Greetings from the Affiliate Convention in Los Angeles.

After spending the morning enjoying a lovely, leisurely breakfast meeting with Lisa Riolo (ex VP of Commission Junction) and then contributing to the local economy, I spent the afternoon attending 2 sessions here at the Affiliate Convention.

The first was Affiliate Marketing in Travel, moderated by Debbie Bookstaber, VP, Strategy and Business Development of The JAR Group with panelists Elisabeth Osmeloski (Managing Editor of SearchEngineLand), Jamie Low (Principal of SearchEngineMarketing) and Lena Siara Huang (eCommerce Manager of Marriott International).

I was particularly interested in this panel because I was wondering in which direction I should take Roamsters.com, i.e. should I spend the time to build it out and really try to make money with it, or should I simply acknowledge that the current economy makes travel a much less desirable niche and that I’d be better to focus my efforts on more lucrative markets.

A few positive tidbits included the facts that travel ranks only 4th (or 5th) after retailers, financial services, and education in terms of online sales and that the U.S. travel market is forecast to reach $236B in 2010. Leisure travel is a bigger market than corporate travel and fully 47% of adult Internet users are surfing for travel information. Too, niche travel sectors ar emerging in importance – think green, seniors and adventure.

The main pitfalls are shrinking margins, increasing competition and more merchant restrictions, eg. saying you can’t promote via Twitter.

That said, the opportunities to deal direct with merchants are increasing, especially if you specialize in local travel, i.e. forging partnerships with local hotels and venues is the way of the future.

I particularly enjoyed Jamie Low’s presentation, which focused on using your knowledge of current and future SEO to influence your domain name choices – i.e. keyword domains and lack of branding are becoming riskier strategies. I  personally can’t wait until all the travel-travel-travel.com crap content sites STOP ranking so highly, and invariably this WILL happen as Google’s algorithm technology improves. Yeeha!

Those latter 2 points were strongly re-inforced during today’s keynote, during which Webmaster Radios Daron Babin interviewed Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan.

So, all in all, while I may not participate more heavily in the travel niche in 2010, (forecast to be the second ‘year of the deal’ in the niche) I decided NOT to rename Roamsters, seniorsgreenadventuretravel.com.

I’ll be speaking at the Affiliate Convention being held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, December 3rd-4th.

The panel on which I’m participating is called “Super-Affiliate To Affiliate: Best Advice for Growth” and includes the following speakers:

Our panel is being held in Super Affiliate Room II from 1:30 until 2:30 on the 4th of December.

• Jim Lillig (moderator): Director of Networks at DotComSecrets
• Dush Ramachandran: Vice President of ClickBank
• Brian Norgard: Vice President of Fox Advertising Network
• Mark Roth: Founder of Offer Vault

Please Note: In light of ongoing family health concerns, I will likely only be in L.A. on the 4th of December, and not for the full conference. Please let me know if you plan to attend by dropping a comment below.

Visit the official Affiliate Convention website… and remember, registration for affiliates is FREE!

I got the phone call this morning that you DON’T ever want to get – “Hi, this is so-and-so from such-and-such hospital in Toronto and your mother fell down the steps this morning and broke her hip. She is here awaiting surgery.”

My mom is 95 and lives on her own, so this is the call I’ve long feared.

I’m just ever SO grateful that she didn’t have to wait too long for someone to come to her aid. Fortunately, she fell close enough to the door to be able to bellow at passersby in the morning and a neighbour heard her. I’m also grateful that now she sees the validity of wearing one of those Lifeline Medical Alarm necklaces that lets you summon help any time of the day or night – even if you can’t speak.

Anyway, suffice to say that I won’t be heading to Denver tomorrow morning to speak at the Affiliate Convention.

My apologies to the many of you with whom I planned to meet. We’ll make it another time… Affiliate Summit in January, perhaps?

In the meantime, enjoy your experience at the Convention and learn LOTS – I’ll miss you!

Cheers,
Ros

I’ve just agreed to speak at the 5th Annual Casino Affiliate Convention to be held on August 27-28, 2007 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Montreal. (The pic was taken at the September 2006 Casino Affiliate Convention held in Vegas.)

My presentation topic is ‘Tips for Super Affiliates‘. Please note that as I do not work in the online gaming sector, this presentation will be of a more general nature, and therefore applicable to affiliates in all sectors.

That presentation will take place at 3:30 on Monday, August 27th. I will also participate in the ‘ADAM ANHANG MEMORIAL FINAL PANEL DEBATE (a.k.a.: The “Beer Session”)’ currently scheduled for Tuesday August 28th at 3:00 PM.

The Casino Affiliate Convention has a global focus on internet marketing for the affiliate marketing and online gaming industry. Attending will be executives from casinos, poker rooms, skill gaming, P2P, bingo, sports books, marketing firms, online casino executives, affiliate managers, affiliates and portal webmasters of both gaming and non-gaming related sites.

Please click here to learn more about the Casino Affiliate Convention.

[tags]Casino Affiliate Convention, Rosalind Gardner, affiliate marketing[/tags]