I just finished my slides for an hour-long presentation that I’m giving on Wednesday, April 15 at a monthly meeting of the Corvallis Etailers Association.

The presentation is taking place at

• 420 NW 2nd St, Corvallis, OR 97330
• 12 noon to 1:30pm

I’ve prepared a presentation on a few essential SEO basics, but after gauging the room for SEO knowledge I plan to quickly shift to a more advanced presentation.

My hope is that most of the attendees will already “get” the SEO stuff, and we can do some real time site reviews,  maybe demonstrating the functionality and time-saving aspects of my SEO review tool.

Here’s a map to get there but I have no idea how someone might sign up to attend, or even to find out anything more about this group! If you’re interested in going, you’ll have to email me I guess!

I just did a search for Corvallis Etailers Association and find absolutely nothing other than a quick twitter post I made a few days ago.

Huh – sounds like they should have a presentation about marketing 101 next month

This year’s Elite Retreat was every bit as good as last years, and again, i’m really glad I chose to attend.  It was great to see some friends from last year, and I also met some really amazing new attendees. Once again, I feel like I learned almost as much from other attendees as I did from the speakers.

I made it to the airport in plenty of time, and just two minutes before boarding, they announced that we were still waiting for the plane from SFO, and we had an estimated one hour delay before boarding. I’m not sure how that wasn’t known sooner, but it wasn’t.

We finally got underway after more delays on our runway in PDX, and then circling in SFO too. It seems the problem is that they just don’t know what to do when it rains in California.

Since my plane was so late, I got found by the limo driver while I was wandering in baggage claim, and he took me to my hotel, where I changed and unpacked, caught up on email for an hour, and headed to the “Meet and Greet” pre-event.

The “Meet and Greet” was in a cordoned off section of the bar at the Vitale hotel. There were about 20 people there when I arrived, but others rolling in over the next three hours, as SFO airport got caught up.

There was a nice spread of food, with some hot pork sandwiches, and some killer cheese & coldcut plates, and of course an open bar. Near the end of the event they added bowls of hot almonds with crispy chopped garlic that were really amazing. I think I actually may have eaten a whole bowl full!

Besides the speakers and attendees, there were a few other invited (by Shoemoney) guests there, and I got to meet and talk with the CEO of Affiliate.com ) Scott Richter who was sponsoring the Meet & Greet. I also had a great conversation with the CEO of Triggitt.com too, Zachary Coelius.

I used to use Triggitt in it’s old form, but it’s a completely different product now – offering a floating toolbar of sorts for site owners. (Don’t ask – I’m not sure either, and we’ll just have to go check it out)

I also ran into Todd Malicoat, who was a presenter in the very first Elite Retreat, but was leaving for SEO Blackhat in Rio, so couldn’t stay this year. I’m sure he’s pretty disappointed…

Each day started with a great breakfast, followed by great presentations and leaning, then an open bar by 11, then a fantastic lunch, then some more presentations, then a networking / cocktail reception at the end of the sessions, and finally by walking nearby to a different gourmet restaurant each night and eating in private dining rooms. totally first class all the way.

Neil Patel –
Neil was the first speaker, and talked about leveraging social media, and gave a well thought out presentation that had some specific suggestions for your Ecommerce, Service sites, social Sites and affiliate sites.

Some of the action items he suggested will immediately benefit nearly half of my client sites, with potential uses for all, assuming I can get them to buy into the idea of participation.

Nearly everything Neil suggested was creative, imaginitive and legitimate, and It wasn’t even until his Q&A that the subject came up of dealing with banned IP addresses, and multiple user accounts.

Kris Jones -
CEO and founder of Pepperjam, gave his presentation about “Affiliate Marketing Search Arbitrage”, and began by saying that “Inspiration is short lived” and went on to say he was planning to give us specific action items, and he didn’t fail to deliver.

He gave a great talk, stressing importance of tracking, and going into some very specific details about identifying the most profitable and best converting keywords.

He also discussed having a strategic PPC account structure, determining your profit / loss down to keyword level, identifying and capitalizing on trends, and then gave some specifics for improving your Adwords quality Score through what he calls, “Quality Score Optimization”.

Stephen Spencer -
I was one of the people that asked Jeremy if he would invite Stephen Spencer to speak at Elite Retreat this year, because I thought he was one of the only other SEO’s in the world that could possibly contribute as much as Aaron Wall did last year.

That’s why I was disapointed when he went next, knowing that lunch was coming up in an hour. Just like with most of Stephens presentations I’ve ever seen, there wasn’t enough time for him to get though it all.

He had specific things to say and show about some advanced SEO techniques both on-page and off. He cited examples, screen shots and action items, and with my copy of his 103 slides I really did learn and get clarification on a few things.

I suspect that the level of detail Stephen put into some of the SEO stuff was excruciatingly dull for some of the PPC guys that don’t really “get” SEO, and who don’t build out sites beyond landing pages.

Also, Stephen REALLY did push the squeaky white hat image a bit too far, as he put on his tin foil hat (his words) about what Google knows and tracks. I know of at least one person who thought it was over the top – I really enjoyed our talk at dinner, Dave – and thanks a lot for your perspective, and I’d really love to work with you someday.

