Now that all my in-house resident photographers went back to school (and I’m not complaining about that at all), I had to figure out how I was going to take today’s Free Shirt Friday picture of myself.

First I thought I’d try out my new XShot that I won from @BenSpark. Never mind that I didn’t realize you had to set a timer on your camera to actually take the picture, and that I have no idea how to do such on any of the three digital cameras in our house.  But I was willing to google and figure it out.

Well, that plan of action didn’t happen because none of the cameras would even turn on – all dead batteries with no new ones to be found.

So, I decided to play with my new netbook that has a built in camera. It’s not the greatest of quality, but what do you expect for only 1.3 mega-pixels…

So without further ado, today’s shirt is courtesy of AffiliateBenchmarks.com.

AffiliateBenchmarks is the affiliate research division of NETexponent. We design and execute affiliate marketing research with the purpose of increasing industry education and providing useful data and statistics to the affiliate community.

The results and analysis for the AffiliateBenchmarks’ 2009 study will be available next month on AffiliateBenchmarks.com. I, as an affiliate, personally participated in the analysis by taking their survey earlier this year.

*Now that I have this post written and ready to upload, the kids are also now home from school. They told me I should have stolen batteries out of a remote!  And that one of the cameras doesn’t even need batteries – it charges via USB.  Too late now.

I let my daughter pick out today’s featured free tee from my now overflowing box of free tshirts.  She is a huge soccer fan so it didn’t surprise me that she picked this one from WorldSoccerShop.com.

World Soccer Shop is the world’ premier destination for soccer gear. Shop soccer jerseys, soccer shoes, soccer t-shirts, soccer equipment, and more. Gear for World Cup 2010, Champions League, Premier League, MLS, Serie A, Bundesliga, FIFA Federations and more.

WorldSoccerShop.com offers an affiliate program through AffiliateFuture.

Want me to wear your shirt? Get the scoop.

Eric Nagel did it.  Joe Sousa did it.  Did what you ask? Recap their Affiliate Summit East experience in New York City last week. So I thought I’d put together a post of my own of a few highlights as well.

Saturday

Didn’t get into NYC until evening, but when you stay up until 4 a.m. in the morning, you can still pack in a lot of fun!  First stop was the Buy.at party atop the Empire Hotel followed by pizza, pubs and private parties.

Ken O'Donovan, Jon Levine, Kim Rowley, Pat Grady, Adam Reimer at Quality Meats

Sunday

Luckily I got to sleep in for a bit to heal my self-induced headache. I bounced back in time to hit the first session: Getting Noticed FAST Session. The panelists (Lisa Picarille, Michael Buechele, Trisha Lyn Fawver, Jen Goode and Stephanie Lichtenstein) did a great job, even if they did use some embarrassing pictures of me in their slideshow.

The afternoon was spent carousing the Meet Market. I was happy to volunteer my time at the Affiliate Marketers Give Back booth to raise money for breast cancer awareness.

Kim Rowley & Melissa Salas - Photo courtesy of Warren Corpus

Next up was the Market Leverage Yacht Party which ran us late getting to the ShareASale “Under the Stars” Party.  Brian Littleton always plans the perfect parties! I actually hit the bed early at 1:30 a.m. knowing I needed some beauty sleep.

Monday

I enjoyed the keynote with Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I wish I would have brought along my copy of their new book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust to have it autographed.

My favorite session (as in most notes taken and I’m smitten by the guy) was with Wil Reynolds. He was kind enough to type up his presentation with links for us all: SEO Tools You Can Use Today.

There were so many parties scheduled Monday night that I couldn’t possibly hit them all. But I couldn’t miss MarketLeverage’s Pizza Party as pizza is my absolute favorite food!  I also made appearances at Linkshare’s Unofficial Affiliate Summit East After Party at Johnny Utah’s (I did not ride the mechanical bull this time), the Drop.io Party at the SoHo House, and the GTO Management Bowling Party.

Bowling & Beers with GTO Management! Photo courtesy of Karen Garcia.

Tuesday

I was anxious to see the keynote with Peter Shankman as I’ve always been a fan of his HARO – Help A Reporter Out newsletter.  He proved to be just as motivational live in person.

I skipped the afternoon sessions to take a subway to Canal Street in Chinatown. I considered this “work” as well since my main sites are shopping related!

I missed going to the Yankees game (thanks for the invite Jason Rubacky) in the new stadium as I had to fly out Tuesday night.

I got to meet a lot of internet celebrities that I had never personally met (ie Gary Vaynerchuck and Ted Murphy) that I plan to blog about individually in upcoming posts.  I also met several non-internet celebrities that you can read about here.

Thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for putting on yet another phenomenal Affiliate Summit! Can’t wait for #asw10 in Vegas!