Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

So I was over at Neil Patels house today visiting him and his parents.

I knew Neil was going to meet someone and had to leave at 2:30, so before I left he said CK Chung, and a friend of theirs who is a well known writer from L.A.

After giving Neil a little hint he invited me along.

It was great to see CK and I met their friend Francisco Dao. Fransico is from San Jose, of Vietnamese decent, but was named Francisco after his parents new home, San Francsico!

Francisco claimed to be the only Francisco Dao in Google, and sure enough he is.

We talked a lot about conferences, attracting people, social media, and how to really apply it for a result and not just gum flapping.

So after we all met, I hooked up with my wife again and went to dinner at our sushi place at Irvine Spectrum.

When I got home, I went to check my database to see if my staff had been doing their job updating things.

I kid you not, I went to the most recent entry and there he was, the one and truly only Francisco Dao.

My staff at met him at Pubcon, gotten his info, and shot a photo, just as they were supposed to do.

Not only are they doing a great job networking, the original social media, but they are out there on the front lines meeting important guys like this before I even get the chance.

Good job guys! And great to meet you Francisco!

Francisco Dao lives in L.A., is a social leader in the tech scene, is a past writer for Inc and Fast Company magazines and currently does life coaching for L.A.’s best and brightest!

I’m in vegas for actually the third time in three weeks. Are you kidding me?

I also spent the day at Word Camp and got to hang out with Matt Mullenweg, the powerhouse behind wordpress and a fine photographer

To feel a little clean and refreshed after so much cigarette smoke, I am throwing off my poker theme and putting on a clean set of word press classic.

There is a big dinner tonight organized by Brian La France

Now in the spirit of vegas for some spammy giveaway promotion thingy.

Shoemoney is shooting for a big target of twitter followers.

Here is how you can help, and win a video camera or a mac computer.

Just follow these simple steps.

So here is the deal. We are going to giveaway ShoeMoney Flip Mino’s on February 27th. And these are the High Def ones not the cheapass ones!

So what do you have to do to win?

1) Follow @shoemoney on twitter.
2) simply tweet “Just entered to win a flip minoHD. Just follow @shoemoney and retweet. http://xr.com/fliphd”

I will be at affiliate summit the next three days, mostly hanging out with Shoe and meeting with big shots and little shots. If you see me come give me a hug and say hello!

In the internet marketing world those you see on the front lines are not always the ones with the power.

Many of us are a lot of fluff, waving our arms up an down to get others to look in our direction, while we rely on the brains and experience of hidden advisors.

I have many of the best advisors around, guys that have quickly helped me to become well read, and shockingly known in the internet marketing world. In fact I am better known than some of my advisors.

One of these guys is not someone you will hear speaking at the conferences. See he doesn’t need to get himself better known, or to pick up clients because he has already “made it”.

I met Andy Liu at the Elite Retreat. Shoemoney told me that he was one of the lessor known speakers, but that he was a genius in start ups, and Venture Capital. He is also a techy programmer guy originally.

Andy also is incredibly positive, straight forward and willing to help.

I now consider him an advisor and friend.

If you end up having the guts to contact him and ask him questions, I predict you will find him amazingly accessable compared to a lot of the superstars in the internet world.

Andy has now started blogging, giving everyone a little bit more access to what he is up to.

Andy is the founder of Buddy TV which according to Alexa gets half the number of views of abc.com or cbs.com.

Check out Andy’s blog on start ups and see what tips you can pick up. My advice is to ask your questions too, before the blog becomes so busy that your voice will get lost in the crowd.

I am writing this not just as an internet marketer, but also as a consumer.

One of the first great pieces of advice I ever got on internet marketing, was to do something which will draw links naturally to you, instead of linking, then hoping traffic will come. This has worked well.

Scott Skinger, I believe, just won the auction for Shoemoney’s contest to wear Scott’s companies shirt “Train Signal” to the affilate summit. This was smart of Scott and he deserves a link for doing something out of the box to promote his computer training.

Shoemoney always does random, fun, outrageous, cool, or controversial stuff, so deserves links.

Jeremy and Dave developed their Shoemoney Tools which took a ton of work. That deserves a link!

These guys took me and my wife on a private tour of yellowstone today, animals, geysers, wilderness, the whole shot! and gave me one of the best days of my life. They deserve a link too!

So go out, and get yourself a picture of you, your wife and a buffalo while wearing pseudo moto-cross snowmobiling outfits, and you might just get a link too!

Happy link building this year!

And as a consumer, stop giving me a bunch of crap on the internet that is just ads, and give me something interesting to read, o.k.?

Happy New Years!

Wow! My wife and I just got back from snowmobiling all day in yellowstone. Buffalo blocking the road, an eagles nest, elk, geysers, steaming hot pots, snow, just flying down the road! A private guide! One of the greatest days of my life.

Love you all! Happy New Years!

Now for dinner and fun in a one horse town!

My wife and I are sitting in the middle of Eastern Utah in a snow storm snuggled up in a Fairfield Inn. Pretty comfy. I am not a master of driving in snow, and it was pretty intense driving up from Vegas.

When we got here the snow was blowing horizontally. I crouched behind the car and watched it fly over me in the light. It was a truly beutiful moment.

I wanted to take a minute away from my precious time with my wife to comment on this past year.

The internet business world, all you guys, have been so kind to me over the past year.

I even had people wait in line to talk to me and get a photo at Pubcon. Pretty flattering.

I know I will forget a lot of names, so I will only throw out a couple.

In order, I have been massively helped by The Webmaster World Gang, Danny Sulivan, Matt Cutts, Pamela Lund, Neil Patel, Jeremy Schoemaker, the BOTW crew, the Azoogle crew, the Ninjas, Epiar, and then all the rest of you too numerous to mention in my blurry semi concious state. I can not thank you guys as a group enough.

Purpose Inc. has become well known, and for the most part well thought of this year.

Target one completed.

I think we also helped our friends and sponsors a ton too which was very satisfying.

I honestly love you guys a lot.

In the future I would love to see us use our power as a group, this power we have to show the world information, and use it more and more to promote what is good and wonderful on this planet!

Merry Christmas!

dk and the purpose inc. crew!

A few weeks ago I spent the better part of two days with a gentleman who is one of the most powerful people on Digg talking about future business opportunity. I have also been meeting recently with a company who has just started doing millions of dollars in revenue per month. One of the largest affiliate companies in the world, is including my events as part of their budget next year. I also just set up an event for the Elite Retreat which will be one of the biggest interfaces between internet marketers and a huge online company this year.

But none of this meant anything to me until I won the Streko award.

Early last week I recieved a red velvet envelope, with an invitation inside. A man in a simple blue suit arrived in a limosuine and handed it to me personally. It was an invitation to the most respected and talked about event in the interent business world, the Streko awards. The man in the suit whispered that I was in contention for the presegious top 20 list.

When I attended the awards all the usuals one would expect were there. What impressed us all the most, was when Mr. Streko arrived, walking with a slight limp and a cane (recovering from a recent hunting accident in Borneo), he walked slowly onto the stage, looked into the auidience and cried. He then lead the audience on a 2 hour journey of his love for humanity, his personal quest for human rights, and his passion for saving the Borneo rainforest.

What held our attention so much was not just the amazing stories he wove so full of passion and hope for the future, but mostly the delicate and articulate language he uses. I looked to my left at Sugar Rae, who tilted her glass of champagne, a tear in her eye, and said simply, “hear! hear!”

Shoemoney and Aaron Chronister both utterred a chuckle when they met in the lobby, Jeremy wearing his new all white long coat with tails, white pants and whit top hat, and Aaron in his usual all black coat and tails, with his black top hat, one the negative of the other.

I kept my acceptance speech to a minimum to show respect to all of those who have helped me and supported me so much.

The evening ended with Pamela Lund singing Frank Sinatra’s I Get a Kick Out Of You, to a standing ovation.

As anyone who has won an Oscar, the Nobel Prize, or a Streko can tell you that it comes with a curse. It is a celebration of a lifetimes achievement. An honor so high that the only direction one can go is down.

Shoemoney campaigning for a possible place on the Streko top 20

So, I have enjoyed my moment at the top, and will now enjoy the plummet from grace accompanied by all of those who will hate me as a result of my award. As I grow old, no one will be able to rob me of the moment that Michael gave me by awarding me the P.W.D.S.

Thank you!

For a change, I am going to take some time off. My wife and I are heading north. It is pretty funny because she is from Norway, and totally used to the cold. I have no idea what to do. Once when she asked me to climb on top of a big snow drift, I asked her if it was possible to fall in the center or if it would hold me up?

The plan, still subject to change, is to drive to Vegas, stay at the Wynn a few nights, then head north. Off to Aspen, to ski/snowboard for half a week, then drive further north to Yellowstone. You can’t drive a car into yellowstone during the winter, so we have arranged for these cool snow cats that carry you in on. Their bottoms have skis and tractor belts.

Once we are in yellowstone, we have reservations for a few nights in these little cabins in the middle of nowhere. It turns out there are still grizzly bears in Yellowstone. I thought they were extinct. I am just imaging wandering outside the cabin at night with grizzly bears.

Then we have a private guide to take us on snowmobiles around yellowstone.

It will be pretty adventurous. The funny part is that you realize that hundreds of years ago, native Americans lived there, grizzlies, snow and all. The only way you could survive was with what you could find in the woods. They did have thermal ponds which they could use as jacuzzis which I am sure made it much easier to get through the winter.

We’ll see how the city/surfer kid does in the snow.

Stay tuned!

Joe Laratro get’s interviewed by Vanessa Zamora at Search Engine World.

Joe really taught me a lesson my first year speaking at Pubcon, when I totally bombed, and he showed me how to really get the audience’s attention.

In this video, Joe, a very creative online marketer, does a beautiful job of getting my interest by talking about my talk during Pubcon on local. In fact I didn’t even really talk, but you can hear Joe discuss it.

I have consistently learned that one of the simplest, most effective ways to get someone’s attention, and get links from them, is simply to talk about them. Linking to them gets their attention even more, (hint – hint).

Remember, most of us who are active on the internet have wordpress blogs that let us know if you link to us. Even if your blog has no value, no pagerank, you will still get someone’s attention if you link to them.

These guys have a blog on Scottish Whiskey as well as other types. I don’t even drink, so never would have found their new blog if they hadn’t linked to my site from their blend of whiskey stories. Their site has a page rank of 0, but I found out about them because they linked to me. Want to have someone famous know about you? Link to them! Then you will have people like Brent Chase, Neil, Shoe, and the most important pair in the internet marketing world know about you. Then, maybe they will link to you one day? Then one day, you might even be noticed by the real power player in the internet business world, Barbara!

Remember, once you have a bit of clout, (Page Rank) it costs you to link out to others. But when you have a blog that is garbage, it costs you nothing to link to others, and lets them know you exist. If you link to a specific page on their blog, they will notice it much easier, than if you just link to the blog in general, since it will show up as a comment that needs to be approved.

Want me to notice you? Might as well link to me! 😉 It just makes sense!

A plane crashed real close to my house today. Real Close. We didn’t even hear it take place.

It was pretty amazing. My wife and I were sitting at our dinning room table planning our Christmas vacation. We are going skiing/boarding in Aspen, and spending some other days exploring the Rocky’s.

So while we are sitting there discussing the trip, and making reservations, this poor pilot is crusing out over the Pacific with a bad engine.

The Marines airport, Miramar, where they filmed Top Gun, is around 2 miles from the ocean. Real close to where we live.

This pilot is out over the ocean and his engine goes bad. I believe he was flying an F/A 18 hornet.

He had taken off from an aircraft carrier and was on his way to the airport by my house.

I hear one of his engines went bad.

So you are flying this multimillion dollar aircraft and you have a few options. I don’t know if they were his options, or his seniors. Regardless of what he was told, it ultimately was still his choice, he was flying the plane.

He had the option of ditching the plane over the ocean, ejecting, and hoping he gets picked up. The ocean is currently around 60 degrees, and you can survive in it for I am sure at least an hour, if not a lot longer. I know because I go surfing in it frequently. The other option is trying to save the plane and landing it at Miramar. The downside of that is you have to fly over my house. 🙂

He chose flying over the houses and landing at the airport.

From what I heard he was aiming down our canyon, the same canyon I occasionally go mountain biking in. At some point, around a quarter mile from the beginning of the military base his plane hit the ground. He had ejected a way back, parachuted down and landed in a tree. His plane hit a house, and killed at least a few people. I still don’t know if I know these people or not.

Imagine the guy who made the decision, and what must have gone through the pilots mind. From the Navy website it sounds like the plane costs around 50 or 60 million. They must have been weighing the costs and risks of the pilots life, the pilots training which I have been told by jet pilots costs around 1 million dollars, the risk of life of civilians which is bad, and also bad PR for the military, the cost of the plane, and the probabilities of which of the outcomes would take place. Meanwhile all of these things are taking place, really, really fast.

From watching them, it looks like it takes these planes less than a minute to get from the ocean to the air field. Remembering the Blue Angels fly over our house, so close that you can see the condensation form off the wings, I bet takes them more like 10 seconds to make that flight.

So you have very little time to make a decision that could take your own life, the life of others, and possibly cost the government 50 or 60 million dollars.

In the end the pilot, and possibly his senior, decided to shoot up the canyon and try to make the airport.

They didn’t make it.

Came fairly close to my house too.

My condolences to the friends and surviving family of those killed. Happy to help in any way I can.

The poor pilot survived. Landed in a tree. I am guessing he is going to feel really bad about what happened. I might even know him.

Decisions sometimes need to be made in split seconds, and the results can be massive. I have found that the business decisions I make today, can have a huge effect on my business, myself, and my family for years or more to come.

In the internet industry we have a lot of power, and effect the opinions of thousands or sometimes millions of people.

As we get closer to Christmas may I invite you to look at what you are doing, and the consequences it will have months, years, and generations down the road.

Maybe make a change now, so when the time comes, you can avoid that last minute decision?

I’ve made some changes for the better because of this, and I enourage you to join me in helping to make this a better planet. 🙂