Also, I KNOW that there were people there that just had no interest in the finer details of thinks like site architecture and sculpting page rank, but I could have listened to Stephen all day, and felt a bit shortchanged by him having to blast through his slides in an hour.

Andy Liu -
As a venture capitalist, Andy talked about finding and structuring the deals for buying sites and businesses, which is not a space I’m going to play in any time soon. However, that didn’t take away from the fascinating processes he discussed, and while I didn’t personally get much actionable information, I learned a lot about how the game is played, and it’s pretty damn fascinating.

Chris Winfield -
Until this week, I had no idea the level of press coverage that Chris Winfield has had in the past. The number of times he’s been menioned or quoted in various publications is staggering, and he’s very open about the positive effect that’s had on his business.

Chris gave a totally fantastic presentation on PR, and he talked about how to get the press to notice you, where to get in touch with the press you’re after, attracting their attention the “right” way, and about formulating a detailed game plan to do it right.

Great information combined with some of the snazziest Powerpoint slides I’ve ever seen, I had to give Chris’s presentation a 10

Garry Vee -
This guy is amazing, and I just can’t say enough about what a motivating and inspirational guy he is. If you want to get an idea what his talk was like, go watch his keynote at Affiliate Summit then imagine talking with him in a room of 30 people for two hours, asking any question that comes to mind.

He gave a short “speech” sort of like the AFF Summit one, and then let us have at him for two hours. It was definitely an experience I’ll remember for the rest of my life, although it did sort of suck that he bailed on coming to dinner with us.

Jeremy Shoemaker – Shoeoney
The second day began with Jeremy giving a short talk, then showing us actual campaigns from actual domains, and cutting to the chase about his findings via multivariate testing. It was a rare glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at a few actual revenue generating projects, and it was really pretty surprising that he shared that level of detail.

He did an amazing job of putting this all together, and I can only hope he does it again next year.

The rest of the day was devoted to one on one talks, and I took advantage by speaking to Stephen spencer, Kris Jones, and Shoemoney about my monetization and distribution plans for SEO automatic.

During the one on one sessions, which lasted all day, there was plenty of networking going on, as well as speaking appearances by Intel’s director of social networking, Michael Brito, and Brian Norgard, the Vice President of Myspace Myads.

Both of their appearances were excellent and informative, and it definitely helped fill the void that was created last year during the one on one sessions, were we had nothing to do but network and get in line for the next one.

On the other hand, last year in just four hours I had time to speak to every panelist, whereas this year, I could only talk to three, and had to miss the other three completely. If I have one “complaint”, that would be it.

Also during the day, DK a famous chiropractor in San Diego took on the role of Julie from The Love Boat, and helped keep us focused on (semi) productive activities that interested everyone. Many thanks also to Tigh, and to Briena for keeping things running smoothly.

I’m sure there are others to thank for helping, and I’m sorry if I’m forgetting anyone. If anyone can remember someone else, please DM me and I’ll slide them in seamlessly to this post.

All in all, attending Elite Retreat has been my highlight of 2009 so far, and I highly recommend that anyone serious about their Internet marketing career plan to attend the 2010 Elite Retreat if they have another one. It’s also the “conference that keeps on giving” through our weekly mastermind group teleconferences, which I’m really looking forward to again this year.

Don’t just take my word for it though… Check out the buzz on Twitter from other attendees and organizers.

I’m leaving this moring for Elite Retreat, and I’m writing this in the airport because my flight is delayed. It occurs to me that I may not be able to productively fill all of my “one on one” time.

Have you looked at who’s speaking at Elite Retreat 2009? Can you imagine not having an agenda of questions ready to ask these guys?

in all fairness, Tigh at Shoemoney sent out a “get ready” email about a week ago, and I saved it, planning to get back to it later, and that’s what I’m going to finish up on the plane.

However, last year at ER, each and every speakers let us “wear out our welcome”, on the last night by hanging around on their own time until EVERY single person had nothing left to ask but “Where’s the bar?”

To be honest, my biggest regret from ER 2008 is that I hadn’t shown up with a mile long list of questions – I had no idea that we would have all that personally devoted time.

This year it’s different, because I know it’s coming, and so do the other 34 attendees. also, my main focus is on furthur expanding services at SEO Automatic as I bring it forward with an affiliate program and brandable agency options.

I KNOW I have a specific agenda. But, like last year, if I were to get the opportunity, what would I do if there was nothing left to ask?

So, PLEASE tell me what questions might you ask of any of these people, and I’ll do my best to get to ‘em.

As I promised this morning, I have uploaded my East Portland Chamber of Commerce presentation here, including all of the links that I spoke about.

You may open it directly from this link, or just right click here and choose “save as” to get it onto your own computer.

For those that weren’t in attendance, it’s a basic presentation with a few site-usability tips, and links to what I believe are the best 12 places for listing your website for free in local directories.

Next week’s SEMpdx presentation gets very specific regarding the local search ranking algorithm. SEMpdx is fortunate to have a new board member join us for 2009 who’s recently moved here from San Fransisco.

His name is David Mihm, he’s an expert in local search, and he’s agreed to give a similar presentation to the one he gave at SMX West in California couple of months ago.

If you’re with a local business and want to know some specific things you can do to rank your business better when your city name is used in the query, then this is one presentation you don’t want to miss.

