The third annual Blog World Expo has come to a close and since I’ve been to every event so far, I thought it would be fitting to write up a short progress report on how the event continues to grow and mature over the years. If you are an affiliate, marketer or blogger… or even if you aren’t any of these, you should still take a look at BlogWorld, as it’s a great conference and like no other. Without any wasted time, let’s continue!

Blog World Expo 2010 – Progress Report

Attendance
This year Blog World Expo passed the 5,000 attendee mark, which is pretty amazing for only being in it’s third year. Blog World doesn’t just focus on blogging, but everything from internet advertising, social networking, marketing experts, and also focuses on how well known name brands and celebrities using online branding and social media.

Location
Sure, the event is in Las Vegas, so that is reason enough for many attendees to make the trip, but more importantly, this year’s Blog World Expo was located at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. I think almost everyone who attended the event though that the move from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay was one of the greatest changes of all. The Las Vegas Convention Center was cool, but you either had to get a taxi ride, pay for the tram or walk quite a ways to get to and from the event. Staying at Mandalay Bay is the best option for Blog World, and if you are a casino player, you can actually have your whole stay comp’d (like I did!), and there is also so much else do to in the casino. Even if you don’t find yourself Mandalay Bay, you still have the Luxor right next door, which is almost the same distance as the Hilton from the Las Vegas Convention Center (which was the previous walk for prior BWE events).

Lunch
Eating at conferences is always a big deal and usually hit or miss. I already wrote about how Blog World Expo provided speakers and other attendees with $20 lunch vouchers. This was just an excellent idea, and allowed anyone with a voucher to get virtually any type of food they wanted. You weren’t limited to just fast food, but also had access to some nice restaurants and cafes. Sure, it’s only $20 a day… but a huge improvement over the regular conference lunches we see at other events.

Speakers
For anyone in the blogging space, you have to be at Blog World Expo. Big names speakers that made the trip to Blog World Expo this year including myself are John Chow, Jeremy ShoeMoney, Darren Rowse, Daniel Scocco and Brian Clark just to name a few. What’s also great about the speakers that attend Blog World Expo, is that it’s such a vast crowd and it’s almost impossible not to learn anything new, or make some new contacts. Among the marketers and bloggers at the conference, you also get to meet up with a wide collection of government officials, speakers on every topic and celebrities like Adam Carolla, Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) and Mark Burnette, who were all speakers at this years event.

Exhibit Hall & Sponsors
No matter what conference you go to, the exhibit hall is always ones of the biggest attractions, and Blog World Expo continues to bring in some of the biggest brand name sponsors every years. Big name companies on the sponsor list this year include Ford (letting you test drive their cars), Kodak (giving away free camera), SouthWest Airlines, Sony, Pepsi, Coors Light and YouTube. The exhibit hall continues to get bigger every year, and with more big name companies contributing every year, it’s always cool to see what’s being given out by these companies as well as making a few business contacts.

Price
Ranging from $50 (exhibit hall only) to $1195 (full conference pass), Blog World Expo has ticket plans for everyone. Even though I continually have my full pass ticket covered since I speak at the event every year, I think it’s a fair price for a conference of this size and value. If the price is too far out of your price range, but you still have a high traffic blog, you can always contact the Blog World Expo team for a “Press Pass”, or search around for discount coupon codes and promotions for free passes.

Recommendations & Room for Improvement
Most of this report has been praise for Blog World Expo, as it truly is one of my favorite events, but we can always find room for improvement and here’s a few areas I noticed at this year’s Blog World.

- KEYNOTE SESSIONS –
The room layout and stage was excellent, however unless you were sitting in the first few rows, you could barely see any of the speakers while they were sitting in their chairs. The stage needs to be a foot or two higher for everyone to see to speakers.

- CONFERENCE SCHEDULE -

The BlogWorld.com web site has a schedule listed on the site that helps you manage how you want to plan your day, but it also makes it very hard to get a quick glance at who is speaking or what you really want to see. While at the event, there are also paper schedules available, but they don’t list the speakers. The Blog World Expo handbook has the best schedule and information. What I would really like to see is an iPhone/BlackBerry app available for next year’s conference schedule and an easy to read schedule available on the site.

