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Archive for Meetup.com

Meetup.com has lost some of the early luster it had for networking

By Dennis Guten on November 16, 2008 No Comments

The Meetup.com Logo

For the past six months or so I have been going to a number of Meetup.com group meetings.

I have attended different groups like meetups for eBay, Joomla, WordPress, Adobe and other general groups that were geared towards internet marketing and affiliate marketing. I even joined a different Meetup.com networking group that met to share networking leads.

At the beginning I was real enthusiastic about a number of the groups, especially the internet marketing groups. They were good outlets for networking in my field of web design. I have met a good number of other designers through them.

At some point you have to begin to weed out those that are not meeting your needs because they do take time to go to and there is usually some expense to attending a meeting, even if it is only paying for your meal.

I think I was attending 8 meetups at my peak. Now I have pared that down to 4 meetups I attend on a regular basis. I dropped the group about Joomla because I was not learning as much as I thought I would at the meetings and I use WordPress for my blogs anyways.

I also dropped the networking group because I was spending $20-$24 a month for the meals and never got a single lead. The members were all interested in much larger types of businesses and I never felt it was a worthwhile deal to go to during my business day.

The WordPress group, which I have only attended 1 time, met only to socialize and had no structure, plus it met on Saturday in the middle of the day, which was not a great time for me. I like to spend my weekends with my wife and family. I think I will give them another try though.

The best meetups I have attended are the eBay and the Adobe groups. They both have real structure, learning occurs and the organizers always attend and are real involved in the groups. The internet marketing groups are hit or miss. One month the discussion will be targeted and lively, the next time they will be aimless and have sparse attendance.

I did make a real good association at one of the internet marketing meetups with a nice man named Dan Mason. We have been listing one of his products on my eBay account and they have done fairly well. He imports custom-made products from China that he sells in his business.

Try Meetup.com for yourself. You can search for subjects of interest to you and there are thousands of groups nationwide with tons in every local area.

If you have tried Meetup.com, what groups had you had success with?

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Categories : Cloud Software, Meetup.com, WordPress
Tags : Meetup.com, Networking, WordPress

New opportunities after career stumble

By Dennis Guten on July 7, 2008 No Comments

Well, on June 20th, 2008 I was laid off from my e-commerce position with hitchfinder.com.

My family has been wonderful and supportive. I have not been depressed at all due to the upbeat attitude of my lovely wife.

I have no regrets. It was a very good learning experience and I took a lot of knowledge away from the job, plus a really cool 24″ iMac computer and the Adobe Creative Suite CS3!

What have I been doing since June 20th you might ask.


Well, I have finished my freelance web site gushindesigns.com and am almost finished with my new business card. I have designed and opened a brand new web site called appleproductsdepot.com, which combines web design, affilliate marketing and eBay.


There is also a second one of these eBay affiliate marketing web sites that I am currently building that is centered around old and new cameras, both film and digital (Note: this site closed in 2010). I am still into photography and I want this one to be a bit more interactive and it will probably concentrate more on vintage camera gear than newer stuff.

And I have been going to a number of meetup.com meetings on subjects like Joomla (a content management system for web sites), WordPress, eBay and various internet entrepreneur groups.

I have also been more active selling products on eBay than I have in the past, with 30 current auctions running. I am trying to liquidate a comic book collection I bought many year ago for a good price and have already made my original investment back so the rest is gravy as far as the comic books go.

There are a few opportunities I am checking into for web design work full time as well, but more about those if anything happens with them.

Categories : Freelance, Job Search, Meetup.com, Photography, Web Design, WordPress
Tags : Freelance, Job Search, Photography, WordPress

Cafe Brazil true to form again

By Dennis Guten on July 2, 2008 No Comments

Ok, went to another Meetup at another Cafe Brazil. Guess what? No WiFi again.

This time it was a WordPress Meetup, so the whole meeting was crippled due to the lack of the WiFi connection and the ability of people to open up their laptop, say “hey, take a look at this” and have someone help them figure a problem out.

They had no explanation, just no WiFi!

So, anyone in the Dallas area needing WiFi connections while out and about – avoid Cafe Brazil in Dallas like the plague.

Categories : Meetup.com, WordPress
Tags : Meetup.com, WiFi, WordPress
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