Jason Calacanis Bashes Affiliates During ASW Keynote

At the heart of what might have been an interesting and engaging keynote speech about curation of the internet and creating more value for internet users on February 25th, Jason Calacanis unabashedly called affiliate marketers in the room spammers who were spoiling the internet, while at the same time acting as if he wasn’t really referring to those marketers who were in attendance.

Jason’s speech showed promise as he talked about how early internet communities, such as Usenet, were ruined by over-aggressive marketers who introduced the very first affiliate spam… websites and links that were designed to make the affiliate money and provide very little value to the user. This type of marketing quickly alienated Usenet visitors, and the once vibrant community disappeared overnight. Jason went on to provide other examples of how people are gaming popular communities such as MySpace and Wikipedia with spam, because these communities allow anonymity and are therefore easier for spammers to infiltrate.

At this point, however, Jason turned his attention towards popular blogger/affiliates who publicly report their income, specifically displaying photographs of two affiliate marketers holding up six figure paychecks of affiliate income. Jason had this to say about these two marketers:

“You guys think small. Holding up a six figure check is just pathetic… is that your industry’s biggest success?”

Jason went on to say that he personally thinks that those same people who game search engines and social networks are among the smartest and most resourceful people he had ever met, advising them to “give up your life of crime and holding $100,000 checks… realize that you’re smarter than half the folks working at large internet companies and get to work creating the next Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Google, or Paypal.”

Calacanis further said that affiliate marketers who pursue low effort/high reward models of making money on the internet were poisoning the web with affiliate spam. Of course, everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion… but Jason’s semi-elitist view was insulting to a number of Affiliate Summit attendees that I spoke after the keynote. I also didn’t feel like Jason’s sour view of the affiliate marketing industry allowed much room for people’s own dreams or desires… I’m sure that many marketers would be thrilled to pull down six figures a year working from home!

All in all, this years keynote speech appeared to be the most memorable and controversial keynote in the history of the Affiliate Summit… it was definitely the talk of every table I sat at throughout the course of the event. While it certainly inspired a strong reaction from attendees, I personally didn’t find much of what Jason said from the stage to be very constructive. But hey… that’s only my opinion.