This was a long and detailed post, but it’s worth it for anyone who was on the fence this year about going to Blog World Expo and didn’t get a chance to make it. Mark your calendars for October 2011 and definitely do what you can to make the event. Special thanks to BenSpark.com for the excellent photography used in this post!

If you made the trip to Blog World this year, or plan to next year. Be sure to leave a comment on what you look forward to seeing at Blog World Expo 2011 and any comments on this year’s event.

We just finished our 60 Question in 60 Minutes Blog Monetization Panel at Blog World. It was a really fun and great panel… and not to toot my own horn, but it was definitely the best session at BlogWorld because we focused all of our efforts at the audience, and had so much audience participation. Go into any other session and you will get a few questions if you are lucky, our session had a ton of user submitted questions, which the panel then answered. I don’t think we ended up getting anywhere near 60 questions answered, but it was a great session full of quality content.

The Blog Monetization panel was made up of John Chow, Ryan Gray, Jonathan Volk, DK and myself. We covered a wide variety of questions such as how to find advertisers for a blog, how much a blog should make vs. the amount of traffic it has, how to monetize non-US traffic and outside methods for revenue generation besides on site advertising and through ebooks, to name a few.

This session was excellent not only because of the awesome collection of speakers we had on the panel, but also because of how the audience always reminds us that it’s never too late to start blogging or start a new business online. How many attendees at BlogWorld this year will have just started their blog or business, and come back next year with a killer success story, or the results they were only dreaming of. The best way to reach these goals is to get out their, put your thoughts into action and network with some of the best people in the game.

I’m now in Las Vegas for BlogWorld, onc of my favorite conferences. Unlike regular affiliate marketing based conferences, BlogWorld is cool because it brings together such a diverse group of people. Bloggers, marketers, media companies and even some celebrities. The high end companies that BlogWorld brings together every year is quite amazing… just a few of the top sponsors this year include Ford, Kodak, Sony, Southwest Airlines, Pepsi, YouTube, Coors Light and so many more.

A great improvement BlogWorld made this year, was to hold the conference at the Mandalay Bay Conference Center instead of the Las Vegas Conference center. This is a great change because attendees can stay at the actual hotel of the event, instead of having to walk or get a taxi to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

That’s not all… BlogWorld is only in it’s first few hours of starting and they continue to impress. Another change to the venue was the addition of lunch vouchers. How many times have you been to a conference and the lunch venue was just crap? It does happen a lot. BlogWorld took their game to another level this year and provided $20 lunch vouchers to the Mandalay Bay food court and a few resturants around the hotel.

So far this year’s BlogWorld is off to a great start! Tomorrow morning at 11am I will be on a 60 min Q&A Panel with John Chow, ShoeMoney, Jonathan Volk and DK. If you are here in Las Vegas, be sure to stop by and say hello!

The last day of Blog World Expo 09 turned out to be the best day of the event. When attending conferences, usually the attendance drops like crazy on the last day. If you this one, you really missed out on the best of BWE09.

The morning keynote “The New Celebrity“, was with a bunch of celebrities that have been utilizing social medial. The panel was made up of Brian Solis, Jermaine Durpi, Anthony Edwards and a few others. What may have been expected to be a name dropping and self promotion session, actually went quite well. Instead the speakers talked about how they can interact with fans in a new perspective and actually share their lives with fans. Other discussions were on how Twitter and social media had now given every a “brand” and how important it is to watch what you say and tweet. A great point made during the session, was how much money and awareness can be made using Twitter and social media. Blog World Expo is also the new World Guiness record holder for a social event having the most tweeted hash tag, which was #beatcancer.

Finally it was time for the “Blogging Super Panel” with John Chow, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and myself. As expected, the session went perfect and provided a lot of insight and advice for attendees. Each speaker gave a quick 2 minute bio, then we went straight into full Q&A and blog reviews. The panel probably went through 10 different blogs and answered a ton of questions. When you think about it, how much would it cost to actually hire someone like this big name bloggers to look at your blog? Instead you just need to attend Blog World Expo and you get a bunch of big name bloggers to give a full critique for free.

The last session I attended was “How to make $60,000 a month with a membership program” with Timothy Sykes and his web designer. Timothy Sykes is a funny and outgoing guy. During our Blogging Super Panel, Tim went up for a Q&A and asked how to make more with his site model. Unlike most of the big name bloggers on the previous panel, Tim makes most of his money through his monthly membership to his Stock Tips newsletter. Tim is famous for turning $12,000 into $2 million, and shares his stock trades with your right when he is buying and sell. This is the same type of business model I talked about with Jim Cramer’s Action Alerts Plus.