Also at this event, I’m going to be on the 4 person panel for a mini – SEM Hot Seat event, along with David,  Todd Mintz and Lisa Williams and we’ll be critiquing three websites.

Check out more info here, and if you come, please do take the time to introduce yourself.

I’ll be on a panel at Innotech this year, because for the first time, there will be live website reviews taking place at the conference,  here in Portland Oregon.

The entire conference is scheduled for next Wednesday, April 16th and Thursday April 17th,  but the live SEM Hotseat is Thursday April 17 3:30 PM in Room D135

Three members of SEMpdx,  Benjamin Lloyd of Amplify Interactive,  Kent Schnepp of Engine Works, and myself, Scott Hendison, will be on the panel critiquing participants websites, answering specific questions, and providing specific information to the site owner,  as well as to conference attendees.  The panel will be moderated by SEMpdx president Kent Lewis, of Anvil Media.

While it is not necessary to pay to attend the “Hot Seat” event beyond your Innotech pass,  if you’d like to have YOUR website reviewed, then that is something extra, but at a ridiculously low price…  Register your website to be reviewed here

I showed up late for breakfast, at about 7:40, which was only 20 minutes before the day was supposed to begin. The buffet (again spectactular) was set up in the hall, so with my backpack over my shoulder, I made my plate, and went inside to try and get a seat.

Much to my surprise, I found that there were less than a dozen people there, compared to the 35 from the previous day. That’s when I realized that my decision to go back to the room at about 11:30 the night before had been the right one, instead of back to the bar. These people were going to miss the beginning…

Scarfing down my food, I went into the main presentation room, and found that yes, there were a lot of people missing; including some of the speakers. In the end, the day didn’t get going until 8:35. That’s not a complaint or a criticism, just a fact.

We started with a discussion about something I already knew… an added value to the Elite Retreat. Every Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 Pacific Time, there is a conference call with a mastermind group, made up exclusively of elite retreat veterans. As attendees we were now going to be invited to that call. Sweet – Now I have to push back the time for my sons team little league practice

My decision to come to Elite Retreat was made back in December, after talking for over an hour one night to a previous attendee while I was at Pubcon. He had told me that while the Elite Retreat itself was fantastic, that being on those conference calls and really been what changed his life.

First up to speak was Brian Clark from Copyblogger, who did a really great job. In my opinion, he was as well-prepared and as polished a speaker at Andy from yesterday, but he spoke about something I was passionate about.

He’s a former lawyer, and he gave some personal history, then talked about a couple of of his new business models, including Teaching Sells and a new-yet-unnamed venture that’s going to be sort of a direct marketing channel for celebrities.

He reminded us of many the opportunities we have and how things are changing so dramatically. It was a short inspirational bit, that would’ve been well-suited for a keynote speech, and then he launched into some juicy details and specifics on how to improve what we were doing now.

He talked about conversion, and how things are changing, and how to do well with permission based marketing, which is really the way things are headed.

“Conversion has to be baked into every aspect of your business model, and if you’re not thinking about it, you’re probably wasting your time.” Smart marketers are getting into more relationship marketing, repeat sales.

He used the phrase “hope marketing” to define simple one-off sales, but pounded into our brains that permission based marketing gets us way past these crappy 1% conversion rates we’ve come to accept.

He also mentioned that he thinks “some day the word ‘blog’ is going to go away”, and I agree totally. For a long long time I’ve been trying to point out to clients that a blog post is just a web page, and vice-versa, and explaining the “difference” between them is silly Websites ARE becoming interactive.

He talked about Early to Rise to illustrate a good example of giving people what they want, and how it’s (past) time to start thinking about affiliate marketing as a way of market testing to see what people really want to buy. He gave some specific dollar figures related to their numbers and affiliates that were astounding

He then got much more specific, talking about the three phases of a business, which he called attention, authority, and acceleration, giving us everything from a few book recommendations to specific steps about conversion, establishing authority, and even developing an exit strategy and outsourcing.

That’s as specific as I’m going to get about Brians talk… Come yourself next time

Guy Kawasaki was the keynote speaker, and the first thing he said was “I don’t really have anything prepared” – THAT’s when I knew it was going to be good… He talked a little bit about his history and his current projects, specifically one called Alltop.

Although some people have been critical of Alltop, I ‘m not here to debate whether or not it’s an original idea or not. The point is, that Alltop is a needed service, and with Guy Kawasaki’s reach and influence, I suspect it’s going to be huge success.

As Guy pointed out, if you don’t agree, then go call your Mom or Dad and walk them through setting up an RSS reader, and telling them how to find and add her favorirte subject feeds.

I will say that something amazing happened during his presentation… When he started talking about how Altop top was created, he said that he had discovered Pop URLs, which is a similar service, but much more subject specific.

Guy found the idea fascinating – to aggregate the RSS content of others in one place and make it available for easier public consumption. Guy said he looked up who owned PopUrls, then picked up the phone, and called the owner, Thomas Marban.

Recounting his conversation with Mr. Marban, he claims he said, something like “so basically Thomas, the way I see it, your goal is just to sit around in your underwear and cash checks”, whereupon Thomas Marban and replied something like, “Yep!”.

The guy sitting next to me then popped open his Twitter, and tweeted something like – “Popurls.com creator Thomas Marban has a life goal to sit around in his underwear and cash checks”.

