Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

I asked Tovio to write this up for us. It is a guest post on hotel options for ASW.
Also, to prepare for Vegas, please watch this video on how to give a lap dance.
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Now that I’ve recovered from PubCon, I’m looking forward to Affiliate Summit West, which takes place in Las Vegas January 16-19. Whenever I find out about a conference in Vegas the first thing I try to figure out is which hotel I’m going to stay at. ASW takes place at Rio, so I started my search based on that location for 4 nights stay starting January 16th. Unfortunately Rio is already sold out for Saturday, so that won’t be an option. Here are some options to consider:

Gold Coast and the Palms are close enough to the conference to walk. Gold Coast is the closest hotel and has some great rates – from $216 for the four nights, but it’s a pretty basic hotel and casino and is off the strip. Unless you have a really tight budget I wouldn’t recommend it. The Palms, which is across the street from the Gold Coast and Rio, is oriented toward a younger, hip party crowd and I found rates starting at $596 for the four nights.

If you want to stay at a really nice Strip hotel with short taxi rides (and who doesn’t), try Caesars Palace or Bellagio. These are both high-end hotels that will be a bit pricier for the four days – Bellagio starts at $706 and Caesars from $685. For more budget-friendly Strip options, I would go with Monte Carlo ($417), Luxor ($360), or Excalibur ($289). These are all comfortable hotels that are really good values.

The place I have decided to stay is ARIA. This high-end hotel’s grand opening will be on December 16th and it will feature not only luxury, but great technology in the rooms. I can’t wait to stay there. They have a “Winter Special” with rates from $786 for the four days, and offers a $75 resort credit. Vegas offers some great deals on hotels and you’re sure to have fun no matter where you stay.

Toivo Lainevool – VegasHotelSpecial.com

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Tovio is not sponsoring Purpose Inc for Affiliate Summit, this is simply a post of info. None of these hotels gave me a dam cent for this either!

I have been so busy living, that I have barely had a chance to write.

Vegas was 4 hours of sleep a night, playing poker with Andy Liu till 5 a.m. at the Wynn, interview by Shoemoney, catching up with Carrot Top in the restroom, making a girl disappear on stage, Randy Couture finally winning again!, fighting Robert Drysdale on stage at Pubcon, my staff just killing it again (GO JENNY! GO FAJAR! GO ROSEANNA (EVEN THOUGH YOU STAYED HOME)), GO SEASIDE CHIROPRACTIC, GO PURPOSEINC!, going up on stage to speak on internal linking with Todd Mailicoat, Aaron Wahl, and Dixon Jones, and having Aaron Wahl not show up! (Actually worked out cool, because I had to step up with Aaron gone and Aaron is still my SEO hero!), watching the drama unfold on Shoe’s blog, my server getting full just as I was about to publish like 100 photos, hanging at X/S with Seattle’s tech entrepreneur’s, and Andy Liu’s way cool friends, with their posse of super hot friends, playing poker with my wife in the poker room while Will Farrell was playing a few tables over, a girl storming out of the poker room yelling at Neil about showing them $200, and of course Neil showing how to give a lap dance! and it went on, and on, and on…

Felt like one of those Vegas movies, except this time it was for real.

More posts and pics to follow.

Each and every one of you who talked to me, or came to one of the events, or watched me speak,

I LOVE YOU!

I just had so much fun, and can not thank each and every one of you for the massive support and fun.

Linkworth just pulled out the stops, and in the last second chipped in a big roll of bills for the poker room party.

I ran into Matt and Ron from the Linkworth crew in the exhibition hall, and after 4 minutes of catching up, they asked how they could help.

Linkworth sells links.

I asked them if they wanted to chip in X number of G’s and just a casual, sure, no problem, they were in.

There was no contract, no negotiation, just some great guys wanting to help us all have a better poker tournament, and supporting Purpose Inc. with our activities. Love you guys and thank you!

In a week online where a lot is being said about trustworthiness and honesty, Ron at LinkWorth told me that he would kick in a big contribution to make our Poker Tournament better, and sure enough by the time I got home a check was waiting for the sponsorship. It was once told to me that if you want to gain someones trust it is as simple as saying you are going to do something, and then doing it. Well Ron did that 🙂

Thanks again to all the sponsors, guests, fighters, celebrities, hot chicks, smart chicks, staff, dealers, managers, Brett Tabke, magicians, and my wife! who made all of this possible.

P.S. Latoya Jackson if you see this, I am so sorry I did not offer you my condolences about Michael when I saw you, I was just being too star struck at the moment. 🙂 I loved Michael and I grew up with Tito living just up the street from me. So love and kisses to Michael, and I am so sorry about what happened. 🙂

Everyone is now welcome to sign up for the poker tournament if you can get a seat.