Blog World Expo 2009 was a great success and is now in the books. On a closing note… WTF IS UP WITH ALL THE LIFE COACHES?

Today kicked off day 2 of Blog World Expo in Vegas. With another jam packed schedule, I hit up two sessions for the day. The first was called “Are You Getting the Most Money Out of Your Blog?“. Most of the previous sessions I had attended were covering all of the basic stuff. This panel was actually decent and showed what the panelists were doing on their blog to make money. The panelists were Dave Taylor, Tim Jones, Chris Pirillo and Chloe Spencer. Not well known for being “big money” bloggers, but still a great learning source for people in the audience from speakers covering a wide range of blog topics and size. Chris Pirillo also talked about how much more effective it was for him to release videos on YouTube to sell / review ebooks/products vs. making blog and twitter posts.

Monetization methods used and discussed were from revenue generating services Kontera, VibrantMedia, BlogAds, Technorati Ad Network, Izea / SponsoredTweets and TextLinkAds. Most of the panelists were relying on a combination of the networks above and Google Adsense.

As I mentioned yesterday, instead of hitting the usual affiliate marketing & blogging sessions, I made it to a sports blogging session as well. The session was called “Incorporating the Web Across Multi-Platform In Sports Media“. The main reason I wanted to attend this session, is because it included former NBA star Jalen Rose. However, after the session started, it was actually one of the better sessions of the event. Rob King of ESPN was also on the panel and he talked about how he used the internet and setting up a web page to secure his first big job. This was back in the mid-late 90s and having a url on your resume was huge. Across the board, this was an excellent session and can’t be summed up in a few sentences. I hope Blog World Expo releases video this year of the sessions they record.

Tomorrow is the last day of blog world. There are another few sessions I am looking to attend, along with my speaking session with Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and John Chow on the “Blogging Super Panel” at 3pm. If you are at Blog World, be sure to stop by and have your blog critiqued by some of the best bloggers in the world.

Next time you go to a conference, make you sure go outside of your comfort zone, or the sessions your used to. You might just be surprised what else is going on outside of your little niche.

I’m here in Vegas for BlogWorld New Media Expo 2009. BlogWorld has quickly become one of my favorite events to attend. The even is run by a great guy, Rick Calvert and it’s not just focused on “make money bloggers”. Instead the event covers a wide variety of blogs, focusing on milblogging, social networking / twitter, make money blogging and sports blogging. Here’s how the first day went down.

Since the conference covers so many different topics, there are usually four or more different sessions going on at the same time, so there is a lot to choose from. Instead of hearing the same things over and over again about twitter and how important social media is, I actually went over to a few milblogging (military blogging) sessions, and they were quite interesting. It’s a whole new word in the milblogging area, and not much talk of monetization or methods to make money. Milblogging is more personal and about keeping in contact with others in the same situations. The first milblogging session was with three army wives who blog while their husbands ore on duty. While us internet marketers struggle with issues like the FTC cracking down on full disclosure, milblogging has to deal with issues of what they say, how much information can be released and what information is actually correct. Remember, these are real people blogging about their families battling around the world. This is a whole new world of blogging I never really looked at, but the sessions were well worth attending.

Members of the Milblogging Session, talking about expanding blog reach and sharing information.

Another session I attended was a keynote with Ted Murphy and a few others on a “Sponsored Conversations” panel. The whole keynote was focused on the new FTC act to require bloggers to disclose any posts related to being compensated or paid for their writings. There are so many questions about this topic, it was pretty much a Q&A the whole session. While many questions were answered, we are still at the mercy of whatever the FTC decides to go forward with on December 1st, 2009 when the act goes into effect. No matter what the ruling, Ted Murphy stressed that all bloggers should have a disclaimer on their web site.

CEOs, Lawyers, Marketers and the audience, all talking about “Sponsored Conversations”.

If you weren’t able to make the event this year, it’s always a good reason to visit Vegas. I’ll follow up tomorrow with day 2.