Within a span of less than five minutes, he then got an e-mail from Thomas Marban, whom he did not know, and neither is a follower of each others Twitter, saying something like “Who are you and how did you know what my life’s goal is”?

He wrote him back to explain, and within a half an hour, they were Facebook and linked in connected too. I found this to be a fascinating demonstration of the power of the Internet and the global instant reach of Twitter.

Just like always, Guy’s presentation was educational and entertaining, and although I had seen him speak twice before, it was never in a room with under three dozen people, where he talked was one-on-one with us, and was asking for questions. He basically talked until we were out of questions and had nothing else to ask. He’s a remarkable guy, and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

There was some time to kill before lunch, so Jeremy filled it up with some specific details about pay per click, AdWords, and the content network, and then through the floor open to questions for all the panelists.

Although the nondisclosure did not say anything about locking those questions and answers later, in my opinion, doing so would be nothing but stupid. I’ll just say that it was a great impromptu session before lunch, that included participation from all the panelists, from Jeremy’s programmer Dillsmack, and even from a few in the audience.

After lunch Jeremy introduced Aaron Wall, claiming to have “saved the best for last”, and Aarons presentation certainly did not disappoint anyone.

I’ve always considered my biggest strength to be organic search, so this was the session I was really waiting for, and Aaron was a huge draw for me to attend…

Aaron talked about an algorithm anomaly that’s been going on for about four months, and how to specifically take advantage of it. I’m afraid I won’t be talking about it here, sorry.

He talked about being a thought leader in your industry and being uber-creative for expanding your network and getting links. In the few times I’ve heard Aaron speak I don’t think he ever mentioned being creative and social as much as he did here.

He talked about a great article to read called, “Is Justin Timberlake a result of cumulative advantage” and explained the philosophy and concept of “things spread because they spread”.

On the plane ride home, I was “reading” Seth Godins book “All marketers are Liars,” that basically illustrated Aarons point over and over again.

He recommended several books and blog articles, talked about writing persuasively and creatively with your headlines and content, and gave specific examples of other sites and companies doing it well.

Then he got to his Powerpoints with his specific ideas and tactics about mixing up our processes, being less than perfect with your SEO, how Google is getting smarter, and then he talked about some tools, and how to use them wisely.

I took a full page of notes before anyone even started asking questions, and once he began answering questions, he exhausted everyone’s curiosity to their full satisfaction. It was an absolutely amazing way to end the formal presentations.

With three hours left to kill, and much to my surprise (since it wasn’t on the schedule) all the attendees were THEN offered face-to-face time with any or all the panelists.

This was great because there may be certain things you don’t want to announce, or domains you don’t want to mention in front of 32 of the most ambitious Internet marketers in the world.

We were able to sit down face-to-face while each presenter had a laptop in front of him, and show specific websites, ask specific questions, and solve specific problems. These one-on-one sessions when on past the 5 p.m. closing time, and ultimately, even though the room closed, never really stopped the entire two days.

DK scheduled a post conference dinner for us all at an amazingly good restaurant for anyone who wanted to attend, and I’ll talk more about that in a wrap up post. However, that may take another day or two because I have a lot of catching up to do.

For now I’ll just say that it ranked among one of the top dozen meals I’ve ever eaten in my life, and was a perfect way to wrap up three incredible days with some extraordinary people.

Elite Retreat Day 0
Elite retreat Day 1

The morning started out great with a buffet breakfast of rosemary potatoes, scrambled eggs, chicken apple sausage, thick sliced bacon, and an assortment of bagels and breakfast breads. I’m typically not a breakfast eater but I’ll never turn down something like this, and I piled my plate high and when into our private dining room.

Taking my place at the table between a poker affiliate from Ohio, and a local San Francisco search marketer, I was surprised to find that four of the eight people at my table had been here before at Elite Retreat.

Overall, I would say that the general search knowledge of people at my table was far higher than the average conference lunch table I’d sat at before, and by the end of the meal and was totally impressed with what I learned, and completely stuffed, which for me is always a good combination.

As we made our way into the room, and I headed for the usual front row / aisle spot that I try to snag, I was pretty disappointed to find out that they had laid out our name tags alphabetically, so I walked up and down the rows until I found my tag in the middle of the third or fourth row of seats. With only 32 attendees, it wasn’t a bad seat by any means, but I’m a little bit obsessive about sitting on an aisle whenever I can.

Laid out with our name tags was an impressive array of swag, starting with a leather portfolio (padfolio?). Had I not forgotten to bring digital camera on this trip you’d see a nice picture here.

Inside the portfolio was a really nice fat silver and black pen, also engraved with the elite retreat logo. Very heavy and with a spring action tip, it’s definitely a nice writing instrument, that I’ll be sure to lose quickly. Sitting right on top, and waiting for us to sign with our new pen was the nondisclosure agreement.

I sort of assumed the NDA was coming, and it basically just said “no live blogging” and “respect people’s privacy”, and show some common sense.

The next item sitting there was a video Ipod Nano, engraved on the back with “Elite Retreat 2008 – San Francisco”. Even letter, the Ipod was filled with all kinds of audio files, from Shoemoney’s Webmaster radio episodes, to Donald Trump’s, “How to think like a Billionaire”.

