events

A4U Expo London 2007 - what a blast!

Marketing Fan — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:36:23 +0200

I must admit I can hardly remember when I announced the a4u expo or that I would attend it, but I know didn’t expect such an extremely high satisfaction with with participating here… comparede to the Affiliate Summit London I’ve been to in September this event was so big i would list it belong those major conferences like SES San Jose, New York and the WMW in Vegas (see you there in December)

Quality Sessions
Quality Audience and networking opportunities around the clock
Quality Venue with coffee & drinks when you need them (hello SES – after partying, we are close to de-hydrating in the morning as well!!)
bonus goodies like on-site massage (what a wonderful experience to get rid of your stiff neck between sessions) and
some really GREAT food at the parties (thanks to sponsors buy.at and pepperjam obviously – Google Dance could use some of this delicious food too Sergey :-)

This actually makes me forget a quite horrible trip to get here (some friends know it) – it was worth every hour delay/waiting for luggage/changing roomes/headache etc.

Shoutouts go to those brilliant folks I had a chance to meet up or party with at the parties here and the (they say) poshest club in London “China White” – namely Stefan Juhl of SignalZoo , Marcus Tandler AKA mediadonis , Kris and Aaron from Pepperjam , Jason & Tony of Strange Logic , Andre & Adam of Hitflip , Sabine, Kristi and Nico Zeifang , Joost de Valk and Owen of AffiliateWindow and Kristi, Michael, JP from HackerSafe as well as JoeBucks of JoeBucks and his sales compagnion which name I forgot :-)

I bet I missed a dozen other people – sorry for that – but I already missed one major appointment today with a very valued client, which I’m really sorry for, so I don’t want to risk missing the plane as well (but then, they might cancel/rebook/mess up everything again anyway :~~) or forgetting/loosing anything import like my flat keys as in Stockholm or other traveller horror stories again :~~)

On a sidenote: I would assume to post a bit more in the next weeks since major travel only takes up again end of November with Chicago and Las Vegas for the WMW

Free Passes for Affiliate Summit London 2007

Marketing Fan — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:11:48 +0200

The Affiliate Summit 2007 in London gives away complimentary passes for the exhibit hall,

so if you are not into listening to the classes, but love mingeling around, meeting clients, partners and prospects then you now have a good reason to visit London end of September. The London Affiliate Summit is organized by folks around Shawn Collins, an affiliate marketer you probably know.

The event is scheduled September 28, 2007 at the Olympia Conference Centre in London, and you bet I’ll be there!

For more details on the conference and registration information, visit http://www.affiliatesummit.com/07london_conference.php.

Will you come, too?

The SEO consultant - a job / process description - a bit of a rant

Marketing Fan — Mon, 14 May 2007 22:23:47 +0200

Now when I was in New York City last month for the SES I met, among a ton of other friends, partners and clients – Avi, a New Yorkian SEO ...

And you know what’s best about meeting good ole’ friends at those events? Yeah, meeting them, having booze and getting introduced to THEIR friends… it’s about networking and actually the non-plus-ultra is if your friends actually do the “elevator pitch” for you, so all you have to do is stand there are smile, hand out some cards and then get back to those folks actually :-)

Shimon Sandler was introduced to me, and while I didn’t recall the name I found that this is actually a really respected SEO consultant in the scene … well- in fact I read on his blog and a ton of this comments eg on Jim Boykin’s link building blog.

One of Shimon’s interesting posts on his blog is that Job-Definition of what an SEO actually does… I love those posts (just like Todd/Stuntdubl also ALWAYS releases those posts where I just think RESOURCE... it’s a RESOURCE... man, it’s great and I’ll be back)

You know when I look at Shimons definition of what an SEO consultant does I actually have to remind myself to finally revamp, rewrite and (hell) get rid of the typos in the copy of my own SEO company site – and yes sure – I want to sync the content in AT LEAST two languages english and german, after all that’s one of my USPs here… and I even got some spain and italian domains for Cemper.Com as well last week …

Shimons’ definition will serve me well as a blueprint, an information architecture for my new copy… 16 points that describe the basis SEO process… very nice..

and best of all, Shimon even gives away a “standard proposal” he sends out to his clients, including specifications for deliverables and EVEN the charging model … he starts with a retainer fee of $2000 for his services, that’s 20 hours work … but still charges what is above that.. I think that’s pretty cool to buy… after all that’s just 4-5 hours a week … half a day… I bet he spends HALF of that already for communication and reporting on some clients…

(hint hint hint to all clients and managers – let your people work :-)

What I’m missing there is some detailled spec on WHAT/WHEN Shimon reports on his link building, link buys, etc… my impression in general is that link building is a bit under-sized in the whole post – after all links are 95% of the game, once you made sure in the first month that the site-structure and content does not suck as it usually does in the beginning when an “agency” created that nice ALL-FLASH loaded site…

But where do these clients come from? ... hehe.. Shimon is a nice guy… giving away a “sales blueprint” with some sort of checklists to ask prospective clients is definately worth a read…

The “questions for SEO clients” are even a bit sophisticated… assuming you KNOW you have an SEO client… you know which question saved me HUNDREDS OF WASTED hours over the last 3 years?

christoph to a prospective SEO client that calls him up wrote:

Nice site you got, promoting all your products, services, etc. blabla

So – what would it do in the bottom line for your business when you get from NOWHERE to number1 in Google? do you know much you actually make per sale? and how much can you spend to increase the number of sales?

