The Power of EcomXpo

EcomXpo finished up its three day run yesterday after putting forth its best show to date. What really impressed me most about the show was the fact that actual affiliates were in attendance in droves. You could select to search affiliates and publishers who were on or offline under the search feature and you were guaranteed a selection of over 200 people online at any given time. The entire selection would show you over 2000 affiliates registered for the event. The shocking part was not that these affiliates were there but that very few merchants were in attendance to talk to these affiliates.

For the sake of argument I am not counting any Internet Services with affiliates programs but just pure ecommerce merchants. Those attending with booths included 123Inkjets, 1800Flowers.com,4inkjets.com,abe books, Bare Necessities, Bidz.com, Blair.com, Collectibles Today,ehobbies, figleaves.com, joebucks.com, Magazines.com, Orbitz, Overstock.com, Puritan’s Pride, Sharper Image, Smart Bargains, Symantec, Target.com, Tax Brain, and Wynn Las Vegas. I count 21 different ecommerce companies in attendance among around 130 booths. Now considering Linkshare has two times as many merchants that start with the letter “A’ in their network, that is really a low amount of merchants. In fact, they made up a paltry 16% of the total booths. I could understand a merchant being shy about setting up at an affiliate convention due to the cost and the travel but this is a virtual convention. At the least, you could have a standard booth at this show for less then $1,000. Now many merchants might be comforted by the fact that their network had a booth at this event. I can tell you that a network is there to promote itself like any other company and is not promoting your affiliate program.

The power of EcomXpo is growing and if Merchants don’t see this as the perfect place to connect with Super Affiliates as well as cloaked affiliates in the future, others will. Right now 21 merchants got to split the attention of over 2000 affiliates and publishers and you can bet that number will be growing for the next convention.

Not only was this event great because it actually brought the whole affiliate marketing community together, it worked well because of the passion of everyone in this industry. I saw people who I know don’t have time to get a cup of coffee create presentations, answer questions and actually care about helping other people succeed. That’s the kind of business I want to be in and that is why EcomXpo is so successful along with the people behind the scenes who are making it happen. One doesn’t have to worry at all about this event, it is only getting better and I hope that the next EcomXpo in October contains a lot more merchants talking to their affiliates about the greatness of their programs.