Attend the Elite Retreat, and you Can’t Afford to Eat
March 20th, 2007
Apparently that’s the mantra of bloggers who attended this year’s so-called “Elite Retreat” that is being held in San Francisco as I speak.
OMG! I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I read how much they are charging:
It costs $5,000 big ones!
Yes dear bloggers you read that correctly. Spend $5,000 $4,950 dollars (U.S.) and you too could hob-nob with the allegedly rich and infamous for two whole days!
Add on to that air fare, hotel, transportation, booze, entertainment, food (sorry but there’s nothing left over to eat) and you got yourself a very expensive two days.
But just look at that list of speakers. They even got the Guy himself (Kawasaki), Aaron Wall, Darren Rowse, Neil Patel and more.
Golly gee shucks and gee-whiz! I missed out on all the fun. In fact I wasn’t even asked to speak. Could that be because I’ve dared to criticize some of these characters once or twice in my past life?
Now shame on you Bloke for even thinking that. Surely they wouldn’t be that petty now would they? Or would they, I mean… um…. it’s probably just because I don’t charge enough for my information (dirty commie).
Anyhow, I was just wondering in who’s pocket will all that cash end up? If they get a decent turnout, at $5,000 bucks a head that could add up to some serious coin.
Even if they capped it off at only 30 heads that still works out to $150,000. Not a bad rake for two day’s work.
But pullease don’t try to sell me that it went mostly towards booking the hotel room or costs either. Been there and heard that before.
And don’t tell me that Mr. Capitalism himself (Kawasaki) et al showed up out the goodness of their heart either.
I (also) can’t help but wonder how many of the attendees who paid for these retreats (courses, books, materials, snake oil) have come anywhere close to making six figure incomes from blogging. Just wondering.
And why (if the retreat organizers are making sooooo much money from blogging) do they need to charge sooooo much moola from the attendees?
That was a rhetorical question of course, so don’t tell me it’s to weed out serious bloggers from the riff-raff either. Been there and heard it all before too.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. They’re making money from selling us their retreats, their courses, their books, materials and snake oil… but I digress.
I know, I know – there I go being snarky again. Shame on you Bloke. Naughty, naughty.
So sorry friends, old habits are hard to break. I’ll be good. Promise (with fingers crossed ever so carefully).
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And they say there’s no such thing as “A-list” blogging.
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Don’t you mean the $$$-list?
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I wonder how many (if any) people are really making money just blogging. No ecommerce, no speaking tour, no other ventures, just Blogging.
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sounds like someone is jealous!
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Oh yeah “anonymous”. Ya got me there. I’m just green (pun intended) with envy and counting the ways that I can better spend my $5,000 bucks.
Next time you want to leave a comment why don’t you show some cahunas and give us a name and website behind the mask.
Thanks for my smile for the day.
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funny how you don’t seem to mind all the anonymous commenter who agree with you (and you do seem to have a lot of those, got to make you wonder who is really leaving them as your blog is about blogging but so many of your comment leavers don’t seem to have blogs).
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Hey “anonymous”. Nice IP address you got there:
March 20th 2007 02:01:00 PM 1 hour 10 mins 43 secs Firefox 2.0.0 Referring URL: California, San Francisco, United States adsl-66-127-210-245.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (66.127.210.245)
Entry Page:
Blog Bloke, a blog about blogging: Attend the Elite Retreat, and you Can’t Afford to Eat
I hope you are having fun spending all your money at “Elite Retreat”, but wouldn’t your time be more worthwhile spent schmoozing with the blog elite instead of wasting my bandwidth? Just a suggestion.
I allow anonymous comments unless it is being abused and you certainly are borderline right now. Apparently you are the one who seems to suffer from comment envy.
So be nice or I will have to delete your butt. Again, I thank you for my smile today and cheers.
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Now that I think about it, the snark that was snorted from the nostrils of “anonymous” is beginning to sound awfully familiar. I know that I’ve heard that tone before so at least I know that you are a regular reader of the Bloke. And now I also have your IP address (albeit I acknowledge that it may just be temporary as you cavort with your fellow elitists in San Francisco).
I always appreciate hearing from regular readers but frankly your attitude stinks and needs some work. So since you are refusing to give me your name I shall give you one. With your permission I dub thee “chickenshit” which under the circumstances is only appropriate. But for the sake of brevity I shall henceforth refer to you as “CS”.
Now, regarding your your dumb comments please allow me a moment to clarify. CS, you are obviously not aware that some users of blogger can only leave anonymous comments between the old and the new Blogger. But I’m sure that you don’t fit into that category, and that your anonymous comment was made by choice and not forced upon you.
Secondly, for your information there are many readers of blogs who do not have blogs or websites of their own, preferring to lurk and make the occasional comment. Which is fine by me, but they are normally (please notice the use of the word “normal”) much nicer than you, and they usually have the courtesy to leave a name or handle that they go by.
I guess you weren’t aware of that either so now you know and it didn’t even cost you a dime. Today’s lesson is now over.
So last warning CS. Play nice or don’t play at all. Now where did I put that delete button…
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I just want to add that I apologize to my regular readers for this distasteful exercise.
This so-called “anonymous” commenter has been lurking here for a long time now leaving snarky remarks here and there. Obviously I’ve rattled some a-list cages and it’s unfortunate things like this sometimes happen. I have my suspicions who it is but I won’t say anything until I have absolute proof.
Of course I could have just:
a. Ignored the person, or
b. Deleted the comment, or
c. Stopped allowing anonymous comments altogether.
Knowing that the commenter has a history of lurking around here, option “a” and just ignoring them obviously hasn’t worked.
I could have chosen option “b” and just deleted the comment but as a rule I don’t like to do that. I try to give everybody a say regardless if they agree with me or not.
But all that I ask is to be polite and leave the snark at home. Knowing the history of this person, more than likely if I just deleted it they would have probably returned to haunt us again next Halloween.
He or she also tried to bait me into deleting them and I wasn’t going to fall into that trap either.
Which left option “c”. I reject that as well because I don’t want to ruin it for everyone else who has no choice but to comment as “anonymous”.
So that left me no alternative but to address the turkey head on. Hopefully this person has got the message and left (especially now that I have their IP address).
But I will continue to monitor the IP address of this individual and if there is any further abuse I will take it to the next level.
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Thanks for the mention always good to see our mentions on technorati and blogsearchs increase-
I invite you to interview any of the attendees so you would actually have a clue what you are talkng about
ShoeMoney
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Well then why don’t you save us all some time and “clue” us in? I have a few questions I would like to know and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
1. So how many of your “students” have made 6 figure incomes?
2. How many folks attended the retreat?
3. How much were you paid?
4. How much money did the retreat take in?
5. How much profit did the organizers make after expenses?
Why not make the information public so we can all have a “clue”.
Cheers!
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