It’s almost that time again, PubCon in Vegas! Figured I’d post the discount codes for those that look for them each year.

If you’ve never been to PubCon, do yourself a favor and try it. It’s Vegas, so that makes it worth the trip, but the business you walk away with is unlike any other trade show in our market.

15% off – lw-8561915 (only 10 available, act fast)
10% off – lw-4857210

These coupons expire on October 21, 2011.

We (LinkWorth) will have a booth, so stop by booth #15 and say ‘hi’. We will have a keg on the first day of the expo hall. Not sure on the time, but more than likely after noon. Swing by and grab a beer or 4.

Drinks, new friends, dinners, tattoos, meetings, old friends, situs poker online tournaments, fake mustaches, and a few more drinks. That about sums up this year’s Pubcon show in Las Vegas.

I’ll be the first to admit that as soon as we rolled into the exhibit hall to set up our booth, I was underwhelmed. By my count, there were only 19 exhibitor displays in total. I was thinking to myself, “Wow…this one could be hard to justify.” It’s expensive business flying 6 people out to Vegas, after all, especially when you consider the way we tend to do things around here. But leave it to the salty-dogs of Pubcon to come through once again. Brett, my apologies for doubting you. Sure there might have been fewer exhibitors, but that sure didn’t seem to slow things down for us. All in all, I’ll have to say it was a great success yet again.

Wednesday was fantastic. We connected with friends and associates from the past and a bunch of new ones, too. I enjoyed chatting with everyone that came by the booth and for those of you that came to our happy hour at The Wynn…thanks for showing up! I hope you had as much fun as we did. I heard I had an especially good time. (Just kidding…I remember everything. Seriously.)

Things seemed to slow down at the show on Thursday, but that’s usually the case on day 2. Thursday night, however, we (err….most of us…I couldn’t make it) hooked up with the legendary DK to sponsor the bar tab at his annual Texas Holdem Poker Tournament, which I heard was a lot fun. Always great seeing you, bud. Congrats to the sbobet winner, whoever that was. I also heard we had some rather large “branding opportunities” as a result of our sponsorship…

Friday was epic. The big networking event was at a pretty cool pub in the Monte Carlo and, as usual, it lived up to its’ billing. It seemed like everyone from the show was there…all in one room…and conversation (and beer) flowed easily. It was there that we decided to crank things up a notch and put on our fake mustaches. There are certain folks in the industry that frown on some of the services we provide so we thought it best to be “incognito.” Or even more accurately, we just enjoy being silly and that we were. My hat is off to the girls on our team who played along. You wore them well Christine, Robin, Jerri & Amanda! We definitely got our share of strange looks, didn’t we???

But wait…we’re not done yet. Friday sort of flowed right into Friday night where we found ourselves enjoying an incredible dinner at N9NE at the Palms. It was awesome, but not as awesome as our two newest inductees to the InkWorth Hall of Fame. Yes, that’s right, there are now at least 6 people walking the earth with our logo forever stamped on them. And these two are women! Jerri and Amanda, we love your spirit and those tats look fantastic. I think we should start getting bulk discounts at Hart & Huntington! All of our pictures can be seen here on Flickr.

Don’t ask me what happened after that because I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that we made our flight on Saturday morning and all arrived home safely.

See you in March for Pubcon Dallas!

Another year, another trip planned for Vegas to attend the popular PubCon show.

If you’ve been before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the “old dog” show, meaning all of us that have been around for years always make a point to attend this show because the networking is better than any other show you’ll attend.

We were given data showing trade shows this year have averaged a 30% drop in attendance, but something tells me PubCon probably will be kicking it as usual.

If you plan on going, we have a couple discount coupons available:

• 15% Discount – li-81315 (only 9 of these left)
• 10% Discount – li-21710

Sitting here in our booth at PubCon in Vegas. Attendence has been slow but those we speak to are great contacts.

In a booth next to us is a really cool iphone game app called inetmania. Its a game for webmasters and you have the ability to make a lot of money with it. Check it out at www.inetmania.com …

Last night Matt and I were invited to a secret “dirty link sellers dinner”. Hosted by Patrick Gavin and MediaWhiz. Lots of familiar faces and plenty of food and drinks. Conversations were great and thanks so much to those guys for the night.