Oh – you don’t know?

Frankly, I met/got called up by so many folks that do “internet marketing” just for some sort of “branding value” or their ego to be up in ranks that they have NO CLUE if they can spend 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 EUR per time interval… well – that’s where I usually end the call… sorry – but people that got no idea on their spends usually have no idea on their goals, or just don’t care… neither of these is a reason to do business…

But anyway, you know it’s REALLY funny – bumping into friends on conferences is one thing, but getting to know the next “indirection” of the network just by chance is in fact the MAJOR reason for me to go to these conferences and to to spend $350+ a night for that sneazy little room in the hilton… Staying as close as possible to the even gives you those extra 15 minutes AT LEAST twice a day where you can meet up with a lot more people that if you would stay ANYWHERE...

Too bad I’ll miss out on the SMX in June and the SES In August – but I’ll then have my studies and master’s finished (be sure to checkout the online survey !)

After this bit longer break I’ll do these

- DrupalCon in Barcelona (September) – NICE weather :-)

- SMX social media special (October) in New York City again, YEAH – rocks

- WMW in Las Vegas (the classic in November)

and then maybe even some SES in chicago… or I might just hang out with my friends there… not sure

Then I’ll sing – “I just can’t get enough…” :-D

I am 2nd place at PubCon DrinkingGame

Marketing Fan — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 23:29:01 +0100

Cool – I got the 2nd place at the PubCon drinking game which was actually a “take-a-shot-while-drinking with SEO celebrities”-game…

This was an amazin idea and actually I only knew about it as Aaron blogged about it…

When I uploaded my final 25 pics yesterday I felt a bit sorry yesterday that I actually forgot to take shots of a lot of people when chatting – just like Werty, Arron Wall, Todd Stuntdubl, Martinibuster and a couple more…

but then the whole thing was a great “conversation (re)starter” ... a funny hook that people talked about.

I’m a bit surprised that there were only 2 entrants – but then, I think the rules were WAY too complex… I read about the deadline 2 hours before it actually happened :-)

anyway – thanks for the fun & the money :)

Jetlagged Link Dump

Marketing Fan — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:11:43 +0100

After leaving the Sahara, probaby the dirtiest hotel I had to stay in and having a REALLY worse experience with the management of Sahara I’m back to Vienna – spend 16 hours in 3 airplanes and about 8 hours waiting for those damn plans ON the airports…

it it were’n so much fun I would travel that far :-)

And meeting with so many cool people really rocked … I’ll follow up with a name list as I post the pics with them a bit later today (hope I’ll make it to the deadline of the Pubcon drinking game

Meanwhile a couple of nice and interesting things happened that really deserve a quick link dump – (in an unordered quick link dump fashion)

Jim Boykin’s son was born – welcome to the Sandbox Nate Boykin :-)

Greg Boser became 40 and I had the honor to hist pretty cool party in the G-Lounge of the Palms casino… as you will see later I got some nice shots from there

Todd Malicoat/Stunddubl relaunched his site’s design and finally takes commments again

Tony Spencer confirms cross-linink still burns ... well – good thing I got so many (don’t ask me about a number :) different IPs and IP-Class networks for all my projects

I got approved to the Multivariate Testing Tool of Google called “Website Optimizer” and will play with that soon… too bad I just recently launched *my onw A/B split testing infrastructure… oh well – it could have been worse to implement an own multivar-tester :-)

Best of the Web got yet another promo running – you can SAVE 25% using the promo code SAVE25 (that’s an easy one to remember fortunately as I read in some mag during my flight)

And I got WAY too many emails still unanswered, from clients, friends and partners… and I haven’t even done these, not to mention follow ups with new contacts from Las Vegas …

So I’m ending here now – get ready to see more soon.

Some of that will be

A FULL AND HONEST review of Snapnames my experience from buying a total of over 50 expired / preferred list domains at snapnames after finding the with the DRT and I got a lot to tell about them… some old and crusty domains were cheap to get but the overall impression and workflow with snapnames wasn’t as nice… and then there is domain kiting …

A FULL AND HONEST review of sticking with Brad Callen’s “NICHE REVOLUTION” club, a somewhat closed membership program that gives out two “info products” (AKA ebooks and audio books) to market yourself -including some creatives… presuming you know a lot about keyword research, PPC, link building, SEO etc that’s a nice thing to play with… obviously people start dropping out as they lowered the price from $97 to $47 already – a sell out?

SEO Trip to Yosemite with Jim Boykin and Dave Zuls

Marketing Fan — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 03:44:04 +0200

I missed the last day on last weeks’ SES show in San Jose in favor of a great trip to Yosemite with Jim Boykin and Dave Zuls

We got a convertible and spent a great time driving all the way to the parks, had great views, great talks and laughs and almost ran out of fuel at night… even the GPS sucked as it had no detail data about the park, so we went back to the old school paper map to find the fuel station…

All went good and I finally arrived back to the hotel at 2:30, to pack all my stuff, worry about carry on luggage worth of $10k (DSLR Nikon D200, tons of expensive lenses, Sony Laptop) that I’d need to check in (and probably break) and go all the way back to Austria… Fortunately all went good, I could take my carry on with me as ususal.

I uploaded a lot of great pics of that Yosemite Trip to My Flickr Account

As you probably can imagine, spending 15+ hours with great guys like Jim or Dave was a really enlightning experience and apart from a great load of fun we could discuss a lot of SEO and business topics in depth…

I enjoyed this a lot and want to thank Dave and Jim here for that! Cheers Guys!

Search Bash 2006 party pics

Marketing Fan — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 03:17:18 +0200

Greg Boser at Webmaster Bash getting outranked at the Studio 8 bar by a link spammer :-)

Jake from TrueLocal – Dana from Webmasterradio and Becky from BruceClay doing the Sumo at the webmaster bash 2006

Google Dance 2006

Marketing Fan — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 02:45:53 +0200

Here come some new pictures from the Google Dance 2006 event last week at the Googleplex

Aaron Wall AKA SEOBOOK.com at “Meet the engineers”

Griffin “Gage” Granberg and Christoph the MarketingFan

Mike Glenn and Christoph C. Cemper at the Google Dance 2006

Greg Hullender, the MSNDUDE on WMW – discussing with Matt Cutts at “Meet the engineers” at the Google Dance 2006

Matt Cutts at “Meet the engineers” at Google Dance 2006

San Jose 2006 Ask.com party pics

Marketing Fan — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:27:46 +0200

A bit late on the boat with the party pics from Ask’s party 2 days ago – stay tuned for the Google Dance 2006 pics – and of course some insights from the great discussions with the Google engineers

hope you enjoy!

Laura from Yahoo and Melissa from Bodog at the Ask.com party Aug 8

Jim Boykin from WebBuildPages and Christoph Cemper at the Ask.com party Aug 8

This girl was working like a dog to dish out great drinks at the Ask.com party bar

Jan from Friendscout24, Todd / Stuntdubl and Tim from sitetuners at Ask’s party

Krystal did a great job serviing some del.icio.us food

People were really having a great fun dancing to all sorts of music styles at the Ask-Party… great mood there!

Monte and Christoph at the Ask.com party SES San Jose 2006

Christoph C. Cemper and Aaron Wall (Mr. SEOBOOK) at the ASK.com party in San Jose 2006

Technorati Tags: ses, ses san jose 2006, yahoo, google, askjeeves, search engine strategies san jose 2006

Search Celebrities at the Bodog party in San Jose

Marketing Fan — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:59:00 +0200

I got to bed late last night, so I went up early today to post some of the fun pics I shot yesterday at the private Bodog party in San Jose… thanks again Greg for the invitation btw :-)

The party was a great warmup event with roughly only 100-150 people there a very cosy and private athmosphere… Matt Cutts from Google and Tim Meyer from Yahoo where there as well and had the usual crowd of 15 people around them, so taking pictures wasn’t so easy :-) – in any case you can check out Matt Cutts and me at the PubCon in Vegas last year

Some impressions from the party following…

Laura Lippay from Yahoo, Greg Boser Boser”:http://general.webguerrilla.com/ses-party-sunday-night/ and Christoph C. Cemper in San Jose 2006

Danny Sullivan and Christoph C. Cemper in San Jose 2006

Jim Boykin, Monte Baumgartner and me at the Bodog party Aug 6 in San Jose

Marcus Tandler aka Mediadonis from Cia.de and me at the Bodog party

Laura from Yahoo New Media team, Greg Boser aka WebGuerilla, Rand Fishkin from SeoMoz and me

Chris Boggs and Jim Boykin

Pascal Fantou and me in San Jose 2006

In case you didn’t hear that – we will have one of the most prominent names in the search engine industry on stage here on Wednesday. Google CEO Eric Schmidt will join Danny for a conversation, in a morning session where they will discuss Google’s “growing and dealing with challenges and issues in search.”

Great place to be!

Update: Dave has some more pics

Technorati Tags: ses, ses san jose 2006, yahoo, google, askjeeves, search engine strategies san jose 2006