Our master of ceremonies, David Klein, started us off by introducing Jeremy as the first speaker. Shoe talked about his own personal history, and it was a really interesting story. He began after he wrote a guide for how to put pics on cell phone, and that turned into an online application that ended up sorting, storing, and sizing photos for putting on your cell phones, and then that ultimately turned into the NextPimp ring-tone business that helped make him famous.

He discussed the ring tone site and development history, talked a bit about AdSense, and then more about some contextual advertising and affiliate stuff, and then about his current project, fighters.com, in an upcoming one that I shouldn’t mention, that has to do with dating, but I think it’s absolutely brilliant.

Shoe is an entertaining speaker, and a smart guy, and the story he told about someone who should have been his partner was a class act, but there weren’t really a lot of details or specifics. Still, I was riveted, and I thought he gave a good talk.

The biggest takeaways for me were to be creative, incentivize users, and to try to think out of the box and far beyond typical traffic generation methods.

For example, with Auction Ads, he offered people 5 bucks to try it, and he went to websites and offered to replace their Adsense income to show his ads instead, trying to gain visibility for the brand. That high visibility is likely what enabled him to sell off Auction Ads less than four months after launch.

Neil Patel was up next and he didn’t disappoint. Due to the NDA, I can’t disclose a lot of what he said, but let me tell you that I do think this guy is brilliant. I’ve seen him speak before, and his rapid fire style is definitely appealing. If you ever get the opportunity to hear him at a session don’t skip that one.

He reinforced a lot of ideas that I had about social media networks, and he also straightened me out on some misconceptions I had. I have nearly a full page of notes, but he kept coming back to the fact that you have to tailor your content and style to each particular community you might be dealing with.

During the Q&A, he asked if anyone had any particular industries they were having trouble getting social with, so he could offer some link-bait suggestions. For each industry mentioned he came back with a really quick answer, with funny and entertaining ideas that I have no doubt will work well on these communities.

He gave some specific examples of successful campaigns, and gave some very clear steps on how to work some of the individual networks, from Digg to Yahoo Answers, and his talk was well worth the cost of admission…

Lunch was great, with an assortment of sandwiches and salads, and everyone ate quickly in order to get back in and hear the next speaker during our “working lunch break”. I sat next to Brian Clark from Copyblogger, who is speaking today. He told me a little bit about his membership site, Teaching sells, but mostly I tried to eavesdrop on his conversations with Aaron Wall and Matt Mullenweg, which was an easy because it was really loud in there.

Next, Matt Mullenweg the fouder of worlds best SEO machine (WordPress) gave an interesting history about how he started, why he started, and some general philosophy about the open source community. WordPress is even bigger than I thought, with 2.8 million users, 15 to 20,000 downloads daily, and over 600 million page views on WordPress.com blogs last month. Absolutely astounding.

His company has 24 people all of whom work from their own home office, so they are truly a virtual company. He discussed his plans for the future including Word press becoming even more of a content management system and some additional new features coming out any time now, but he specifically asked us to keep them quiet for now.

My favorite quote from his session was related to adding certain features into the back end and how difficult it is to keep clean and easy to use, because “everyone wants their 15 pixels of fame”

Andy Liu from Buddy TV was next, and his discussion had to do with raising venture capital. the detailed information on exactly how to do it was phenomenal, with great tips and lots of bullet points to pay attention to.

I have no doubt that the notes I took could come in very handy someday, but it’s just not applicable to what I’m doing these days, and I probably could’ve done without that session. Still, it was amazing information to have presented so concise and I appreciated his tips.

For the last session of the day they ask for URLs to put websites up on the screen and talk about ways of improving conversions and engaging visitors. I learned a little bit, and as various attendees spoke, it was interesting to hear all of their opinions too, and see all of the different businesses they were involved with.

When one of the attendees brought up their website, the guy next to me said “That sounds familiar, I think I pitched him a couple of years ago”. Within just a few seconds, he brought up an e-mail that he’d sent this same guy in 2006, with some specific details and recommendations about how he would improve their site. The funny thing was many of the changes and recommendations still had not been made, and the panelists touched on nearly every one.

The other thing I learned from this site review session, was that the SEM Hot Seat events that we put on here in Portland are truly world-class.

Immediately following the close of sessions at 5pm, they opened up the hospitality suite where they were offering free snacks and alcohol for the next 3 1/2 hours before the limousines were scheduled to arrive to take us to dinner.

As appealing as the thought of shmoozing and drinking was, I had made a point of not answering any of my e-mails all day and had a few things I needed to attend to. I walked the two short blocks back to my hotel and proceeded to plow through all of my necessary responses while my battery drained away.

When I went to my backpack to get my power cord for my laptop, I discovered that I had apparently forgotten it in the conference room. Panic set in, because my battery was already dead and being in early-morning riser, I find myself with nothing to do and very far behind if I didn’t find some juice, so I walked back to the conference hotel.

Of course when I got up to the room my power adapter was nowhere to be found, even though I knew exactly where I had left it after unplugging it from the power strip. Remembering that there was a computer store across the street, I went over there and was able to buy a $60 universal adapter to get some power.

I went back to my room, changed for dinner, and walked back over to the cocktail party to network with the other attendees.

