Finally I am home. I can never sleep on planes and I didn’t sleep at all the night before leaving. I think I hit a new personal best when it comes to lack of sleep. I must have went around 40 hours or so without any sleep. Anyhow, I am back now and fired up for the remainder of the week.

I am going to do the CAP Euro Barcelona report in three parts. Part 1 will be more of a business focus, and part 2 will be all about the parties and fun. Some of you may want to pay me off now before Part 2 comes out. Part 3 of course will be the “pictures post” where I will share some of the best and worst from CAP Euro…… Some people should be very nervous.

As I mentioned before, I am so thoroughly impressed with the team at CAP on these events. I suppose I am known for being blunt, so I’ll come right out and say it. Every CAC event with the exception of Amsterdam is probably going to be fuct moving forward. For one, this industry only has room for so many conferences in a year. And for two, the things CAP is doing such as bringing in Doyle and Calvin, as well as what is going to be done at CAP London is sick <——–sworn to secrecy. I won’t even get started on the fact that affiliates are able to attend CAP for free. Bottom line is Big Kudos to Warren, Lou, Greg, Kiera, John, Yvette, and the rest of the CAP team that put this on. In my opinion, from the business side of things, this ranks right up there with one of the best industry events yet.

Thanks to Greg Powell for originally displaying this picture. Pure content theft on my part, so I mine as well at least give him a link to his blog. I did link the Calvin Ayre theme song to the picture though.

You may have read in my prior blog post that I got several things done for PAW, and I did. I sincerely had some great meetings with the rooms I wanted to meet with. Anymore however, I really hate walking around the exhibit, handing out cards, and meeting every person at every single booth. As soon as I tell them I am with PAW and PokerNews, it inevitably ends up turning into a “meeting” about how we can do business. And to be honest, it is just impossible to do business with everyone. Well, and just ask Shenaz or Brandon what my thoughts on having 20+ meetings per conference are. It’s not that I want to be rude, but it’s just easier to not “meet” than set false expectations. In my defense though, every convention I do meet with new people, but again I just can’t cut a deal with everyone each time.

On to a few observations from CAP Euro. One thing I have been doing lately in my personal business is acquiring domains. And after speaking with a few bigger affiliates here, it seems the trend of domain acquisition is heating back up. For a while domain acquisition went cold, but now more than ever, it seems to be getting big again. And maybe not just domains, but websites too. Google has always valued keywords in domains, but in my personal experience and after speaking with some friends there, it seems this is gaining more weight especially with shorter and and aged domains.  More proof of this can be read in a post made in Kyle’s SEO and Affiliate Blog.

Another trend I have seen is that the affiliates whom are rising to the top in the industry are outsourcing much more than they used to. Many of the medium to big affiliates are outsourcing almost all of their content, reviews, and obviously translation. So if you’re a small affiliate, this is what you have to compete with. These guys are pumping out massive content.

The biggest up and coming market - drumroll………..well not really, but the general consensus is that Germany appears to be “the” place to be right now. Everyone has different opinions on this, but as they would say in horse racing, Germany has got to be in all your gimmicks.

I don’t necessarily think poker or casino affiliate marketing is still in it’s infancy. But I do think the market leaders (from the affiliate standpoint) are really starting to stand out. The companies like PokerSourceOnline and PokerNews, as well as several individual affiliate who shall remain nameless are all growing by leaps and bounds. Sure, much of their growth may be fueled by acquisition, but they are clearly defining themselves as the big players for years to come in the industry. New affiliates shouldn’t be discouraged however. Because the amount of money still out there to be made is absolutely sick.

If you have any specific questions about the conference or even general questions, feel free to post them in the comments.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Affiliate Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.