Off for now. Have 2 more nights!!

PubCon is just over a week away from posting this. Always a fun time and great way to meet all the industry people who enjoy a great time. Let’s face it, if you are going to PubCon Vegas, it means you like to let loose and socialize. Plus, the end of the conference includes a Pub crawl!

Things we look forward to this year:

• Spreading the LinkWorth business to new business owners, their employees & agencies that haven’t heard of us yet! (the whole point of going)
• A secret little dinner with some big names, hosted by a cool guy. (all I can say) The conversation here will most definitely be top secret and classified.
• Meeting new faces and seeing familiar faces as well.
• Tattoo Me Night! This will be the night that a couple of us will be getting LinkWorth logo tattoo’s and anyone else who is interested. Always the best night!
• Pub Crawl. This will be our first time to stick around for it. Hope it’s as fun as they say it is. If it isn’t, something tells me we’ll wake things up a bit.

If you’re interested in the “Tattoo Me Night”, shoot me an email. We’ll pay for the tattoo, as long as it’s our logo, of course. It’s fun and a story you’ll have for the rest of your life!

It’s almost that time of year again! PubCon Vegas – November 11-15. If you’ve been before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you have never been, first of all, it’s Vegas. There really isn’t a second part, it’s just a blast to attend.

If you plan on attending, we have ten (10) 25% discount codes and unlimited 10% discount codes that you can find on couponscollector.com. I know some of you have asked about the PubCon coupons, so jump on the 25% codes ASAP if you know you’re going.

• li-30325 – 25% off coupon code (first come first serve)
• li-71010 – 10% off coupon code (unlimited)

Go to PubCon to register today. LinkWorth will be in booth 29 and we hope you’ll stop by to say hello. Who knows, maybe we’ll have another tattoo night. Anyone want a LinkWorth logo tattoo? If so, stop by our booth and we’ll make it happen.

This year’s Pubcon was unique due to it being the same week as SES Chicago. While the show was still a decent turnout, there is no doubt it was a lot smaller than it would have been had SES not scheduled a show in Chicago. Regardless of that small side note, we couldn’t have been happier with the results. We were able to see and talk to a lot of existing customers and lined up several new clients.

Much like the SES San Jose show, the link buying session grew the biggest buzz of all sessions. Unfortunately we were busy at our booth and missed the fun, but evidently the presence of someone in the crowd caused lack luster presentations and a complete fart and fall down moment.

A couple off topic trip thoughts, American Airlines absolutely sucks at ever arriving or departing on time and rolled up bath towels can make great pillows on the bathroom floor. Go Vegas!

LinkWorth will have a booth at the big Vegas Pubcon show next week (Dec 5th & 6th expo hall dates). Pubcon is always a great show to attend for the following reasons:

• It’s in Vegas
• It’s reasonably priced
• LinkWorth will be there
• Did I mention it’s in Vegas?
• We’ll pay to get our logo tattoo’d on you (Ask Dave & Matt!)
• Gambling, Live Shows, Great Hotels
• Pubcon has a great turn out
• And the obvious reason, VEGAS!

Make sure to check out joker123 if you want to learn how to play poker online. Clubvip777 is also one of the most rusted platform for online casino gaming. And for other gambling games like slots machines, go to DaisySlots. There is no other online casino with the same caliber as them. By just registering an account, you can already claim an excellent reward. If you’re going and looking for a discount, here are a couple of coupon codes:

10 coupons worth 25% off: “li-62825”
Unlimited 10% off coupons: “li-37610”

Obviously the 25% will be first come first serve. We hope to see everyone there. Please try to stop by and say “Hey”.

