Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend SES Chicago but it sounds like it was a great event–and, at least from what I can tell, the Rockstars got a little wild ;).

I mentioned earlier that I’ll be attending the Affiliate Summit West in January. Today I reviewed the agenda and was really surprised by how different this conference appears to be as compared to PubCon–Search Engine Optimization and search engines in general seem to represent just a footnote of this event.

I’ve been making a little money from affiliate sites for several years, but it’s always been a relatively small part of my repertoire. Lately, however, a couple of my old sites have really picked up and surprised me with their profitability (lead generation in particular). I look forward to hearing some of the affiliate marketing gurus speak and am anxious to see if I learn anything new I can apply to my sites. I will post live session reviews from the event as frequently as possible and hopefully share some tips I pick up as well.

Below is my list of the sessions I plan to attend and a few comments for each–if you have any recommendations or think I’m missing an important session, please comment and let me know

Maybe this will be interesting to those of you also attending—and if you will be there, I’d love to say hi at the show.

Sunday, January 21^st

I have between the hours of 11:00AM and 8:00 PM to register on Sunday—after experiencing the incredibly long registration line at PubCon, I will definitely take advantage of this early registration period.

2:00 PM – 6:00 PM, Meet Market and Vendor Show Case

As I understand it, this is basically a chance to wander around the expo hall, ask questions and network.

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Ice Breakers Networking Session

Some games, or ‘activities,’ that will help us nerds start meeting people. I wonder if we get to play dodge ball…

9:30 PM - ?, Affiliate Jam Session and Sing-a-Long

Monday, January 22^nd

9:45 AM – 10:45 AM, Opening Remarks & Keynote

The Keynote Speaker is Michael Sanchez, CEO and Co-founder of ClubMom. I’m looking forward to this, just because the founder of “Club Mom” is named “Michael Sanchez”—God I love the internet

10:45 AM – 11:00 AM, Announcements on Industry Initiatives

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM, Marketing Your Affiliate Site – Outside of the Box

Scott Hazard, CEO of Cooperative Affiliates Inc will discuss ideas and strategies for gaining new customers, building a brand and creating a buzz… in other words: the usual :). But hopefully he has some unique insight to share.

12:30 PM – 1:45 PM, Lunch

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, Anatomy of a Viral Video – Maximum ROI

This was a tough one—the session led by Jake Bailey, an Affiliate Program Manager at overstock.com was tempting, however I think online video is really the new, new thing at the moment and I can’t afford to miss a panel on the subject, particularly when it is so foreign to me.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM, Ask the Experts: Super Affiliates

This one is a no-brainer for me. If I have the opportunity to listen to guys that do the same things as me, but better, I’ll be there—and that’s what this panel appears to be. I also like the idea of an unscripted Q & A format. I have high hopes for this session and I hope the audience asks good questions.

5:00 PM – 6:30 PM, Bingo Networking

This sounded silly to me at first, but it might actually be pretty cool. We’ll see. Basically you exchange cards with 24 other people and make a bingo box out of the cards. Then the hosts will draw cards from a box and the first person to get bingo wins… I’m not sure what they win, but it sounds kind of fun any way

Evening: oneNetwork Pure Imagination Party

Tuesday, January 23^rd

9:45 AM – 11:00 AM, Remarks and Rotating Roundtables

This sounds pretty cool—there are four consecutive 10-minute roundtable sessions running simultaneously, and groups of attendees move from table to table to have brief discussions with many different people.

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM, Bloggers – The New Super Affiliates

Since I’m enjoying blogging and also interested in affiliate marketing, this is another no brainer. Has the potential to be a great session.

12:30 PM – 1:45 PM, Lunch

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?

The title didn’t really draw me in but the description says the session will cover improving ROI for search affiliates which is something I’m very interested in. This is another panel that could go either way.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM, The Confluence of Search and Affiliate Marketing

I’ll attend this one just to hear Kristopher B. Jones, President and CEO of Pepperjam—a company I’ve been hearing more and more about.

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM, Affiliate Summit Lessons Learned

These are just the sessions I’m planning to attend based on a brief review of the agenda. One again, if any of you have suggestions or recommendations I’d love to hear them. I hope to get a lot out of this conference and maybe even meet some other SEO Losers!