Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

Howdy!

In case you didn’t know, we are having a poker tournament!

The great news is that the Venetian is busting their behind to get us approved so it will be a charity tournament, and it looks like it probably will be. It will be up to the Venetian now!

The above is the final graphic for the poker tournament.

I and another designer have had our hand in it too, but it is 98% Dean!

Now we have to choose the colors. The graphic will go on the back, but these show it on the front. All American Apparel t-shirts.

Take a look at the options, and then I am going to ask you to vote.

In reality the colors will not be as bright, or as clear on a t-shirt.
This first one was olive.

This one is asphalt

This one is black.

This one is natural color.

This one was white.

NEXT QUESTION

Should we put this emblem on the chest?

THIRD AND LAST QUESTION:
Should the sponsors logos be down the arm?
This is just a fast crummy drawing to give you the idea.

Click Here to take survey
YES SERIOUSLY – PLEASE GO TAKE THE SURVEY – 15 SECONDS!

I would like us to all give a standing round of applause to the following companies for stepping up and giving us our beloved poker tournament this year.

Azoogle Ads hit it out of the park with what they did! They basically proved that even in a supposedly crummy economy, if you know what you are doing, you can deliver value to your customers and thrive! Good job Azoogle, and thanks so much for all the help! Without their help, we might well not have been able to have a poker tournament! Azoogle has some big surprises coming out in the near future, so keep your eyes on them!

Shoemoney, as the head of Fighters.com took the lead and was the first one to spearhead the poker tournament. He’s Shoemoney! He dipped into his sacred shoe, and all I can say is he has been very, very, very generous with us! From the bottom of my heart! Thank You!

We Build Pages stepped up too! They also asked me to pass on a huge chunk of their change to Heaven Can Wait, a really cool doggy and kitty place that keeps them from having babies, and keeps the extra ones from having to check out!

Neil Patel introduced me to his buddy who runs Epiar. They are a very cool company that does SEO, and have their own search engine. They have a really cool tool I was reading about that gives you a mess of negative key words to use when doing PPC and other aplications, that I am very curious about.They kick out like 10,000 negative keywords. Their stats on this are through the roof allowing wasted money on PPC to go way down! Without giving away some of the future surprises, all I can tell you is that Ken the president has a fantastic sense of humor.

Easy Tweets jumped in and signed up as soon as they heard about the sponsorships. I have been playing with the Beta of the tool, and it just makes a lot of tweeting easier. Hence the name! It is easy to use and self explanatory.

The Unique Blogging Design guys came through with this theme. What do you think? I spent an hour on the phone with Nate describing what I wanted, a few weeks later Nate told me to check my themes and blammo! There it was! They really pulled through to give the tournament the image and feel it deserves.

Michael Dorausch of Planet Chiropractic also kicked in for a final help to make the tournament even better. Michael is a great friend and a fellow chiropractor. I told him I just love to have the word chiropractic on the t-shirts!

Kevin K. from Chipotle is a man on a mission armed with killer burritos. I told Kevin we were having the poker tournament again. He just asked how many burrito certificates we needed. I smiled. He smiled. The next time I saw him he delivered a grip load of certificates for the winners. There are way over a 100!

Dean Yeagle, the famous playboy cartoonist is doing the graphic for us. I love it. I hope you do too! Huge thank you Dean! The guys (and gals) are going to love it!

The final supporter of the tournament is also the first, Best of The Web. Gregg Hartnet who started it pretty much invented the internet. Greg is an amazing guy who has been involved with a lot of plays on the internet, is a way, way cool, laid back guy, and is your friend even if you haven’t met him yet. Thank you so much bro, I am proud to have you part of it. He also fricken loves poker!

The charity portion of the tournament? We are currently pushing the Nevada Gaming Commission to approve the charity portion of the tournament. My hands are tied until this gets through. Then we have to get it through the Venetian Casino legal department. If it does not turn out to get approved in time to be a charity poker tournament, it will still be a tournament, with oddly more money left over for the purse! If you are in the mood to make a donation, I highly recommend Heaven can Wait, or the Xtreme Couture GI Foundation! Stay posted until the Nevada Gaming Comission and the Venetian sort it out!

Last year the only complaint we got was that there were not enough cocktail waitresses. I am currently working with the Venetian on a solution to this, so you can enjoy yourselves in the velvety comfort of the Venetian Poker Room!

