This tour will visit the historic Denver Mint. This is a free, 30 minute tour. We will meet in the foyer outside of the Imperial Ballroom at 2:15 and walk to the Mint. The walk is 0.6 miles and will take approximately 15 mins. The tour actually begins at 3pm, but we have to arrive 30 mins early. Limited to 40 people.
This tour will visit the Great Divide Brewing Co.'s tap room and brewery. We will meet at 2:30 in the Foyer outside of the Imperial Ballroom and walk to Great Divide, which is 0.6 miles, or 12 mins, from the hotel. The tour actually begins in the Great Divide tap room at 3pm and lasts 30 mins. Limited to 30 people.
This tour will visit Little Man Ice Cream and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Denver. Anyone who wants to take the tour should be able (and willing:) to walk a little bit.
This tour will meet in the Foyer outside of the Imperial Ballroom at 3pm. You will take the free 16th street mall shuttle (one block from the hotel) up to Union Station and then walk to Little Man Ice Cream. It is about a 16 minute walk (.8 miles). And from Little Man Ice Cream to the MCA it is about a 13 minute walk (.7 miles).From MCA back to Union Station it is about 3 blocks.
Admission to the MCA is $10, and you will have to pay for your own ice cream. No limit to attendees.
The first stop on this pub hop will be Wynkoop Brewing Company - Denver's oldest brew pub. After a taste, we'll take a short walk over to the Falling Rock Tap House - they maintain a constantly changing selection of 75+ beers on tap. To finish our tour we will head next door to 1Up - Denver's twist on the arcade bar concept. The 1up features over 45 classic Arcade Games, 15 Pinball Machines, 3 Lanes of Classic Skee-Ball, and more.
We will meet in the Foyer outside of the Imperial Ballroom at 3pm to start the tour and take the 16th Street bus to Wynkoop. Beers cost around $5. Games at 1 Up cost 0.25 cents.
This tour will visit the historic Denver Mint. This is a free, 30 minute tour. We will meet on the second floor of the hotel by the Imperial Ballroom foyer at 3:15 and walk to the Mint. The walk is 0.6 miles and will take approximately 15 mins. The tour actually begins at 4pm, but we have to arrive 30 mins early. Limited to 40 people.
This tour will visit the Great Divide Brewing Co.'s tap room and brewery. We will meet in the Foyer outside of the Imperial Ballroom at 3:30 and walk to Great Divide, which is 0.6 miles, or 12 mins, from the hotel. The tour actually begins in the Great Divide tap room at 4pm and lasts 30 mins. Limited to 30 people.
We will journey to Denver's riverfront playground, home of Elitch Garden's amusement park, the only urban theme park in the country. We will see kayaking at Confluence Park, visit the amazing REI flagship store, and marvel at the Denver Skatepark, the largest municipal park of its kind in the world. All these sights are within a few blocks of each other in the shadow of downtown Denver.
We will meet in the Foyer outside of the Imperial Ballroom at 4pm where we will make a quick walk to the 16th Street bus, which will take us to the "playground".
The Third Annual Plutus Awards is the brain child of Luke Landes "Flexo" of Consumerism Commentary and are designed to reflect the financial blogosphere.
In early August, bloggers will be encouraged to vote and solicit votes from their readers, friends, and fellow bloggers across a number of categories, such as “Best Frugality Blog” and “Best Personal Finance Blog for Students.”
A committee of fifteen financial bloggers are being selected to represent the blogosphere at large, and a secret ballot will be used to determine the winner in each category. The award ceremony will be Emcee by Kevin McKee of Thousandaire.com.
More information can be found at http://www.plutusawards.com/.
Media attention for your blog (or, how Linsey used HARO, Media Kitty, and online job postings to get her name into magazines like Reader's Digest, All You, TIME, Better Homes and Gardens, Shape, Woman's World, Family Circle, and Grit).
Last year J.D. Roth’s keynote speech was about the importance of story. Donna Freedman agrees that this is vital. But she thinks that unless you can tell that story in a compelling way, nobody’s going to read it.
