What Is The One Dollar Experiment?

Simply put, the One Dollar Experiment is nothing more than asking all my readers to donate $1 to help pay for my travel and hotel stay.

But it doesn’t stop at simply donating a dollar.

For every dollar you donate, you get that many chances in a drawing to win half the money that I raise.

So if I raise $1,000, then one lucky winner will get $500 to use anyway they want.  This means the more you donate, the more money you could possibly win.  And by all means, you don’t have to stop at $1.  You can donate as much money as you want.

Drawing A Winner

The One Dollar Experiment will end July 27th and the winner will be drawn and announced on July 28th.  Anyone is eligible to enter and win, no matter what country you’re from.  The only requirement is that you have a paypal account, as that’s how the money will be transferred.

Gaining Another Entry

To get another entry into the drawing to win or to simply help me get the word out, copy and paste the message below into Twitter.

Here’s your chance to win a large sum of money from @steven_sanders in his One Dollar Experiment. http://bit.ly/14O1ji

Let the experiment begin!

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About Elite Retreat

Elite Retreat is different from most marketing conferences, in that you can actually learn some great info from some of the greatest internet marketers today.

Most marketing conferences are, what elite retreat calls, “Pitchfests”.  Meaning, you pay money for a sampling of experts followed by an exhausting series of sales pitches from people promising you lessons in marketing in return for some of your hard-earned money.

Most of these pitches leave you with less money and feeling even more confused.

Elite Retreat actually lets you sit down and interact with experts rather than just listening.

Registering For Elite Retreat

The Elite Retreat is a very exclusive event, and sells out within days of opening registration.  Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker has been able to assemble the most sought after people in the industry to provide insight and help to those that attend.  Some of the leaders this year will be Chris Winfield of 10e20, Neil Patel of KISSMetrics, Aaron Wall of SEO Book, and Brian Norgard, of FOX Advertising.  Keynote speakers of the ER have been great in the past, including Guy Kawasaki and Gary Vaynerchuk.  This year the keynote will be none other than, New York Times Bestselling Author, Seth Godin.

But you should be warned that this conference is not for everyone.  Jeremy takes the time to approve all of the attendees, so that everyone gets the most out of the Elite Retreat.  Don’t be scared to register though, it is NOT invitation only.  He just likes to make sure you are prepared for what this event can do for you.

Registration for the event is open early to you because Jeremy selects a few people to do some pre-sales before he announces it on his blog (www.shoemoney.com).

The cost to attend is $4,995 per person, and although some may call it expensive anyone who has ever attended the Elite Retreat calls it an investment that easily pays for itself.  An hour of consulting with any one of these guys would cost you at least $5,000.

Register For Elite Retreat Here!

Location Location Location

This year the event will take place at the unbelievable Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District of New York City.  The hotel has one of a kind spaces for being in Manhattan, like a rooftop pool (which will be the location of the opening night party).  Pics of the hotel can be viewed here: http://www.hotelgansevoort.com/photo-gallery/index.cfm

For more information on the Elite Retreat NYC, check out http://www.eliteretreat.info.  But don’t take too much time deciding, the event always sells out, and like I said Jeremy will be announcing the event to the world on Wednesday.

Click here to register for Elite Retreat in New York City

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Free Ticket To Izea Fest

Early last month, I started a giveaway for 2 IzeaFest tickets, holding onto a third and hoping I could come up with some creative way of giving it away.  And I’ve finally decided on giving it away at Blogher.

If you’ve never hear of IzeaFest, you are really missing out!  It covers a wide variety of topics dealing with blogging, but most importantly, this year, it is offering every attendee a free pass to Sea World Orlando on the Sunday of the event.

You really can’t pass up a free ticket to Sea World!

To find out more about IzeaFest, click here.

How To Enter

Entering to win a free ticket to IzeaFest 09 at Blogher is super easy.  Simply find me, and give me your business card.  Much to the warning from Backpacking dad on his How To Attend Blogher As A Dude post, I’ll be the one wearing cargo shorts, and probably an Izea t-shirt.

Might even be cool if Izea gave me a t-shirt to wear to Blogher that said something like “Ask me how to get a free ticket to IzeaFest 2009″.  *Wink *Wink

When I get back home from Blogher (carrying my huge stash of business cards), I’ll mix them all up, throw them in a big pile, close my eyes, and randomly draw one card.

The owner of that card will win the Free Ticket to IzeaFest.