It is going to be a mind blowing time in Vegas. I say to turn off the T.V., create your own economy like the people mentioned above are doing! Let’s have some fun, make new contacts, share new ideas, and creates some new value on the internet that no one has even thought of yet!

Some of the partnerships and businesses that have already come out of the Think Tank are mindblowing! There are is no shortage of opportunity out there for those who are ready to create things of value! Join me and the companies above in creating a new vibrant economy full of creativity, value, and most of all…fun!

I came across an interesting Digg analysis tool. It let’s you analyze your digg submissions and your friends list to figure out which of your friends are digging your stories and which are not. The tool also shows you who in the digg community consistently digs your stories. These are your fans, and people you want to add to your friends list, since they already have your back.

The tool is useful for those looking to find out where to invest their time, friendship and resourses on Digg. It also lets you quickly see who to remove from your friends list if they are not digging your posts and taking up your time, you can cut them loose like dead wood.

It is a raw tool, and doesn’t have any fancy graphics, but you can tell there is some hard core programming behind it. Don’t expect a fancy UI. It takes a minute or two to run its majic, and then you will be shocked when you see the results. Nope, no body paid me this to write this, and I have no financial ties to the site. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how I found out about it either Check out the Digg tool!

A few things are now set in stone.

We are having the poker tournament, of course!

Here is a peek of the poker graphic. There is a whole girl there though, trust me! The drawing is done by Dean Yeagle, famous cartoonist and illustrator for Playboy Magazine. He is doing this graphic just for us and our poker tournament!

We are also having a FightClub taught by Shawn Tompkins, the fight trainer of Randy Couture, at Randy’s personal gym where he works out regularly. FightClub will be on the Tuesday of Pubcon at 2:45 2:15 in the afternoon, and over at 4:00 3:30. Apologies to whoever is speaking at that time.

The fight training will be in the same practical fighting skills used by real UFC fighters. It is going to be taught at whatever level you are at. Most of us are absolute, trip over our own toes beginners.

At ThinkTank more than one person said that the fight training may have been the best experience of their life. Wow! At the worst it is good exercise, and you will learn practical skills you hopefully will never have to use in real life.

Those on my mailing list will be getting the secret code to register later today or tomorrow for both events. Jump on it, as I expect both things to sell out fast. If you are not on my list, then let me know who you are and you just may get on my list!

The art for the t-shirts and graphics for the tournament is almost done. As soon as we get the last few sponsors wrapped up this week, we will be able to finish it.

We still may have room for a few more sponsors at the less expensive levels. Just get in touch if you are interested.

ThinkTank was non stop, never a break and the fun just kept rolling.

I have a whole slew of prizes left over for the ThinkTank attendees.

We still have the online contest to finish off too!

Stay tuned to this blog for details for the ThinkTank attendees about how they can win the fun prizes.

There are at least $5k+ of actual prizes still to be released!

Thanks for being patient.

We have now gone full bore on planning for the big poker event on November 13th.

Dean Yeagle, the playboy cartoonist is currently working on the artwork for the t-shirts and other give away stuff. It should be off the hook.

I am also going to get to work with the Unique Blog Design guys on a site redesign just for the poker tournament. I will be releasing info here about them as we go. It will be a great case study for anyone thinking of using Unique Blog Designs.

Pubcon is going to be soo much fun!

dk

9:00 Cameron has surfing down by the tent.
10:00 Breakfast first opens. An amazing crepe place, three blocks south of the hotel.

View Larger Map

You can arrive there up until 11:30.

Call me if you get out of step with the group!

Much Love,
dk

Meet in the hotel lobby for breakfast at 10:00.

Dress casual for a great breakfast.

If you are running late, just call me on my cell, and I will direct you!

Much Love,
dk

Whooooh. Are you kidding me? I am stoked about this.

Super Super curious to see who wins.

I saw he mentioned the contest we are working on for the event.

The lawyers are working on the rules of the contest right now. The full legal details will be posted on this site when we have it all worked out. But it is going to be amazing. All I can say is that the plan is that teams will compete for a significant prize at the end of the contest (assuming we get it so all the parts are perfectly legal).

I am unbelievably grateful for Jeremy (Shoemoney) for his contest.

We are honestly working to make this the event that people will be able to say it was the best event they have ever been to.

For my attendees, just make sure to let me know anything else you need to make this perfect for you.

Jon Kelly and I put together something pretty radical for the Think Tank.

I know folks at Internet business events come because they want to connect and have fun. They usually learn more from each other than they do from speakers. That’s why I had this event in the first place. No Speakers!

What better way to get to know your fellow attendees, than by throwing each other around?

This is actually going to be very safe and controlled, because Shawn Tompkins is considered by many in the know to be the greatest fight trainer alive. Randy Couture, the five time world champion in Mixed Martial Arts (Ultimate Fighting), uses Shawn as his trainer. Shawn also trains many of the other top competitive martial artists in the world, and has been the coach of many world champions.

Shawn is probably the top professional fight trainer in the world, and SureHits is paying for him to train us. Jon is really into athletics and wanted to help me pull this off. For those who don’t know, SureHits is an affiliate company that gives webmasters like us adds to run on our sites to get our users to insurance and mortgage companies. Both Jon, and his company SureHits have an amazingly good reputation in this industry as an affiliate company to work with.

I know most of internet business guys are pretty out of shape, although some of the Think Tankers are quite good athletes, Jon Kelly included. I love martial arts, studied a little in the past, and am really looking forward to Shawn Training us.

I am going out to Vegas next week for Defcon, anyone else going? and will stop by the Couture gym to meet up with a few people, and possibly train.

Shawn will be going over practical methods of self defense that are actually usable for beginners, and if we have any experts in our crowd, Shawn will customize a bit of training for them personally.

I know from my own experiences as a professional skimboarder and expert swim coach, that often you can correct a certain guy on one thing, and then suddenly their ability increases dramatically.

Shawn is also an amazingly great guy. When Jeremy Schoemaker first hooked me up with the Couture camp, I expected them to be a bunch of arrogant tough guys. In reality they are a bunch of the warmest sweetest people I have ever met, no kidding! They do change a bit when they get in the ring! Ha Ha!

We had a blast today at Comic Con. Lived in San Diego almost 20 years, and have never gone. As many of you know, I use a lot of cartoons in my marketing so this was right up my alley.

Most of it was focused on Space Aliens and super heroes.

In a place like this, you have to keep an eye on your hot wife, since everyone else is too.

Jo enjoyed it a lot too.

You get to run into lots of random cartoon characters brought to life,

But also random uber-hot undead cheerleaders.

One of the main reasons i went there was to find Dean Yeagle, famous Playboy cartoonist for a project that we are working on.

Initially, the only Playboy cartoonist we could find was Doug Sneyd, who has been cartooning for playboy magazines for around 40 years!

Ya gotta love his work!

He was nice enough to do a little sketch of Jo.

He was amazingly full of the joy of life! Can you imagine 40 years of taking the hottest girls in the world, and having to carefully study them and turn them into cartoons?

Then I found Dean. He is famous for his cartoon Mandy. Dean told me that until the head brass made them take her down, she was painted on many vehicles and planes in Iraq. You can see Mandy in the background with the blonde hair. The drawing I am holding is the girl that the poker tournament graphic will be based on this year. Dean is going to make us something very special!

Here is the new poker girl in closeup from a print we got to hang at home.

Here is another drawing that is also going up.

Dean’s works have all been copyrighted, so please don’t copy these images.

They have a wonderful place called Artists Alley. You can find amazing artists, many of whom have not become fully appreciated yet, meaning their work is very affordable.

Because of the small format, a lot of these sites don’t do justice to the artists.

Alain Viesca  does lots of women, and fantasy stuff. It is just breathtaking to see these in large format prints.

Stephen Silver is much more polished at promoting himself, and has had good commercial success. He has some great characters. He also keeps a blog of his cartoon work.

Molly is from Santa Barbara and does really light fun characters.  You can even buy these high fashion t-shirts with her characters on them.

There was a fascinating guy by the name of Todd Klein, not a relation that I know of, who does lettering for comic books and has for decades. One never thinks about it until you sit there and look at his work. In a world of fonts it is amazing to see someone who creates fonts from his mind, and does these amazing hand written styles of lettering.

One of our final places we stopped at was the booth of Travis Hanson. The first thing you notice about Travis is himself. He just glows. You can tell from the second you talk to him that he is a hard working, friendly, good guy. In a place like Comic Con, the majority of the work involved demons and devils, and the lighter funner work was naked women. Travis does incredibly detailed works that focus on the creativity and inspiration that live inside of us. Looking at his work just makes one happy!