Just a quick heads up since the event is two days away. I am loving what I am learning from Scott Magers who is one of the founders of both PitchIn.com and iDuplicate.com –both of which will be launching in Q1 of 2010. Well…all this slightly cynical girl from Silicon Valley, with a background in traditional marketing, can say is “wow, wow, wow!!!”

Believe me, their credibility is quite high. I’ve personally met half of the people presenting and am looking forward to hearing from the others. These people have proved their success on the web ($600M in online sales in 7 years).

It’s really been an extremely relevant, highly informative and practical undertaking for today’s market. Personally, I am using their info to power blog on 2 sites and plan to add two more for my art work and another for travel and food stuff. My webstats are climbing dramatically on this recently launched site and I haven’t even told anyone about this –just as a test in obscurity and using their success formula. My weekly stats show that I have surpassed my previous month, and it can only get better once I get through my really long checklist of things I need to do to build my subscriber base. I can’t wait! This has been the “shot in the arm” I have been hoping for in my career. I’ll confess, things were getting a bit dull.

If you don’t have a clue about which way to turn in today’s online marketspace, or need to optimize your web presence, or want to start from scratch with today’s hottest know how, this special one day Internet money-making training in Irvine on 12/12/09 will put you in power mode. This is an excellent crash course in social media marketing (using a website with blog+Facebook+Twitter+dozens more social sites+Search Engine Optimization help+how to use affiliate marketers to help you sell your biz: products and services) for today’s business professional. Reinvent yourself!

Please feel free to forward this to people you think might be interested in improving their business presence on the web or learning how to get a website up the right way for todays market.

Feel free to ask me any questions you might have in the comment section.

Hope to see you there!

Once your site submission has been received a DMOZ editor will review your submission for inclusion in the directory. If it gets accepted into the Open Directory –and that may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, etc. –all due to the fact that each of these search engines has their own agenda for checking with DMOZ.

And unless you paid the fee Yahoo! wanted to wring out of you to speed up submission wait time, you better take a chill pill or two. Their entry page warns you that their submission page is on “overwhelm”. Since I’m a bit on the cheapside, I rolled the dice and crossed my left fingers while clicking the submit button with my right hand without paying. (I was submitting my TallForeheads site to their Health Directory: Genetic Diseases and suggesting they make a category for Down syndrome). Only time will tell if they accepted me or not. If they did, I can be found at Su Casa’s in La Jolla at happy hour with a celebatory Margarita in hand. If they didn’t, and I am having some blog-shock from my website for children with Down syndrome being rejected by Yahoo (or DMOZ) I still might be found at Su Casa but I’ll be rethinking my online marketing strategy.

I got a gentle slap on the hand from WebsiteGrader for that 777 character description.

“Who am I as a blogger?” is what the search engines want to know as succinctly as possible. They want the boiled down reduction sauce of 777 characters in 150.

Here’s what I did next: I did some Q&A on myself, but first I made an Irish Coffee:

Q: What does the long version tell people?
A: Well…I’m going to write a blog about lots of things that are unrelated.

Q: What have people always said about you?
A: They’ve called me an ‘unconventional woman’.

Q: What are you really going to talk about?
A: The pillars of PitchIn.com

Here’s what I entered on the Metadata Description box in the optimizer:
An unusual blog, by an unconventional woman, covering a myriad of subjects under the umbrella of health, wealth, education and charity.

115 characters not counting spaces. 135 counting spaces. Woo-hoo! I did it …AND…I didn’t go and try to squeeze in more adjectives until I hit 150 characters. I have five keywords I am happy with, namely: woman, health, wealth, education [and] charity. The search engines are happy; websitegrader.com is happy and I am feeling the effects of an ounce of Bushmills Irish Whiskey in San Diego’s finest Ryan Brother’s Coffee Roasting Company’s roast “Peru”. It almost sounds like my coffee drink needs a new name! Anyone…?