Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Down-To-Earth Advice For Bloggers and Internet Marketers

I just finished the three day Internet Mastery Secrets event in Brisbane and it was great, but also tiring – three days is a lot of time to spend listening to how people make money and then the subsequent sales pitch to buy their package to learn how you can do the same.

This event is definitely targeted at the absolute beginners. I didn’t stay the whole time and missed the question and answer session at the end, but my friend West saw it and was amazed to hear some people in the audience ask uber-beginner questions like – What’s an e-Book?.

We all have to start at the beginning, but wow, if someone is asking that question at the end, then 80% of what they heard from the speakers over the weekend must have gone totally over their heads.

As per usual at events like this, the speakers do a presentation of about one and a half to two hours long and end with a sales pitch for their “package” or workshop that sells for anywhere from $1000 – $4000. As I’ve said before, there is a sugar rush at these events that a lot of people fall for. The potential to make money is very appealing, but unfortunately most will splash out a few thousand dollars on a package and not even make their investment cost back. But that’s another story I’ve already told.

Instant Credibility

The main reason for me to attend these events is to network and meet the speakers. I made plans with Mike Filsaime to have dinner with him and some of my friends on Saturday night at one of my favorite restaurants in Brisbane. Another speaker, Marc Dussault and his wife also came along, and it was a great night full of interesting conversation. I also chatted with Brett McFall, my friends Daryl and Andrew Grant, and briefly spoke to Stephen Pierce over the weekend. If you ever get a chance to attend an event like this I recommend you seek out the speakers and introduce yourself.

What was really powerful is something that happened during Mike’s presentation. This is the second time I’ve experienced this sort of credibility boost and each time it always amazes me what happens in the aftermath.

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Starting tomorrow (Friday) the three-day Internet Mastery Secrets event begins here in Brisbane and I’ll be popping in and out all weekend. I’ve invited lots of my friends and people I work with, and for many of them this will be their first taste of an Internet marketing conference.

There’s the usual crowd of big names at this event: Stephen Pierce, Mike Filsaime, Andrew and Daryl Grant, Tom Hua and Brett McFall (the guys behind the World Internet Summits), and a host of other speakers, some I have seen perform before and some I haven’t.

For me the highlight as always is the chance to meet, greet, and chat with people. I’ve got dinner plans with Mike Filsaime and friends on Saturday night and I want to say hello to Stephen Pierce this time since he was drowning in groupies at the last event I went to, so I never got a chance.

If you are attending make sure you come up and say hello if you see me, I’m always happy to meet people who read my blog.

In the meantime to keep you busy I’ve got some recommended links I’ve been collecting for a while but haven’t had a chance to post because I’ve been concentrating on Blog Mastermind. Here we go…

Recommended Links

• First up I have to welcome a new sponsor, Micfo.com, who offer WordPress themes and WordPress hosting.
• Las month, Gobala Krishnan, my Malaysian Internet marketing friend, wrote a comprehensive article on Keyword research.
• I had a bunch of interviews come out over the last few weeks. George at Can I Make Big Money Online asked me some great questions about my previous experiences working online and ended with a question I didn’t see coming. Affiliate Knowledge Base asked me all about making money with blogs and, surprise surprise – affiliate marketing, and Felix Krusch from Germany did my first ever Skype IM text interview, where he asked me all kinds of questions including how I first made money online and what I studied at university.
• You likely noticed late last month the meme-like theme floating around the blogging about blogging blogosphere about top income earning bloggers, first started by Paula’s List of Blogger Salaries, where I was featured at position #19 earning $78,594 a year online (sweet!). Following this was a list of millionaire bloggers, where this blog was valued at $1,178,000 (even sweeter!) and one of only nine blogs mentioned at worth more than a million. All I can say about this is that it pays to talk about how much money you make online if you want exposure.
• I want to send a shout-out to David Risley and his Webby Online blog, where I read, among others, his post, Blog Monetization, PayPerPost and Ebook Affiliate Saturation – David, add some sub-heads to your articles for easier reading please!
• Des Walsh over at the B5 blog, Business and Blogging, has written a two part series on monetizing your blog.
• The Get Elastic blog has been pumping out some interesting content about online retailing and e-commerce.
• Adnan over at the Blogtrepreneur blog has put together a list of 101 Essential Blogging Resources, which is fantastic and only lacks one key ingredient – there’s no link to my Blog Profits Blueprint .
• And to end with, I think I have my first ever blogger crush. I’m talking about Ladan Lashkari. She’s a blogger, a successful Internet marketer, a girl AND she’s from Iran (now there’s a unique combination). This might not seem that big a deal to you, until you realize the challenges she has faced to become a successful Internet marketer given where she comes from and what it means to be female in her culture. If Ladan can make Internet marketing work in her situation, then none of us westerners (or down-underers) have any excuses!

