, kaveman, itzbert and his girl.  I even ran into Amber Paul from AKMG up there.  Just as I was leaving Bryn, Trevor and Stanley were getting out of a cab and you know damn well I had to stay and kick it with the homies.  I was straight smashed by the time we ended up catching a cab to somewhere and he ended up stopping right down the road from The W.  I was smashed and tired so I wished the guys well and chunked the deuce.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Day 2

As I expected, I woke up late and hungover.  Just as I was heading over to the floor at noon, I ran into Dylan and Matt from Revenue Ads and Shawn Smith and we all decided to grab some lunch.

After lunch it was time for the AffBuzz Birthday Party with Shawn, Tony and Mike.  Got up there and it was a who’s who in affiliate marketing.  Just to name a few affiliates, Dr. Ngo, Morgan Thomas, Nick Mattern, Bryn Youngblut, Jonathan Volk and Ian Fernando were all in attendance.  A few networks were there including A4D, AKMG and ECM.  We even had a traffic source, Plenty of Fish show up so you know I had to chat it up with Ben for a couple minutes.

Around 2:30pm I finally left the AffBuzz ordeal and made my way to the conference.  I only had 2.5 hours until I had a meeting wtih Amber Paul and Eleah Portillo of AKMG, so I had to make quick work of these booths.  Again, I have to give a shout to Jason Akatiff from Ads4Dough for the epic tradeshow floor tips.  God knows I used them on many booths. Shawn Smith and I went around from booth to booth finding out who did what and took a business card if we felt like we could benefit from the services they offered.  I didn’t get to finish checking out all the booths by the time I had to meet with the AKMG girls.  There wer e a number of new traffic sources I talked to and can’t wait to start buying traffic from.  I also let the Facebook Affiliate team have it.  I should’ve recorded it for all to see.  Shawn Smith will atest to this.

After that I went to the Meetup202 event and the place was packed.  Too many suits for my taste.  Meetup202 just isn’t what it used to be.   Then I had dinner with Shawn Smith, Tony and his wife, Mike, Alan Rutledge, Stanley and a few other guys whose names I do not recall.  We ate at some decent Chinese place and we all talked about the show, the meetup and what everybody’s plans for the night was.  It was almost unanimous that the EWA/PPC.bz party was where everybody was going.

We left dinner and started heading to the Mezzanine where the EWA/PPC.bz party was going down.  We were there before most people arrived and the wait wasn’t too long.  It was an open bar from 9pm to 11pm and everybody was taking advantage.  All the usual suspects showed up.  Dirt Nasty and Andre Legacy are freaking awesome.  I must admit, I never listened to their material beforehand, but their subject material was on point!  Their videos are at the bottom of this page.  I was talkin to the infamous Rob Hustle and was telling him to get on stage, but unfortunately nobody would battle him and Mic Davice couldn’t make it. I was also pretty disappionted that YTCracker never got on the mic.  Right before the open bar ended, I double-upped on drinks and already had a full one at the table.  After the open bar was over the place pretty much emptied out by 11:30, but I wasn’t going to leave until I finished my drinks.  The place was damn near empty when I left at midnight and decided to head home, but not before I stopped in at a Denny’s and absolutely murdered everything they put on my plate.  I later found out that Too Short was backstage and I wish I would’ve known so I could’ve met him.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Day 3

Woke up earlier than I expected and surprisingly wasn’t hungover.  I had to fly out at 2:30pm and I decided I had to to hit the floor and make quick work of the last few booths I didn’t get to make it to yesterday. As I was making my rounds I ran into Steve Howe and Mike Kerry from C2M and chatted it up for a few.  I wish I could’ve talked longer, but we were both short on time.  Finished up the booths and decided I had to get some In ‘N Out before I headed home.

The award for best marketing gimmick at ad:tech 2010 San Francisco goes to Meta Network.  Picture below.  I think I found just the condom for Dirt Nasty and Andre Legacy.

The guys from Revenue Ads scored some playoff tickets and invited me down to watch the game.  The Oklahoma City Thunder are playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the First Round of the NBA’s Western Conference Playoffs.  This is a big deal for us Oklahomies.  This is our first professional sports team and the first professional playoff game ever played in Oklahoma.

Now I have a dilemma because my favorite team is the Los Angeles Lakers and always has been since I was young.  But, I ALWAYS root for the home team.  I decided I was going to root for the Oklahoma City Thunder because it was our state’s first playoff game ever, and I’m pretty confident that my Lakers will win the series.

The Lakers came out strong with a 10-0 lead and it looked like we would never score.  We would keep getting within 1 or 2 possessions, but every time we would gain some momentum Kobe would shoot one of his daggers and kill it for us.  There were a handful of great dunks, notably one by Russell Westbrook, of which I’ve included a video below.  The Lakers were up 5 to end the 1st quarter, 7 at half time and 1 heading into the 4th quater.  We didn’t sit for a large portion of the game and not at all in the 4th quarter.  We were finally able to take the lead with around 8 minutes remaining thanks to our defense and Kevin Durant finally getting into a rhythm after slumping all game long.

It turned out to be a freaking awesome game and I couldn’t have asked for a better game to attend.  The environment was absolutely insane.  The noise level was off the charts.  After the game Kobe Bryant was quoted as saying, “It was one of the loudest crowds I’ve ever played before in the postseason.“  And every seat had a blue Rise Together shirt on the back of it, turning the entire arena into a sea of blue.

