Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Just got settled in at the Westin St. Francis in San Fransisco for the 2008 Blogher conference.  So what is Thor Schrock doing at a women’s blogging conference?

My wife loves to write on her blog when she manages to find the time.  Some of the stuff she writes is fricking hilarious (even though she would never take credit or accept the praise).  Over the past year my wife has sacrificed so I could travel all over the place so it was time for me to return the favor.

Even though it is a conference for women bloggers, I will be helping out by recording some podcasts for their website.  I always try to find opportunity in everything, so I am hopeful I will learn a thing or two about blogging from a perspective I may not have considered before.

I’d have to say the only session I am nervous about attending is the Progressives session – primarily because I am one of the rare conservatives on the web that is willing to endure a pounding to stand up for what he believes in.

This is the session description from the BlogHer Schedule:

Progressives: Engaging Those Outside the Political Blogosphere in Political Discourse…and Action
Is 2008 the year when every blogger is a proof point for the old battle cry that “the personal
is political”? We are seeing a tremendous amount of interest and action around political issues
and causes from bloggers who usually steer clear. They are galvanizing their readers to be more
engaged and get more involved in a variety of ways. We’ll talk about some of those ways with
Twitter rabble-rouser Erin Kotecki-Vest, Momocrat Joanne Bamberger and a woman who
exhorts us all to exercise the Power of our Purse, Diane MacEachern.

All three women on the panel hold some pretty liberal views that I would generally disagree with.  That said, from their writings online they seem to be reasonable, rational people.  All things equal, I will do my best not to embarrass my wife by opening my pro-drilling, anti-Obama pie-hole.

One of the best lessons you can learn in life is that you can learn a lot about people by listening what they have to say and how they justify their arguements.  That doesn’t mean that they are right or wrong, but the first step in persuasion is listening.

Yesterday the last of the Top Affiliate Challenge Contestants headed home.  I took a day today off the grid to ground myself back into real reality and refocus on saome other projects.

Over the next week or two we are planning to do a complete post-morteum on the show.  We are going to identify things that worked, things that could have gone better, and most importantly, re-edit some of the early episodes.

Just off the cuff, the show was an amazing success.  While we didn’t make a pile of cash or win an oscar or anything, we demonstrated that what we set out to do could be done.  Could it be done better?  Of course.  But to everyone who told us it could not be done at all, WE DID IT.

This was a pilot season designed as a proof of concept.  We needed to create a show that would draw the eyeballs of one of the most desired demographics in the affiliate marketing industry – up and coming affiliate marketers.  It was pretty clear that the experienced guys out there thought the show was a bit elementary for their tastes, but they were not our target audience.

There is no doubt in my mind that all 12 of the contestants on our show learned from the experience and are better affiliate marketers because of it.  Even our show’s winner, Jonathan Van Clute picked up some tidbits that he had never considered before.

While the show was a success through the prisim of its own internal goals, it is important to note that it was a success for our sponsors as well.

To be a part of the show this season, affiliate networks had to pay $1,500 to have their offers available to the contestants.  Just about all of the participating networks had $1,500 or more pumped back through their networks, making the show an extremely affordable advertising and awareness vehicle.

There are definately some things we will improve for Season 2, and interest from potential sponsors is already trickling in.  We should have an early-bird rate card by mid August.

Unless something massive changes, we do plan to hold the show in Nebraska again next season.  Knock it if you want, but its where the show is going to be because that is where over 70% of our sponsors were from Season 1.