The annual MAC–2026 Partner Marketing Conference was held in Yerevan on May 26 and 27.
This year, perhaps, I prepared for MAC the best: I took a week off, moved to Yerevan from Gyumri and made a normal plan for the event. I even took tickets for myself and Sanka in advance – in early March, 3 months in advance. And I published the announcement in my blog back in February.
On the other hand, unlike, for example, MAC-2024 or MAC-2025, this year, apart from the conference itself, I did not plan any more related activities for myself: no prepati, no afterparty, no trips around Armenia.
- May 26: the first day of MAC-2026
- May 27: the second day of MAC-2026
- Afterparty of MAC-2026
May 26: the first day of MAC-2026
Having considerable experience attending SEO and CPA conferences, I went to around one o’clock in the afternoon (3 hours after the start of registration for visitors).
So I didn’t find any queues or other similar things. And judging by the conference chat, they didn’t seem to be there this time. By the way, many participants arrived a few hours later.
But there were obvious problems with the taxi. Firstly, a military parade dedicated to the Day of the First Republic of Armenia was planned in Yerevan on May 28. And a few days before that, rehearsals began, with a bunch of soldiers and military equipment. Therefore, the city center was regularly colored red on the traffic map.
Those who booked accommodation not near the conference venue, Meridian Expo & Event Centre, were unlucky. By chance, it was only about an hour’s walk to the Expo, along a convenient road, along a park with beautiful views of the city.
Overall, the first day of MAC-2026 was quite relaxed. We met with friends. We talked. We visited all the partner stands. We noticed where the contests and sweepstakes are held, what you can participate in.
Despite the fact that I did not plan to work this time, I still held several business meetings. Let’s see if some of them will result in further productive cooperation.
I was particularly pleased with the slight shift in the focus of the conference from purely arbitration topics to a broader field. I even went into the gym and listened to Oleg Shestakov’s talk about black SEO in the age of AI (how to manipulate Google and LLM in 2026).
I wanted to ask Oleg a question about the economics of everything he was talking about, but I didn’t. First of all, there were so many questions there without me that they didn’t have time to answer them all. And secondly, I doubt that he would have answered me directly about money and traffic (otherwise he would have shown them on slides instead of positions).
Interestingly, there was no local canteen on the MAC this time. Either Meridian Expo doesn’t have it anymore, or it was closed for the duration of the conference. I’ve been all over the place twice looking for her.
The food was available in three versions:
- All kinds of snacks from the partners at the stands: starting with doritos and ending with bananas (all for free).
- Catering inside the Event Center, where everything except sweets was finished by the afternoon of the first day (for a fee).
- An area with food trucks on the street, in front of the entrance to the building itself (for a fee, and quite tasty).
The first day ended with a walk around Yerevan with a friend whom we had not seen for two years. I learned a lot of fascinating stories from him about his current online moneymaking journey during this time. What is the case worth, how he met a friend at a conference, with whom they later muddied the scheme, thanks to which the mortgage was closed and Harley-Davidson was bought for $ 21,000 (and someone after that will tell me that conferences are a waste of money)!
May 27: the second day of MAC-2026
The second day of MAC-2026 started a little early for me, with a pleasant walk, during which I once again strengthened my opinion that it is necessary to live in a place where the eye is happy when walking around the city.
Upon arrival at the conference, I immediately planned out all the promotions and sweepstakes from the partners in my calendar, in which I could participate (and win valuable prizes). There were plenty of them: some overlapped in time, so it was necessary to move quickly.
As my friend, with whom we hung out on May 27, put it:
The second day of the CPA conference is a real buzzer!
Here is just a partial list of partners who raffled off Apple hardware and similar cool prizes for partners:
- 1x Affiliates;
- POKER Partners;
- Tiger Partners;
- WaveLead;
- BetWinnerAffiliates (these guys have been distributing iPhones at every conference for years);
- 4RA Partner;
- JetTon Partners;
- Affstore;
- FTD.pro ;
- MNQN Partners;
- PARI Affiliates.
As a result of all these activities, Sanka won me a Tangem Wallet (a hardware crypto wallet in the form of a bank card that allows you to safely store, buy, sell and exchange thousands of different cryptocurrencies).
There were some rather unusual draws this time. For example, POKER Partners played for gold, and PARI Affiliates played for black caviar. In general, originality and eccentricity were present. (where without them, at the CPA conference)!
Well, of course, it couldn’t do without a bunch of all kinds of merch.
MAC-2026 afterparty
After the official part, Sanka and I returned home. We went for a walk with the dogs, rested and went to the afterparty on foot. The after Karen Demirtchian Sport/Concert Complex, where AfterMAC-2026 was held this time, is literally a 15-minute walk from our house.
The MAC-2026 afterparty traditionally featured a lot of delicious food, drinks, music and interesting conversations with relaxed webmasters, arbitrators, representatives of partner companies and related services.
Once again, I saw how small the scale of my online earnings schemes is. Here’s $100, there’s $500… people generate 500 videos a day to upload to YouTube Shorts and transfer traffic from there to affiliate programs. Shestakov generally talked about 300,000 sites in their PBN network… I’m still a long way from that.
Hopefully, by MAC 2027, I’ll be a little closer to what was discussed at this year’s conference.
See you!
P.S. All photos and videos (including from the afterparty) can be viewed on my Instagram.