Day 2 of Blog World Expo started off exactly as I suspected… late. I don’t know that I have ever been to a conference where the final day has started on time. Especially a conference held in Las Vegas. I think the only way to have a final day session start on time in Las Vegas is to make sure the final day doesn’t start until noon.
The keynote today wasn’t so much a speech as it was a dialog/Q&A with Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week and Mike Shinoda, singer from Linkin Park moderated by Rohit Bhargava. They talked about building your personal brand and how it pays to be more interested than interesting. Rohit asked them the best question I had heard all weekend: How important to your success has it been to not be an asshole?” This headed the conversation towards how it is important to be nice to people you may think are non-important at the time. You never know which person is going to have the connection or cause you to be in a certain place at the exact right time. Tim also spoke about setting goals but know what the goals give you when you get there. He also suggested to “Talk to your readers like you would talk to your friends after 2 beers.”
The first session of the day I went to was called “My Blog is a Business? Building a Foundation that Can Help You Grow Your Blog Past the Hobby Stage” The panel consisted of Chris Brogan, Rob McNealy, Jeremy Wright and Nina Yablok and was moderated by Jim Kukral. The panel for this session was pretty amusing. Definitely a bunch of characters here. Nina forced them all to give their top keys to becoming a business in less than 5 minutes.
Chris made the following points: Be helpful in your space, write from your customer/reader’s side of the fence, don’t do a sales pitch.
Jeremy said he has 3 simple rules: think less, plan less, do more stupid shit. Don’t get caught up in trying to make things perfect. Of course, he didn’t mean that you should throw any crap together and expect to make money. But I think you get the idea.
Rob pointed out the following: professional bloggers work their asses off 80+ hours a week. Embrace the hard work to be successful, and, if you love what you do and are passionate about it, it doesn’t really seem like hard work.
The next session was called “Beyond Adsense: Exploration of Practical Monetization Streams“. This panel had David Berkowitz, Jason Billingsley, Michael Buechele and Matt Hulett and was moderated by Angel Djambazov. This session had a lot to do with tools each use for making money on their blogs. Mostly ad networks, affiliate links, software to display ads on WordPress blogs, etc. For me this session was mainly review and didn’t have a lot of new content, but there were several people in the crowd frantically taking notes, so I was definitely in the minority there.
Next was the Networking Reception on the Show Floor. During this time I made one final trip around the show room floor. I grabbed a couple more business cards and flyers and broke my rule from yesterday and collected 2 new T-shirts (thanks, Lijit). 
I drank a couple Jones Sodas (cream soda, yum!) and I picked up these two bottles that I think I’m going to go ahead and save for a while. I had some chicken fingers and chips and then I spoke with a few people about WordCamp:Las Vegas. By the time I was done, there was still another hour left before the next session started. I realized that my recent travel schedule plus the marathon day yesterday had left me wiped out. I decided to pack it in and head on home.
I had a great time at BlogWorld once again and I’m already looking forward to next year’s event. I hope to see you all there!
