I’m writing this post in the car driving back from my vacation in Daytona Beach. Actually Ally is driving… I’m in the passenger’s seat writing!

The vacation was great – it was nice to get away without any responsibilities for a week. The only quirk was that apparently it was bike week in Daytona Beach, meaning there were thousands of loud Harley’s on the streets… and the beach. But other than that it was fun and relaxing.

But this post isn’t about my vacation.

This post is about my transformational week at the beginning of this month, at Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar 8.

I was there as a Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Recipient – so that waved the $3,495 price tag for the ticket. Knowing what I know now, I’d gladly pay the full price of the event to go again. It was life changing. A HUGE thank you to Yanik Silver for making this scholarship possible and to Michael Dunlop for organizing it and choosing me as one of the fortunate recipients!

Also huge thanks to Michael Dunlop for making the event so fun for myself and the other young entrepreneurs. Michael you’re the man.

I legally can’t share any content from the event – sorry! I signed a waver to keep it underground

I did get a chance to hang out with and learn from some of the top in the Internet marketing world – Jonathan Budd, Mike Filsaime, Brandon Burchard, Mike Dillard, Robert Hirsch, James Dyson, Michael Dunlop and tons of others. And of course Yanik Silver. Most of the speakers at the event aren’t so famous in our industry… but they run multi-million dollar online businesses underground.

The content was incredible, the relationships are priceless, but the overall event was transformational for me beyond the sum of its parts.

The people, the education, the environment… empowered me to discover my true value and my higher calling. Yes, I will continue to build Purpose Inspired Marketing to a really successful company. My vision for it has certainly grown, I found several higher end clients at the event, learn stuff that will explode my business in terms of both sales and operations… and that explosion has already started over the past couple of weeks.

Brandon Burchard’s closing keynote motivated me more than anything before. We have approximately 18 months to do something really significant online… to really lead the way in Internet entrepreneurship. And I plan to build something really big and significant in the coming 18 months.

But that’s not what I mean by my higher calling.

I got in touch with my higher passion and purpose to inspire and educate young people to create lives of Freedom, Passion, and Purpose through entrepreneurship. I launched my site FreedomPassionPurpose.com with a few of the interviews I did at Underground, and will continue to post new interviews every week, eventually turning the site into a thriving community to stimulate and support young entrepreneurs.

I talked about this to the Mavericks at Underground, and got some really great support, ideas, and a few awesome Interviews, which I’ll be posting on FreedomPassionPurpose.com … I realized that I share this passion with many of the Mavericks there, including Yanik Silver and Robert Hirsch. Robert’s keynote was specifically on building Elevation Academy through EVG, an accredited university to teach entrepreneurship.

Teaching and training young entrepreneurs 13 – 23 years old is actually Yanik’s primary passion. Yanik and I chatted about this after the event. Ally and I had lunch with him in Maryland on our drive down to Daytona last weekend, and it looks like Yanik and I will be working together on some level.

This is really exciting for me. Not just the opportunity to work with Yanik, which is awesome, but the opportunity to have a much greater impact than I could possibly have on my own at this time.

Overall, between hanging out with the greatest minds in the industry, hanging out with other young entrepreneurs from around the world doing big things, and the incredible education I got and relationships I developed, the event was totally transformational for me.

I look forward to bringing so much more value to the world through my personal passions and my business, and what I can do for my clients with the new skills and mindset I developed there.

Come back for more updates soon, 2012 will be a BIG year!

PS – Here are some photos from the event, you can find more on my Facebook.

Jonathan Budd - Also a great breakdancer!

The Young Entrepreneur Crew with Michael Dunlop (being silly in pics as always)

Getting ready for next year on stage

Robert Hirsh, CEO of Elevation Group

Noah Kagan (founder of AppSumo) is the bomb. His speech won $10,000 to his favorite charity, which gives Burritos to homeless people

With the man, Yanik Silver

Marie Forleo from RHHB School

PPS – Michael Dunlop also bribed me to break dance a couple of times. It was hilarious… for others. A bit embarrassing for me but I had fun with it the session below actually lasted nearly 5 minutes, during which I totally ran out of moves and breath… but here’s 30 seconds on tape…

Kate Buck Jr At Leverage Summit

As you know guys, I’ve been here in Austin Texas this week for the Leverage Summit. Check out my post about my first day here.

