I am writing this while I am at the airport waiting to board, so I decided to go a head and do a write up of my experience at Blog World. The other day I wrote about my experience and what I thought of BWE. I met so many people and I even met up with Ted Murphy again. There were a lot of good sessions but there were too many sessions. I wanted to go to a lot at the same time frame but I wasn't able to. I ended up splitting sessions because I wanted to go to one session and then another.
Two sessions I really liked were the Facebook Branding and Video Monetization. I actually started IANteract FB on Facebook, while Shama was speaking. It was interesting to find new ways to find and brand yourself. I know Facebook is a great way to brand yourself and even interact with your readers. It is also a great way to gather traffic and build trust. Facebook is a community of engaging users, there are a lot of users there that want to interact and find new friends or just network. With that said that is a lot of traffic to leverage easily, you just need to filter it and respect them.
Another sessions was the Video Monetization and this puts me in a way where I want to start doing video sponsorship. I think I do good videos and I think doing video sponsorships would be really good. I will be doing a case study with this and see if I can generate some income with this. I do get fairly good views about 100 views per video, but I will grow soon. There is also a site called Common Craft, you have probably seen their videos explaining RSS, Twitter, etc.
There were other great sessions and I met up with a lot of people. I met up with JoeTech, Bill Rice, Market Leverage, and so many more.
....I think that was a little off topic.... but back to the post about the dinners.
Affiliate Summit Dinner
The first day of Blog World was great - later that night was even better. I got invited to attend the Affilaite Summit Dinner hosted by Missy Ward and Shawn Collins. There I met up with Steve Hall, John Chow, Zac Johnson and so many others. I talked to Shawn about the soon to end summer BBQ if any and talked to Steve about taking pictures of his food.
There were a great a mount of people there and the food was great, the desert was great, and the environment was great. The dinner was very entertaining and I want to thank Shawn and Missy for having me and providing the dinner. I will be seeing them again in New York for Affiliate Summit.
Dinner with Market Leverage
The next day, I attended sessions and that night I was invited to attend the Market Leverage Dinner. It was very convenient because it was right after the last session and I just walked over to the hotel where the dinner was being held, Envy SteakHouse. WOW! Well the place was great, but upon entering I saw this sign which gave me a flashback when I was a hard worker. A Vector sign, the Cut Co company? The selling knives to your neighbors and friends! I was like wow and it reminded me when I was a loser. I was tempted to just go over their and tell them to sing up under my Market Leverage Referral and to start to make some real money. HA
At dinner I had the Rib Eye - friggin great steak! It was perfect, it was juicy, it was gangster as hell! At the beginning the waiter introduces himself and started to go over the menu. He was very thorough, I have seen it before, but this dude was doing it real well, like he had a script he had to memorize. Great Job to that dude.
It is great to see some of the AMs, Dina, Debby, all at dinner in a different environment rather than their work space. The thing was they didn't act any different when I did see them at work and while I hanged out with them at dinner. That is when you know the network is really enjoying what they do! I want to thank Debby, Dina, and Market Leverage for having me attend their dinner.
Dinner with Jim Kukral, Dave Taylor, and Bloggers
I even met the faces of bloggers such as the famous Lorelle on WordPress. She is very entertaining and loves life. She brings up good conversation and really enjoyed just talking with her. I talked to Jim Kukral and Dave Taylor, it's great to talk to these type of guys and have small talk and not try to pitch something to them. I try not to talk or pitch to them unless they ask, or if it is something they have done and I am doing something very similar.
The dinner was entertaining I met a person, Francois, who creates an alternative to WordPress called b2evolution. It is basically a CMS which comes in languages packs and has the ability to update all your blogs or cms platform. This is pretty slick, because I have to update all my blogs, login -> update - that becomes to cumbersome.
I met another person who blogs about USB connectors. Not too sure what you can blog about it much but he is very into social marketing. He is part of several networks such as twitter, friendfeed, facebook, etc - as we all bloggers are part of. The dinner was delightful and want to thank Jim Kukral for inviting me on such late notice, I was literally in my socks and flops.
Blog World was great, it was my first time and look forward to the next. I didn't get to hand out as much business cards as I do when I go to Affiliate Summit. But it was a good experience. Look forward to some pictures and videos in the coming days.
