Archive for June, 2007

Would you like to be paid for your expertise? (In sales training, I was taught to never ask a question that I wouldn’t know the answer to) Of course you do. Did you know that About.com pays their guides (qualified experts) to help them build their site? Well not only do they pay them, but some guides earn in excess of $100,000 per year by maintaining quality content in their field of expertise. Of course, the topics are limited, but it doesn’t hurt to check and see if they have a need that you can fill. The minimum compensation is $725 per month, which isn’t a bad PT income for doing something you enjoy and are good at. Visit: http://beaguide.about.com/ to get more info on becoming an About.com guide. You can view the available topics here: http://beaguide.about.com/topics.htm

Check it all out on Search Engine Land

Also, Matt McGee at Small Business SEM did a nice piece called the Top 12 Takeaways from SMX Advanced.

I look forward to personally covering conferences in the near future. I just don’t have time to get out to conferences lately. If someone is looking for an SEM conference journalist, feel free to ping me.

I got a call last night from my good friend Don Baker from NSI Partners with an Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conference update. I had just read a posting where Karl Ribas had questioned whether or not SEM conferences are worth attending, so it was good to hear that I was not alone in thinking that SEM conferences still have value.

Karl’s article points out that there is so much available online and in the blogosphere, and Don did confirm that by letting me know that there were a handful of bloggers giving “real time” updates right from the sessions. He also confirmed that it is refreshing to be able to hear from the source as opposed to a second hand account of what someone said at a conference.

I hope to get more updates from Don, but you can follow his SEM blog to read more.

Search Engine Land also has a recap of several of the SMX bloggers.

Wishing I were conference bound,

- OldSchool

I know this is last minute notice, but I am unable to attend The Future of Online Advertising Conference this week and I am already registered. After reading Simon’s article on “how to use your readers to build links“, I tried to think of a cool contest to hold. Well, I just don’t have the mental energy to think right now (too much going on), but the simplest way to do it is to say link to this posting if you are interested. Ideally you should be someone in or near NYC as the hotels are not cheap there. The tickets are for both days (Thursday the 7th and Friday the 8th) and are valued at $995.

I did put the word out to a few folks in the industry already, so if they go fast that might explain why.

Good luck to all!