A good blog post needs voice.
“Voice” means being able to hear the writer while you are reading him or her. i.e. writing style that not only keeps the reader going until the end, but also makes him/her bookmark the site.
Other things this session will touch on:
Donna will also include some examples from blogs that she thinks contain genuine voice – some of it fairly straightforward (but compelling) stuff and some of it what she calls “stylistic backflip” writing (but only examples that actually work).
Are you (or your readers) passionate about retirement planning? Maybe not?
Okay, now are you (or your readers) excited about becoming financially independent so you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life, with whomever you want, whenever you want, and never have to work for the man again? Thought so.
This panel will explore how those two things are the exact same thing from a financial standpoint. The only difference is the label.
What this panel will discuss is the math and investment strategies behind your financial freedom.
Your knowledge of the material we are going to talk about for the next forty-five minutes will literally make or break your ability to achieve your financial goals (and help your readers achieve theirs).
This talk will compare some of the characteristics wildly popular social movements, celebrities, bands, TV shows, and yes, even blogs that seem to grow organically and almost accidentally, while the creator humbly goes about just doing what they love most.
People are naturally attracted to certain social situations. Places where they feel they belong, where they feel powerful, where they feel unique and distinct from the rest of the population, and where there is a strong leader that they can relate to. These characteristics seem to be what create cult followings - Greatful Dead (deadheads), Phish (Phish-heads), and even followers of the world’s major religions and also more wacky things like the cults of the 1970s and 80s.
By understanding the idea of building your blog as more than just a source of information - but as almost an entire identity for readers, you can create a more engaging reading experience for them (leading to more loyalty), and a more engaging writing experience for yourself (leading to more motivation). As a side effect, it can create runaway popularity with no need for self-promotion.
This session will cover the technology behind membership sites.
A lot of people get hung up on the technology involved in packaging their expertise into a membership site. After last year's talks from Baker and Ramit many bloggers are interested in offering something of their own but often don't know where to start.
People have a lot of options, ranging from a simple service like Ruzuku to more flexible but complex self hosted software like aMember. In between are alternatives like WishList and Digital Access Pass that require you to self-host but have a pretty simple user interface to get things setup.
This session will also cover the pros and cons of the different types of membership software options: how they integrate with tools for delivering email (aweber, mailchimp) and publishing video (easy video player / flow player) since those are key parts of a membership site.
To make it more practical, rather than just a theoretical discussion, a case study will probably be presented.
This distinguished panel will tackle a variety of topics in the world of affiliate marketing. Including,
This session will cover how to take your blog offline and into the community, in the area of workshops, meetup groups, etc while helping your community and profiting.
Andrea ran one of the most successful meetup groups in the Atlanta area for the last four years. The success of this group has allowed her to hold a conference, speaking engagements for the FDIC, Aflac and various non-profits.
A great headline can generate thousands of clicks even for the most mundane of articles. More importantly, a lousy headline can torpedo an outstanding post and keep it from ever getting off the ground.
Check out these tips for writing great headlines, and real-life examples of good -- and bad -- headlines from the financial blogosphere and elsewhere. We'll have a little audience participation in headline writing.
Len Penzo will talk about the role SEO plays in writing headlines. He will also extend a little bit into how to grab eye-catching tweets -- although that will be a small aside.
A fun time will be had by all!
The Yakezie network is the largest financial blogger network on the web.
This session will explore:
This session will cover securing sponsorship for attending blog conferences, as well as ways to make money outside your blog by using it to launch into different fields such as freelance writing, becoming an author, public speaking, creating products etc.
Kylie Ofiu will share links to sample letters, media kits and more.
This keynote session will discuss how to balance life with blogging. Whether you're working full-time, a student, or have a family you may find blogging is something that you do with the leftover time in your day. You may have a million ideas all day long only to sit down to write and produce nothing.
Will cover:
WordPresss security; hardening and best practices to help you secure your site.
