Despite that complaint I have been spending more time in the Warrior Forum Special Offers area lately because of the great deals on software that I’ve seen posted there. There are some decent information products shared there, but those are few and far between. Instead what I’ve been most interested in are all the great WordPress plugins, scripts etc. selling for only $10 – $30 that I see regularly selling for much more than that. (Perfect example here)

I’ve been watching these good software deals posted in the warrior special offers area for a few months now and I’m sure some of you might be interested in getting updates on only the best software deals that I’m finding as well. Rather than sending these deals through my existing blog newsletter (where I know perhaps not everyone would want to see the software deals) I’ve decided to launch a separate free WSO Software newsletter instead. Think of it like an AppSumo style service but for the Warrior Forum only. I’ll send no more than one email per week with the best deal that I’ve found that week on a software related special offer. If you’re interested sign up here.

WSO Software Newsletter Free Sign Up Here:

If you want to save some money and occasionally buy scripts, plugins etc. elsewhere on the net then this should be a worthwhile free newsletter for you to join and because you know it’s run by me you can be sure I won’t just send out emails linking to crappy stuff just to have something to send. In fact, if there isn’t a good deal on something worth buying I simply won’t send an email that week.

WSO Software Free Newletter Homepage

Tell me what you think in the comments below

The Sessions:

I only attended 3 or 4 sessions during the 5 days I was in Vegas and I’ll be honest – I didn’t learn that much. I believe this is because Blog World has more content focused on people that have the passion for blogging but need help with the business end of things. This is exactly why I spent most of my time meeting people instead.

Who I Met At Blog World:

There are numerous advantages of networking in person and that’s why I spent most of my time meeting new people and building relationships that previously existed only in online form.

Here’s who I met in person:

David Risley, Darren Rowse, Daniel Scocco, Jonathan Volk, Pat Flynn, Chris Garrett, Naomi Dunford, Chris Pearson, Dave Navarro, Jade Craven, Jordan Cooper, Leo Babauta, Nathan Hangen, Lisa Morosky, Annabel Candy, Jim Kukral, Corbett Barr, Mary Jaksch, Matt Gartland,
Erica Douglass, Sid Savara, Srinivas Rao, Adam Baker, Johnny B Truant, Ryan Gray, DK, Eric Schechter, Jacob Gall, James Seligman, Logan Thompson, Maren Kate, Tammy Camp and Nadia Giosia

Yah – those are just the ones I remembered to write down.

Why Blog World Was Worth It:

I met dozens of people nearly all of whom I could work with in some capacity – even if it’s just to help their children to improve their Halo: Reach skills – I’m looking at you Leo. The people I listed above are those that I had lengthy conversations with and not just people I said hello to (if I included those people as well the list would grow even larger). It was great to finally meet so many people that I’ve talked with online or had read their blog years before I was able to earn a living online (like Darren).

My opinion? If you decide to go to Blog World next year don’t fill your schedule with too many sessions. Instead be sure to make time to have as many meaningful conversations with new people as possible.

Upcoming: As I alluded to earlier, things are about to drastically change here on this blog so please stay tuned. It’s going to be awesome and better yet you’re going to learn some amazing actionable tactics for earning money online.

Stick around.

Last time he opened the doors it sold out in a couple hours (yes it sounds like a marketing gimmick, but he is including physical product as well and that’s what they ran out of).

Go check out his video that shows what is included:

If you don’t plan to take action and actually use the information to make money than please don’t waste your money buying his product. Whenever I recommend products like this my hope is that the buyer uses the information, learns a lot and most importantly starts making money online. If you just want to buy something where you can do nothing and have money come in this isn’t it (and for that matter nothing will provide that). In any case, I do have a lot of respect for Jeremy. He’s personally taught me a lot and I think he provides a lot of value in his material.

Check out the ShoeMoney System Video

Note: My Amazon eBook has been done for a while, but I’m working on the paid video material and extra tactics now and I want to have that done before I release the free eBook.

View my updated Resources page

What’s upcoming next:

I have a review of Kontera as part of in depth in text advertising case study that will go live next (see Part 1 on InfoLinks and Part 2 on VibrantMedia). I have another case study that should go live on addressing WordPress load times that is very in depth, but more importantly – easy for you to understand and how you can reduce your page load times. Then I have some more VERY exciting things after that.

Subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out

Freelance work, blogging, affiliate marketing, contextual advertising, mini sites, forums, creating and selling an info product, buying and selling existing websites, buying and selling domain names and building unique websites.

If you’re new to the concept of making money on the internet or already trying to do it I think it’s worth the read. Download it via this sign up box:

Please share your comments and I’ll work on improving the guide in a future version based on your feedback and comments. This is primarily aimed more towards new aspiring internet entrepreneurs but there should be a few good nuggets in there for the experienced entrepreneurs as well.

Enjoy!

phpZon Pro Review:

phpZon Pro is a $79 premium WordPress plugin from the folks over at phpBay. phpBay Pro was their first plugin created back in 2007 to display products from eBay with a wide variety of display options. In fact, the few thousand dollars I’ve made from eBay’s Partner Network has all come from clicks on ads I was displaying through the use of the phpBay plugin. So as you may have guessed by now, phpZon is a similar plugin that instead interfaces with Amazon.com’s database of millions of products to display product information much like how phpBay does. It can pull in an image of the product, the average star rating, a partial or full description and a whole slew of additional options. Here is an example product running on this blog from my Amazon wish list that no one has yet to give me (*clears throat* … twice).

[phpzon]B001GAPC1K, 1[/phpzon]

You can set the number of items you want to display based on a keyword OR you can also just display one specific item using the ASIN number. To display the above product I simply clicked the phpZon button from within the post put in the ASIN number of the product and it’s done.

Because the information being pulled in is styled via a template file from within the plugin it’s also very easy to adjust any elements such as the font size of the text. In my case, I increased the font size a bit, made the sale price field a clickable link and adjusted the style of the product description with a few easy changes. Overall the plugin does require a few more steps to set it up such as inserting some Amazon Associates info to provide proper tracking. You also need to copy code into your .htaccess file if you want to take advantage of the SEO URLS option to display the product URL like I’ve done above (hover over the link above to see what I mean), but there is an extensive manual included which shows step by step how to set everything up if you need help.

phpBay also let me know there is another version underway with even more features planned and because all customers get lifetime support updates there’s no need to worry about buying this version only to have a new better version come out later.

Overall Impressions:

I’ve installed this plugin on nearly every niche website I created and I’m certain using this plugin on my various blogs will help improve earnings. As I’ve said before, one of the worst ways to make money with Amazon Associates is to simply use Amazon.com ads. By using this plugin you can display product information in a nice way without looking like an Amazon.com ad which is key. The use of the ‘More Details’ button and Making the image clickable are two of the ways I discussed in my past post on how to improve your Amazon Associates earnings so it’s nice to see the functionality already built into this plugin. If you mention products on your blog than I highly recommend you buy this plugin and implement it. In fact, Wade – the creator of the plugin – hooked me up with a 20% off coupon code for anyone that wants to buy the plugin or the phpBay plugin (it will work for both). It will only work if you click here to use it: E907DB07EB There is also an option to buy both the phpZon plugin and phpBay plugin in a bundle for $99; however, the 20% off coupon will not work with that bundle. Click here to check it out.

Want to Win the Plugin for Free?

Wade has given me two copies to giveaway and I’m going to make it very easy for you to win one. All you have to do is follow me on Twitter. In fact, I only have about 80 Twitter followers as of this post being published so you have pretty good odds. Follow me on Twitter here and in case you want to be ready for the next contest I run you can sign up for my newsletter below as the next contest winners will be drawn from there:

The winner’s will be selected in 7 days and I will post their Twitter names on this blog. I’ll give you 48 hours to contact me before I pick a new winner(s). So be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed in case you don’t want to miss the announcement.

So after I came back from Elite Retreat I paid for directory submissions for a few of my websites from both Yahoo’s directory which runs $299 per year and BOTW.org which runs $150 per year for the directory or $75 for the blog directory. I did see improved search engine traffic from the sites I paid for the links from, but it’s far too difficult to determine whether or not it was as a result of the paid directory submissions or a combination of the other tactics I have since implemented to improve organic search rankings and traffic. With that said, I do still believe they are worth the price and just recently paid to get into the BOTW.org blog directory with this blog MakeMoneyontheInternet.com. The main reason for this post is because I wanted to let you know they are offering 20% off everything until the end of January using this promo code: newyr. So the yearly link only cost me $60 instead of the usual $75 – not a huge savings, but it’s still worth it if you plan to pay for the directory submission sometime soon anyway.

