I spent this past weekend at Blog World LA, a conference very much like how it sounds, at the LA Convention Center. In contrast to most of my conference visits, I actually went to three different sessions at this one. Crazy, I know.

I went to a Friday session that basically turned out to be an introduction to WordPress. Unfortunately, I got there late, so I had to sit in the very front. By the time the horror of the reality of the session sunk in, it was already too late. I was already firmly planted front and center. I waited as long as I possibly could before I rudely evacuated. The time in between was spent on Skype.

Saturday I attended two sessions about video. Although I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it on this blog, I co-run a YouTube partner account that has seen some pretty significant success in the past couple years. We just recently started getting heavily back into producing content for YouTube, so I hoped to get some good info out of these sessions. Or at the very least, leave the room super motivated to create more videos.

YouTube Partner Success Panel

This was the first session I attended. Hosted by Paul Colligan, the panel consisted of Mike Rotman, Ed Dale, and Don McAllister. All of the above have been very successful using YouTube as a promotion vehicle for their respective businesses. Unfortunately for me, they all focus on using YouTube as a tool to promote their business, and not actually using YouTube to produce a passive income (via partnership/revenue share). Although I definitely understand the value in what they are doing, I was still disappointed. I was hoping for more specific YouTube talk rather than general online business promotion. If you understood the nature of my partner account, you would understand why building an outside business off of it would be rather difficult (and sort of silly).

How to Promote Your Video

I thoroughly enjoyed this session. This one was run by Michael Terpin, founder and CEO of Social Radius. Michael and his company have been responsible for the viralization of many prominent videos such as Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral and Scarface School Play (one of my personal favorites).

One thing Terpin stressed was the importance of sound quality in a video. Amazing sound quality won’t make a video go viral, but shitty sound quality will most definitely prevent it from doing so. It’s something a lot of people new to online video overlook. The guy filming the session recommended this type of mic for capturing the best audio (not that exact model, necessarily).

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Blog World is a very different animal from the conferences I’m used to, such as Affiliate Summit. Instead of small to mid size ad networks shoving free booze and strippers in your face, you get companies like Blogger and Stickam giving you glossy little info cards. I know that sounds boring, but it’s not so bad. And there are about 745% more female attendees than any affiliate summit. A lot of fashion bloggers and that sort of thing.

One impressive company in particular was the Ebay Partner Network. Great people, all around. The new head of the North America program, Julia Barrett, is pretty dang awesome. She’s also hilarious. I never thought I’d be openly advocating EPN on this site, but really, any doubts I had about the program or the people running it have been dissolved. I’ll probably build another handful of eBay sites before Christmas. I suggest you do the same. If you’re having trouble getting accepted by EPN (and you have quality web sites), contact me for help.