Nagel Family Website

Blog changes

Hi, and thanks for stopping by! We've made some big changes to the blog - including shutting it down! With social networking and micro-blogging these days, there's no need for us to blog. So check out the latest on our homepage, and thanks for visiting.

Wow… it’s been a crazy couple of days, but I’m back home and slowly getting back to work. The past few days I’ve been in New York City, attending Affiliate Summit East.

I flew in Saturday afternoon, which wasn’t all that bad. An hour long flight, followed by 2 hours of walking through JFK, taking the AirTran to the E train, onto the Hilton to checkin. I got to my room just long enough to unpack my clothes, get changed, pre-register (BRILLIANT! Took 2 minutes this time, versus 45 minutes in Vegas!) and head to the Hotel Empire for the Buy.at party. Thanks to Kim Salvino for quickly responding to my tweet, when I was looking for an invite. They announced some really cool features, exclusive to their network, and I look forward to trying them out. After buy.at, we hung out at the hotel bar long enough to decide no BLT in the world is worth $17, and retired fairly early. Besides, we had to be up early Sunday for the CAMA Gospel Brunch!

So Sunday morning we (and by “we”, I mean Mike Buechele, my roommate, and I) take the train to the Cotton Club in Harlem for the CAMA Gospel Brunch. This is the third Gospel Brunch I’ve been to, and I think this one had the best entertainment, but the food was pretty bland. I have some video of the entertainment, but it doesn’t do justice. The CAMA brunch is a great way to get started on Sunday, and even if you’re not Christian, you’re invited to come. I promise you won’t be scarified.

After the brunch, I (with my Gold pass) attended the Get Noticed Fast, Advertising Tax, and Offline Affiliate Marketing sessions. Since I could only attend sessions on Sunday, and don’t really get much from the Meet Market (too crowded – if I see someone I want to talk to, I just hand them my card & tell them to call me later), I stayed in the same room and just chatted with people in-between sessions.

Sunday night I was fortunate enough to have won a ticket to the Market Leverage Yacht party. They did their best, but the limo company really screwed up. After waiting around for an hour and a half, then being taken to the wrong pier, then getting on the boat and waiting another half hour for the chef, we were on our way. I need my readers to do me a favor, and if I ever mention “dinner” and “boat” in the same sentence again, remind me how I felt on this venture. While I wasn’t hanging overboard, I was a little woozy. The Ginger Ale helped a lot. However, since we got a late start, I missed the Share A Sale party (AGAIN! 3rd year in a row now!) and just went back to my room.

Monday morning I headed out into the big city to find a Tim Horton’s with no luck. I headed back to the Hilton for the keynote, then hit the Exhibit Hall. This is much more manageable than the meet market. I had lunch with a merchant I work with, and got a lot of useful information from him. This is the power of coming to Affiliate Summit. You don’t get this information over the phone or email.

My dinner plans changed last-minute, and I went to Victor’s Cafe as a guest of Andy Rodriguez Consulting. The food there was amazing, and I had a good time chatting with Jennifer, Stephanie and Emilio (they helped me identify the food, too – didn’t matter, though – I eat it all).

After dinner, I headed back to the Hilton for karaoke. As you would expect, most people were pretty bad, but Lance (and I apologize, but I have no idea what company he’s with or what his last name is) was amazing, singing Louis Prima’s Just A Gigolo.

Tuesday morning I was up bright & early to run with Peter Shankman, the keynote speaker that day. I thought it’d just be the two of us (after all, who else wants to run at 5:30 in the morning?!) but there were 5 of us total. On my way down from the room, I passed @andrewlpayne and @cashtactics on their way up to their rooms – I invited them to join us, but they politely declined. Anyway, the run through Central Park was nice. Afterwards I did a little work, but since my roommate got in an hour before I woke up, I left the room so he could sleep and found a Tim Horton’s! I was so happy

After Peter Shankman’s keynote, I was kinda tired of the conference activity, so I took a walk to FAO Schwartz and bought the kids some toys (Morgan LOVES her (Not So) Scary Monster), dropped in Tiffany’s but didn’t want to buy the wrong thing, then started packing up. Tuesday night Jason Rubacky from Share A Sale invited me to the Yankees game, where we watched an amazing game between the Yankess & Blue Jays. While I really didn’t care who won, I’m glad the Yankees did, because that made 99.98% of the people around me happy, which helps.

After hanging out at the hotel bar for about an hour, I went back up to my room to clean & pack up to head home the next day. I took Mike to Tim Horton’s (I felt like a missionary… I showed him the good word, then sent him off into the world to spread the news!) then made my way to JFK for a horrible flight home. But when my family picked me up from the airport, I turned off my phone for a few hours & had a nice dinner w/ them.

While this post is long, I left out the details of meeting many great people… too many to name. I need to be on my game next time and blog daily. I took some photos, but not many.

Now I have a LOT of work to get done in the next 5 months, including some rebranding (inspired by the Get Noticed Fast panel). It was great seeing everyone again, and I’ll see you all in January!

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Affiliate Summit East in NY is coming up in a few weeks, and there’s a few things you need to know:

Affiliate Summit

• Bring business cards! If you have nice cards, print cheap ones, too, for the network give-aways (fish bowls). Save the nice ones for networking
• Register early. There’s an early registration on Saturday this year (2nd Floor Promenade, 4-8pm), and based on the lines in previous years, I recommend if you’re in the area, take care of this.
• Plan your parties early – know what’s going on, when, and where. Same with the agenda… don’t be sitting in one session, wondering what you’re going to next. If a session sucks, get up & leave. Go to another, or go back to the exhibit hall.
• Hand sanitizer (avoid getting sick!), water, breath mints / spray, etc.
• I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t want to talk at Affiliate Summit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a merchant, network, or affiliate – start a conversation. The more you start, the easier it gets.
• If you haven’t booked your hotel yet, try to stay at the Hilton. If you have an extra 20 minutes, you can run up to your room & drop off all the crap you pick up from the vendors.

