Missy Ward

I Busted My Butt at Affiliate Summit

by Missy Ward

Literally.Thanks to those of you who have aimed and emailed me to check in on my butt. Yes, it’s a fractured coccyx and yes, it still hurts. Apparently it will be hurting for several weeks to come.

If you were in Las Vegas, but not at the Advertising.com’s Buy.at Network party at the Ghost Bar in the Palms, last Sunday night, you may have felt a slight tremor around 1:00am.

No, it was not the after-effects of the Nevada earthquake that hit earlier in February, it was me taking the worst digger of my life – in front of 400+ people.

Roughly somewhere around midnight-ish, I was dancing with a blogger/affiliate marketer that shall remain nameless (the only clue is that if his last name was an animal, it would likely sound like a cute and fuzzy marsupial). I was so excited to dance, since I seldom get asked, that I may have gone slightly overboard.

To this day, I’m not sure why I don’t get asked to dance… I Q/C my breath, I don’t dance like Carlton any longer and I check my overbite at the door. But I digress…

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what happened. I’d like to blame it on a wet floor or the fact that someone might have tripped me accidentally. But as I go through it over in my mind time and time again, none of those conditions existed.

Maybe it was the 4 glasses of wine?

In any event, I guess my dance partner will forever be fondly known to me as my “Pain in the Ass” at ASW08.

If anyone was there that saw what happened, can you please give me a play-by-play recount?

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Affiliate Marketing

Jason Calacanis is Bulls**t during Affiliate Summit?

by Missy Ward

I say not.

You know, there were a number of Affiliate Summit attendees that came up to me immediately following Jason Calacanis’ keynote last week furious with Shawn and I for inviting Calacanis to speak at the conference.

Their initial reaction was one of shock and bewilderment. WTF was this guy coming into our hood, smack-talkin’ directly at the audience who paid good money to see him? More importantly, why would Shawn and I invite him to do so?

Well, as my Dad always said, “humbling experiences can open the door to life’s greatest insights, if we are willing to learn from them.” And yes, Jason humbled us.

We as affiliate marketers, sing the praises about folks that have grown the profile of our industry – the white hats, if you will – the ones who have cultivated their businesses by being innovative and by doing the right thing. Yet, I don't believe we spend as much time working on ways to shut down the ones that give affiliate marketing a bad name.

If you were an attendee and peeked into your Attendee Guide, you will see that Shawn and I (interviewed separately) still believe that the largest obstacle to the growth of affiliate marketing is the fact that we are unable to squash the black hats who still continue to piss on our reputation and feed the opinions like the one that Jason has about us.

But, is his way of thinking a way in which I want to live my life? Absolutely not.

He’s got that typical 30-something Silicon Valley attitude. I dated guys like him.. zzzz. Boring. Dude wants to own gazillion dollar companies, where I’m at my happiest working for myself, making a comfortable living, hanging out with my kids, going to the gym when I want, and goofing off on AIM with the rest of my affiliate marketing friends. He wants to pay hundreds of people, have huge infrastructures, deal with investors and all that crap. I’m happy with my 800-foot commute where the only things I worry about is whether I can find a pen on my cluttered desk and whether my dog will get off my lap in enough time for me to answer my phone.

I've been where Jason is. I once spent a lifetime there during my 20's and 30's and as G-d is my witness, there is no amount of money or fame that would ever send me back to that hell again. There is no pricetag for the peace and freedom that affiliates have and cherish. Maybe when he grows a little older, he'll realize that.

While I didn’t agree with his delivery, there were pearls of wisdom and shining moments in his gig. I did relish in the fact that he recognizes that affiliate marketers are likely the smartest marketers around. (For the folks who are still letting me know that they felt that Jason was degrading an entire industry, I urge you to re-listen to his schpiel if you still feel that way.)

That said, there’s a whole lot of things we can teach him if he sticks around – and it looks like he is given the fact that I’ve seen him post several comments on blogs and forums including ABestWeb. I give him props for this. He could have simply cleaned his pipes and ran. After all, he doesn’t owe us anything.