One of the sessions we participated in at the Vegas Pubcon was the session on “purchasing links”. I missed the SES conference in San Jose, but Matt did make it and sat in the session on link buying. One of Matt’s first comments regarding the Pubcon session was how the first speaker gave the exact same speech that was given by another person in San Jose. I’m guessing most participants of these sessions are reps sent to learn for their respective companies and most will not attend all of the conferences, however, there are many people that try to make several of these conferences, so I would imagine there is a decent percentage that hear the session presentations numerous times. With that being said, should unique content and a variety be a good idea to “spruce” things up for those who have been lucky enough to participate in many conference sessions? This was the lineup:

Andy Hagans, Strategist, ReviewMe
John Lessnau, Founder, LinkAdage
Thomas Bindl, SEO Consultant, ThomasBindl.com

1. As mentioned above, the first speaker, Andy Hagans, who represented his new venture “ReviewMe“, showed an identical slideshow and presentation which Patrick Gavin gave at the San Jose SES for his company Text Link Ads. Of course, these two guys work, or have worked with each other, so maybe there is a passing of the buck or some such, but frequent audience members would prefer to learn new info each time and the imitation is like seeing a comedy show where the comic says the exact same jokes from last time and it loses it’s luster.

2. The next speaker was John Lessnau who founded LinkAdage. For those who are unfamiliar with LinkAdage, they were actually one of the first sites to offer a way to buy and/or sell links between webmasters. They definitely took the quick route and purchased a pre-coded auction software program and tweaked it to their liking, but they basically auctioned the sale of text links. They’ve offered other forms of text advertising to keep up, but I believe the auction angle does well for them.

Now when Lessnau began his presentation, I noticed an image on the projection that caught my eye, the Survivorman splash screen. I turned Matt on to watching Survivorman so we both love the show. So we were eagerly interested in hearing what Lessnau had to say since it’s our favorite show. As time goes on, the presentation became more and more familiar and I instantly pulled up my Moto Q phone and logged on to our LinkWorth Blog. I did a quick search for Survivorman and much to my surprise; this presentation was somewhat identical to something I wrote back in March of 2006.

I handed the phone to Matt so he could read what I had written to get a 3rd party opinion, then also had another person read it to get one more opinion and the topic became whether it was plagiarism or coincidence. I was told that “Plagiarism is the best form of flattery.“, but also would like to know if this guy that I have never met before thinks exactly like I do. I must admit that listening to his speech, he gives speeches almost identical to how I would; long pauses, stuttering, over use of the word “uh” and so on. I’m horrible at giving speeches and I commend those who do, but Mr. Lessnau fell on my side of the fence when it came to his speech. I definitely am not here to bag on his speech abilities because I am horrible, but I am very interested with similarities between his presentation and my blog post back in March over the exact same thing.

The guys over at SEO Roundtable are very good at blogging the sessions and I found this session on their site. So I will reference the page and then paste the bit of info on this part of the session so those who missed the Pubcon could get some insight.

John Lessnau from LinkAdage (sp?). He says there is no such thing as a free link. You can pay, trade, get one for a favor, or get links to great content or tools that cost a lot of money to develop. He started by relating the TV show “Survivorman,” saying that some webmasters need to be able to get a lot of links with few resources. So “What would Survivorman do to get links?” One thing that a new webmaster has is time. At least there is time to spend on researching competition, and to gain knowledge from seminars like this and by talking to other people.

He look at about 300K .net and .com domains and looked at how many were various PageRanks. He threw out the 210K that had 0 PR. Found almost no PR 9’s, only 18 PR 8’s (.027% of all sites. The majority of page had 1, 2, or 3 (23.5%, 27.4%, and 25.8%, respectively. Interesting. Link buying tips: buy keywords for your site embedded in existing text within indexed sites. Do not worry about PR 0, as long as it’s indexed. Buy only permanent or year long links. Do not spend over $5/month on average per link…sounds cheap, but there are plenty like that available. Goes into an example of how to find keywords that might be relevant, and finding obscure websites that come up with the keywords. Approach the sites probably not making any money and buy links from them. Showed some cool examples of results of this type of research…finding some nice niche sites.

Beware of links that may fit into any of the following classifications: on home pages of very high PR sites. In long lists at the bottom or sides of pages. Links under “sponsored links” text. Links that are “run of site” (aka “site-wide links”). On sites designed to sell links. On an artificial networks of sites. He ends like Andy and says to keep your links natural.