If you’ve already purchased a ticket to IzeaFest or won one from someone else, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to draw another name to win.  What fun would an event be where one person horded all of the tickets?

Are you going to Blogher? Leave me a comment, letting me know.

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The sleek all-in-one unit’s 21.5-inch HD screen and hidden speakers and sub make it perfect for doing double duty as a bedroom TV. It even has a sweet remote control/air mouse and wireless keyboard.

A Core 2 Duo processor, optional ATI Radeon graphics card, and up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory provide enough muscle to play intensive games like Crysis as well.

Sure, you could install MS Office, but this rig’s best features are all geared to help you avoid work altogether.

You can get the Lenovo A600 from Amazon for $994.39. Click here to learn more!

If you’re interested in sponsoring next weeks “Gadget of the Week”, please contact me here.

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Winner Number 1

The first winner of a Free IzeaFest ticket is Anne-Marie Nichols of www.the-write-spot.com.  You can also find her on Twitter under the name amnichols.  How convenient.

Anne-Marie seems to be doing very well for herself with her many blogs and social media profiles.  I’m sure she will bring a lot to the IzeaFest conference.

Winner Number 2

Winner number two of a Free IzeaFest ticket is Stacie Haight Connerty of thedivinemissmommy.com. You can also find her on Twitter under the name StacieinAtlanta.  With over 12,000 twitter followers, she must have something interesting to say.

Stacie is also doing very well with her blog and social media profiles.

Win A Free Ticket To IzeaFest 2009

Congratulations to the winners and remember I still have one more ticket to give away, so make sure you continue visiting my blog or subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss your chance to win a Free IzeaFest 2009 ticket.

Remember, if you aren’t interested in possibly missing the chance to attend IzeaFest because you’re waiting on winning a ticket, you can alway go ahead and buy a ticket to IzeaFest 09 here.

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And thanks to the marvelous workings of my Twitter friend Jeff Peak (you can follow him here), I have a new design, that truly stands out from most other business cards.  I, of course, made a few minor text changes myself.

Your Thoughts

Of course, I could never settle on the final touches without getting your input.  After all, you are the reason I write.

So here are pictures of the front and back of the card.  Let me know what you think!

Like it? Don’t Like it? Any suggestions?

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I have 3 Gold passes to Affiliate Summit East in New York City.  These passes normally cost $399, so a free one could be the difference in whether you can go or not.

What’s Affiliate Summit East?

For those of you who don’t know, here is an exerpt straight from the Affiliate Summit website:

“Affiliate Summit East, the premier affiliate marketing conference, is taking place August 9-11, 2009 in New York City.

This three day conference includes an exhibit hall with affiliate merchants, vendors, and networks, as well as multiple tracks of educational sessions covering the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts.

The keynote speaker for Monday, August 10 will be Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, and the keynote for Tuesday, August 11 will be Peter Shankman, founder and CEO of The Geek Factory.

Our charity partner for Affiliate Summit East 2009 is Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City.

Where: Hilton New York
When: August 9-11, 2009″

How To Enter

Entering to win is as simple as hitting a few keys on your keyboard.  Here are the three ways to enter:

1. Copy and Paste the following on Twitter: (1 entry)

- “I just entered to win a Free Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit East from @steven_sanders .  RT to enter to win. http://tinyurl.com/mlfnxl”

2. Write a blog post telling others about Affiliate Summit East and about this giveaway. (3 entries)

3. Join my Izea Insider group, Izea Mafia, and claim your blog on Social Spark. (5 entries)

* Giveaway ends July 20, 2009 at 11:59 pm

Make sure you visit tomorrow to find out who won the Free Passes to IzeaFest 2009!

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Not only has this given me a break so I can come back to this blog fresh rather than worrying about blogger burn-out, but it’s also been part of an experiment.

An experiment to find out just how my subscribers and social media followers react to a strong blog that pumps out great content every single day, then disappears for a month.

The Effects On My Blog

Yes, when you stop writing content for you blog for a month’s time, you’re going to lose traffic.  My traffic numbers didn’t totally go away, but they did dwindle down quite a bit.

The key to keeping your numbers high when you take a blog vacation?

Work on your backlinks.  Be everywhere.

The more places that are linked to you blog, the more links of yours show up in Google, the more traffic you’ll get even when you’re not writing.

