Engineer….. This should be a NO brainer to your affiliate manager. They absolutely should comp you the pass AT THE MINIMUM. If I were you, I would find it an insult if they did not.
It is an issue of how you approach it.
My suggestion: Call your affiliate manager and say, “As an affiliate, I consider my website and yours as partners, working together. Please look at my account while we are on the phone. My commissions are currently at $7500 each month. I desire to increase this and as my partner, so should you. I have recently discovered that 80% of the affiliates at the Casino Affiliate Convention are sponsored. See CAC2006.com for yourself. I believe it would be prudent that you should offer me a pass to this event as a sponsor of your affiliate program. Affiliates that I know of on CAP that make *less than me* are sponsored. As a performing affiliate, I deserve this in the least. If you elect not to sponsor me, then I will interpret the decision that your firm has little to no interest in improving my business, and in addition, our partnership. If this is your decision, I will be forced to make meetings at the event with other affiliate managers and I will begin to send my traffic to other affiliate programs.”
My second suggestion is NEVER NEVER NEVER be tied to one affiliate program. Always diversify your revenue. That way if an affiliate program goes out of business, you are not 100% out of revenue.
Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
http://www.CasinoAffiliateConvention.com
September 14-15, 2006
Las Vegas