Webinars are approximately one hour in length and held on Wednesdays at 10am ET. They consist of a presentation by a specialist followed by Q&A.

Blog Talks are again, about one hour in length. Blog Talks are online chats on a specific topic between members. There may be a guest with specialized knowledge on the topic. The objective, is to have a very active process for sharing information between members.

Webinar

September 1, 2010, 10am ET Craig Martin, Indie Travel Podcast
Multimedia or death! Why you should care about podcasting and how to to make it happen
Podcasting isn’t something you can bolt onto your site and hope it works. For a podcast to be successful it must be a pivotal point of your content strategy. We’ll discuss:

• Why you should consider podcasting as a part of your content strategy.
• How podcasting affects your audience and advertising dollars.
• The technical side of creating a podcast with Mac, Windows and Linux plus a brief discussion on gear.
• How to get podcasts into your WordPress site, and into other distribution channels
• Thoughts on content most suitable to podcasts, with examples from established and up-and-coming sites.

Craig is more than willing to answer questions, and has generously offered a massive reduction on his one-on-one podcasting setup and consulting fees to members that attend the webinar.

Craig has been traveling around the world since February 2006, with his wife Linda. Together they produce the award-winning Indie Travel Podcast and several other sites while they visit between three and thirty countries a year.  Craig has a degree in Film, TV and Media Studies from Auckland University, New Zealand.

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Webinar

September 15, 2010, 10am ET Chris Christensen, Amateur Traveler
Making Your Pictures (and your traffic) Pop
Chris Christensen is best known in the blogosphere for two things, the very popular Amateur Traveler podcast and the stunning photography on his site. In this webinar, Chris is going help us non-photographers do a better job with the pictures on our blogs. He’ll cover:

• How can you use photographs to help grow your traffic.
• What camera you need to be a blogger.
• Where should you host your photographs.
• Framing a shot – people and landscape.
• The technical side of photos and blogging – best practices.

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Blog Talk

Wednesday, October 6th, 10am ET
Topic: Newsletters
The questions to be explored in this Blog Talk are:

• Who has a newsletter and why?
• What’s the ideal frequency and format?
• What do you put in your newsletter?
• How do your build your list?
• What’s the future of your newsletter?

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Webinar

Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 10am ET
Chris Gutherie, Make Money On the Internet
How To Make Money During the Holidays: affiliate marketing for travel blogs.
The holiday season is coming. Maybe it’s a time when travel bloggers can make a little extra cash. Chris will share his techniques and strategies behind effectively monetizing a web property through the use of selling physical products with affiliate marketing. 

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Blog Talk

Wednesday, November 17th, 10am ET
Topic: Managing Multimedia on Your Blog
The issues to be explored include:

• How multimedia fits into your blog content strategy.
• Tools for managing podcasts and video.
• Integration with Youtube.
• Tagging for SEO.
• Other channels for promoting your content.

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Past Speakers
Recordings of all past webinars are available in the GBN Members’ Lounge.

August 11, 2010, 10am ET Matt Kepnes, Nomadic Matt
Monetization: Matt Answers Your Questions in an Open Forum
Matt – the incomparable Nomadic Matt – is widely known for his success in the blogosphere. He makes over $3000 a month from his travel site. His ebook “How to Make Money With Your Travel Blog” is available on his site. At this webinar, we’re leaving the floor open for your questions. We have a few of our own to kick things off but we expect a lively conversation that helps us all generate more cash from our blogs.

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July 28, 2010, 10am ET, Katie Gray, Stumbleupon
Get Your Blog Discovered with StumbleUpon
Katie Gray is Marketing Communications Manager at StumbleUpon, where she develops strategic communication priorities and programs and also works with the product development and engineering teams to improve the StumbleUpon user experience. Previously she worked at Google, where she drove strategic marketing and analytics programs for AdWords advertisers.

Stumbleupon and Su.pr are one of the best tools available for blog marketing. At this webinar, you’ll learn:

• What makes StumbleUpon’s recommendation technology uniquely capable of surfacing little-known content
• What type of content is most popular on Stumbleupon.
• What style of post is most likely to go viral.
• How to use Su.pr for best results.
• How to get the most from Stumbleupon and Su.pr together.

