I decided to make this post at my personal blog and not at ReveNews.com or Search Engine Journal. This story is definitely not worth it and getting more people spending time on it than there already are does not help anybody or chances anything. I also "
nofollowed" a bunch of links in the post to prevent that I pass any SEO value to those content, if this is only a dirty "link baiting" scam.
I wanted to
leave a comment at Shoemoney's blog, but he disabled comments for some reasons. I wasn't aware of the post and the discussions that surrounded it a few weeks ago, because I was busy with getting my two laptops up and running again.
Let me take a step back and tell you about the background story of this a little bit. I was at
Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas in February and had a great time. There was obviously an incident at the ShareASale "Under the stars" party at the Palms hotel and casino that I was not aware of. I was at the party, but did not notice what was going there at one point in time, which had to do with the behavior of some of the guests at that party.
There were some kids from an upstart company, including its CEO and co-founders, called Tatto Media (yes, only one "o", it's an intended typo) who had a few drinks too much and started sexual harass some of the women at the party, which is illegal in the United States. The guys were eventually kicked out of the place and that was it.
The sinners and 2007 Finalists:
Best Young Entrepreneurs by BusinessWeek; Lee Brown, 23; Lucas Brown, 23; Lin Miao, 20 years old of Tatto Media.
Details emerged later, after the event at the ABestWeb affiliate marketing forums (a thread with the title "Tatto Media - Idiots at Sagamore/Shareasale Party"), where several eyewitnesses stated their experience and opinion about the inappropriate behavior of those young men.
The boys are obviously famous and nominated for a Business Week award for entrepreneurs and start-up companies, which created an even bigger backlash for them. To make a long story short, Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit stepped in and stated that this company is banned from all future Affiliate Summit events. That might be a bit too harsh the one or the other might say, but that is not what I wanted to debate about today.
Following the discussion was a
blog post by Jeremy Shoemaker at his blog Shoemoney.com with the title "How Long until Someone Is Killed at an Affiliate Summit". Those are very strong words. Jeremy who did not attend this Affiliate Summit talked about this incident and claims that this event attracts all the scum and thugs of the affiliate marketing industry, which makes the whole event not only unpleasant, but dangerous, where you have to fear for your health and life, on top of that.
The statements he made seem to be the living proof of the existence of parallel universes, because the event he describes is by no means the event that I encountered three times already. I didn't only feel safe, but also in good company. I met many new and pleasant people and did not come across any of the thugs and scoundrels Jeremy was talking about.
Some others made similar contradicting statements in the comments of Jeremy's blog post while comments were still open. I could not understand why Jeremy would make such statements in public, knowing that he causes direct damage to the reputation of the whole event and not only deter potential attendees, but also casts just another negative shadow over the industry as a whole as if we did not have enough problems already.
I thought that Jeremy did not attend Affiliate Summit because of the overlap with the SMX West event in Santa Clara. I decided for Affiliate Summit versus SMX and thought that he decided for SMX. This is obviously not the case and things seem to be running a bit deeper.
I have a feeling that the story with Wickedfire forums from early February plays a role in all this. Jon, the owner of the forums
did a rant about "super affiliates" like John Chow, Amit Mehta, Zac Johnson and specifically Jeremy Shoemaker, titled "John Chow, Shoemoney, Super Affiliate Mindset Camels".
The write-up was bad enough to cause Jeremy to involve his legal counsel and send out a Cease and Desist letter to Jon Fisher (You can learn more about that at the
Geekcast podcast from February 2008, Shoemoney vs. WickedFire and the cease and desist order of Jeremy against Jon Fisher.). I don't know for sure and have no hard evidence to back it up, but I cannot get rid of that feeling that tells me that this must have something to do with what Jeremy wrote.
I only fail to be able to make the connection between Jon Fisher from Wickedfire and Shawn Collins or Missy Ward from Affiliate Summit that would be reason enough for Jeremy for trying to damage the Affiliate Summit conference as a whole.
For everybody out there who comes across this post of mine and read the post by Jeremy, I can tell that fear to attend Affiliate Summit is completely unnecessary and not warranted. As in every big city are there places and people you don't want to surround yourself with, if you prefer to stay out of trouble, but to avoid this is a choice everybody has to make for himself. I am looking forward to the
next Affiliate Summit, August 10 - 12, 2008 at the Seaport Hotel in Boston, MA.
Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC
