In the last contest, Lee organized, I won an iPod Touch, $250 from CPA Network NeverBlueAds, and a bunch of other prizes in Lee Dodd’s last Earner’s Forum contest.

About a month ago, it was announced that Webmaster Talk and Earner’s Forum were merging, forming one of the largest webmaster forums (as of today, it has 57,000 registered members).

There’re a number of cool features like the publication of your blog’s RSS feed (similar to what forums like DigitalPoint currently offer) as well as Ad Revenue share (through Google AdSense).

I think everyone will be most interested in the prizes…

They include:

• A beautiful new Macbook Air laptop from ClickBooth valued at $1,800
• A Copy of Interspire Shopping Cart (Professional Edition) valued at $995
• $500 cash in a Max Bounty affiliate network account
• Another $500 in the form of a Text Link Ads gift certificate
• Another Apple product, the iPod Touch from Rocket Profit
• Another $250 cash in a Pepperjam Network account
• Custom T-shirts printed for your headline website from Ndesigns. 24 Custom Printed Shirts (color T’s, 3-4 color printing, one-sided).
• The hottest new camera for blogging, The Flip, is provided by Advaliant
• Speaking of blogs, the MOST AMAZING paid theme ever is now yours from Revolution Theme and it isn’t just one, but the complete multi-pack!
• To help you relax that hard working brain of yours, we close the package out with a Nintendo DS Lite from RevResponse!
• 3 Free months of Aaron Wall’s SEO Training can only be good for business!

Contest winners are determined by the number of points you accumulate through various forum activities such as referring new members, publishing quality forum posts, writing articles, blogging about the contest, etc.

I guess my favorite pick from the lot are the cash bonuses. I probably have enough computers and MP3 players to last for some time, but they can always be sold on eBay to generate a little cash for your PPC campaigns or keyword or other research tools.

If nothing else, the contest will give you something to do once your Mother’s Day campaigns are set up.

If you haven’t signed up as a member yet, you can register for Webmaster Talk to enter the contest.

Good luck!

Check out my entry in their Blogging segment: “Ruthless For the People…A Blog Story” and see if it brings your blogging efforts up a notch.

If you enjoyed it, I’d appreciate your support.

You can:

• If you haven’t done so, Register at Earners Forum
• Head to my “Ruthless For The People…A Blog Story” thread
• Click the BACKIT Icon (see this pic if it’s not apparent)
• You’re done!

The competition ends on Oct 31st, so your support is appreciated…

Thanks in advance!

Lee also happens to be doing a promo for his Earners Forum site, targeted at Internet Marketers, with a “Webmaster Inspiration Month” contest. To sweeten the pot, there’s $5,500 worth of prizes at stake, including a iPod Touch, cash prizes and other assorted goodies.

There’s about 7 contests within the competition, each with a distinct winner, so you could submit a blogging-related entry, a forum-related one, affiliate marketing, SEO, or a rags-to-riches one.

Each prize package includes:

• $250 worth of Text Link Ads
• $250 CASH from NeverBlueAds
• 24 T-Shirts to promote your blog or site

Regardless of whether you win or don’t win, I believe posting your entry and sharing your experience could inspire newer marketers along their journey. You can help “pay it forward” so to speak and benefit too.

The contest ends October 31st at 11:59pm CST. Check the contest details.

Here’s my blogging entry “Ruthless for the People…A Blog Story“…

Your votes (known as “Backs” on EF) are highly welcome and greatly appreciated.

Attendees from the first ER paid $4,500 per head to attend the exclusive event.

The upcoming second ER to be held on 19 and 20th March in San Francisco is raising some hackles with its $4,950 price tag.

I’ve often heard the question on the forums and a number of Internet Marketers have been asking me this question:

Is it too much?

And often I hear the gripe that paying $4,950 which works out to $2,500 per day over the 2 day workshop is too much.

I think there’s a major problem here.

And the problem is with the person asking the question.

See, I have been doing business consulting and training and managing start-ups for the better part of 10 years.

I’ve almost never looked just at how much something costs, because that’s only half the equation.

What’s more, ok, I understate it here, what’s of the utmost importance whether you should invest in the opportunity is your return on your investment (ROI if you want the jargon).

If you spend $1,000 on an investment, what would you like to get out of it? $1,050? $2,000? $10,000?

My personal benchmark has always been to get a minimum 10 times return on my investment.

If I were to spend $5,000 on an opportunity, I’d expect to get at least $50,000 back in net profits.

So the question is whether Elite Retreat is overpriced?

Looking at this issue rationally, value is a function of your return over your investment (Return / Investment).

This are the two constraints on the issue:

1. The investment is fixed ($4,950)
2. The return is not fixed.

The return is determined by what you want to get out of the event.

Speaking to Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney) on the sidelines of Affiliate Summit West, he mentioned that one of the ER participants from the first workshop was now generating $2,000 a day.