BlogWorld Expo has just released their agenda for BlogWorld 2009. You can see the full list here, or the Monetization Track below. While BlogWorld Expo covers blogging on all angles, the “Monetization Track” is what most businesses and affiliate marketers are interested in. Last year was an excellent event and the Super Affiliate / Blogger Panel went extremely well. It went so well in fact, that Rick, the founder of BlogWorld, decided to bring it back again. It’s one of my favorite events to attend, and I haven’t missed one yet. Whether you are just a blogger, or affiliate, and I would recommend BlogWorld Expo to everyone!

BlogworldExpo Monetization Track

Day 1

Solo – Jay Berkowitz
Session Title: Making Social Media Make Money – The Top Ten Strategies
Description: Social Media has become our first choice for communication with friends and for business. Most of us start our online sessions with Twitter or Facebook. Social Search poses the first real threat to Google’s dominance. This presentation will explore practical applications to deliver real bottom line profitability for business and leading strategies for building your personal brand online.

* Twitter Rocks! Learn how to build credibility and parlay a loyal following into real revenue.

* The New Explosion of Social Search Marketing. Learn how to use Social Search to drive traffic to your sites and social locations.

* Top techniques for making blogs make money

* Podcasting is alive and well! Discover the top strategies for building a loyal audience and generating revenue from podcasts.

* What breakout innovations are driving Social Media success, how can you integrate these strategies for business?

* Which Social Media tools are the most important for business?

* How can you use these tools to build a breakout personal brand?

Panel: Affiliate Marketing Blogging Secrets
Description: Top bloggers already know, and have proven, that affiliate marketing is a top three money making tactic for their blogs. Now is the time to learn from the affiliate marketing experts about how to incorporate high-converting affiliate marketing efforts into your plan of attack.

· Missy Ward

· Scott Jangro

· Kim Rowley

Panel: The Money Making Potential of Continuity Programs
Description: The business case and money making potential of creating and maintaining continuity programs.

· Tim Kerber, Owner, MemberGate.com

· Ryan Lee, Owner, Ryan Lee Internet Marketing

Panel: How to Earn A Big Ole’ Pile of Money By Making Lots of Killer Blog Content
Description: One way to make money on your blog is to create tons of high-quality content. But how do you do that if you’re a one-person shop? Learn from the experts about how they create massive amounts killer blog content that helps them earn like Web rock stars.

· Rosemary

· Warren Whitlock

· Dan Gray

· JB Glossinger

Day 2

Panel: Blogging Super Panel Live Feedback Site Reviews
Description: Is your blog optimizing its potential to make money? Find out! This panel of the top money making bloggers of all time will spend a few hours reviewing your blogs live. So get there early and step up to the mic and be ready to have your blog picked apart by the pros who know.

· Darren Rowse, Problogger.com

· John Chow, JohnChow.com

· Jeremey Shoemaker, Shoemoney.com

· Zac Johnson, ZacJohnson.com

Panel: Are You Getting The Most Money Out Of Your Blog As You Can?
Description: You may think your blog is earning well, but what if someone showed you how you’re leaving money on the table and could be earning much more? Well, this panel will show you how to extract those extra revenues out of your blog that you’ve never thought of. Ready to make even more income next year? We’ll show you how.

· Chris Pirillo

· Dave Taylor

· Tim Jones, TheRealTimJones.com

Panel: How to Make $60k a Month with a Membership Program?
Description: Learn the secrets of how to take a niche topic and turn it into a profitable membership program from scratch, capable of earning $60k a month or more. It wasn’t always easy either. Learn about the early days and the problems we ran into, as well as the mistakes we made in the process. Also learn how to turn on the marketing machine to attract new members.

· Timothy Sykes, Owner TimothySykes.com

· Adarsh D Pallian, Biz Dev, TimothySkyes.com

Solo – Mari Smith
Session Title: Facebook & Twitter Fortunes: How To Strategically Grow Your Business Using the Top Two Online Social Networks
Description: Facebook is the largest online social network and Twitter is the fastest growing online social network. These two giant sites have changed the landscape of online marketing with significant implications for business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. Facebook boasts over 200 million active members and is growing at a rate of over one million new members per week. Twitter has grown 2300% in the past 12 months. Facebook Advertising, Twitter and other social media sites are extremely powerful marketing mediums through which to exponentially grow your business.

During this information-rich session, Mari will share proven strategies for generating significant online profits using social media, including:

·         The most effective ways to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

·         Simple strategies to powerfully leverage your visibility and brand.