This will be an informative presentation on the subject of being an effective part-time blogger while balancing real life commitments of being a husband, father, and having a full time career. Topics covered will include:
The focus would be on how to fit being a part time blogger within the framework of real life commitments by setting realistic goals - and how to accomplish those goals.
Travis will share his own experiences as examples of failures and successes.
This session will cover how to create, jazz up, and store audio and video for your blog posts, podcasts, free gifts, affiliate promotions, and paid products using free or low-cost software and services.
This presentation and workshop will cover methods for increasing revenue through legitimate means without having to increase website traffic -- or, a course in optimization.
Our project: add mulch, paint and improve a community park near Downtown Denver. The park is Lincoln Park, which is located at W. 11th Ave & Mariposa St. Buses will begin shuttling people from the hotel at 3pm. Buses will return a little after 5pm. Members of Denver’s Parks and Recreation Dept will be on hand to coordinate.
The projects consist of:
You will need to bring the following:
Ignite FinCon is your opportunity to get up and make a 5 minute presentation to the financial blogging community.
Ignite is a speaking movement that has grown like wildfire around the world. At Ignite events from Boulder to Budapest, speakers are encouraged to jump up on stage to educate, inspire, or entertain a crowd of enthusiastic, like minded individuals.
An Ignite speech is a 5 minute talk with a 20 slide presentation set on a 15 second auto-advance.
More info: http://ignite.financialbloggerconference.com/
Get a 10,000 foot overview of the sphere. You will learn:
In this rare talk, Ramit will share actual strategies, techniques, and test results of how he went from writing a free blog to building a 7-figure business, including deep monetization techniques (never revealed before), strategies to secure national press/TV appearances, and actual numerical test results of what worked -- and what didn't.
You'll learn:
There will be lots of time for Q&A. Bring your toughest questions and Ramit will answer them.
Jeff Rose has been creating video for almost two years now, and he continues to master the craft. He's one of only a handful of financial bloggers that produces videos on a consistent basis.
His presentation will cover the basics of making videos, including overcoming your fear of being in front of the camera, as well as how to optimize your efforts.
Currently Jeff is using video to build his credibility as a financial planner on my Good Financial Cents channel, to help promote his book on my Soldier of Finance channel, and his credibility as an online marketer on his wife's Dollars and Roses channel.
You might know about Google's Panda initiative, which attempts to reward quality content with higher search rankings.
But you may not know that Google has made other moves to promote quality content and quality writers -- in other words, your fellow #FinCon12 conference participants.
The "rel=author" tag and other parts of Google's new initiative are designed to help it sort out who the quality authors are, so that it can associate quality authors with quality websites, make sure original authors -- not copycats -- are recognized, and ranked them all accordingly.
Is it a big deal? Yeah. Google is looking for specific signals that you're high quality, and we'd like to help you create those signals. Whether you're a solo blogger or a contributor to multiple blogs or news websites, this presentation will break it down for you and give you tips on how you can make it all work to your advantage.
This talk be focused on the concept and why it's important. Matt Schulz will go light on the (modest) coding required, but for those who want to take the leap Matt will create a step-by-step how-to on creating author pages and Google profiles, using best practices, and make it available online in a location reserved exclusively for conference participants.
A session on collaborating with brands so you don't go broke but don't lose your soul in the process!
Covering:
More than ever major brands are ready to pay blogs of all sizes serious money to run campaigns on their sites. The problem is due to inexperience, many of us are either missing these opportunities, taking less money than we deserve, or executing these ad campaigns incorrectly. Through a lot of trial and error, Wise Bread has successfully landed and executed lucrative ad campaigns from brands like American Express, TurboTax, Microsoft, etc.
Takeaways: Will Chen will explain the step-by-step process of a big corporate media buy--from landing the client to the final report. Examples of what he'll cover:
Will cover the planning stages of turning a side hustle into a business such as: making your goals for an exit date based on your own financial data and circumstances.
This session will also cover some of the basics that need to be considered when tackling self-employment like: private insurance, remembering to set aside more than enough for taxes, and paying yourself a set salary instead of living month-to-month.
