Six years ago, when I moved to the US when working for eBay, I set myself two goals: 1) Build up a network of people in my industry,Internet Marketing 2) Get more comfortable with speaking in public. Now looking back, I'm happy to say that I made good progress on both of these goals!

SEO Networking in the USA

Over the last 6 years, I managed to meet a lot of people. It is not a coincident as I made an effort every time I was at a conference. As I described in a recent interview with Aimclear:

One of the efforts I always found important is to build a broad network and connect with people who at least understand what I’m talking about on what I do on a daily basis. The first conference I went in the US was SMX Advanced in Seattle in 2006. First night I met with my friend Scott Polk (now at ObsidianEdge) and Scott Skurnick (now at Sears), both at Edmunds at the time. We still keep in touch and get together when we attend the same conferences.

Even to this day, when I go to a conference, I have a goal to meet new people. And not only meet them, but also stay in touch and check in after the conference. You never know who you can help in the future, or introduce people to each other!

Speaking in Public

Meeting new people is easier when you are one of the speakers. Not that I see myself as a Rock Star on the speaker circuit, but it's a simpler opening to approach people and ask questions. In the last 3 years, I spoke at several small or large conferences, but the funny thing is, I'm still nervous before I speak.

Just recently I started to read the book Confessions of a Public Speaker, in which Scott Berkun tells all kind of stories what he has experienced travelling the world for speaking performances. Already on page 8, Scott brings in a great perspective out of Dale Carnegie's Public Speaking for Success:

Good speakers usually find when they finish that there have been four versions of the speech: the one they delivered, the one they prepared, the one the newspapers say was delivered, and the one on the way home they wish they had delivered.

For me, I think it's important the audience thought it was worth it to spend their time listening what I have to say at that moment. As long as the audience didn't feel cheated out of 20 minutes or 3 hours of their life, I would say only then I'm satisfied! Which is at the same time, my biggest fear, and I always feel insecure after the session I was speaking at and I'm dying to get feedback from people in the audience. Feedback which would make me better in what I've just delivered.

Dennis Goedegebuure, Greg Boser (moderator) and William Sears
Foto sourced: BlueGlass

Learn from your Audience

The two best public speaking events I learned a lot from, where not even in the SEO industry. Last year I spoke at the EVO conference (see my post about speaking at EVO 2011 here), where I did a 3 hour SEO workshop for Bloggers. Just 2 weeks ago, I did a similar updated session at the SNAP conference (download a PDF of my presentation here). Three hours, I spoke about what I'm passioned about: Search Marketing, SEO & Blogging! You can read how the audience has experienced the 3 hours presentation here. And trust me, holding the attention of an audience for 3 hours, is really hard!

Presenting at SNAP conference 2012

Photo by Kendra from My Insanity

At the SNAP conference I reconnected with bloggers who sat through the 3 hours SEO workshop at EVO. Asking if they implemented any of the best practices and what happened with their traffic, I was pleased to learn that all of them had significantly grown their traffic. I even got to hear of one website which had grown from 8-9K visitors a months last year, to more than 100K per months right now! I wished I could take credit for this growth, but unfortunately I have only helped the search engines to find the content on these websites easier than before.

My Public Speaking Confessions

The women I spoke at SNAP are so much more successful in Blogging then I am. I'm using this site to rant, publish ideas, news what is happening in San Francisco, and here and there a lost photo. nothing really structured or on one topic. Next to that, I hardly am making enough time to really build out the site, because I simply have way more other stuff to do.

Speaking with people who run a successful site with more than 2 million visitors a months, inspired me to think about new projects. Since I will have some time over the summer, I will start to prepare a new project inspired by the success of all the creative bloggers at EVO & SNAP. More to come!

Oh, and last thing: EVO & SNAP, THANK YOU for the inspiration and the opportunity to for me to learn from you all!

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Some time ago, I bought a site from somebody for a small amount of money. It’s a poetry website, for which I thought I would have plenty of time to build it out, redesign and make it a good running website. Now two and a half years later, I managed just a few things on the list of to do’s, which stands between me and my success in the poetry business.

One small milestone is that the site now has more than a thousand poems in it’s database. Just last week the number of poems broke through the magic number of 1,000.

If only I had more time to work on a couple of side projects, then I would be able to retire sooner than my current plan!

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Just one more day to get as many donations as possible for Movember 2009. We did alright, collecting $365 so far, but we can still hit the higher numbers in just one day. So if you read this, get your credit card out of your wallet, or use your Paypal account, and donate at least $1 for Cancer research. It will benefit men’s health in general! Donate here!

Growing a Beard

Today we had a lot of fun grooming my beard to a nice looking moustache. I had the full beard growing for at least 3 weeks, so it was pretty tough to get the hair off my cheeks. Here are some shots just before grooming.

Just after a week, it started to itch really bad. At that point I had to go beyond myself to not start shaving every morning. After another week, it was ok. No itching anymore, but only if you touched your face a lot, your skin would start to burn from the hairs pointing into it.

Some people in the office had trouble recognizing me with the shorter hair and the beard at the same time. I will make it up going back to my old look after November 30th. As long as people will donate to our cause!

Moustache Grooming Fun

I finally got around trying my hair clipper I bought on eBay. It was tough to go through the long facial hair which had grown over the last 3.5 weeks on my cheeks. But at the same time, I started to feel naked in my face… Now I get it why some men keep their beards. It’s nice and comfy warm…

After the grooming, we had a big laugh. I felt like a truck driver, and almost I started to shave the sides of my moustache off. But then I reminded myself, this is for getting as many donations as possible, so shaving it off right now, won’t get more money in.

So please donate some more money! At least I will know I have not done this without any pay off!

I even went out for dinner with this facial hair showing off the ridiculous moustache on my upper lip.

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Martin Luther King day, wonderful weather outside in San Francisco. I can hear the coco bongo’s in Dolores park through my open window. Not for me today, I stay inside… Not that I’m afraid for the UV, it’s more that I finally found some time to work on a project I had in mind for a long time. ShopTwits!

Somewhere in November StockTwits was launched, and I instantly liked the service. It got me thinking right away, what can I do with product conversations on Twitter? Right, there is a lot of money to be made from affiliate programs, and so far I don’t get any of it! That can change with just a little bid of effort… Back then I registered the domain ShopTwits.com, next to shoppingtwits.com. Some other domains were already registered, so I knew that there were some other people who had the same idea!

But damn, I had not enough time! Like I already once burned my nose of inactivity on a good idea, I almost was the fool who was fooled twice; not executing on a good idea. A good idea is not a good idea without execution!With Twitter, you can not stall the development for another moment it is convenient to you. With Twitter you can be too late if you wait just 12 hours! And until today, I again waited almost 2 months!

So what is ShopTwits? On ShopTwits you can discuss, review and enjoy all kinds of products. For now, we only source the talks and discussions from Twitter, but there is more in the pipeline.

Stay tuned for ShopTwits… It might be the next revolution in shopping!

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