After five fun filled days in New York City, I am back at the PeerFly office trying to catch up from the days I was gone and also trying to follow up with all the great new contacts I met at Affiliate Summit East. This year’s ASE went fantastic and I not only met a lot of great new people I am looking forward to working with, but I had an opportunity to catch up with industry friends that I have made over the years.

The first conference I attended with PeerFly (and the first Affiliate Summit PeerFly ever attended) was just two years ago at ASE10. We did not exhibit or even have a Meet Market table. We simply got passes so that we could go, mingle with our current clients, and try to learn a thing or two from the sessions. Since then, we have grown immensely and we not only have a table in the Meet Market and booth in the exhibit hall, but we also sponsor parties, give away some of the coolest shirts that have ever been given out at any conference ( :) ), and are actually sought after by other attendees. It is pretty cool to be recognized for all our hard work.

The Meet Market
The Meet Market at Affiliate Summit is always on the first official day of the conference. I like the Meet Market because it’s a little more relaxed than the hectic flow of people that walk through the exhibit hall during the other two days of the conference and it gives me an opportunity to walk around and speak with some of my friends in the industry. Even though we are direct competitors with a lot of the affiliate networks that attend Affiliate Summit, we are also pretty good friends and work with them on a regular basis. We work in a very friendly industry, which makes conferences like Affiliate Summit that much more fun.

While I was at the Meet Market I had an opportunity to speak with Zac Johnson and told him that I will be using his blog as inspiration for my new design for this blog that should be released towards the end of September or beginning of October. He seemed pretty excited about it and we are going to do an interview on his blog, which will be pretty cool!

The Exhibit Hall
Working a booth at the exhibit hall at Affiliate Summit is one of the most exhausting things you could ever do in your entire life. Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad, but it definitely will definitely make your entire body and mind tired.

The exhibit hall was open for attendees from 10-5pm on Monday and from 10-4pm on Tuesday. That’s 13 hours of standing at a table and speaking with the thousands of people that pass by. By the end of the day your feet are screaming at you to take your shoes off and your legs are prepared to buckle if you do not sit down. Despite all my wining, I really enjoy it.

I met a ton of new people and made some really good contacts. This year there were definitely a lot more advertisers walking around than publishers, but the publishers I did speak with seemed really excited to give PeerFly a try.

Our booth for ASE12 was brand new. We got a new booth with our new slogan, Custom Built. Performance Driven., and some new Incent.ly shirts to give away.

Incently
At ASE we officially announced Incently. Incently (incent.ly) will be PeerFly’s new sister network specializing specifically in incentive based traffic. PeerFly has been 100% non-incent for a long time now and we wanted to give our publishers an opportunity to work with incentive traffic, but at the same time keep the good quality of the traffic at PeerFly up. So, we will be opening an new incentive network in the next couple of months.

We ordered blue and purple incent.ly shirts and gave them away at our meet market table and booth at Affiliate Summit. We’re really excited for incent.ly and I’ll be posting about it quite a bit probably over the next few months :)

Too Much Food
There are a lot of benefits that come along with working for PeerFly, but it goes without saying that the amazing meals we eat while we’re at conferences are a huge bonus. I consumed more steak over the five day span while we were at Affiliate Summit than I have the entire rest of the year combined. I’m pretty sure I may have consumed more calories than the entire time I was competing in the PeerFly Weight Loss Contest. New York has some really good food, but if you’re going to be visiting anytime soon and you are looking for a good steak I suggest going to both Del Frisko and Ruth’s Chris. They are both amazing and I am already looking forward to going back next year for ASE13.

Affiliate Ball
I did a complete post a few days before we left for Affiliate Summit about the Affiliate Ball. Did it live up to my expectations? Sort of. The Copacabana was pretty nice, but it was a little farther from the Hilton that everyone was staying at than I expected. I would suggest getting somewhere a little closer for next year.

The performances I saw were pretty good. Trayne only did two songs, but they were good and then Mix Master Mike came on and he was awesome. Ice-T and Coco were there, but I didn’t get a chance to get a picture with them. The AFFY Awards were kind of lame in my opinion and I wouldn’t suggest doing them again. Overall, it was a pretty fun night, but I left early because I was really tired and the drinks were all too expensive.

Touring New York
The conference ended on Tuesday, but our flight back to Florida was not until late Wednesday night. We had intentionally scheduled our flight late on Wednesday so we would not be rushed to leave on Tuesday after the conference (a mistake we made at ASE11 last year) and it would also give us an opportunity to roam around New York. So, we took an all day bus tour of the city using Gray Line New York Sightseeing and it was awesome.

The bus was comfortable and our tour guide knew everything about every street we drove down throughout the city. We drove by Central Park (I didn’t know it was so big!) and even took a ferry around the Statue of Liberty. If you’re in New York and have a free day, I definitely suggest looking into a bus tour.

Affiliate Summit East this year was awesome. I had a great time meeting new people, catching up with friends, eating a ton of food, partying with the PeerFly team, and touring the city. I’m really looking forward to ASW13 in Vegas, but until then, let’s run some traffic and make some money!