Anyways, today is day two and like I had mentioned before, I want to share with you some really cool notes that you can implement in your business asap.

Today’s piece is based off the notes I took of Kate Buck Jr.’s presentation. She is a social media expert and shared some amazing case studies with us. The technique I’m about to share with you has helped one of her clients make a 1200% return on investment.

Enough intro. Let’s start.

So today’s topic is about using facebook contests to great buzz, branding, and revenue.

The reasons contests work is because it gives people incentive to take action.

It may seem overwhelming to “think” about hosting a contest in your mind but it’s more complicated in your head than it is in real life.

It seems complicated because there are so many “components” etc. Well first off, I’ll introduce a cool tool (see below) that will really make it simple for you but in the meantime just remember to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

So before starting off with a contest. Remember to keep in mind your outcomes. There are 4 main social media contest outcomes.

1. Grow your audience/fans

2. Increase engagement with brand

3. Generate leads/Generate revenue (Every person that joins your contest is a new lead)

4. Survey your marketplace.

Determining outcome is important! Here’s why:

Say you are looking only to gain exposure. In this case the prize you are offering may be a widely wanted product like an Apple iPad.

However, if you are looking to build a list of more “likely” buyers, then the prize you offer may be something more specifically related to your marketplace.

This qualifies your lead.

After determining your desired outcome you can craft a contest to accomplish that goal.

The next step is to choose an application. There are many third party platforms that integrate with Facebook that allow you to run contests, sweepstakes, etc.

The best one is contest burner which allows you to simultaneously join your contest and opt in to your email list.

Next you want to research the habits of your audience. Are they reluctant to share their information online? Are they willing to share stuff with their friends? What motivates them to take action?

Then you want to figure out the following:

1. Title/Brand of the Contest

2. Decide on your prizes

It helps to give multiple prizes on three different levels.

Ex.

Grand Prize – one or two BIG prizes

2nd Place – a few more “medium” valued prizes

3rd Place – a whole bunch of lower cost prizes

Oh by the way remember you MUST use a third party application to run a contest on Facebook. Otherwise you may get banned.

So what you want to do is to basically create rules for how contestants can earn more points or entries into the contest pool.

Ex. Share with two friends – 3 extra entries.

Couple Other Key Points

• Optimal length of contest – 10-15 days
• Remember to keep a tab on your costs.

Build buzz & excitement about the contest itself. Utilize other social media avenues to generate interest. Also use offline promotions like word of mouth and direct mail.

Example of things to say:

“Hey I’m about to throw a big contest , will keep you posted.”

You can use paid traffic (Facebook Ads & Google Adwords)

Include in your ad copy something like “giving away ____!” to increase clickthrough rate!

Reminding Contestants To Participate

Remind contestants to participate and earn more points via status updates or if they’re on your list, through your emails.

Announcing The Winner

Get the winner to make you a video or send you a picture of them with the prize.

Following Up With Non-Winners

Don’t just forget about those that entered and didn’t win! Give a constellation prize if you can and if not at least follow up and say thanks for entering.

An idea for making some cash fast is to offer non-winners a constellation prize of a great product at a percentage off.

Okay guys, I hope you enjoyed this content. I’m about to call it a night. Day 3 of the event tomorrow!

Dmitriy (and Larry)

Hey,

So this weekend I’m in Austin Texas attending an event called Leverage Summit. Apart from American Airlines totally messing up my flight there… it has been a great trip so far.

I got to meet and network with many key players which was a great experience for me. But the best part was definitely today’s event.

In a nutshell, the event today, called The Leverage Summit, was hosted by a group of multiple 6-7, even 8 figure earners.

We all got together in a banquet room at the Omni Hotel.

And they shared many insider secrets of how they use leverage in their business. I was really pleasantly surprised at how much great applicable content they taught at the event.