Bleeding-edge content can define you as an expert in your niche. Become an authority in your field by predicting trends using everyday tools. Learn how to define your audience, dive into your analytics, and develop authentic content to drive traffic to your website.
Takeaways:
Leaving this session attendees will understand:
This session will explore the ways today's bloggers can have their voice heard by traditional publishers.
We will examine techniques and and steps needed to win over top tier reporters from the WSJ, New York Times, network television, major personal-finance portals and local TV stations.
We will examine using the power of Linkedin to connect with journalists, how to build a media list and the correct way of formatting emails to journalists you have no connection with. We will also explore what you should do once you gain coverage and ways to capitalize on it.
Questions Answered:
1. how to correctly formulate a point of view, journalists will want to use over and over
2. what is "news jacking" and why it's your best opportunity to gain coverage
3. does video have a role and if so how so, what
4. understanding what news best fits your mission and voice
What good is your content without community, consumption, and distribution? Enter social media.
Will include information about:
A Q&A panel session with Jim Wang (bargaineering.com), Will Chen (wisebread.com), Luke Landes (consumerismcommentary.com), and J.D. Roth (getrichslowly.org).
Lodo’s is a massive four story restaurant that turns into a club post 9pm.
We get a private room (The Rox Room) that opens up to a public rooftop dance floor and bartender. This gives us a private space for mixing and mingling and a dance floor to show off our moves.
We will have freedom to go throughout the whole club, and we will have free drink tickets good for soda, beer, wine, and well liquor.
The theme will be 90s hip hop. Oh yeah! We’ll have a DJ, photo booth, and more on hand to make it a fun time.
Come out and join the Man Vs Debt team to celebrate the last night of #FinCon12.
Some people blog as a hobby. Some people are testing the waters but if you want to get serious about blogging as a business, you need to think like a business person. The principles of business are universal whether you want to open a restaurant, hair salon, financial advisor practice or a financial blog. Learn the six principles of success.
Really basic SEO 101 theory and how-to application.
Eg., get links, and here are good ways to do it; watch google referrals, and here are the tools and stats to pay attention to.
Format -- hands-on to fit the "workshop" format. Aimed towards pretty novice bloggers, who would have their laptops and blogs available in the workshop, and we would actually walk them through doing basic things like downloading plugins, suggesting specific design tweaks, finding specific link partners, etc.
Discussion on frugal/couponing blogging and what to do to keep your audience coming back along with possible monetization details.
Discover how setting the right goals and asking the right questions can boost your Facebook engagement and establish you as an authority in your niche. Melanie explains how to take your Facebook fan page from 'meh' to amazing with a few tweaks to your status updates and tracking efforts.
Key Takeaways:
An explanation on how financial bloggers can use current events to create viral content, drive traffic to their sites and use both local and national media to gain valuable attention.
Topics will include:
This talk will discuss a mix of business and personal finance factors that bloggers must consider before "quitting the day job" including:
Business of Blogging
+ Is your blog a hobby or business?
+ Blogging business models
+ The right and wrong reasons to go full time
+ Keeping your sanity as a solo blogger
+ Productivity and prioritization
+ Diversifying your income
Personal
+ How much do you need in savings?
+ What about the income you'll give up from the day job?
+ Things that are harder for the self-employed: Health insurance, taxes, and getting credit
+ Self-employed retirement options
+ Self-employment and your spouse; special challenges
This session will show the steps Jason Steele took to become a successful freelancer, while addressing two distinct audiences.
Finally, Jason will consider the pros and cons of this business model as a career, and and its outlook for the future.
Many bloggers have no professional training in how to write OR in how to edit a team of freelance writers. This session will show bloggers how to craft great stories, touching on both the technical (grammar, syntax, structure) as well as the art (theme, narrative arc).
It will also teach bloggers how to edit the work submitted by the freelance writers that they hire. Regardless of whether your freelancer is a top-notch writer or a beginner, the fundamentals in editing a story are the same. Blog owners need to know 1) how to give a clear, detailed freelance assignment; 2) how to quickly edit material; 3) how to give their freelancer writers feedback and direction.