But don’t expect to build that traffic overnight.  It takes months, and even years to build enough backlinks to significantly keep traffic flowing when you’re away.

My subscriber count while not showing an astonishing increase, did actually show an increase rather than a decrease in subscribers.  Which begs the question of whether all of the advice that’s been taught about how subscribers will leave if you don’t keep a consistant writing is really flawed.

From my experiment, I’ve concluded that subscriber numbers aren’t effected by a disappearance of one month.  But the results could change if a blogger was gone for a longer period of time.

The Effects On Social Media

The effects my disappearance has had on my social media profiles is actually quite impressive.

I’ve increased twitter followers by at least 200 since my month-long disappearance.

The best way to do this?

Use websites that compliment your use of Twitter.  Like Twitter Follower and others.  They aren’t just here to look pretty.  They actually can work in ways you haven’t though about before.

Have you taken a break from blogging before?  How long?  And what effects did you experience?

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I’m picturing the biggest and most popular blog the world has ever known!

Co-blogging, even if the authors aren’t big names in the industry, are marketed and maintained better than a single authored blog.  And I believe that as more and more people start becoming interested in making money online, the best approach for most would be to team up and kill it on one blog.

If you look at your blog as a real business it only makes sense that co-blogging will only get bigger.

Just like with a business, you don’t run everything.  You figure out what area you’re weak in, then hire someone else to do it.

With blogging, you may be an awesome writer, but have no clue about affiliate marketing, so it would make good business sense to hire someone very proficient in that area; giving your blog an even more powerful driving force.

Here are 4 benefits of co-blogging:

1. Multiple times the marketing power – It’s hard enough to market something by yourself, but imagine how much marketing you can get done if you doubled your efforts.
2. Multiple times the content – As a single blogger, many find it difficult to post consistantly over a long period of time.  By increasing the number of authors you have on your blog, the job of consistantly posting great content gets extremely easier.
3. Multiple time the knowledge – Let’s face it, no one knows everything.  But 3-4 people could know quite a bit more than just one.  Having more than one author for a particular niche can open up ideas that a single blogger might not have thought of.
4. Multiple times the time – The biggest problem most single bloggers have is the time needed to build and market their blog successfully.  With multiple authors, you effectively increase the time  you have by twice as much if not more.  What might have taken you 2 hours to do could now only take 1 for each of you with 2 authors.

Leading By Example

I recently started a new blog geared toward my local community, but I don’t do it by myself.  My wife is also an author, and in only 2 days of the blog being up, we’ve already made 27 posts, and saw traffic and subscriber numbers that aren’t typical when a single author starts a new blog.

We are leveraging the power of both of our networks, and it has helped a lot!

You can check out the new blog here: www.helloky.com

What are your thoughts on co-blogging?  Do you co-blog?

I’ve not been on any social media sites, there’s been no blog posts, no commenting, etc.

It’s not because I’ve given up on anything… because I haven’t.

It’s because I’m trying to expand by getting smaller.  Or more like, going local.

The Results Of A Split Personality

It seems I have two passions in life when it comes to what I want to blog about.

1. Making Money Online
2. Helping others find interesting things to do where I live.

The first passion is something I’m already doing with this blog.  I’ve managed to successfully make money online and I love helping others do the same.

The second passion is something that I wasn’t currently doing… until now.

My Newest Blog

I’ve been really working hard to set up and get a new blog running that is targeted toward my local hometown area.

Not many people around here are interested in blogging and making money doing it, so there was never really a great way to connect with any of the local community through this blog.

My ultimate goal with blogging has always been to better connect with others.  I can make money online in so many other ways than blogging.  In fact, I’m already doing it.

So creating a blog where I can really connect locally was very important for me.

It’s not loaded down with content yet, but it’s slowly building up.

If you have some time, check out my newest blog geared toward my hometown of Western KY.

www.helloKY.com

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

I know it’s been preached to you more times than you care to admit.  I’ve even done it.

Shouldn’t you put your focus onto only one blog and really try to build it?

For most, the answer is yes.

If you have trouble running one blog and keeping it maintained, then you probably only need to stick with one blog.  But for those that can make the time to put 100% effort into 2 blogs, then go for it.

If you can handle multiple blogs, remain passionate about them both, and keep fresh content flowing on each, then it’s very easy to double or even triple your income (depending on the popularity of your niche, and you expertise).

I’d love to know what you think of my new blog.  Let me hear it with a comment.

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