New York

• Get confused w/ NY taxis like me? Here’s the scoop:
  

  The trick is in the lights atop the cab. When just the center is lit, highlighting the medallion number, the cab is available. When the medallion number, as well as the side lamps are lit, the cab is off-duty. When no lights are lit, the cab already has a fare they are bringing to a destination.

• If you’re taking the subway (Map), get a MetroCard. I always buy a Pay-Per-Ride MetroCard when I’m in NY ($20 is good – with 15% bonus, you get 10 trips), and sell the unused portion on eBay when I get home.
• JFK – If you’re loaded with money and in a rush, or afraid of trains, pay the $45 flat-fare and get a taxi from JFK to Manhatten. Otherwise, take the AirTrain to Jamaica Center, then transfer to the “E” Train and take it to 7th Ave station. Then walk to the Hilton. Directions
• Central Park is 5 blocks from the Hilton – make it there. The Ed Sullivan Theatre isn’t too far, either. Just take a walk around in the morning – you can sleep on the plane home.
• If you’re looking for a dodgy Rolex, look for a man carrying a suitcase in Battery Park. A simple head nod will get his attention. They go for around $50. While you’re there, take a photo of Lady Liberty.

If you’re going to be at ASE in NY, leave me a comment and let’s get together!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

It seems everyone’s making money from Twitter, except Twitter. Even GoDaddy is getting involved. When I logged into my Domain Manager today, I saw this message:

I thought I’d check it out, so I went to a certain domain and checked the enhancements:

Of course, being the savvy marketer that I am, the username is already taken

So what’s GoDaddy getting out of this? The total package. Twitter is all the rage, and their users know it. Showing that GoDaddy understands this, too, helps reassure their users that GoDaddy is embracing emerging technologies and is ahead of the game.

Is your name available?

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I probably appear strangely obsessed with Billy Mays, but the reason his passing has had such an impact on me is because I’ve built up the BillyMays.TV website and have kept up on his doings the past few months.

BillyMays.TV is a blog featuring Billy Mays, the products he pitches, and his show, Pitchmen, on Discovery.

I started promoting Billy Mays products through the As Seen on TV Network, and after a dinner meeting with then in Vegas last January, moved on from a single product to anything Billy Mays pitched. The stories I heard about Billy were great, and I had hoped to meet him someday. We even talked about a custom, Billy Mays ringtone! “Hi, Billy Mays here for your cell phone…”

Yesterday I opened my email, after being offline for 3 days, and found my entire inbox flooded with Billy Mays e-mails (from YouTube comments, Twitter followers, etc). Clicking on one, I read “RIP Billy Mays” which was a complete shock to me.

The fan base of this infomercial superstar is amazing. There’s no middle ground – you either loved him, or hated him. However, after the past 24 hours, all of the comments I’ve seen on the blog, the YouTube channel, and even the Twitter account have been positive.

Traffic to BillyMays.TV increased over 5,500% yesterday – Billy Mays was a superstar amongst all marketers and will be truly missed.

Building your business on a single company, product, or person is a huge mistake (heed the warning, Apple!). Luckily, this was a small portion of my affiliate business – it was more of a pet project, rather than a big income producer.

Remember Billy Mays this Wednesday starting at 11am on the Discovery Channel with a Pitchmen marathon.

Life’s a pitch, then you buy.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Depending on your niche, Yahoo Answers can be a source of some quality traffic. Getting your answer declared the “Best Answer” not only gives you points for your profile, but also gives more credibility to your account.

Sometimes, the asker choses the best answer quickly, and if that’s your answer, you get the points. But many times, the asker never choses the best answer, and it’s left to the voting public to chose.

So the other day I received a notice that my answer was voted the “Best Answer”, and got the credit. That prompted me to login to my account, and review my answers to other unresolved, or “In Voting”, questions.

When you vote for the best answer to a question, you don’t see who the author is, but you should be able to identify your answer based on writing style and sources. So go ahead and vote for your answer.

I did this the other day and voted on 9 questions that I took the time to answer, which where in the voting phase. Within 20 minutes or so, I received 9 emails that my answers were chosen as the best!

Now this may be considered cheating, although they don’t specifically mention this method as such. Don’t be surprised if your account is banned, but mine’s going strong, with 65% “Best Answer”.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

They always say, you gotta be in it to win it. Thankfully, I have a job lifestyle which allows me to be online a lot, so I see all sorts of contests come up. It typically takes about 2-3 minutes to enter, and then you just wait.

Remember last year when I won $500 from Pepperjam? I’ve been on a streak since then. I’ve won:

• A signed Gary Vaynerchuk “100 Wines” book, courtesy of Zack Johnson (Zack – STILL waiting for it!)
• A nice stash of Beef Jerkey & a steak brander from Oberto
• An IDrive portable USB drive (so small, I lost it somewhere in my office!)
• A Silver pass to Affiliate Summit East in NYC this summer (thanks Market Leverage!)
• Can’t forget my Buxton Bag from Affiliate Summit West last year – oh, and my Share a Sale dart board!

There are other things, too, but the point is take 2 minutes and enter the contests! Here’s your chance to get in on a new contest.

I’m entered to win a 40? Samsung 1080p LCD HDTV from Nickycakes. If you have a Twitter account, you can enter in 2 minutes. If you don’t, it’ll take you 5 minutes. 5 minutes (or less) to be entered to win a 40″ LCD HDTV? What are you waiting for? If I don’t win, I at least want someone I know to win it!

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.