Affiliate Summit was founded by Missy Ward and Shawn Collins in 2003 for the purpose of providing educational sessions on the latest industry issues and fostering a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers.
Jump down to the history of Affiliate Summit.
Attendees at Affiliate Summit events break out into five main categories: agencies, affiliates, merchants, networks, and vendors.
As you can see, affiliates account for the largest group of attendees at Affiliate Summit.
The attendance at Affiliate Summit has grown steadily since the inception of the conference for each location.
Affiliate Summit West 2009 will be the twelfth Affiliate Summit conference.
Below are charts that break out the registration growth by Affiliate Summit location:
Affiliate Summit West Attendees by Year
Affiliate Summit East Attendees by Year
Affiliate Summit Niche Attendees by Year
Affiliate Summit International Attendees by Year
History of Affiliate Summit
Just five years ago, when people thought about affiliate marketing conferences, it was generally a negative connotation. At the time, the reigning conference was Affiliate Force, an annual cruise around the Caribbean.
Shawn Collins and Missy Ward helped to coordinate those conferences, but they thought there were ways it could be done better. To make a long story short, Shawn and Missy offered their opinions and were dismissed. So they decided to create an alternative shortly after the April 2003 edition of Affiliate Force.
The first Affiliate Summit took place in November 2003 in New York City. The goal was to differentiate from other conferences by focusing on content and networking. The first Affiliate Summit introduced Speed Networking, as well as an agenda heavy on the hot issues of the day in affiliate marketing.
The first Affiliate Summit had 200 attendees, and it grew by about 15% for the next show in June 2004. Though skeptical of the cruise ship as a conference venue, they gave it a shot with their approach.
The cruise conference was a sell-out, but the venue was not scalable, so they went on land after that one. After two somewhat basic shows with a single educational track, they evolved to have two tracks and an exhibit hall in June 2005 in Las Vegas.
This time around, Shawn and Missy grew the attendance from 230 on the boat to a crowd of 550.
Following the momentum of the first Vegas show, the pair ran another one in January 2006, where the crowd doubled again. As Affiliate Summit was growing, Shawn and Missy remained the faces of the show and always encouraged feedback. With each successive conference, they tweaked elements to improve them even more.
As they led up to the July 2006 show in Orlando, they incorporated various value-adds, such as a social network and free video of the educational sessions to conference attendees. The Affiliate Summit 2006 East conference also featured the biggest crowd and exhibit hall to date.
In January 2007, Affiliate Summit returned to Las Vegas and surpassed the 2,000 attendee mark, as well as another increase in the size of the exhibit hall. This conference also marked the first time Affiliate Summit held an industry awards show.
Then in July 2007, Affiliate Summit took place in Miami, and this edition of the conference was the largest U.S. east coast Affiliate Summit to date.
Next up was the eighth overall and first international Affiliate Summit in London in September 2007, followed by a return to Las Vegas in a big way - over 2,900 attendees.
In the summer of 2008, FeedFront magazine, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, was launched.
We headed to Boston on August 10-12, 2008 for another record-breaking east coast show that had 2,341 attendees, and we launched our first in a series of one day niche events in New York City on October 5, 2008, where we limited attendees to 300.
Thank you for your past, present and future support.
Take a look at the Cory Booker keynote address from Affiliate Summit 2008 East:
Contact us with any questions.
