Jason Calacanis keynote at Affiliate Summit West 08

Even though there is no WiFi in the conference hall, I could not pass up live blogging Jason’s keynote.  Sam Harrelson is also live blogging…he has WiFi cause he’s staying here at the Rio.

We’re second row centre in the “blogger row” … sweet eh?  Steph Agresta is the “hostess with the mostest” and keeping us all organized.

As I said earlier this morning, Jim Kukral is opening for Jason Calacanis…

Jason is a lightning rod in tech… ya think?

Playing Bad to the bone fitting, eh?

“Affiliate marketing is bullsh*t… thank you.  Just kidding.”

Spam and overzealous marketers ruined the Internet back in the day.  Now malware and “affiliate spam” are polluting the Internet.  Content scraping, page view crack, are killing what we love and need about the Internet.

Love Jason’s keynotes … Seth Godin, smart.  David Sifry, Ev Williams smart, but Technorati and Blogger are now hijacked by spam.  Ted Murphy, smart but misguided.

PayperPost is pissing in the well.

What is the responsibility of affiliate companies for making the infrastructure to allow affiliate spam blogs?  Shouldn’t they police their affiliates?  Yes.  I agree with Jason on this.  If you want to make money through affiliates … things have to fix

Curation is coming.  CitySearch to Angie’s List the evolution of the recommendation sites.  You have to be a real person.  MySpace fake profiles.  Facebook, harder to do.  LinkedIn almost impossible.

High work, high reward — that’s the American (and Canadian) dream.  Pride, satisfaction, honour.  Low work, high reward — Criminal, thrill, satisfaction.

Building, publishing high quality sites takes time.  It isn’t an overnight success (hear, hear).

Jason’s SEO is bullsh*t quote came out of being asked what he did to get Engadget to rank well.  Answer: don’t know write good content everyday and be credible.

Arguments against gaming … pretty much people can’t be gamed … but

Those who game, are getting better and better.  Social networks are covert gaming systems.

Holding up the six figure cheque is sad and embarrassing, but seo and affiliate marketers are smart and work damn hard.

Love Jason’s irony and sarcastic wit … what should affiliate marketers do?  Stay the course … keep gaming better and better … really think of new ways to scam people (this is the selfish version).

The real advice:

• Fight from the bottom of the food chain
• Create long-term relations with users
• Give up a life of crime and get cheques with more zeros
• You’re smarter than the folks at most Internet companies

Think big! Change your wiring from the quick buck, fear of failing and seek the quick buck.

If you fail, who cares … that’s just one more way not to do things.

Love him or hate him, Jason Calacanis gives a great keynote.

Question from the audience, what about Jason’s responsibility?  LinkedIn spam, Facebook spam.  But he started Weblogs Inc. (number one blog in each of their verticals), brought in moderation at Netscape and now Digg is doing it, and Mahalo … human powered search.

I haven’t used Mahalo much and every time I hear about it I think I should try it.

Ah the how does Mahalo scale question…interesting work part time for something cool and earn decent money.  The Mahalo Greenhouse.  It scales as a distributed workforce.

Before he gets slammed for affiliate marketing is spam … well …

Well pretty much Jason, and I, thinks that links (and ads) should be disclosed.  If it’s an ad, call it an ad.  Now, does advertising colour content?  Well I don’t really know what ads are going to show up here, so I just write what I know.

Who is Mahalo targeting?  Not power surfers, but peoples grandmother’s and parents … the people who haven’t really had the time and experience to know where to got first.

Mahalo for power users … that I’d like to see.

It’s quality sites, with good content, and know SEO, they will eat the affiliate marketers lunch, unless they use their smarts to do better.

Be better to users … Jason, love this, but if you want to keep polluting the lake that’s fine, better for me.

Building your personal brand.  Jason never has a PR person?  Really?  Never could have guessed ;-).  The Mark Cuban school of personal brand building.  Hmm.

• Be honest, be yourself
• Engage other people, create a dialog, talk with people.  Being a part of the conversation.  Like at a dinner party, first you sit and listen.  Then you speak.

How does Mahalo make money … When it makes money I’ll let you know…

Search marketing is great for adverting rates and inventory.

Is more crap coming to the web?  Yes.  As more areas come online, more crap.  Then the curated web will be more important.  Be patient.  Take risks.

I didn’t know that Jason’s first gig was fixing laser printers!  Dude, gotta love a guy who comes from the trenches!

Shoot for the stars and get the moon.  Work hard.

Jason would like to buy the Knicks … uh huh, but doesn’t want to sell Mahalo.  Seems that it’s his passion for sure.

Why not post cheques?  Because it ropes people into a get-rich-quick scheme.

Isn’t it inspiring to see the cheques?  Writing great content is inspiring.

Silicon Valley thinks about making great products, affiliates think about making great profits.  Make the next Twitter or Skype.  Look at the long term.  Shoot for the 10, 20, 30% growth curve.

If everyone is cheating, how do you succeed if you don’t?

And that’s a wrap folks.