Hello, G’day, Hola, Ahoj, Hallo, Mrhaba, Chaírete… These are the greetings of the past few months of my life. I’m back again with a travel update, maybe some industry insight, some tips, some lessons, some stories to tell your grandchildren. Oh and maybe some gym recommendations. I began writing this post from the train-cabin enroute from Prague, CZ to Berlin, DE. What a beautiful country-side.
I’m on my second round-the-world trip this year, hopping around to a lot of conferences, meeting with businesses, traffic sources, advertisers and affiliates as much as possible, increasing my network one day at a time. From the palm-trees of San Diego, to the picturesque islands of Greece, it’s been quite the exhausting adventure thus far. This trip began back in Melbourne, my birth place, where I spent 2 months regathering my life and wondering how the F I got to this point. It’s truly amazing. I managed to take advantage of my status and frequent flyer miles this time around to get upgrades into business class, which was quite nice, given I paid full price the last RTW trip I completed earlier this year.
Before I departed Melbourne, I reached out to the very-awesome girls, Eleah and Naomi from Adsimilis, to ask how to RSVP for their meetup in Prague, as I was planning to attend since I would already be in Europe for a few other events. Little did I know this would result in my first time public-speaking in many many years (do birthdays count?). I was invited to be a speaker at their event which was an honor and an experience I couldn’t pass up. I spoke on topics I am more familiar with (fitness, travel, staying productive whilst traveling). The other 4 speakers absolutely killed it. The line-up was Alexander Tsatkin (Angry Russian), Rohail Rivzi (suitcasemarketer.com), Max Teitelbaum (WhatRunsWhere.com) and Ryan Kauffman.
Back-tracking to the beginning of my trip, I started in LA, visiting good industry friends who I have often Joint-Ventured with (Alex Tao), then made my way up to San Diego for a few days to catch some friends. I then made my way over to Dallas, Texas for a meeting with an advertiser I’ve done business with for approx 3 years and generated 7 figures in revenue for to catch up. Next stop was New York City, the big delicious concrete-jungle apple, to attend Affiliate Summit East and to attend my good friend’s wedding (also an affiliate). ASE this year wasn’t as productive as last year, but the meetings I had were somewhat productive, some new things were learned and of course, the always over-the-top parties were attended.
After NYC, I flew over to London for 1 week, where I was supposed to have a meeting with a financial advisory firm, but I decided to cancel and just see a couple friends, catch up on work, go to the gym and prepare my liver for Amsterdam. I flew over to Amsterdam to party with F5Media and Zinq Media (organizers) for SAIL (happens once every five years). Zinq put together an epic show, hiring out a large three-level ship with open bar and finger food, entertainment and speeches as we cruised alongside other boats and ships.
At 11pm we were all escorted into private transfers to an unknown location, taken down a tiny Amsterdam-style alley way and into the back door of a ‘bar’ which also had an open bar. The girls serving drinks had kinky-collars around their neck, attached to a chain, which was attached to a roof. They were seated in chairs on a platform/stage serving drinks to intoxicated affiliate marketers, managers and the like. There was also one more surprise in this venue, a wall with holes cut out for you to poke your head through. On the other side were two bar-tenders, a wall of breasts and a jug full of ‘titty-milk’ which would be poured into your mouth from shot glasses by one of the eccentric bar-tenders.
Such a unique experience – Once again, thanks to Zinq Media (ZinqMedia.com) for the organizing this epic event. If you’re after lead-gen offers, hit them up.
The Bucket List
After Amsterdam, I and a good friend decided we must cross something off our bucket-list. The world’s largest food-fight: La Tomatina. It was guns blazing, tomato’s being pelted in every direction, my head throbbing by the end of it all. The day started with Sangria on an empty stomach, followed by more drinking, a Tomato-War, more drinking and a sun-kissed hangover by 2pm. “Sunglasses and Advil, that Tomato-Festival was mad real”.
After our Valencian stop-over, we trekked up to Barcelona for a few days to do a little sight-seeing, catch a few friends, before heading over to the Island of Malta – my potential future European home-base. I have been looking to relocate to either North America or Europe for quite some time now and Malta seems like the ideal choice right now due to their Residency and Tax Laws.
The fun stuff – Malta is a beautiful, history rich, warm country with a relatively small population of only 400,000 people and approximately 2 million tourists per year. The Mediterranean ocean water is a clear as it comes, there’s a lot to see and explore there. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit.
After Malta, we made our way to Santorini for 3 nights just to see it. I challenge you to take a bad photo in Santorini. Absolutely stunning. There isn’t a tonne of things to do, but it’s definitely one of the most picturesque places you can ever visit in the world.
We then boarded a ferry over to Mykonos, with intentions to attend the Clickdealer meetup, but failing to do so as the venue was impossible to find. Nevertheless, Mykonos is one fun island! I only stayed 4 days but it was a great time regardless of the failed-meetup attempt.
After Greece, I flew over to Frankfurt via Athens (with a cold unfortunately), then took a train to Cologne, Germany to attend DMEXCO. Due to the sinus issues, flying really killed me and blocked up my sinuses like crazy so I had a hard time hearing. I only attended the conference floor for about an hour and had to leave due to feeling unwell, but managed to get to the unofficial STM meetup and OMClub later that night for more networking.