Two big Hummer limousines arrived to take all 40 of us to a great restaurant, we had our choice of Chilean sea bass, or filet mignon. It was a nice restaurant with impeccable service, and the obligatory tiny portions in the center of the plate. I love gourmet food as much as the next guy, but why do the portions have to be so friggin’ small?

At dinner I sat next to Aaron Wall and his new wife Giovanna, who has an amazing knowledge of the industry. Just like the rest of us here, she has a true passion for what she does, and is incredibly knowledgeable. I’m sure she’s involved in all kinds of projects with Aaron, and besides the romantic aspect, marrying her seems to have been a wise business decision

Aaron’s presentation is this morning, and he said he still had to put a lot of finishing touches on his PowerPoint so he wanted to go work on it after dinner. However, he says he hates working without a mouse and had forgotten to bring one, so the three of us walked to my hotel and I loaned him mine for the night.

So far the Elite Retreat has been great, but as I suspected, the true value in attending has been networking with new people and forging relationships that could go on for years.

Elite Retreat Day 0
Elite retreat Day 2

As I write this we’re circling San Francisco Airport, and I expect to be told to shut down the computer in a moment, but I wanted to give my blog post about the first night at the elite retreat.

There’s a limo that’s supposed to be waiting for me at the airport, and even though I’ve tried that two other times with no success I suspect that this time it will work, and there’s going to be a guy waiting for me with my name on a sign. Sweet.

The anticipation of this trip has been building literally for over a year,since the last time I opted not to come, and have been kicking myself ever since. I’ve got my list of things I want to learn, my list of things I hope to learn, and my list of things I plan to ask about if they aren’t discussed.

Next morning:
Okay, the limo was there, my name was spelled right, and the conversation on the way in with another attendee (Justin from Legalzoom) was fascinating. At just over 30 years old, he’s lived in a dozen different states & countries, and been a computer geek even longer than I have.

I got to my hotel, call the Mosser, and was pleasantly surprised. This place has recently been remodeled, and my room is neat, clean, furnished with trendy modern stuff, and is TOTALLY well worth my two block walk to the conference, compared to spending an additional $210 a night to stay in the conference hotel!

Last nights networking event got off to a slow start because I got there early, but within an hour the place was packed, and the drinks were flowing. I’m glad I stopped at Mel’s Drive-In on the way, (awesome burger) because other than a couple of bowls of snacks, there was nothing to eat.

The first person I met, while waiting downstairs before heading up to the networking event was named Slaven, and he described himself as a PPC affiliate.

For a minute I thought he meant that he gets others to sign up for PPC advertising and gains a percentage, but in talking to him more I realized that what he does is find affiliate programs he likes, joins them and build the site, and then just does PPC advertising, tweaking things to make them work.

I found this fascinating, because that’s always been my weakest area, and something I need to learn more about. I’ve never really had the guts to throw much money at PPC for my affiliate stuff because I don’t have the confidence that I will take the necessary time to tweak the landing pages, improve the conversion rate etc. so I really enjoyed talking with him.

Conversely, his primary goal in coming here was to learn more about the organic side, because he says it makes him very nervous to have all his eggs in Google’s PPC basket, and he’s afraid the bottom could somehow fallout.

Walking into the networking event, the first face I saw was a familiar one, Dr. David Klein, the infamous San Diego chiropractor who seems to have become famous in the search marketing world, because of his genuine interest in the subject, his ability to network with others, and the fact that he’s just a really nice guy. He’s the one who put on the SEO poker tournament in Las Vegas at Pubcon.

For nearly 2 1/2 hours I talked to people in all walks of internet life, from casino affiliates, two independent SEM firm owners like myself, to in-house SEO’s sent here by their company. It was interesting to hear the different motivations in attending this event, and I’m looking forward to meeting them all again today.

I talked to more than one person who had come to Elite Retreat before, and I found that to be a great testimonial. I met a woman here who’s has been has been to Elite Retreat twice, and she decided to attend, after recently leaving her job to go into full-time affiliate marketing.

Oh yeah, got to talk with Shoemoney and Aaron Wall too quite a bit, and met Aarons wife too. also talked very briefly with Neil Patel, but more about all of them later… Time to jump in the shower and head to the show!

Visit the Elite Retreat site

Elite retreat Day 1
Elite Retreat Day 2

There are approximately 72 hours remaining for you to obtain a ticket to SearchFest ’08 at more than half off of the non-member door price.

Here are the steps…

1. Join SEMpdx
2. Register for the conference. (Price goes up slightly March 1st)
3. Before checkout – apply this additional $40 discount code – SEMBD

For those of you search marketers that have been living under a rock here in the Pacific Northwest, SEMpdx is holding its second annual search marketing event on Monday, March 10 at the Oregon zoo.

Representatives are coming to Potrtland from from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, along with some of the brightest minds in the Internet marketing industry. This one-of-a-kind local event is fast becoming the most popular local search shows in the nation due to the high profile speakers we’ve brought in.

In fact there are so many good speakers, but none of us on the board even get a speaking session this year (but we will be moderating).

Interviews with nearly all of the SearchFest ’08 presenters are here

Here’s the full agenda of all the speakers and sessions

Tickets at the door will be $299 for member, and $349 for non-members.

