“Matt Wood and his team from Existem … certainly raised the bar”, however I am confident that with a4uexpo 2008 they will rise to the challenge and put on an event that is even bigger and better than this masterpiece.

I wrote that paragraph just after a4uexpo 2007 and it has to be said I was not disappointed, a4uexpo 2008 the Affiliate Marketing Conference and Exhibition was absolutely awesome in every department.

Highlights were many, it was great to see a higher proportion of merchants about, both as delegates and exhibitors, the social side as always was great nice to cement old friendships, and forge new ones, over a couple of drinks.

I wasn’t disappointed at all by the sessions that I highlighted in my article last week:

  • Joost de Valk was excellent with his walk though of essential plugins for improving seo with wordpress.
  • The Sunshine Boys, Chris and Alan launched their “secret weapon” an innovative wordpress plugin which I am going to enjoy playing with. They also have knocked up a trio of great wordpress travel themes to make getting that first travel site off the ground even easier.
  • Karl and Ben of Conversion Rate Experts gave a great talk about about a few methods of converting website visitors, I was particularly pleased to see that there was a good representation of merchants in the audience. This talk was essentially a follow up to the one they gave last year if you never saw that click here to watch the video.

Other sessions I was particularly pleased to have attended were:

  • Hero Grigoraki of Webgains and her excellent talk about the use of Voucher Codes, Hero was ably supported by an expert panel. Hopefully this has helped demystify how voucher codes work and the different ways they can be used, nice boost for my ego when Hero put up a slide featuring two of my content sites Fashion Style You and UK Fashion Boutiques as an example of using promotion codes on sites which are not solely dedicated to vouchers and discounts.
  • I was very pleased I made the effort on day 2 to attend the early session presented by Gary Beal of StickyEyes, Gary spoke about a selection of great (and mostly free) tools for analysis of PPC and SEO campaigns.

Other Sessions I would have liked to have seen but couldn’t be in 2 places at once include:

  • Mark Russell and Keith Budden with their talk about effective communication and incentivisation of affiliates, I appreciate this was aimed at Merchants and Agencies however I feel it never hurts to look at things from another perspective.
  • I suspect Internet Marketing Howlers uncovered was a fun session.
  • Practical PPC Strategies would no doubt have proved useful, I am currently running only a little PPC but any improvement in ROI is always welcome, and who knows what little joke google may have in store on the run up to Christmas, PPC may have to pay a larger role in my activities if I get messed about too much.

Hopefully I can pick up Video or slides from these presentations.

All in all a4uexpo 2008 was a tremendous success, I’m sat at home now with a million fresh ideas wondering just how I’m going to find time to implement them all, I have more than enough to keep myself busy until next years events, but that said a4uexpo 2009 can’t come round quick enough, bring it on.

Dates for your diary A4uexpo 2009

Amsterdam 28th and 29th April 2009

London 14th and 15th October 2009

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