Why I am excited for Blogworld

Over the years I have been to a decent number of industry conferences. My first conference was the first Pubcon in the US back in 2002 in Irvine, CA. There were about 80-100 of us that just met at a bar, hung out, talked, and had a great time. I went to the next few Pubcons and mostly I just went to hang out with friends and people I met in the industry. Pubcon is still going strong and it is tempting to take another trip to Vegas in November.

The I started going to the Affiliate Summit conferences. I think I have been to 7, maybe 8 Affilaite Summits and it has been awesome to watch that grow from around 500 attendees to over 4000 at the last Vegas conference. Shawn and Missy have done a great job and those conferences are usually highlights of the year.

For the past three years I have been fortunate enough to attend the Shareasale Thinktanks. These are probably my favorite “conferences” of the year. They are only about 100-150 people and it is mostly people I know and have worked with in the past. Shareasale puts on a great event every year and they are an awesome company to work with.

There have been a couple other conferences I have been to over the years as well. I checked out Ad-Tech a few years ago, went to an SMX Advanced conference a couple years back, and a few other smaller meetings and conferences here and there.

So this year I figured I would give BlogWorld Expo a shot. I have heard good things about Blogworld from a few different people and usually have fun checking out new conferences every few years. The closer Blogworld gets the more excited I am getting about going. Here are a few reasons why:

1.  Meet New People: When I go to Affiliate Summit there are probably 50-80 people or so that I would consider friends of some sort. We have shared meals, talked at the bar, hung out on the golf course, or something like that. At Blogworld there will be some of those people there (maybe 10-15) so this will be a great opportunity to meet some new people. One of the greatest resources anyone can have is the people they know. It is always great to have people to bounce ideas off, share plans, answer their questions, assist them in what they are doing, get assistance on projects, get referrals, etc.

I hope to meet some new people that I can learn from and also find some people I can help. Since I am primarily an affiliate and I seem to know a bit about that I am hoping to find some people who are looking to get into the affiliate industry and monitize their blogs and hopefully point them in the right direction.

2.  I Want to Better Utilize my Blogs: I have probably about 6 or 7 different blogs including this one. Most of them are compliments to my affiliate sites but I want to flip that on some of the sites and make the blog the main part of the site with the affiliate stuff there to compliment the blog. I know enough about blogs to get by but hopefully I can pick up a few tips here and there that will help. Even just one or two tidbits that I am missing would be great.

3.  It is Vegas: Not much more to be said. Sun, golf, fun, late nights, etc.

4.  The Parties: I have slowly been coming up to speed on the Blogworld parties and it looks like a very fun lineup. It will be intersting to see how they compare to other industry parties I have been to.

5.  I Have Grown Stagnant: It gets a bit monotonous sitting here and cranking out affiliate sites all day. Yeah, they work and make money but I am looking for something to shake me out of a bit of a rut. Maybe this break will be the stimulation I need to get back on the ball.

6.  Could Help Some New Projects: I have a couple new projects in the work that could benefit greatly from Blogworld. One of them is affiliate related and the other isn’t but bloggers will play a huge part in it. So it will be nice to get connected to the non-affiliate blog crowd a bit.

At first I just kind of reluctantly decided to go to Blogworld but the closer it gets the more the anticipation has been building.

Why are you going to BlogWorld? Leave a comment and let me know.

Also if you are going and you want to get together for dinner or lunch or just a drink at the bar leave a comment and let me know.

Looking forward to seeing you there!