So great in fact, I was inspired to write this post tonight to share with you a quick tip and technique I learned that you can use immediately. (You know I’m big on action

I may very well be compiling most of my notes not just from today but from all three days into a readable and applicable form for you in the near future, so keep your eye on that. I may, I may not.

These are the lineup of speakers at this three day event. Keith Baxter on the right hand side is actually the speaker that shared these 3 traffic secrets.

For those of you who don’t know Keith, he’s an SEO and traffic expert. He has taken a brand new site and taken it to a couple hundred thousand visitors a month in 6 months time; the guy showed me his traffic stats. He definitely knows a thing or too. I’m sure you’ll like his info.

Anyways, one last thing. For those of you who don’t know of Yanik Silver, I’m actually going to his Underground Online Seminar in a couple of weeks so my life might be a little bit hectic, but whatever the case, keep on the lookout for some really cutting edge info in the coming weeks because I am going to be learning many, many insider secrets (I’ll be updating this blog a lot more often, thanks to my awesome new marketing intern Larry Yu who is helping me organize and write content).

So here are the techniques.

Product Curation

Product curation is a great way to get traffic by capitalizing on buzz. Hardly anyone is doing this! It’s a simple concept.

Various events happen in the world each day/period of time and naturally related “keywords” and interests pique for a period of time. For example, say there was a big celebrity breakup or scandal (Ms. Kardashian hint hint). For a period of time afterwards, people will be interested in and will search for terms related to that topic.

You can capitalize on this traffic by being on top of certain buzz/news in the world or even better, in your niche, by simply curating the content. Which is really you taking a piece of content and “reporting” it in your own words via video, article, etc.

But the key is to tie it into an offer of yours. This offer could be an affiliate product, newsletter sign up, whatever. After having your piece of curated content, simply upload it to your own blog or social media sites like YouTube, etc.

This is a really effective way to build traffic.

Press Releases

These aren’t talked about as often with internet marketers but according to a Guru to the Gurus, Keith Baxter, the sure frickin’ work. They’re great traffic generators in themselves and they are a great way to build high quality backlinks to your site.

Retargeting

I don’t know if you have heard of retargeting yet but it will soon be the wave of paid advertising. It’s best explained through an example.

You visit a site, say Zappos.com (the shoe company).

From that point on, for a given period of time, as you visit other sites, say CNN.com (the news authority) you will see a banner advertising Zappos.com. This isn’t by coincidence.

Google has now allowed us marketers to “follow” our visitors with our advertisements. Not only that but the ad that “follows” them doesn’t even have to be the same. For example, you visit my site, Zappos.com.

Then you visit CNN.com and you see a banner ad with a pair of black shoes that says visit Zappos.com.

Then you visit addictinggames.com and you see another ad from Zappos but this time with a pair of brown shoes as the image.

Once again… this is not coincidence.

Zappos has deliberately chosen to have its ad “follow” you around, this is called retargeting and it has deliberately chosen to switch the ads from black shoes to brown shoes (and possibly back to black shoes as you visit further sites).

So we all know people don’t usually buy the first time they see an offer. They buy the 7th or 8th time. This is why email auto responder series which allows you to make the same offer a few times is so powerful.

Well now with retargeting you basically have an autoresponder but with a banner ad.

Visitor comes to your site and doesn’t buy anything the first time. No worries. Your banner follows them around for a period of time afterwards. This will greatly increase conversions and not to mention strengthen your brand. You can imagine what a visitor thinks when they see your banner on a HUGE site like CNN.com.

I highly recommend you check out retargeting.

Putting it all together

A key concept I want to remind you about (that I was reminded about today) is that in general you shouldn’t be doing the “manual labor” like writing press releases, articles, etc.

For the most part you can outsource such jobs at very, very low prices. (Believe me, I just hired a full time employee oversees so I know). 

You are the visionary. You are the strategist. You are the one that puts all the pieces together. You’re the marketing master. The rest of the technical aspects you can just hire someone to do it.

So I’ll end with that today. Use your time wisely.

