What can I say but that I had an absolute blast! BlogWorld was utterly exhausting but really educational and I got to make a few new friends. I’ll be posting over the next few days on some of the things I learned.

One of my favorite sessions – and did I ever take notes! – wasn’t listed in the printed schedule available at BlogWorld. It was on the online one that I had printed out at home, so I was one of the few to know about it until people started posting on Twitter about it.

These kinds of things can be really overwhelming, and I sure wish I had a laptop. Would’ve really simplified the note taking, not to mention the chronic urge to blog. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be away from a computer for days when you’re used to spending significant chunks of most days on it?

Well if you’re like me, you probably do.

There were two things that were challenging for me. The first was simply dealing with some hip pain due to my current pregnancy. Not much to be done for that, but it ensured that I went to a lot of sessions. Great excuse to just sit down.

The second was more important. It’s hard to network when you’re no longer used to crowds of people. It’s been AGES for me since I’ve had to deal with more than a small group, and frankly things were overwhelming at times. But the time before and between sessions were nice for just talking to to people in the same room. After all, if you’re in the same session, coming up with something to talk about is pretty easy.

Choosing sessions to go to can be tricky. There can be many great titles available. But don’t bother going to too many on similar topics. There were a ton of them on monetization, and while earning money is nice there’s a lot more information you need in order to succeed.

Besides, the basics of many of the monetization sessions were to first try selling something of your own, preferably your own products, but ad sales as well, then affiliate marketing, with AdSense down on the bottom if you just need a way to earn money.

The exact details varied, of course, but you can experiment with those and see what works best for you. Some did find affiliate sales to work better than selling their own products.

When your schedule and budget allow, go to one of these conferences. I found it to be highly rewarding.