I’m thankful for Clay Bennett and his desire to bring the team to Oklahoma City.  This Thunder team really has a lot going for them.  They had a 50-win season, made the playoffs and are the youngest team in the NBA if I’m not mistaken.  Their really young nucleus will allow for us to build an even better team in the coming years.  Even their coach, Scott Brooks, was awarded the NBA Coach of the Year award in the pregame ceremonies.

Thanks again Revenue Ads!

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►

Okay, say I was running mid 3-figures a day to one of the most reputable networks around. Not a huge amount of traffic, but decent figures and my monthly income for February at this network ended up being in the mid 4-figure range.  I’m currently on monthly net 15 with this network because I hadn’t ran any revenue for a few months.  But I do have a history with this network and they know I’m a legit affiliate pushing legitimate traffic.

I emailed my affiliate manager starting on the last day of February and asked if my check could be cut the first week of the month (instead of waiting til the 15th) because I wanted to pay the IRS as soon as possible. Now, I didn’t want to be put on weeklies, I just wanted a one-time exception.

She told me she couldn’t get me paid any earlier than the 15th because I was only running minimal traffic, about $50 daily, at the time I wanted to be paid.

Was I out of line asking for a one time payment earlier than usual?  Should they have paid me when I asked? Vote below!

As you might have read in one of my previous posts, I helped organize a meetup for Oklahoma affiliates.  I would first like to thank Revenue Ads, Ndustry Clix and NDemand for sponsoring a great weekend.  I won’t lie, I was a little butthurt because the Meetup202 guys wouldn’t endorse it because I wouldn’t hold it regularly every 4-6 weeks.

Day 1

You couldn’t ask for better weather on my trip to Revenue Ads‘ office in Oklahoma City.  I got there and got to meetup with Dylan Stout, my affiliate manager, Brandon, Edgar and Matt.  They had catered in Rib Crib for lunch and had all the pop and more importantly alcohol I could get my hands on.  And the most important thing was they had a television ready to rock so I could watch all the freaking March Madness games that were on.  I stayed glued to this tv while everybody showed up and got ready for lunch.  Sorry to everybody I didn’t chat with a bunch.  March Madness is serious business!  Lunch went well and I got to bullshit with a number of guys from around Oklahoma, including one that came up from the Dallas area.

After lunch Murray Newlands gave a pretty informative and broad overview about to get started in mailing.  He also let the attendees know how to setup campaigns and optimize.  If I was into mailing, it would’ve been a lot better for me.  I do believe it was a good overview into another aspect of affiliate marketing that most people aren’t involved in.

Next, my brother from another mother, Ian Fernando gave a great presentation on a few niche ideas on how to market an offer to different crowds using different traffic sources.  You can check out his presentation on Scribd.  If you’re stuck in a rut right now, he has a great couple of ideas you can check out.

Then, Revenue Ads, Ndustry Clix and NDemand all rented us a party bus so we could roll in style to go eat at Boulevard Steakhouse in Edmond.  The food there was nothing short of amazing!  Best steak I’ve had in a minute.  Finally we to Red Pin to get in on some bowling action.  It looked like everybody had a great time.  I say looked like because I was off in the corner glued to the television watching the final March Madness games of the day.  After bowling I called it a night and crashed at the Skirvin Hilton in OKC.  The King Suite is niiiice!  The Lakers blamed a lost to the OKC Thunder on the ghosts of the Skirvin, but I didn’t see any.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Day 2

Oh man, day 2.  This day started with me looking outside to a bunch of snow, which was a bummer.  But Mike Pacheco from Ndustry Clix cam and picked up me and Ian Fernando at the Skirvin and Kevin and James from XY7.  The plan was to go watch the 2nd round of the March Madness games at the Ford Center in a suite that Ndustry Clix got for us.  So we had to bullshit for a couple of hours between eating and 3:10pm, when they finally opened the doors to allow us in.  Doing this wasn’t an easy task because it was freezing and snowing outside.  We finally were able to get in and start drinking.  You have to be ready to get your drink on during this time.  The NCAA doesn’t allow for alcoholic beverages to be served or consumed while the game is being played.  The cops would literally come around and give you a 3-minute warning on your drinking time.  So before the games, during halftime and between games you better be ready to chug!

Check the empty cups!  Ian even had a sick freestyle.  I’m trying to score this video for all my readers.  I think he might be slated for a guest appearance with the Paper Clique!

The first game made the entire trip for me.  Kansas was upset by Northern Iowa and was the upset of the tournament, so far.  Kansas State held on to beat BYU by 10 or so.  I’ve included a handful of pictures I took from the games below.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

After the games Mike from Ndustry Clix took us to Crab-town.  Ian Fernando, Kevin, James and I murdered some seafood there.  They litterally throw a huge bucket of shrimp, crabs, potatoes, onions and who knows what else on the table and we devoured it like animals.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Conclusion

I couldn’t have asked for a better weekend from Revenue Ads, Ndustry Clix and NDemand.  Plus, I was able to do some great networking and even picked up a handful of tips that I have already been implementing into my campaigns.

Here’s a great summary video by Ian Fernando.

P.S. – Sorry guys for the lack of pictures.  Kevin from XY7 and Ian Fernando both have a lot more pictures than I do.  I even stole some of theirs.  Thanks guys!