Blogworld or Bust!

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I was determined to attend Blogworld but I didn’t know how it would happen financially or logistically…

I thought about it for a few months, talked to other bloggers who were going but, it wasn’t until I discovered on Tuesday Fairy Godmother Janet Meiners was looking for a roadtrip buddy and then Podango miraculously offered me a full event SPONSORED ticket that I was able to “Make it Happen.” It was perfect…we hopped in Janet’s car and drove down to Vegas (6 hr drive) splitting it up in St. George on Wednesday night and drove down the rest on Thursday morning. I have to say that driving with Janet for 6 hours was equally as fun as the event itself–if you don’t know her, you should read her blog and get to know her at Startup Princess events! Not to mention the incredible FREEDOM of kid-free roadtrips. The photo below is Lee Gibbons, one of the founders of our sponsor, Podango and myself at his booth.

A funny thing happened on the way to Blogworld, initially we went to the WRONG conference!! We walked in, got registered (they just took our names and gave us a badge) and they pointed us to the breakfast buffet. I looked around the room of business clad professionals wondering–where are the BLOGGERS? I expected lots of T-Shirts. Then I looked down at the folder suddenly burst out laughing–”2007 Leadership Conference for Community Service Professionals,” Janet and I ran out of there fast to get to the RIGHT conference, just just in time to hear Matt Mullenburg, the 23 yr old WIZARD of Word Press (the open source format this blog is on, and 10 MILLION other blogs too). Fortunately our Blog Sponsor and Startup Princess Fairy Godmother Sarah Lewis answered her phone and helped us to find the right place!!

Here’s a summary of the sessions I attended:

Matt Mullenburg: “Passion is #1 Key to a great blog–Find something you CANNOT blog about”

Know your demographics by doing surveys on your blog.

Blogging is the best representative of who you are, not social networks (Facebook, etc.) because you will get a sense of people by what they write over a period of time (blog archives are valuable).

He believes that you MUST disclose all sponsorships so your readers continue to trust you, and so you are transparent to them with your objectives. Your integrity will be in question if you don’t disclose sponsored posts, etc.

Panel with “Shoemoney”, Kontera, and Rebecca Weeks, Director of Business Development at Real Girls Media, creators of the site Divine Caroline on “How to Generate Income on your Blog”: (Shoemoney and Rebecca in the photo to the left)
Shoemoney talked about the benefits of affiliate links, and recommended: Share a Sale, CPA Empire, Commission Junction, ClickBank, and Azoogle Ads. He recommends using a banner affiliate ad before you approach someone for a direct ad…”act as if”. He also suggests having a “Advertise with Us” page on your site and list all publications, demographics, your stats, and define areas of available ads in “zones” and then sell them in rotation of 5 max. He also recommended getting a “Heat Map” of your site where you can see the “hot spots” of where people click the most so you know what is working well for people, you can get a FREE one from Crazy Egg.

Rebecca Weeks introduced her stunning site, Divine Caroline to the audience and talked about their NEW ad network (because they are oversold on ads, they just released this offering, it is by invitation only). I was very impressed with Rebecca’s site–particularly with their template (I love the features of how writers can upload content, how you can contact a writer by email, get updates of when a writer posts, etc.) Regarding comments guidelines Rebecca said they ask themselves, “does the comment harm the community or support it?” Before launching their site last January (it how has over 500K uniques a month) she created an advisory board of well-known women bloggers (the very community she wanted to attract to write for them) and asked them what would make the site dynamic, user-friendly, etc. They did their research and it’s now paying off…(oversold on ads is very impressive)!

PAID RSS Syndication: Check out Newstex if you have content that may be interesting for professional services to search (news reporting, industry relevant news, etc. you might qualify to make income for those researching at Libraries, or in corporate search engines.

How to Build a Community: Fairy Godmother Wendy Piersall was one of the panelists here and did a wonderful job…the photo below is Wendy and Janet!

Blog Community To Do List:

• add a Top Commentor section
• highlight the positive from comments that might lead to another conversation/post
• push commentors to meet each other if they have something in common
• write a post about a top commentor
• create ways for others to enter the conversation (ask guest writers)
• add tools that allow sharing with friends (email this, etc.)
• put comment # on top of the post by the title
• be honest and open as possible, be REAL

The photo to the right demonstrates Startup Princess “Bling” magic wand and eMoms’ “e” pin as worn by new friend, Jared Kopf of Adroll being released very soon!

Today’s Magic Wand: Lingospot! Lingospot is an in-text search service enabling authors to increase reader engagement and dynamically crosslink their content. When I heard about this new FREE product, I seriously CHEERED right there at their booth at Blogworld. They said they wished they had it on video. I wish I had it installed yesterday! Wish Granted for Startup Princess.

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