  Another note worth mentioning, which I thought about while reading about Ladan, was how wonderful a position she is in for building exposure just on the strength of her personal brand. She’s got a great story, she’s attractive, young and is a successful Internet marketer. That’s a nice combination to have in any industry and I expect we are going to see her face more and more. She’s also already charging $250 an hour for consulting – nice!

Photos Soon – And Stay Tuned For Blog Mastermind

That’s it for me. I’ll attempt to get photos and maybe even video from the conference this weekend and post them up whenever I get a chance. I’m going to be working on Blog Mastermind this weekend too and I expect to have news on the release date very very soon…stay tuned to this channel.

I made it to the end of the World Internet Summit (WIS) and wow, it’s been a GREAT experience.

I probably didn’t have a typical experience since I wasn’t there as a person new to Internet marketing and consequently spent more time talking to the presenters, but I want to explain to you first my take on why YOU would consider attending one of these events if you are new to Internet marketing and then I’ll throw in more tidbits about my experiences.

Opportunities, Education and Networking

My last article Beware The Allure of The Internet Marketing Success Story should serve as a cautionary tip on the mindset you need to have before entering an Internet marketing conference. Once you have that mindset you can attend these events, really enjoy and learn from the experience and leave with clear intentions rather than overloaded senses.

The WIS is four days. It’s a long event. I guarantee by the end if you watch every speaker you have enjoyed a huge variety of presentation styles and learned about many different ways to make money online.

My initial Internet marketing training occured throughout the late nineties and early two thousands where I was managing hobby sites and creating BetterEdit.com. It took a long time to learn the ins and outs of how people made money online and I can honestly say if I attended this conference back then, while I definitely would have felt the urge to buy every program (I feel that even now to a degree), I would have covered about two years worth of hands on training and experience in four days. That’s great if you want to speed up the learning process, but it also tends to overwhelm you.

What you will gain is a nice general awareness of how Internet business is conducted today. Things like capturing an email address, the sales funnel, product creation, viral marketing, copywriting, affiliate marketing, niche marketing, butterfly marketing, ebay selling, etc, are all in-depth topics that are covered in some detail at the event by each speaker. You will take a big step forward bringing the knowledge gap between wanting to make money online and understanding how others currently do it.

The big benefits come after the event when you go home and start implementing. You might begin by following the steps and training in a package you bought from one of the speakers, or by acting on the information you absorbed from the presentations. Whatever happens, if the event is the catalyst for you to start implementing and really learning through experience, then you have easily recouped the money you invested in paying the conference fee.

For the absolute newbies I’d say definitely go, it’s a fantastic experience, but be prepared to be overwhelmed. For the people who already know a thing or two about net marketing, it’s possibly even better. You still learn a lot plus you don’t feel the sense of over-stimulation to quite the same degree since the basics are not new to you and you get the chance to see how the big boys and girls make money by presenting at conferences.

The Highest Paying Job In The World

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A few people have asked me whether I will be at the World Internet Summit in Melbourne and I can now finally answer – Yes!

I was hesitant at first because I didn’t feel like traveling so soon after returning from Canada to Australia, but after the wonderful experience of meeting Mike Filsaime and Rich Schefren at the Strategic Profits seminar and all the other great things that you get from a room full of Internet marketers at a conference, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity when it is so close to home. I only have to travel a couple of hours to get to this one!

