I saved yesterday’s Shoemoney show for today, knowing that I’d be in the car for a few hours. Shoe’s guest was Scott Jangro, the founder of BumpZee – a very cool and, in my mind, promising social networking project. The guys discussed a number of topics, mainly news (I wish I’d listened live and called in as I’d loved to have heard this very knowledgeable and successful duo discuss some more ‘precise’ / applicable affiliate strategies), but toward the end of the show they discussed conferences like PubCon, Affiliate Summit, Ad Tech, and SES. Scott’s favorite was, not surprisingly as he’s a long time affiliate marketer, the Affiliate Summit. I agreed with his sentiments in that the atmosphere at the Affiliate Summit was really unique, welcoming and fun.

One of Scott’s comments reminded me of a phenomenon I’d thought of blogging about in the past but apparently forgot, and that is the incredibly “tight lipped, big paranoia fest” (borrowing Scott’s perfect description) that is so prevalent at these shows. Basically, many attendees feel there is an unwritten rule–separating the wise from the ignorant–that you don’t talk about things that make you money. If you do, the idea is that others will copy, compete and ultimately conquer you.

The fact is, however, ’secrets’ that the elite or even the losers can share about how they’re making money online—for example, which programs they use and how they are promoting affiliate offers—are not likely (with a very few exceptions) to hurt or benefit anyone to a significant extent. While talking to a few guys attending the PubCon conference outside my hotel, I remember one of them asking me “so what affiliate programs are you doing well with?” My response was something like “mortgage leads are making me a lot right now” and both of the guys looked at each other with a poorly disguised expression of victory. When I saw their reaction I immediately attained a fairly certain guess of what they were thinking: “Dude, we got him! This idiot must have had a little too much to drink and gave away a secret!”

“DEAR GOD NO! Now they know I make money off a mortgage affiliate program. I’m ruined! And they’re gonna be rich!” Reality check guys–this just isn’t how it works. Go ahead, “bring it!”

If you disagree with me that’s great, because then I can give you one piece of advice that’ll get you a ton of these ’secrets’ and you don’t even have to get anyone drunk: call your affiliate manager and ask him which programs people are making money with. Ask for conversion data, keyword lists, etc. They’ll give you stacks of spreadsheets and other information in a matter of minutes with no questions asked.
Sure, there are a (very) few cases I can think of where a person might have discovered some incredibly easy maneuver that earns big bucks. But for the most part income of that type is short-lived and usually isn’t the part of your portfolio that’s going to make you rich.

In my opinion it’s more ignorant to think you’ve tricked some ‘fool’ into giving away the bank than it is to tell someone about an affiliate program that makes you money. We’ll see how people are at SES, but I’m hoping the ‘paranoia fest’ isn’t quite so pronounced. It’s fun to talk to people about online business, particularly at these shows. But it’s not fun when people naively assume substantive discussion automatically means idiocy.