So here it is in a nutshell. As an industry, I refuse to let Calacanis view this as a case of Hit Dog, Hollar. Let’s use his comments (although somewhat skewed based on his admitted ignorance of the industry as a whole), to motivate us into doing better and continue to grow this former red-headed-step-child of the online advertising industry to the Prom Queen that it can be.

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For The Heck of It

My Faith in Humanity Has Been Restored

by Missy Ward

OK, this is one for the books.

I've been crazy busy over the last few weeks leading up to Affiliate Summit 2008 West. To top it off, I decided to go out to Palm Springs for the eTail Conference, when I probably shouldn't have.

That being said, it was an interesting conference. Not one that I'd likely attend again, but it did offer up a few interesting topics and a cool Carnival. But like all conferences before eTail, I overdid it. How could I not? It is afterall, a conference — an opportunity to network and that's what I love best. I'm good at it.

Nonetheless, I left Palm Springs beat. I hopped on my flight from Palm Springs to Phoenix on my way to Orlando, clad in my Geekcast.FM T-shirt and sweats, determined to snooze. Unfortunately, my neighbor was already snoring before the flight even took off. So, I plugged in my iPhone, pulled an Audible (The Appeal, by John Grisham) and chilled out for the flight.

At one point, I must have gotten up to stretch and put my iPhone in the pocket of the chair in front of me. Well, that's where I left it when I got off the plane. It wasn't until 1/2 way to Orlando that I realized that. So, I did what every person in my shoes would do.. I bid my iPhone a fond adieux and cancelled the phone number.

Six days later, the night before I was leaving for Affiliate Summit, I checked my office voicemail and heard a conversation between a friend/business acquaintance of mine, Alan Rafeli of Rock Solid Colo and a gentleman named “Dan” who apparently found my iPhone. Alan, being the solid kind of guy that he is refused to just give Dan my phone number for fear that this person was a nut case or something.

Needless to say I was in shock. Dan the Man, found my iPhone! So I gave him a call. Turns out, he is a fine older gentleman who works for the railroad system. The reason why it took him 6 days to call me to let me know he had my iPhone was because he works 5 days on and has 2 days off. On his first day off, he went to Wal-Mart to get a charger to turn my phone on since the battery had long since died. He then messed around with the buttons and came across the contact list. (Alan was one of the first contacts and he got the call.). After a pleasant 30-minute conversation, he told me that he'd be overnighting my phone and the new charger to me.

I told him that I wanted to send him a check for $200 bucks for all of his troubles. Dan said, “just send me 25.00 for the charger and we're square”. I ended the call with a question to Dan: “Dan, how come you just didn't turn the phone into the airline's lost and found.” Dan said, “Honey, if I would have done that you'd have never seen this dang phone!”.

When I got back from Affiliate Summit, sure as heck, the iPhone was waiting for me. Dan is now $200 richer and I've roped another person into affiliate marketing.

Life sure is weird. When you least expect something to happen, it fires one right at ya!

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For The Heck of It

Separation of Church and State

by Missy Ward

For several years, I used MissyWard.com as my family website and then subsequently a blog. It was here that you could check out pictures of my husband, kids, pets, neighbors, aunts, uncles, parents, etc. and get an idea of how we were all doing. Occasionally, there would be a rave or rant totally unrelated to first haircuts, hockey scores, weddings, parties and so on, that my visitors would read, and simply say, “Huh?” I was probably talking about affiliate marketing, which to this day, I have a hard time making some family members understand — (those would be the ones that Webtv has been trying to shake for the last two years so they can properly shut down their services.) So, in order to prevent the “Huh?” blog comments and the “keep this crap off your family blog” emails I've decided to separate out the content. Friends and family, you can still get your fix of the boys on www.TheSpauldingScoop.com. Friends, family and business associates that want to contend with my famous ideosynchracies that I love to share, my rants and raves on affiliate marketing and my gooberish videos that I love to make, stick around here and enjoy. Looking forward to providing you with my perceptions of and adaptations to reality.

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