Ok, I’d admit that I didn’t nail Shoemoney on whether it was gross or net profit. But even assuming a worst case scenario that it was ‘only’ a 50% net profit, that’s a cool $1,000 a day, or $365,000 a year.

On a $4,000 investment.

So the issue now is whether the ER trainers will be able to deliver on their objectives to bring you to the next level.

This time around, they’ve assembled a cast of trainers comprising:

• Shoemoney (Search Engine Marketing, Branding, PPC, and Arbitrage)
• Kris Jones (Affiliate Marketing and Search Arbitrage)
• Lee Dodd (Community Building and Web Real Estate)
• Aaron Wall (Search Engine Optimization)
• Darren “ProBlogger” Rowse (Blogging and Monetization)
• Neil Patel (Social Media Optimization, Reputation Management, and Viral Marketing)

So between them, I believe they have most of the bases covered. I’d think that if you were more concerned about topics like domaining, copywriting, product creation, which aren’t specifically covered in the presentations (although some of the speakers have experience in these areas), what you can do to ensure your own success is:

1. Do your preliminary research beforehand
2. Do the necessary testing
3. Compile all the questions you have and bring them to ER.

Talk to the panel of trainers and fellow participants and do whatever it takes to get the necessary knowledge to get yourself to the next level.

I’m sure that even if they aren’t able to directly address your query, one of them will be able to direct you to resources to get the information you need.

Will going to ER provide the magic antidote to all your burning questions and make you an overnight millionaire?

Not likely.

Neither will signing up for a myriad of courses, or buying a million dollars worth of ebooks.

What will bring you the success you desire is the determination, perserverance and most importantly, effort, to move yourself one step closer to success.

Obviously, Shoemoney and his team have planned a roadmap for Elite Retreat to make it a major initiative this year with sessions planned in Orlando (May), Chicago (July), Phoenix (Sept), Dallas (Nov).

Should you consider investing the $4,950 for the event?

Only if you see yourself investing the effort necessary to bring yourself $50,000.

You can also read some of the related posts by:

• Kris Jones
• Neil Patel
• Shoemoney
• Lee Dodd
• Aaron Wall
• Darren Rowse

For more details, you can visit the Elite Retreat website or call PlanetAndrea at 1(800) 888-8151.

I was checking out Shoemoney’s post “Elite Retreat Ticket For One Lucky Winner” .

Blogging Guru Dave Taylor, SEO Specialist Aaron Wall, Forum and Communities Specialist Lee Dodd, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, Dave Taylor again!

Forum Guru Lee Dodd has posted at his ForumTrends blog that the 4 gurus: Shoemoney, Dave Taylor, Aaron Wall and Lee have decided to put up one ticket for the event (valued at $4,850 by the way).

Just head over to Lee’s blog, read the instructions and best of luck!

The deadline’s Dec 11th, noon CST. There’s a couple of hours to go.

I’d have loved to try for the contest, though the event clashes with a family holiday.

Ah, well, maybe next time.

If you do enter the contest, and win, post a comment!

Here’s an update from Andrea:
—

We’ve got our publicity machines out in full force, and have received lots of encouraging response.

A lot of people who have expressed interest are worried that they might not be advanced enough to attend. We are targeting everyone from newbies to high status sites.

We will also be promoting the Elite Retreat at Chicago SES in December and be able to answer any last minute questions people might have there as well.

We’ve received so much support throughout the industry for this event and looking forward to the event.

—

Facilitators at the event include Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney), Dave Taylor, Aaron Wall and Lee Dodd.

Check out: Elite Retreat information page.

Here’s the launch banner:

Here’s the site: EliteRetreat.info

Shoemoney mentions on his post: Elite Retreat December 18-19 San Antonio

This is a really new and interesting style of conference. This is open to a very select group of people who maybe feel like they are on the verge of something big within their company but just need a little help to get over the edge.

No matter what that is we should have you covered. We have assembled a team that can cover any area of business on the internet.

—

And there’s an application process involved:

People who want to attend the elite retreat need to fill out a brief application of what they expect to get out of the conference. This helps us determine if for sure we can help you. It is not automatic that everyone will be approved for this retreat. If we feel we truly will not be able to help you then there is not use in wasting your time and money.

—

Facilitators for this event-

• Jeremy Schoemaker – Self branding, PPC, arbitrage, SEM
• Lee Dodd – Forum and Community Legend
• David Taylor – Blogging And Online Business Trends
• Aaron Wall – The guy who wrote the book on SEO.

Some points to note:

The ratio of Facilitators to attendees will be an unheard of 1:6.

The role of Elite Retreat is to get to know participants business on a 1-1 level then formulate a “plan of attack” to help them succeed.

The Elite Retreat team will have follow up calls to see if there are any obstacles and to check on your progress.

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

Already 2 of the 35 slots have been taken up.

—

Here’s a word from Elite Retreat project manager, Andrea Schoemaker:

Download audio file (andrea.mp3)

Here’s the site again: EliteRetreat.info