The next day I was to depart for my trip to Prague. I was running to get to a train with my large suitcase and backpack, in the rain, in order to get to the airport on time and somehow allowed my wallet to jump out of my pocket. Great! I just donated 210euros to some lucky person. I quickly ran back to the apartment thinking I may have left it there, but didn’t find it. I rushed to an ATM, took out more money with one of my backup cards (ALWAYS travel with backup cards in your passport holder or backpack!!!) and hopped into a taxi. I somehow made my flight to Prague luckily! Just in time for the Adsimilis meetup. I had an excellent time. Thanks to Sean, Michael, Eleah, Naomi, Joanie, Rachel and the rest who helped organize it!
After Adsimilis’s meetup, The European Summit was on, which is for the Adult Industry. I focus mostly on mainstream offers and traffic so for me, the meetup was purely to network and see if I could potentially discover some new traffic sources.
Needless to say, I didn’t find much there but it was an interesting meetup to attend.
I’m in Germany now, in Munich, and attending Oktoberfest as well as seeing who’s out here and wants to network.
Have had some drama with a traffic source and of my servers (down time TWICE) recently has kept me on my toes.
More updates to follow regarding this drama… if I’m legally allowed to post about it..
STAYING FIT
Ooh, I love this topic.. I will be posting more info about this, stuff that I wrote for the meetup, as I think it’s important for the world to know, as opposed to how much I travel… For now, here’s what I found during my travels to stay in shape…
London:
Name: Jubilee Hall Gym
Website: http://www.jubileehalltrust.org/jubilee-hall/
Drop In: 11 Pounds
3-day passes available, not sure how you get them though.
I got lucky as I befriended a personal trainer in London so I got free-entrance.
Amsterdam:
Name: Health Club Jordaan
Drop-in: Not sure
Website: http://www.healthclubjordaan.nl/en/
1 week trial passes available, requires a deposit which you get back if you cancel your trial before the trial ends. It’s a small gym, not a lot of equipment, but should suffice for your non-weed-smoking days.
Barcelona:
There are three gyms in Barcelona that I have been to. Holmes place was expensive and crap so don’t bother. The one we went to only because it was close-by, but it isn’t cheap, is DiR. The other is cheaper but a bit far from where we stayed, and has a weird layout.
Name: DiR Gracia (they have many locations too).
Drop-in: 11 Euros
Website: http://www.dir.cat/en/clubs-dir/dir-gracia/
The cheaper alternative:
Name: “BCN Fitness”
Drop-in: 15 euro’s for 5-6 visits
Website: http://www.bcn-fitness.es/
Notes: the lady at the counter only spoke spanish when I went but someone helped me out to get by.
Malta:
We stayed in St. Julian’s, there’s a decent gym there with a OK weekly rate.
Name: Cynergy
Drop-in: 10 Euro’s
Weekly-Rate: 35 euro’s
Website: http://www.cynergi.com.mt/
Greek-Islands:
In Santorini we didn’t bother finding a gym but went on a few hikes in the heat which made up for it.
In Mykonos, there was a half-decent gym at the old hard-rock café which is now defunct, but it has no name to it as far as I know.
All I know is it’s about a 5 minute scooter ride from where we stayed, in the direction of Elia Beach from the Alexandros Hotel.
Drop In: from memory it was 10 euros per visit or 30-40 for a week pass from memory.
There really didn’t seem to be many options in Mykonos.
Prague:
Name: Fitness Kotva (Cybex).
Drop-in: 140 CKR
Website: http://www.fitnesskotva.cz/en/page/fitness-cybex
Tips: bring a towel and “indoor” shoes. They’re quite anal and strict there.
Berlin:
There’s a few options here, McFit has a 2 day trial pass but we never went.
Website: https://www.mcfit.com/de/probetraining.html
There was a gym that was close to our apartment that was 10 euro per visit and had a strict house-rule about not wearing any muscle tops.
The name was Fitness Point. OK Facility but the heaviest dumbbell is only 27.5kg. Wussies.
Website: http://www.fitnesspoint-berlin.de/
Munich:
So far have tried a few gyms. Munich Gym GmbH has a 39 euro week pass, but it’s a poor facility in my opinion.
I paid 10 euro for a drop-in, and was far from impressed.
Website: http://munichgym.de/
Fit X is a bit far out, has a 2 day free pass and is a pretty awesome gym.
Website: http://www.fitx.de/
McFit also has a 2-day pass but I haven’t seen it yet.
Hope you enjoyed reading, and I hope some of it was inspiring, useful or helpful to your poor little souls without motivation to work harder and achieve a life of freedom.
Til next time…
– Andrew, aka Andy D
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Can’t Decide on Tracking Software?
I’ve recently switched over to a new tracking platform called Thrive by the guys over at iPyxel which I love. It’s still in development, but is constantly improving and making strides, and the best part about it can be self-hosted. The offer a 30-day trial and it’s $99 a month thereafter which is well worth the investment.
Those on a smaller budget can still opt to go the CPVLab route, another favorite of mine but a little more outdated. It is, however, more suitable for PPV traffic if that’s your traffic of choice.