Best,

Dmitriy

P.S. Implement what you learned here! Haha action, action.

A couple of days ago I got some incredible news. I’ll be attending one of the greatest internet marketing seminars in the world, Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar!

The ticket alone is $3,495.00

It’s in Washington, DC March 1st – 3rd.

Check it out here.

This event will have some of the top speakers in the internet marketing world. Past speakers and attendees include guys like Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuck, Bob Parsons, and other really cool experts.

Instead of having to pay $3,495 or whatever the current price is, I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship for the event. Michael Dunlop (of IncomeDiary.com and RetireAt21.com) was giving away 10 scholarships to entrepreneurs age 13 – 23. I applied – and I was chosen! I am beyond grateful to Yanik, Michael, and the others that have made this possible.

Check out Yanik’s primary goal right now, according to his website:

“Currently his most important mission is impacting 1,000,000 young entrepreneurs (ages 13-23) to start or grow their business by 2020.”

I can’t explain how excited I am to attend this event.

I already believe realistically that PIM will reach five figures in revenue this month… and going to this event next month will just multiply the momentum we have now. I will definitely send an update from the event and give some key takeaways in a blog post afterward.

PS – I am also attending the Leverage Summit in a couple of weeks in Austin, TX. The event is February 17th – 19th but I’ll be there for a week. I’ll make sure to share an update and takeaways from Austin as well.

I just finished watching CFO-In-A-Box, a 13 video series by Mark J. Kohler on the best tax and legal strategies for 2011.

Firstly, I want to say that I was really excited about the course when I first heard about it. This is my first year filing a real tax return with significant income from my business. I’ve operated as a few different entities in 2011, have had expenses, contractors, employees, and multiple streams of income… so I was in the perfect frame of mind to learn this stuff.

In fact, before I watched the course, I was super stressed out about doing my taxes for 2011. I wasn’t sure about how proper book keeping worked, what I could and couldn’t write off, how I should pay myself, etc.

After watching the video series, I am not only excited to do my taxes this year (and keep more money in my pocket!) but am even more excited about my future as a business owner and all of the tax advantages I have.

I just feel like I have a much stronger grasp on the financial and legal elements in my business and the economy overall. I feel excited, educated, and empowered.

Before I go into more detail on the course and how to get your hands on it, I want to make it clear that I was very lucky. I was lucky that I just happened to visit my good friends Cory Shanes and Marcelle Allen in Orange County, CA while they were starting to work with a team of internet marketers to get Mark Kohler’s material into the hands of thousands. I watched the content and got so excited that I found a way to get involved with the project through my web design company Purpose Inspired Marketing, helping to build the membership site and product informational pages.

I think the initial plan was to sell the course for $197… and I have no doubt that it will be sold for that sometime soon. And I have no doubt that a lot of people will buy at that price.

But right now that’s not the case. They are making the course available to a niche community of internet marketers called the Warrior Forum first… for a tiny fraction of the retail price. It’s kind of a special Holiday thing.

It ranges from $27 – $47, depending on when you buy. The sooner you buy, the cheaper the course.

But I’m not here to sell you on it. Just to share my own review: I can say with confidence this material empowered me to save an extra couple thousand dollars this year, and a lot more than that in coming 2012 and beyond. I’m now buying Mark’s published books and look forward to reading them.

The bottom line is that if you currently are or plan on becoming a small business owner (network marketing, blogging, affiliate marketing all included!) then this video series is a must have.

Even if you already have a great CPA doing your tax returns, this course will make you aware of strategies and concepts that can still save you thousands while creating a long term wealth formula for yourself.

The best thing is, this course doesn’t even cost anything. If you apply it, it will pay for itself many times over. Plus the purchase itself is entirely tax deductible.

You can get the course here, only available for the next few days at this price, with the price going up by 10 cents for every ten purchases.

purposeinspiredmarketing.com/cfo

And yes that’s an affiliate link. I am proudly making a commission promoting this awesome offer

On another note, OC is absolutely beautiful this time of year compared to Boston… can’t wait to move here next year!

Had a nice Mustang Rental in OC!