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!

I was just catching up on Twitter (do you follow me yet?) and read Darren Rowse’s tweet about BlogRush shutting down.  What?!  I knew nothing about this and swear I just saw the widgets on my sites.  I immediately clicked on this blog and saw an empty space in the sidebar. So I clicked on over to BlogRush.com to read John Reese’s notice that BlogRush is now indeed dead.  It was exactly six months ago that I recommended BlogRush as it sounded like an interesting concept to filter traffic between blogs. I can’t say I received an increase in traffic from it, and obviously it wasn’t fruitful for others either.

So, it’s time to move on to bigger and better things (and fill up the empty space in my sidebar) -  I’m giving Jim Kukral’s ScratchBack TopSpot widgets a try. Please hold as it says it only takes thirty seconds to sign up…

Okay, that was quick and painless.  I had to rearrange my sidebar to get it the TopSpots widget to fit, but I think it will work.  There were 16 style choices.  Although Style C would have been my first choice for this particular site, I went with Style F to fit the sidebar better.  I could have picked the “Tip me, & I’ll Get NAKED!” style, but you already have to put up with me in my pajamas, and I didn’t want to scare off any more visitors.

I decided to only add 5 spots to start with because if nobody “tips” me, I think I’ll look like less of a loser only having five empty spots available as compared to 10 or 20.  If, I mean when, (think positive, think positive) I sell 5 spots, I’ll open it up to 10 and so on.  Look right. Look right —>

So there you have it.  It’s only $5 to get a “Top Spot” (you get to specify URL, anchor text and mouseover message) which is cheaper than buying me a drink in most places (although locally I can get my Rootbeer Schnapps with Diet Coke for only $2.25). They say money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can rent it for awhile.

Okay, gotta watch Sarah Silverman on Jay Leno. I love her The Great Schlep Video and her Matt Damon video. She’s another one of my girl crushes (right behind Justine Ezarik and Melissa Salas).  G’Nite!