Ryan Moran

Regretfully, I admit that my expectations of the Traffic and Conversion Summit were very low. When they said that we would leave exhausted after each day, I didn’t believe them.

I don’t like to do this… but I must admit that I was wrong!

The last week has been one of the most fun and rewarding experiences in my life. Spending four days each in Austin and San Diego left me feeling refreshed, renewed, and excited about my business, and I feel confident that I am equipped to succeed far beyond my current level.

Pizza Shop - First Night

My Room Was On the Top Floor

Prior to this week, I was caught in a plateau, and for the first time in a long time, I felt scared to grow. As a full-time college student, it was easy to hide behind the fact that I could only work on my business occasionally. It was easy to be comfortable with my success.

Now, as a full-time internet marketer, there is a challenge ahead of me, and it is scary. It’s like being new all over again, because I have so much opportunity.

Therefore, getting away for a week was extremely rewarding from a business and a personal standpoint.

The first four days were spent in Austin, TX at the Traffic and Conversion Summit with Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher.

My friend Brian and I knew it was going to be a good week as soon as a bum accused us of not working. I think there’s a headline in there somewhere…

We then ate at this janky but delicious pizza shop (seen above)…

After the first ten-hour conference session, my brain was fried, my body was tired, and I was filled with new knowledge. After the first day, I said to my good friend Brian Owens, “We get so caught up in how to generate traffic, but if you have an offer that converts well, traffic is no longer a problem!” It was like a revelation.

Because I’m mainly an SEO and PPC marketer, I’ve ignored Facebook advertising, the content network, media buying, demographic targeting, and buying banner ads. If you have an offer that converts, then there is plenty of traffic that you can buy. Which leads me to my second revelation…

I love being an affiliate. I could be an affiliate marketer until the day I die. But there is an entire new world that exists in having your own products. As an affiliate, it’s impossible to test different offers, colors, headlines, and pricing points, because you are not in control of the offer. Of course, you can do the tracking to maximize your affiliate sales, but you still have to send them through another offer to the vendor.

While I have no plans to stop being an affiliate, the conference was a kick in the butt to get my own products out there, as well. While TAG is still in recreation (and boy oh boy is it awesome), there is so much more that I can do. In addition to the affiliate promotions that I do and TheAffiliateGod.com, it’s time for me to start teaching some things to offline business, as well.

After the three-day session of learning copywriting, follow-up sequences, offers, traffic, and testing, I headed to San Diego to see my good friend Matt Bredel of Tru-Guru.com.

Immediately upon arrival, Matt began to make a list of things that he wanted to do in order to corrupt me. They included: eating beef, getting drunk, going to a strip club, using a PC, gambling, cursing, and a host of other things.

I’ll give him credit – he did pretty well. He didn’t get me drunk, but he did buy me a Coors Light one day. He didn’t get me to eat beef, but we did have some awesome fish tacos. He didn’t get me to gamble my life savings, but I did have a blast at the horserace (I lost a total of $8).

I brought two Apple laptops, but unfortunately I must admit that I DID use a PC once.

All kidding aside, hanging out with Matt and his family in sunny San Diego was the perfect way to cap off a week that provided much needed refreshment and energy. As we took a ten-mile bike ride around the bay, I was reminded why need to move a beach.

Being near the beach also reminded me of some wise words from Jason Moffatt in a recent blog post regarding maximizing your free time (it’s worth watching if even for the best F-bomb I’ve ever heard at 2:40): Taking Time Off

Together, the trips to Austin and San Diego were educational as well as refreshing. Now, I feel armed and ready to absolutely kill it in my business, and I’ve put together a few goals of what I need to do with what I learned:

- Take more vacations.
- Sell, rent, or ditch any websites or ventures that distract me.
- Get business cards.
- Create a product for offline businesses.
- Be more aggressive.
- Read more books.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve already begun this process; I’ve completed a case study in which I recorded myself creating a website that went from $0 to $100/day in about a week. I also began reading “Atlas Shrugged” and the latest Robert Cialdini sales psychology book. I’ve begun seeking buyers for the websites that I want to sell, revamping my autoresponder series, and I’ve been putting together videos for the new TAG, due out… sometime.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.