The blog requirement is now removed for new sign ups.

Go here to sign up! Sign up for Poker Tourney – Guest – or Fight Club
Now room open for players, guests at poker tourney – free drinks from 8:00 pm to 2:00 am

fight club with Robert Drysdale 6X world champ in Brazillian Jiu Jitsu also open for more registration.

Full information here, but no longer need to blog to get in.

Follow these steps to get in before it sells out as a player or guest. Both get free drinks on Nov. 12th  from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Mirage hotel.

Here is sign up but read blog first! or you may lose your seat. 🙂

1. BE INVOLVED IN THE INTERNET BUSINESS INDUSTRY, OR A PUBCON ATTENDEE.

Requirements, 21 or older, either a Pubcon attendee or involved with Internet business stuff. If you are a total NOBODY, don’t know anyone, junior webmaster, coming to your first Pubcon, this tourney is especially for you!! (All Mirage rules and laws apply and supersede my rules :)).

2. PICK A CHARITY YOU LIKE

It can be totally your own pick, any charity at all.

Here are some recommended ones if you can’t think of one.

Missy Ward (boob master) and I will be raising money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Breast cancer sucks. My friend Chris Parham, doctorate in engineering, M.D., and getting his radiology degree and some of his buds invented a way to take mamograms (boob x-ray) with something like one onethousandth of the radiation. This new method of doing mammograms is way safer than the old way, (even though the old way is still a good idea), gets better pictures of cancer when it is smaller and starting, and will save probably thousands of lives per year. With early detection, and proper surgical techniques, breast cancer can be caught and cut off at the pass before it kills. Study up here how to do a self breast cancer exam, and hey! Guys can learn too! ?????

Two of my favorite charities are:

Criminon that gets into the worst prisons in the world, and works to help prisoners get off drugs, change their viewpoint on crime, be productive, and help others. The success stories speak for themselves.

Here is another one that really hits home with me. With the white man’s exploitation of africa, (I’m kinda white and brown at the same time 😉 and the fact that man is originally is probably from Africa anyways, I think we still should help out there till they are up to speed with the rest of the world.  Samburuland is an area with gentle, lovely people, who get hit pretty hard by droughts. Also the elephants walking the same migratory trails as the people could use a drink now and then as well. Wherever The Need, who I have checked out pretty well, are raising money for this way bitchen project. Dig some big fricken holes along the path of the river, that fill up when it rains, and provide water during the dry season. This happens naturally already, but they are just kicking it up a notch. This will help the nomadic people and large game at the same time.

Or use any charity you like for this!!!

My note on charity. I am all about the teach the guy to fish thing. My goal in any charity is to help others to help themselves. That is why when there is a company like Azoogle, We Build Pages, Train Signal, or even Shoemoney himself, I will do a ton to help them because they help so many other people. Helping the strong who give to others is a very high leverage opportunity with high ROI 😉

3. WRITE A BLOG ABOUT THE CHARITY

Write about the charity. If you don’t have one, go set one up at wordpress or blogspot. Write whatever you like. Draw a little attention to something, that someone is doing in the world that you dig and makes the world better! John Chow has drawn attention to Africa. Jim Boykin, who sponsors the crap out of the Purpose Inc pubcon events, poker and otherwise, EVERY SINGLE YEAR! also supports lots of other charity events, here is one of his blogs on one of the charity fundraisers for Ronald Mac Donald house. Some of the heavy hitters have even gone so hard as to create their own bad ass organization to raise money for good causes on an ongoing basis, including Graywolf who consistently promotes other good charities like this fundraising party sponsored by Best of the Web. If you check Sugar Rae’s site,  you will find she promotes her charities at the bottom right of every page! Lauren Vaccarello is always involved in some way in virtually every internet marketing charity event you will come across.  In fact it was her who carried the money bag while me and Dave Snyder acted as the muscle. And then there is Marcus, who has taken helping through charity to a whole nother level, not just donating money, but rolling up  his sleeves, and his machete 🙂 when needed!

4. PUT ONE OF THE POKER TOURNAMENT GRAPHICS IN THE POST

Pick any one of these, any size. If you understand capitalism, then put one with the sponsors on it. If you are a total socialist, or just like the look better, then use one without sponsors on it. Here are a whole bunch of sizes available for you!

5. EITHER PING BACK TO THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW (NOT REQUIRED) OR LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW LINKING TO YOUR POST.

