Day 3: Let’s Do It All One More Time
Day 3 mercifully starts a little later for those who aren’t morning people, especially those attending the late night party that was held on Friday night. This is Saturday now though, and the first session doesn’t start until 11:00. There of course is the customary half hour coffee break prior to the sessions, so you can catch up with some of the people you’ve met already while being in a presumably more sober state of mind.
The first session of the day offers participants a choice between “Wordpress and Expired Domains: How To Do It Right” and “How Can Affiliates Cash In On The 2012 Olympics”? I’m sure that there are a lot of searches related to the Olympics, but I’m pretty much in the dark on how we would monetize them with our gambling domains.
So my expectation is that this would either be a sports betting dig or something not related to gambling, and right now I’m not really interested in either. While I know nothing about WordPress and don’t really care to, the link network stuff that this session deals with does sound pretty interesting, so that would be my choice here.
The Next Session Is A Two In One Choice, Of Sorts Anyway
The events starting at 11:45 are “Promoting In Unregulated Markets” or “Live Affiliate Coaching And Advice Panel.” These initially both looked pretty good, until I looked into the unregulated markets one and saw that this would really be of interest to operators, as it mostly deals with the flow of payments and is in fact co-hosted by a gentleman from Ukash.
So that’s kind of fortunate, as the live panel might be the best session of the event, and I’d hate to be tempted to miss that. Besides, if you select the payment processing one, you will be late to the party for the next session, which is “The Affiliate-Casino Power Relationship.” This looks like it deals with dealing with gambling affiliates in general, not just casinos, and therefore should be of interest to all of us. This session looks to teach us how to negotiate better deals through a win/win approach rather than just purely looking out for number one.
This session will have you a bit late for lunch, but this still leaves you with 45 min, which in my mind at least is more than enough time to eat. If it isn’t, well you may need some coaching on this topic as well
The Afternoon Session: The Seminars Conclude
For the final two sessions, due to the way they are scheduled, affiliates are faced with choosing them in sets. In Room 1, we have “The Future Of SEO: How To Conquer Panda,” hosted by 4 renowned SEO experts. This runs for a full hour, followed by a 45 minute session entitled ‘Ask The SEO Expert With Dave Naylor.” This is probably the easiest choice in the whole conference for most affiliates, and in fact I’d recommend you get your seat to these early.
The sessions in Room 2 during this timeframe are “Player Acquisition Strategies For Mobile,” and “Why Social Media Is Non-Negotiable.” While I’m not all that familiar with either of these topics, and I am still waiting for a clear bottom up explanation of “Social Media for Dummies Who Don’t Have A Social Network And Have Little Idea How To Use Any Of This Stuff.” I suppose this question can be asked to Dave Naylor in the other section. I actually wouldn’t mind attending this social media one if not for a better one in the other room.
Is This All Really Worth It Is The Big Question
So that ends the sessions part of the conference, and as you can see, there is a lot of interesting stuff here. I’m happy that PAP and CAP now hosts regular webinars, with a lot of the same topics and even a lot of the same experts that present at these conferences.
I guess that in the end, conferences are truly about networking, and so the trick is to convince yourself that the benefits from this will be well worth the time, expense, and travel involved. To be honest, this has always been a pretty gray area for me, maybe because I’m not as involved in the business as some people, I don’t know.
I’d sure like to see people share what some of these benefits have meant to them and in particular how they have made more money from these things. My understanding of this is perhaps finding some link partners and that doesn’t seem that big of a deal to me.
We also are assured of getting a lot of offers from operators, but my experiences there have been most of them losing interest when I tell them I don’t promote revenue share at all and therefore don’t care what introductory offers they have here. That’s just me though and I know a lot of poker affiliates love revenue share. Maybe I will too someday but that’s not now.
So after all of this I’m still up in the air, part of me says go for it and the other part, maybe the side with the halo perhaps, says that this is a very extravagant expenditure that is much more suited for others. So I’m still undecided, but the horned side of the conversation does have one more point to make, as the partying is far from over.
LAC Closing Party And More
The closing party takes place at 20:00, those of us from countries who don’t use military time will have to do the math with our watches, so this is 20-12=8 PM J I guess an argument could be made for military time in that you don’t need the AM and PM, but on the other hand this stuff doesn’t really suit dial watches
As is customary, the closing party runs until “late,” and the website boasts that this will be “full of wonder and amazement.” I’m sure it will be. If that isn’t enough for folks, there’s one more shin dig the next afternoon, between 13:00 and 16:00, at the Paternoster Pub, right next to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is certainly handy for those so disposed who might want to mix in a little prayer into the event
There’s also going to be a poker tournament limited to conference participants, who have to first qualify online. There’s some nice prizes available though along with everyone shooting for the bragging rights of being the champion poker playing affiliate of 2012. Go poker!
If this all sounds good and you are interested in registering, just follow this link: http://registration.londonaffiliateconference.com/
Have fun!