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July 14, 2010, 11am ET Andy Hayes, Travel Online Partners
Do What You Can Do, Leave the Rest Behind
Andy Hayes is a tourism industry entrepreneur, behind the popular travel magazine Sharing Travel Experiences as well as director of travel online marketing firm Travel Online Partners. Andy will talk about juggling priorities as a blogger. Online businesses sound like fun in the brochure, but the reality is most travel entrepreneurs work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week “to make money in their sleep.” This session is a reality check, to help you appreciate that running a travel blog is a marathon, not a sprint. Takeaways will include how to understand what is important and how to prioritise the things that will be the most effective for your business.

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June 19, 2010 Gary Arndt, Everything Everywhere
Taking Your Blog to the Next Level
Gary’s blog is consistently ranked as one of the top travel blogs in the world. We couldn’t learn from anyone better. He’ll give us a round-up on our topics to date – monetization, marketing, building readership… – based on his experience. Then, he’ll offer his advice on taking an established blog with a decent readership base and some income to the next level.

• Personality is King
• Doing what everyone else is doing is a recipe for failure
• Be prepared to stick with it for the long haul. The early mover advantage is over.
• Experiment, analyze and adapt.
• Don’t listen to people who don’t know your niche.
• Be everywhere
• Your audience isn’t other travel bloggers.

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May 29th, 2010 – Chris Garrett of Chrisg.com
Killer Content
Chris is a blogging and new media specialist. I read and followed much of his advice in his book “Killer Flagship Content”. At this webinar he’ll cover:

• What Flagship Content is
• Why you need it
• How to generate killer content ideas
• Easy ways to generate compelling headlines
• Make your content go viral

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Apr 24th, 2010 – Dave Lee of Go Backpacking
The why and how of collaboration
Writing for others and having others write on your blog has real benefits. In this webinar, Dave will cover:

• Benefits of contributing guest posts to other blogs
• Tips for how to approach and pitch other bloggers
• Benefits of accepting guest posts on your blog
• How to find/attract contributors
• Tips for how to work with contributors
• Fostering relationships with your contributors (team building)
• Ideas for how corporate and independent travel bloggers can work together

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BONUS Webinar Apr 10th, 2010 – Khalid Saleh of Invesp
Optimizing Your Blog

Khalid Saleh is co-founder and president of conversion rate optimization company Invesp. He is an in-demand speaker who has presented at such industry events as SMX, ACCM, DMA, emetrics and Refresh, among others. He is also the coauthor of O’Reilly’s upcoming book on conversion rate optimization.

Khalid is the architect behind blog rank, the blog ranking service that was released in May of last year. He is quoted in publications including Internet Retailer, California Executive and Chicago Sun-Times. He has more than 12 years experience in e-commerce architecture, design and implementation. His work has helped generate an average of 65% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients including Motorola, Levelor, Citrix, WWT, Nabors and AMEX.

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March 27th, 2010. Michael Martine
The Essence of SEO and Building Traffic
Michael Martine is Google’s #1 ranked blog consultant and runs Remarkablogger, where you’ll find tons of free content on how to boost your bottom line with a blog. Michael has been blogging since 1999 and lives in the beautiful state of Vermont in the USA. You can follow Michael on Twitter.

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February 27, 2010. Jeff Bullas
Positioning and Marketing Your Blog
Jeff helps companies use the Internet to market efficiently — not in an intrusive way through interruption marketing but by engaging people and companies in conversations that build trust and relationships. He’ll talk about breaking through the noise and clutter on the net by positioning and marketing your blog in a relationship that inspires readers. Read Jeff’s blog: Jeffbullas’s Blog. Follow Jeff on Twitter.

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January 29, 2010 Trisha Miller
Monetizing Your Travel Blog
Trisha is the Publisher and Managing Director of the Travel Writers Exchange. Their mission: to help travel writers and bloggers make money online. Trisha and has written extensively on monetizing blogs, she is a member of the International Food, Wine, and Travel Writers Association,a frequent world traveler, an occasional guest-blogger on a number of Travel Blogs, and writes about travel and technology, sometimes both at the same time.