Are You Interested In Coming Too?

If you work in Internet marketing, run an Internet business or are considering starting one and want advice and the chance to talk to many like-minded individuals, and learn from some of the top talents in the industry, I strongly recommend you come to Melbourne and attend the event. If you have never attended an IM event before, especially as an Aussie, this is possibly one of the best chances you will have since there are not that many top calibre events held down under – you usually have to head to the USA.

It’s not super-cheap – you pay $997 AUD per ticket, but you get two tickets for the price of one, so my friend Will Swayne and I split the cost and are both getting in for just under $500 each. That’s not bad for four days of networking and presentations from a range of very successful Internet marketers. I know from my point of view I’ll recoup my costs down the line just from handing out my business card to people I meet, which will increase the traffic to this blog, or maybe from a few affiliate sales if any of you reading this decide to come and buy via my link.

Who Will Be There?

I’m excited because Mike Filsaime will be there, as will Daryl and Andrew Grant, who you might remember from a podcast I did with Daryl. Mike will probably talk about his viral marketing techniques and Butterfly Marketing and of course I expect lots about running an online e-book business from the Grants.

You can add some more big names like Stephen Pierce, who I have never met or heard speaking before, but is always featured at top IM events and is mentioned as source of inspiration for many of the marketers I follow and study – he’s been in the game for a long, long time.

Ewen Chia I always see at the top of affiliate lists for product launches, so I’m keen to hear what he has to say about building more traffic and list size for greater affiliate income.

Then there are also a bunch of Aussies and Canadians – nice combination I always say – speaking about various things like product creation, teleseminars, eBay, membership sites, marketing psychology, copywriting, etc, etc.

I suspect some these speakers are here to help show newer Internet marketers the different industries available online that they might considering jumping into, like eBay. If you already have an Internet business you might have to slap yourself to make sure you don’t go opportunistic and start another project – be careful, I know I will have to .

My only concern, is how bad the “pitching” might be. I’ve never been to an event with so many different speakers and I hear that the presentations at some other events are nothing more than thinly disguised sales pitches for each of the speakers programs. I don’t expect that at this event because of the high entry fee, usually the pitches are at the $97 type events. I think each speaker will be selling something, in fact I expect it, but it will only make up about 10% of the speech at the end, with 90% content to come before that, which will be very valuable.

I expect to probably be quite sick of Internet marketing by the end of it all too – four days is a lot!

Is It Right For You?

If you want to start making money online but you haven’t been able to come up with exactly how, this event sounds ideal for you in terms of the presentations available.

If you are like myself, you may not get much new information from the presenters (though I always get tidbits and nuggets even if I have heard the information before), but the real golden opportunity is to network, find joint venture partners (there’s an organized networking session, which I’m quite curious to see how it works) and best of all, have a brief chat with the experts presenting. They are usually friendly and can spare a few minutes to talk to you personally if you go up to them and say hello.

I always leave these sorts of events feeling very motivated, and perhaps that is the greatest benefit of attending. Yes in some ways it’s a sugar high for a short period because you have spent so much time immersed in the Internet marketing world, but it also serves as real solid motivation because you see how others are successful online, validating that it is possible you can be too, with work and the right knowledge. I for one would like to stay on that sugar high for as long as possible because I feel the most motivated and buzzing with energy to take action, and only with action to you earn rewards.

If you want to read the full info page or sign-up, you can by clicking here -

I’ll do my best to blog from the event, but it might be difficult since I want to spend my time networking with as many people as I can. If you do decide to come down and attend the event, make sure you come tap me on the shoulder (look for the skinny guy with big hair – I look like my photos on my blog) and say hello. I love meeting my readers and you never know, maybe we can JV sometime in the future.

If you are a butterfly marketing specialist, definitely say hello since I’m in need of people with the tech skills to implement the software for me.

Yaro Starak
Climbing to the Summit