So I think there was a definite certain spin put on his presentation, however, is it plagiarism, imitation or just plain coincidence here? I definitely commend him on saying Survivorman is his favorite show! In case other Survivorman fans read this, Les Stroud is currently filming the first location for season 2 . . . FINALLY! ! !

First let us thank everyone that showed up to the Viva Las Vegas Lounge!  Although the live Sirius radio broadcast with guests like Lukas Rossi from Rockstar Supernova and the drummer from Guns-n-Roses, Steven Adler did get up a few feet away from us and go speak with them, no one could be out done by the comedian Jim Breuer.  We weren’t sure if Jim was a guest or if he’s part of the show, but he stayed the entire time and pretty much gave every one of us a headache for screaming into the mic continuously.  You could never even hear what the others were saying because he spoke over them, but then you couldn’t understand Jim because he screamed so loud it distorted the sound.  Absolute thumbs down to that station and their performance.  It could have been better, but oh well. 

On to the real matter at hand, our LinkWorth happy hour.  Matt and I both agreed Friday on the plane ride home that it was the absolute best part of the entire trip.  Pubcon was “ok”, but other than hearing the engines prove points or show us new releases we haven’t yet read on their blog already, it’s a bit a waste of our time and money to go sit in these seminars.  So this go ’round, Matt and I wanted to step outside of the norm and plan a gathering for our customers and other associates outside the actual convention.  This led to putting a small happy hour together at the Hard Rock Cafe where Matt and I were staying.  A way to get up and close to each and everyone that shows up listening to any and all feedback over a few drinks and see where things go.

All I can say is, “SUCCESS!”  From the initial first arrival “Dazzlin Donna” all the way down to the “American Muscle” crew, we were able to speak, face to face, with some of our long time advertisers and partners who have been with us since we initially launched.  The theme was “what is your account id?” in hopes of becoming the lowest account id in attendance.  I believe M_Reider at account 24 was the lowest (other than my account 1 😀 ), however, I didn’t hear of one that was over 100.  It was definitely very special to us in putting faces to names and creating a more personal working relationship with all of you.

Initially, we were worried people would have a hard time finding us because some tables that were supposed to be roped off, wound up not being so at the last minute and we couldn’t do much with it.  We did notice that most visitors found us quickly.  If you looked for us and did not find our table, we deeply apologize and next time will be much more organized! 

Once the drinking began, a shot here or there and then inhibitions started being dropped like our money in the local slot machines.  As our drinks kept coming and a few visitors moved on to bed or “other things”, our group dwindled down to Steve and his crew along with Matt and I.  One of the guys “Dave” had a few martini’s dry on the rocks and had a great idea to possibly put our LinkWorth Logo on the outside of his left shoulder.  Matt, being one that rarely backs down from a bet, says, “If you will do that, no only will LinkWorth pay for your tattoo, but I’ll get one with you!”

After some careful consideration and thought about the idea, I closed our tab at the bar and called up a nice big limo to take us all down to Vince Neil’s ink parlor.  The two gave things one last consideration and didn’t even think twice about it.  Next thing you see is both guys headed back.  Unforutnately, Dave’s room was not on the outside window for us to watch, but Matt’s was.  We had a camera with video making her way to the back to catch Dave. 

So the final outcome was the simple logo on our business cards.  Matt placed his on the underneath of his left bicep (OUCH!) and it actually looks like a very cool and trendy tattoo.  Dave threw a little fit at first for the size and wanted it TWICE AS BIG! !  On the outside of his shoulder/arm, so his is a little larger.

After the fact someone brought it up to go over to the Hart & Huntington ink parlor and try to be on their reality show, but at that point in the night, we wanted to make sure it went through before changing of minds and get it done.  The TV aspect would have been interesting enough to qualify for the show, but I’m just as happy with the memory and the pictures and videos we have.

The pictures and videos of Dave (our client) getting our LinkWorth Logo tattooed will be up very soon.  Hang tight, they’re well worth it.  I think we all deemed it the most exciting time of the entire conference that night.  GREAT stuff.  Thank you Matt & Dave!  Expect the video’s and Pics this next week.