Well, I thought I would write about my experiences at my first Casino Affiliate Convention, which was held in Amsterdam from the 3rd to 5th of May 2007.

As a newbie to the world of casino and gambling, just building my first site for online poker and casino, I was in two minds if this convention would be a good use of my time as it would be three valuable days out of the office and it was going to cost me a fair amount to get there and stay in the hotel etc.. I had already received sponsorship from Virgin Games for my show ticket which would have set me back around $599 so the cost was somewhat reduced.

As I am serious about getting into the world of casino and gambling affiliates I decided that it was going to be worth the investment, maybe not immediately but I strongly believe in relationships and I was sure that meeting people face to face would only help me in getting these relationships under way.

I also strongly believe in asking people for help and I knew from the A4U forums that quite a few other UK affiliates were going, and I made it my task to find these and ask for help and guidance.

Now, I am not a conference newbie. I have attended quite a lot of conferences around the world including shows like COMDEX and Networld in Las Vegas. With one of my previous companies I also was on stand at shows in London and New York. So, I was intrigued with how CAC would compare.

Well, there were two rooms of the main conference floor at CAC. Both of which were of a decent size for what was quite a small and specialized event. A lot of the large names in Casino and Poker were in attendance, with quite a bit of exposure for sites from the USA such as Everest Poker and Full Tilt Poker.

The first session I attended was the White Hat vs Black Hat SEO session. This was fun, and one thing I am sure is that I am NOT going to steal any content from Gamesandcasino.com as their webmistress, Dominique, scared the hell out of me! If you were there, you know what I mean!

We attended a few more sessions, sampled the typical Amsterdam nightlife and generally had a jolly good time. I attended the event with Chris White from Broadbandchecker.co.uk, you can see him here at the famous "Beer Session"

The Beer Session is the final session of the event where you are provided with as much beer as you can drink whilst sometimes controversial topics are discussed and argued by the panel and audience.

Well, what is my summation?, Well, I am happy I attended CAC as I learned a lot, met some great people, and it gave me great motivation to stick at what I am doing in this very competitive marketplace. I am here for the long race and will offer good content and great service to users of this, and other sites that I will be running with the focus on casino and gambling.

On the last evening we were taken on a dinner cruise by ToteSport so thanks go out to ToteSport for their hospitality.

I will leave you now with some other photos of the event.