In any case, hope this post saves you a few dollars over at Best of the Web.

Also, I didn’t plan on writing anything else before my follow up post to my article on the top 7 tips that I used to earn $41,438.42 with Amazon Associates in 2009, but because this deal ends soon I had to share it now.

Please note: The above post does include affiliate links; however, as I’ve stated multiple times in the past two years I’ve been blogging – I will not promote a product or service I haven’t used myself and genuinely believe is worth spending money on.

Update: I just got approved and am already in the directory here. The grammar in the sentence they used is off though – I sent them an email to fix it.

I decided to attend Elite Retreat this year and I carefully weighed out the costs and benefits before buying my ticket. After all, I’ve only been making $3,000 to $5,000 a month since early this year and still haven’t come close to hitting $10,000 per month. But after speaking with Shane Pike and Al Carlton (former Elite Retreat attendees) I decided to take the plunge (thanks again guys).

The Venue:

Sunrise from the top of the Gansevoort Hotel

Me in Times Square

This year’s Elite Retreat was based in New York and being from Seattle it was a long trek for me to undertake and my first time in New York. The event was held at the Hotel Gansevoort for a discounted rate of $350 a night. I went over a day before the retreat started so that I could make sure that I would be able to attend the networking party held that night. The food was great and the drinks were unlimited but that’s sort of what you should come to expect if you’re paying $5,000 just to walk in the door right?

The hotel was very nice and apparently a legitimate night life spot for New Yorkers. It was funny coming back to the hotel at night and seeing people standing in line outside trying to get in to the club at the top floor of the hotel where during the day we were doing our sessions. I was also able to walk to a few of the cool New York tourist locations like Times Square and Madison Square Gardens so that was pretty fun. There was also a neat elevated park that was converted over from an old railway system.

The Speakers:

I had an opportunity to listen to the following individuals; Jeremy Schoemaker, Neil Patel, Aaron Wall, Chris Winfield, Brian Norgard, Jon Kelly, Loren Feldman and of course key note speaker Seth Godin.

In terms of practical advice I could use on my websites I would say Jeremy, Neil, Aaron and Chris provided the most relevant info for my business. The other individuals still had valuable things to say, but not something I felt I could immediately implement in my websites. The one one one sessions were great and where I took down the most notes but beyond that I’m not really allowed to discuss the contents of the presentations because of the NDA. Technically I didn’t sign anything. In fact, I don’t think the NDA’s even got passed out, but Jeremy mentioned they haven’t had any issues in the past.

Overall

I thought the event was definitely eye opening. It’s hard to believe just how much money some of the speakers are making and especially the attendees too. I got a ton of advice from several of the attendees and I’ve already begun to implement their suggestions on my websites. The conference as a whole seemed very laid back in it’s presentation format which can be a good and a bad thing I suppose. I thought it was a good thing as it allowed even more time to meet each and every person and learn from each other. I believe there were only a couple individuals I didn’t get an opportunity to speak with at length.

Officially there won’t be another Elite Retreat but knowing the past history of the conference (hint: he always seems to say it’ll be the last Elite Retreat every time he does one) I have a feeling we could see more hah hah.

Is the Elite Retreat worth the price?

The price is certainly something that holds most people back. As I indicated earlier, the overall trip cost me close to $6,494.03 for the price of admission, flight, lodging and a few meals. But to get back to the focus of this post, is it worth it? For me I would have to say – wait for a follow up post in 3 months . I know that the advice I received from the speakers and conference attendees should more than pay back the price of this trip, but until I implement the tactics and see the results for myself I can’t say for sure. I will do a follow up earnings post at the end of the year where my new goal is to break the five digit monthly barrier. Needless to say if I’m successful at accomplishing this I will say the conference was worth it.

Should you go to the Elite Retreat?

I think this question is very dependent on where you are at in your business now. If there is another Elite Retreat and you’re on the fence please contact me and I’d be happy to hop on a phone call with you and help you decide if it’s right for you or not or we could simply trade emails.

I will keep you posted on how my earnings climbs, stagnates or falls based on the implementation of the advice I received from the Elite Retreat in the coming weeks and months. If this sounds good to you then I suggest you subscribe to my blog for future updates.

See more info about Elite Retreat Here