Obviously I looooove links! On the other hand, links are not required. Just leave a comment below so I know that you wrote your post on a charity. If you link to this page I will allow the ping back to show up and that counts. If you register, and you are not listed below, your registration may be reversed. Once all spots are taken, there are no more. 🙂 Unless you’re name is Alex and you founded one of the largest Affiliate companies that rhymes with Google and I will allow you in.

6. GO REGISTER EITHER AS A PLAYER OR A POKER PARTY GUEST AT THE TOURNAMENT

Click here to register as either a player or a guest. Players need to pay the buy in fee to get in. Guests are just that, guests. You can also pay and register for the fight club training with the 6X world champ in Brazillian Jiu Jitsu if there is space.  All the other events are open to everyone with no sign up. Once the tournament fills up, you can register for free as an alternate. We will go by the alternate list, quickly reading it off that night to fill the seats. If you are not there and waiting when your name is called, you will not be playing. If you pay and don’t show, no refunds.

7. Show up at the Mirage Poker room at 7:30 November 12th

the night of the tournament to check in. Those not checked in by 7:45 will lose their seat to an alternate on the list. This is a real poker tournament, the real deal. First place will be over $4k, plus a custom poker table by Custom Poker Tables.com, plus a bunch of free Chipotle certificates, plus other stuff. In the prize pool will also be a chocolate fountain for first out, a couple nights free room at the Mirage. If you have something of value you want to donate, hit me up! We will probably pay down to 10th place.

FULL DISCLOSURE

Only read if you are bored. 🙂

No refunds under any circumstance.

Purpose Inc. events at pubcon are sponsored by the bad ass sponsors listed above. When it all shakes out Purpose Inc. either lose money or make a profit on the whole thing depending on the year. The sponsorship money for the poker tournament, only covers poker tournament expenses, and no profit is made. The sponsorship money for the other events may or may not make a profit! LOL This year due to administrative snags the tournament is not a charity tournament. All money that goes to the buy in from the players goes to cover the pot, the Mirage’s expenses, and maybe a little left over for t-shirts but probably not. 🙂

Pamela Lund once said to me something like the day that Loren Feldman and myself are both in a room, the walls were going to cave in because of the noise. I haven’t met Loren yet, but his online stuff is funny, and he is quite loud and not afraid to speak his mind. But wait a second, I’ve been told the same thing!

I’ve been hearing wisps of this Audience conference, but really did not get it until I just read Shoemoney’s blog. It sounds amazing. I love the fact that it is intimate. I love the fact that there is no where to put your computer or write notes easily. I love the fact that is has some of the biggest and the best in the business, in the type of setting that will tilt them just a little bit and allow some of their juice to spill out in a different direction than the usual talks.

With Loren’s creativity I can only imagine what else he has in store.

Just the idea of Shoemoney on a theatrical stage if fantastic in itself. The guy is naturally very theatrical, and the setting is perfect for him. I just wish that Jeremy was going to sing too!

The event is very affordable, only $399. I honestly just clicked back to verify that is was that inexpensive and it is.

The Audience Conference is another wonderful example of what we can do when we don’t give a crap about badges, exibitor tables, or conference centers. I just love the idea of finding another unique way to connect the people to the speakers on the subject we all hold dear, the audience!

I just noticed that in addition to having Tech Crunch founder, Shoemoney and T.V. celebs, they are going to have things like a funky harp group playing as well. I love a good juxtoposition!

Not that most people would get it, but this event is literally historical in what it is doing.

I am actually quite excited, just to find out what happens!

Boy we are going to have fun.

We are sending out invites to sponsor today.

If you want to sponsor either as an individual, or as a company, let me know imediately.

I will be finalizing the t-shirt and card designs so need to sponsor logos now. 🙂

We are going to be having a fight club with Robert Drysdale the 6x world champ in Brazillian jiu Jitsu, and with Shawn Tompkins at his new home at the Tap Out gym. Shawn is running pro training for the big UFC guys, and we will be able to watch.

I am getting lots of e-mails about the poker tournament.

We are only going to have room for 100 players. My buddy Chris who runs the poker room at the Mirage has worked out a great deal for with me for us, and we are going to have cocktail waitresses serving free drinks to the players, and 200 of my guests from 8:00 to 2:00 a.m. on Thursday night of Pubcon. This is going to be off the hook!

The poker room is right next to CPK, BLT burgers, and the Deli, so we will have food and drinks.

I can only get in 100 players and 200 guests. There will be bracelets to identify you.

I am going to make you work for them a little, and do a little pre holiday charity awareness. It will just cost you a tweet if you are buying in as a player, and a blog if you want to get in as a guest with the open bar. Details coming up here, but don’t blink because I am going to post it, send invites to my list, and I predict they will be gone fast!