While advance tickets are less, here’s how you can get the absolute best price available right now, knocking it down to just $159.00…

First go to SEMpdx and sign up to be a member. You really should be a member anyway. For the fee, you’ll find no local search engine marketing group to be more educational, with monthly meetings and events.

Then, once you’re a member go to register for the event and choose the $199 early registration admission, which saves you $150 on the non-member door price.

But wait, don’t pay yet…

Since I’m a board member, and you’re a loyal reader of my blog, I can give you a discount code that will save you another $40, bringing the total to just $159. Use this code to get that last $40

Be sure to hit the ADD button before you enter your CC info, and remember, you do have to register no later than March first to save the full $190, but the $40 code works for all the price level except student.

In January of 2007 I joined StomperNet under the belief that I would get the personal attention of their world-class faculty.

I assumed that for the nearly $10,000 I was going to pay for the year, I would not only learn everything I wanted to know, but I would establish some personal relationships that I could continue to nurture over time.

Admittedly I learned an awful lot, but primarily what I got was sales pitch after sales pitch, and “new program” after “new program”, and far too many different forums that offered practically no participation by the original faculty members that were the catalyst to my joining.

The primary reason for my joining was to hear directly from certain faculty members, and overall, as a group, their participation was shamelessly poor. The whole experience at StomperNet basically sucked my time dry, and left me wanting for much, much more.

To be clear, I’m not saying StomperNet sucked, or that StomperNet wasn’t worth the money for anyone, just that it wasn’t worth the money for me, because I didn’t have four hours a day to wade through their ever growing and poorly organized volumes of crap looking for the “good stuff”.

At PubCon In December I was discussing my disappointment with someone, and telling him that I was not going to renew Stomper after January 1. I’d put in a year, and was fed up. That’s when he told me that he had gone to Elite Retreat, and it changed his life.

Elite Retreat
The more he talked about Elite Retreat, the more I realized that I had really blown it making my decision to skip it last year. Everything he claimed to have gotten out of ER was exactly what I had been looking for.

Last week I was on vacation with my family in Mexico, and I spent nearly three hours every day doing email, and dealing with work issues by phone and by web.

After getting back this weekend, and immediately spending nearly 2 hours on three separate unproductive phone calls this past Monday morning, I hung up from the last one and immediately signed up for Elite Retreat.

It’s not “productivity” that’s my problem, it’s that I’m focusing on the wrong things. With only so many hours in a day, my business model really isn’t scalable, and more growth as an “SEO Consultant” isn’t something I really want any longer.

One of my Internet Marketers New Year’s Resolutions was to do more of my own affiliate sites, and while I’ve been managing to keep two people fairly busy, we just haven’t made nearly the progress I expected to make nearly 2 months into the year, and have been bogged down by little details. I’m counting on this conference to change that.

Elite Retreat will be held April 2 & 3 2008 in San Francisco, and will be a conference unlike any other I’ve ever attended. To begin with, it’s only comprised of 35 attendees, instead of the hundreds thousands that attend Search Engine Strategies and Webmaster World’s Pubcon.

Elite Retreat is more what I would call an “interactive session”, as opposed to a conference, and I expect to be learning far more in this two days that I would in an entire year of Pubcon and SES conferences and learning it in a much different way.

Along with only 35 attendees there are six world-class experts in their fields, including the keynote speaker, Guy Kawasaki. The entire faculty will be there the whole two days, which means lots of face-to-face quality time with some of the brightest minds in the world.

I’ve spent nearly half of my entire 2008 education & travel budget on this event, and I’m specifically skipping SMX West and SES San Jose as a result, but I have no doubt it’s going to be worth it.

Here’s who’s running the show in San Francisco…

Guy Kawasaki
I was riveted by Guy’s keynote at the 2006 Pubcon, and it remains the best I’ve seen. He’s motivating, inspirational, and dare I say brilliant? I remember trying to get near him just to say hi, and to be perfectly honest, I had an easier time talking to Google’s Matt Cutts than I did getting close enough to Guy because of the crowd.

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College

Jeremy Schoemaker
Since I ran across Jeremy’s blog a little over a year ago, I’ve found some of his posts to be incredibly inspirational for me, and it’s clear that there’s a reason he’s holding that big fat AdSense check, and it’s not because he just got lucky. This guy is the real deal, and while his “no bullshit” style may not be everyone’s cup of tea, he’s exactly what I need.

Jeremy Schoemaker (widely known by his nickname of ShoeMoney) is an important player in the search engine marketing world, and his knowledge and expertise make him one of the top go-to guys for PPC, arbitrage, SEM, branding, and online income optimization. His weekly Internet radio show Net Income allows listeners to hear Jeremy’s honest assessment about his failures and successes in the online marketing space.

Neil Patel
Having seen Neal speak three or four times now, I can say that he is one of my favorite speakers, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know him. His presentations are always rapid fire fast, totally enlightning, and given with such total confidence and enthusiasm, that you can’t help but realize that he’s bursting at the seams with killer information.

Neil Patel is an Internet marketing consultant and the founder of Advantage Consulting Services which was started in 2002. He has lead Internet marketing strategies for small and medium sized businesses as well as top companies such as Hewlett Packard and Wal-Mart. His experiences include search engine optimization, social media optimization, reputation management, and viral marketing.

Aaron Wall
This is the guy that actually “wrote the book” on search engine optimization, and while it may not have been the first, (or was he?) I do believe it’s been the best, to ever come out.

