BlogWorld Expo Recap and A Bonus!

As many of you already know, last week was BlogWorld Expo East in New York City and I was invited to come talk about review blogging and how to capitalize on current buying trends to turn that into blogging profits. To be honest, I was a little bit nervous! I have presented in conferences before in the professional business to business world, but this was my first time jumping into the bloggers trade show arena. I was stoked for the opportunity and at the end of the day…everything went perfectly.

Speakers I Attended At BlogWorld East

Conferences like BlogWorld are a great chance to listen to varying opinions and suggestions of other successful bloggers and marketers throughout the industry. There were a couple on the list that I knew I was going to want to hear and since I arrived in the Big Apple on Monday and my talk wasn’t until Thursday, I had the time to network and hear others.

Lewis Howes – Webinars

For those of you that don’t know Lewis, he has quickly become the king of webinars in the industry (he also happens to know a ton about LinkedIn if you are interested in that as well). You can dig into his content at LewisHowes.com, but his talk was on “How to Turn Your Blogging Passion into a 6 Figure Business with Webinars”…and he isn’t kidding. In the first quarter of this year…he has cleared over $250k by doing webinars. I don’t know about you…but I think that is insane and you can see why I wanted to hear what he had to say.

This ex pro football player took himself from living in his sisters basement to killing it online by doing webinars. His first LinkedIn promotion ended up netting over $8k for an hours worth of work! Those are concrete results showing that the environment is changing for promoting digital and physical products online. My main interest in hearing him talk was to get the nuts and bolts on how to get this going on my end as I have been looking for a way to more personally interact with my online friends/audiences.

Lewis didn’t disappoint and there was a ton of great information included. I’ll be starting something up really soon.

Johnny B Truant – Radical Transparency

Johnny is one of those guys I have been quietly watching for some time. Honestly, I really respect how he presents himself online and how he is able to act like himself and attract raving fans at the same time. When I saw he would be doing a talk on this at BlogWorld, it was on my list of must do’s.

Out of all of the presentations at BlogWorld East this year, Johnny’s was the one that got me thinking the most. The way he brings himself into his content and his relationship with his readers is nothing short of amazing (and a lot of the time…hilarious). I think we find ourselves trying to get too “professional” with our tone and talk online, and Johnny is the in your face reminder that blog readers want to connect with bloggers…not some boring cardboard cutout. The more honest you are with your readers and bring as much of you to the table as you can…the more response you will get and the more success you will see.

Far too often, I try to be Mr. Business on here when I should let go a lot more. I don’t wear a suit to my office…I am sitting in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with my dogs at my feet…and that is a good thing! Radical transparency is just that…being yourself at all cost and letting people connect with who you really are…not who you think they want to connect with. This one hour session will hopefully radically change how I speak online.

You can check out Johnny’s site here: The Internet Made Awesome

Syed Balkhi, John Chow and Zac Johnson

As you saw from an earlier post with David Risley’s intro of these three, there is never a dull moment when you get Syed and Chow together. While their talk was monetizing outside of banner ads, it was basically information that anyone already making a sum of money online knows. Things like why you need a newsletter and setting up a sales funnel were main topics in the conversation. Syed also highlighted the need to teach people how to use tools and complete things in your respective niche to create value and increase affiliate commissions (which I completely agree with). Zac illustrated how diversifying income streams can also open up your possibilities.

Again, all information I implement on my blogs and if you are not doing it now…you need to start today if you actually want to make any money online. It was fun hanging out with the guys over the course of the week and they even made me work “honk if you are horny” into my talk due to some horns they got from the book expo that was upstairs…yes…they literally said “honk if you are horny” on the horns themselves.

Here are the links so you can check them out for yourselves. John Chow (johnchow.com), Syed Balkhi (WPBeginner.com), Zac Johnson (zacjohnson.com) and David Risley (davidrisley.com)

Shane Ketterman – Rapid Success and Google’s Strong Hand

Shane is a newcomer to the block that has made HUGE strides in a very short period of time. After 7 months of blogging on his iPad blog (now sold), we was getting over 12,000 visitors a day and making thousands of dollars by capitalizing on events and teaching people how to use their new tablets.

The story is really a cool one as he went through the process and how he dealt with this rapid success. Unfortunately, he also got hit hard by the Panda update from Google (from what I can guess by what he was saying…the content scrapers are what did him in…not his content. He was writing five 1,000 word posts a day of unique content which is just insane!).

So there are two main things you need to take away from Shane (@rewirebusiness).

1. Never put all of your eggs in one basket. Google traffic and Adsense can go away quickly if that is all you are relying on.
2. Have a newsletter!! If Shane would have started a newsletter from day 1, he could have kept things rolling much better with a database of people that wanted his content.

When it was all said and done, Shane made out pretty good on the sale. It would have been much better without the Panda hit, but he is onto new things and I am excited to see what comes out of it.

Networking…Networking…Wait…

Outside of hearing some great speakers, BlogWorld was also a great time to put faces with names of people that I talk to online all of the time. I wouldn’t call it networking…I call it solidifying friendships. It was great to be able to hang out with everyone and I am looking forward to doing it again soon.

Unfortunately I will not be making it to LA for BlogWorld West as I will be neck deep in having our first baby around that time. If that isn’t a good excuse to miss…I don’t know what is! Our first child, Daniel Merrill Sutton is due October 25th..so we will be just a little bit busy! 😉

Oh yeah…the Bonus!

Some of you probably scrolled all the way down to the bottom of this page before you read anything above. That’s ok…I do it to! Just make sure you scroll back up at some point. There is some good stuff up there from some great bloggers and internet people.

Anyways, I am going to be annoucing the bonus in my newsletter this week, so if you are not already subscribed, click here…enter your info…claim your free eBook and watch out for a very cool announcement on something I am going to do for you and do it for free this week. I’m stoked and there will be a lot of value to it…so stay on the edge of your chair for this one.

In case you missed it…click here —> Blogging Labs Newsletter and Free Problogging Is Dead eBook! and then watch out for a killer free deal this week.