If you don’t sign up for the poker tournament in time, you won’t play. Sorry?

If you want to be part of the party, and don’t win a spot as a guest with the free bar, then you can still come, you will just have to buy your own drinks 🙂

Just watch this blog, and details will be announced probably within the next few days or early next week.

If you want to sponsor either as an individual or as a company, read this and hit me up.

I also may have a few surprises during my talks at pubcon, so you may want to come see what’s up for those too. 😉

Some of the facebook advertisers were selected to beta test the new facebook ads manager. I am sure there will be more changes before it goes live for  everyone, but here is a sneak peak and my initial impressions.

First a rundown on what’s not in there.

The biggest restriction for running facebook ads is still the speed of loading multiple new ads. This was not handled in the new beta. If you are not familiar with facebook ads, there are many, many variables. Even if you decide to test 3 different titles, with three different images, three different ad copy options, to three different age groups, in three different cites, you will have 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3  possible ads which means you will have 243 different combinations. Because the ad platform is all server based, each time you move to the next screen it takes up to a  minute to load, depending on the speed of your internet connection etc. So to run 243 ads will take you at a minimum 500 minutes, or close to 10 hours.

There are software programs that are sold that do this automatically, but the problem is that they are against facebooks terms of service, and they only allow a few variables, and have not allowed for the variables I personally want to test. There are so many demographic different variables to test in facebook advertising, that the options could easily be in the millions when you start adding them up. I am sure this will be handled in later versions of the ads manager, just not yet.

That being said the new ads manager is a huge step in the right direction. In the current ads manager, pre beta, once you have been running ads for a while, you will have pages and pages of campaigns. To navigate to find a certain ad or adgroup would require clicking through multiple pages looking for your ad, which could take a while if your pages are slow to load. Now there is a table of contents that you can slide up and down to find a specific group. You can also sort the adgroups by different variables to more quickly find the one you want. There is also an onthe fly search box to search for ad names that is similar to the search box you use to find facebook friends.

There are also selection boxes next to each campaign in the campaign view, where you can edit entire campaigns, multiple campaigns, or even every campaign, and with a few clicks can change all the daily limits, whether they are active or inactive.

There is also an easy way to change the name of a campaign from this screen which is nice to get them to alphabetize a  certain way, assign them a number to keep track of them, or even just to correct the errors you made when you created them.

The graph at the bottom still is a little counter-intuitive to me, in terms of how to scale it. Mine usually is off the scale and appears blank, and honestly I still have not figured out to use it.

One of the nice features is the ability to click on the top of the column, such as campaign, status, budget etc. and have all the campaigns sorted that way. One notable point of that is the ability to bring all the active campaigns up to the top where you can see them, and push all the deleted and paused campaigns, down out of the way.

Below is an image from one of my accounts.

Because of the massive number of variables there are to choose from when running facebook ads, and the fact that they keep adding on more and more, means that it is going to be a while before you will be able to easily manage all aspects of large numbers of campaigns. If you combine this with the fact that facebook is obsessed with quality, and a great user experience, it would not surprise me if we don’t see the ability to manage even most of the variables in large groups for a year or more from now.

Once you are inside a campaign you can also change the ad name easily without having to reload screens.

Once you are in the screens to create a new ad, the screens seem identical.

While I am stating my wish list, I would like to see a listing of possible keywords. I got the list of the top facebook profile keywords, but this obviously changes over time. I would also like to see a list of neighborhoods available.

This new facebook ads manager is a huge step forward, appears to work flawlessly, and will cut down the time of managing large numbers of campaigns dramatically. Facebook is doing an amazing job of keeping their software really clean, intuitive, and pretty bug free.

As a final note, take a look at the volume of searches for facebook advertising vs. myspace advertising vs. google advertising. While not a complete story, it does give some insight to the amount of interest in the subject.

If you need help with facebook ads, just give me a holler.

Not an actual dinasour, but an actual turtle-rex taken from George Avery of GetAds creek.

The Best of The Web, BOTW, boys have kicked in big time for our beloved poker tournament. They did this before the exact set up has been determined, and before we have figured out whether it will be a charity tournament or a non charity tournament.

Greg Hartnet loves this tournament, and the tournament loves Greg.

The BOTW crew are true dinasours of the internet world, since they have been around since 1994.

Their company, and the culture around it has served as fertile grounds for many of the leaders in this field to find their roots and grow. When I first started going to the conferences, it was told to me by many people to just hang out at the BOTW booth. You will never find any pretentiousness there, and nobody is ever an outsider. Just throw on one of their famous t-shirts, and you are instantly part of the family.