At PubCon in Las Vegas, Rand Fishkin said that Aaron was one of the smartest people he’d ever heard, and “if there’s one blog you should be reading every day, it’s Aaron’s”.

Aaron Wall is a search engine optimization expert who blogs about search at SeoBook.com. He also wrote a popular book by the same name, publishes numerous other websites, and has consulted clients large and small about how to increase their search exposure.

Brian Clark
Being a conversion expert, I expect to learn a lot from Brian not only in the area of usability but in measuring and quantifying results.

Learning how to use the tools I already have, like stats, logs and Google Analytics, to better identify exactly where and how conversion rates can be improved upon has never been a more valuable skill.

One of the best quotes I heard at PubCon last year was that “it’s a lot easier to double conversions than it is to double your traffic”, and I’m taking it to heart, not only for my own sites, but for my clients as well.

Brian Clark is an Internet marketing strategist, content developer, entrepreneur, and recovering attorney. In addition to building three successful offline businesses using online marketing techniques, he has sold scores of products and services online via joint venture and affiliate arrangements. He founded Copyblogger in January of 2006, and continues to develop successful web properties with a variety of partners.

Andy Liu
Andy’s name did not sound familiar to me at all, and I can’t even find anywhere online to link his name to. However, anyone not living under a rock has heard of Net Conversions, (now aQuantive, err, Microsoft) and as the President of an Internet company way back in 1999, he undoubtedly has a lot to offer.

As a startup expert, I think he rounds out the faculty perfectly for me, because I have some of my own ideas far beyond simple affiliate sites, and I’m really looking forward to meeting and hearing from him.

Andy Liu is CEO of BuddyTV, the largest independently held TV site on the Internet reaching over 4.3MM monthly uniques. Prior to BuddyTV, Andy served as President and CEO of NetConversions from 1999-2004 prior to its sale to aQuantive and served as VP and GM of its Site Optimization unit from 2004-2005.

He’s also a founder of a non-profit focused on technology in developing countries and is very passionate about entrepreneurship. He brings deep experience in building companies, site optimization, SEO, community building, and product development. In 2003, he was named to Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 under 40 and holds an MBA from Wharton.

What do I really hope to gain?
By paying approximately $300 per hour for two days of “coaching”, I’m hoping that I can get any specific question I might have answered, and believe me I have a lot of them. I have three pages on the front page of Google for a “Internet consultant”, yet what I DON’T know could fill volumes of Encyclopedia thick books, and I don’t expect to hear many “I don’t know”s from the student questions this crowd gets asked.

I hope to gain the confidence I need to try new things. I’ve continued to stay in my comfort zone for the past couple of years, both in my personal projects and in dealing with clients. I’ve turned down dozens of consulting opportunities, simply because I didn’t like their platform, or I didn’t know anything about their technical setups, and I hope to gain the confidence to break out of that comfort zone and accept those challenges if I choose to.

I hope to gain lasting relationships with these guys, and because they continue to hold weekly conference calls for past attendees, I expect that will happen. The insights that I got from having a conversation with one of their ATTENDEES was enough to keep my buying the drinks in Las Vegas.

I hope to gain some sanity in my affiliate business, as I continue to flounder making just a few bucks here and there on several of my own domains, while I continue to leave dozens of other domains that I own undeveloped. With what I know ALREADY, this shouldn’t be the case, yet it is, and I’m tired of it.

I hope to gain some insight on better ways of scaling some of the mundane tasks that are necessary, like outsourcing decent content, getting that content into pages, and obtaining inbound links. I have developed my own methods out of necessity, but the time involved in doing this successfully when dealing with a dozens of affiliate sites is astronomical, and paying employees to do it is not cost effective. There’s got to be a better way.

Above all, I hope to gain more of the knowledge and the networking connections necessary in this industry that will allow me to write my own ticket (but upgraded, of course) and continue making a living online, without the need to get out and “sell” my SEO services – That’s just not a game I want to play any longer.

Since I live eat and breathe for search, and I’m truly passionate about what I do, for me, this is going to be like going to a fantasy baseball camp. There’s literally nothing I’d rather be doing… If you’d care to join me, there are still a few seats left to sign up.

Somehow, there are still some slots available for site reviews at next Mondays SEMpdx Search Engine Marketing Hot Seat event.

For those who don’t know, Vanessa is a top speaker on the conference circuit. Formerly head of Google’s Webmaster Central team and more recently Zillow.com, Vanessa has transitioned to features editor at Search Engine Land and to helping startups at Ignition Partners.

I won’t be in attendance this month, and will instead be affiliate hunting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,  but it promises to be another great Portland search marketing event.

The January Hot Seat event will feature a presentation from Vanessa Fox, who will then participate as one of our Hot Seat panelists and dole out advice for your site!

SEM Hot Seat is a chance to get real search marketing advice from a panel of experts. Our panelists will critique actual sites and address specific SEM questions / issues.

Whether it’s advice on how to improve your site optimization (SEO) or how to fine-tune your pay per click (PPC) campaign for better results. Even if you don’t have a site for our panel to critique, you will still be able to gain valuable insight and answers for common search marketing problems and questions. We limit the number of sites critiqued in order to provide the best possible value – so submit yours ASAP!