·         Proven ways to identify and attract your top paying clients.

·         How to build a team of lucrative Joint Venture partnerships.

·         How to use Facebook in just five minutes a day and still yield huge, measurable results.

·         How to build a targeted, responsive following on Twitter.

·         Secrets to leveraging, automating and delegating to get maximum results from your social networking.

Register for BlogWorld Expo 2009 in Las Vegas!

No matter what conference you go to… sessions will only teach you so much (if anything)… the real value is in the people you meet and where those new relationships will bring you and your company. During Blog World Expo there were some really great parties and dinners that I was invited to. Here’s a run down of the past few days and the fun we all had!
Affiliate Summit Dinner
- Shawn Collins and Missy Ward put together an excellent gathering of “who’s who” that were at Blog World. The dinner was held at Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois in the MGM Grand Casino. Not only was the food excellent, but it was great to be able to talk with everyone without any distractions or loud music blasting. John Chow, Dave Taylor, Jim Kukral, Ian Fernando and Tim Jones were also all at the dinner.

Our table with Shawn Collins, John Chow and others at Chinois.

Market Leverage Super Panel Dinner
- Three winners were selected from the audience at our Super Panel and were invited to a special dinner with everyone that night. Market Leverage sponsored the amazing dinner at the Envy Steakhouse and the Renaissance Hotel. In addition to everyone on the super blog panel, we also had our contest winers, Unique Blog Designs crew, many from Market Leverage and a few other close friends.

Super Blog Panel Speakers and Dinner Contest Winners

Last Day BlogWorld Expo Dinner Blast
- The last dinner and networking we had in Vegas ended up being a blast and was one of the best times I’ve had at a networking conference. First we headed over to the Wynn and had dinner at Red 8, an awesome Asian restruant… where John Chow managed to convince me try Jellyfish! Additionally, ShoeMoney, Nate and the Unique Blog Designs crew and Debby, Dina and Mike from Market Leverage were all in for a killer time that night. We ended up bouncing from casino to casino into the wee hours of the morning… even though Shoe had to catch a flight a few hours later… it was awesome!

Rick Calvert after his Last Session at Blog World Expo 2008!

If you didn’t get a chance to meet up with me at Blog World, I definitely look forward to meeting with you at the next one. I want to thank Rick for pulling off another amazing Blog World and to everyone else that took the time to talk with me, buy drinks and just hang out… it was awesome!

Today was the first real day of sessions at Blog World and after the keynote, the sessions kicked off with our “Making Money with Blogging” panel, which was referred to as the “Super Panel” of Blog World. The session went very well, and it would probably be tough to pull together this great group again as Darren is from Australia and just having all of our schedules sync up for an opportunity like this is rare.

To start off that panel, Jim Kukral gave a quick intro for each of us, then we gave a quick rundown on our blogs and how we make money with them. Afterwards Jim had a few questions for us each to answer.

One of the best parts of the shows (mainly for the audience), was when we were all critique other people’s blogs. Jim had two posted on the screen, then he asked if anyone wanted their blog shown and examined… then a ton of people ran up to the mic.

This was a great panel not only because of the over knowledge and experience we all had, but also because we each made money online in our own ways… whether it be blogging with our actual “name” as the domain, or running a niche site like Darren’s photography blog, or even Brian Clark’s CopyBlogger site that doesn’t talk about making money at all… yet it does!

In the end, there were still so many questions and we could have talked and answered questions all day… but the session was only an hour long. This was a killer panel and extremely fun to be on. Once I get my hands on a copy of the session, I will post the video.

Even though tomorrow is the really big day for Blog World and when the masses will start to arrive, there has already been plenty of excitement and cool things going on. Jones Soda has done a huge sponsorship with Blog World and have sent over 7,000 bottles exclusively for speakers and attendees of the event. Since Blog World is like no other event, Jones Soda made sure their sodas were also like no other!

There are many different flavors to choose from, and depending on your favorite affiliate marketer or blogger, you can choose from specially labeled drinks such as Jim Kukral, John Chow, Shawn Collins, Gary Vaynerchuk and of course myself, Zac Johnson!

I’ll be bringing a few bags of these home for my collection, not to mention they also taste great too! Since Jones Soda was cool enough to provide the drinks and setup the special labels, be sure to check out their site and you can even try to make some money with their affiliate program.