Tuesday Tips - Jason Calacanis and the Unbalanced Life

March 25, 2008 · Filed Under Entrepreneur · Comment 



Jason Calacanis Tears the Box Open

March 3, 2008 · Filed Under Entrepreneur, Heroes · 2 Comments 

Here is the Jason Calacanis Affiliate Summit West Keynote Speech with Q&A at the end. It’s long but just fantastic.

I’ve read a lot of negative posts and comments about Jason’s speech, criticizing his lack of affiliate industry knowledge to his foul language. I think much of it is unwarranted and misses the point of the message.

In any industry, and especially affiliate marketing, those on the inside can succumb to the danger of believing this little slice of the total internet pie is the whole pie. We can make ourselves right at home in this little box and forget about what’s outside the box. We need people like Jason Calacanis to tear our box apart and open our eyes to larger possibilities.

As far as his foul language goes, maybe it’s because I’m from NYC and worked in Silicon Alley like Jason but I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Those criticizing that it’s debasing and demeaning should step inside a board room in the Flatiron district. You’d think Jason was pulling his punches.

And I really do understand his point about those bloggers holding up their checks. First time I saw that, I was thinking well what’s the purpose of that? I’ve never seen an internet CEO from the old dot com era, or the new one now, do that. And the reason is that it’s uncouth and, yes believe it or not, the checks they are holding up are small in comparison. I think they post those pictures to get readers to buy into what they are selling, their authority.

Long term thinking will beat out the quick win time after time, and that’s what Jason wanted us to learn. Be anti thin affiliate, pro content and disclosure, and dream of the biggest goal you can attain. And then think 10 times bigger than that.

Webmaster Radio

 

Jason Calacanis on Affiliate Spam

Jason Calacanis talks about affiliate spam, Seth Godins Squidoo service and remarking about the large amount of content on Squidoo that is stolen and is overpopulated with affiliate spam.

Show: Affiliate Summit

Channel: Conferences

 


Click the Play button to listen to the speech in it’s entirety.

I’ll leave you with this great quote from a post from Scott Jangro on the speech.

And every time you see a PPC advertiser beating out your good ads and driving up your prices with some sneaky tactic, think about this keynote. Every time your minimum bids get jacked up or your ads get deactivated for “quality issues”, think about this keynote. Every time you look at a search result page and wonder why the hell that crappy site got ranked above yours, think about this keynote.

What do you think?