If I set up any new site of any importance to me, to this day, I always submit my site to their directory, which is the original internet directory. If your site is quality, they will most likely accept you. If you get accepted, then you get a quality link, that is very relevant, and on topic, and good page rank.

For those of you who don’t remember, before search engines this is how you found stuff on the internet. I still have a lot of faith in hand reviewed directories, and expect a resurgence of them in the future. I don’t think a computer can ever determine quality and relevance the way a human can. Their newer blog directory rocks and is a great place to get links and awareness started for your blog.

I am grateful to Greg, Brian Prince and the crew there because from the first moment I announced doing an event, the first poker tournament, they immediately jumped in and offered whatever help, finance or otherwise I needed. They let me come to their parties, even before anyone thought I was cool, and are an incredibly tight, yet welcoming group of people.

Thank you again guys for making the first poker tournament possible, and during such a tight year for so many people, being so quick to step up and throw down to make sure the event we all love so much takes place!

The Mirage hotel has graciously allowed our gang of misfits to decend upon their lovely hotel and casino on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2009 at 8:00 P.M.

The poker tournament has grown so large, and brings with it such a moving party, with last year literally hundreds of people who either showed up to play or just to play 🙂

If you want to rub elbows with the top SEO’s, internet marketers, website owners, and social media experts, this is the place. It is the relationships you develop here that will allow you to get the real internet marketing secrets in the future.

Keep checking this blog as Pubcon 2009 approaches, but it looks like we are going to be setting up our own poker room for the event, as we can not longer fit inside their regular poker room.

Before this can actually be a charity poker tournament, I need to get approval from the Nevada Gaming Commission. As I am sure you would guess, having a poker tournament with real money flying around legally, has an enormous amount of regulations attached to it.

After doing some research I found a charity that if they will give us permission, I would like to get behind this upcoming holiday season. They are called the Blind Center of Nevada. One of the super cool things they do is run an online electronics business, which takes old electronics, computers and monitors, cameras and the like, makes sure they are working, and then sells them on e-bay to support their center. To date they have made around a million bucks this way. This supports the center which trains these guys and gals in skills so they can be out in the regular work force.

Historically blind people for the most part have had assembly jobs, or other repetitive jobs that were less intellectually demanding. Through their program they allow blind people to new technology that allows them to do things online, that previously was impossible.

Anyone who knows me well, gets that I like to support those who are busting their buts to help themselves and others. This group takes that path by teaching visually impaired people job skills, and then in their own institution allowing those individuals to apply those skills to make money to run the institution.

If you give a few thousand dollars to feed people, that money will be spent in a day. A group like this, since it is already making some money themselves, can leverage a donation to help many, many, more people in many ways for years to come.

The poker tournament should be a great time. EVERYONE IS INVITED! I would love you to blog about it, and put up a poker poster on your site, and make sure EVERYONE  who is part of pubcon knows it will be the best of the pubcon parties!

We are now accepting sponsors for the event also. The money is going to a good cause, so open up those pockets!! Contat me at dk (=at=) purposeinc.com if you are interested.

Feel free to grab a poker poster that is the correct size for your blog and use it on your site.

It is 4 a.m., the party is finally over, I am exausted, but as good journalist I need to keep the public updated with what’s important right?

Azoogle, Alex Z. and Michael Sprouse pulled out all the stops for what was THE BEST PARTY I HAVE EVER BEEN TO.

On the bus ride home, I said to my wife, after this what is left? Seriously it was unbelievable. There will be a lot more shots that will show up my blog coming up, but a lot of them will never see the light of day. 😉

It was cool, Michael Sprouse used to be high up in the playboy corporation doing marketing for them. When the girls saw him, they were genuinely happy to see him. It made me proud!

If you can imagine just how wild a party could get, the absolute wildest, and turned back the volume just a quarter of a click, that is what I just experienced.

I stayed out of trouble and played Donky Kong. Free video games, are you kidding me?

All the while the whole event was actually done tastefully, and with a lot of grace and beauty. The food in fact was off the hook, and a huge surprise.

My wife and I got to hang out with Hugh Hefners brother Keith. I noticed something amazing. He constantly complimented all of the girls, and was warm and friendly to everyone he met. Very, very nice guy. Feel free to invite us over for old movies whenever you want!

Come back soon to see more of the pics, once I have time to edit through them.

I went out on one of these stands to get my picture taken standing over the pool, and a few of the Azoogle staff were kind enough to give me a little push into joining their pool party.

I will let these 11 pictures tell the story, and you can fill in what is not being shown with your own imagination.