After the AVN show, I’m swamped with new business and projects. It’s amazing how popular you can become when you show people your traffic stats from your spamdex and adult sites (being incredibly good looking doesn’t hurt either). Anyway, I’d imagine a few of you who read SEO Black Hat are professional SEOs who charge for consulting. If you do, these non-SEO conventions can be a great place to find new business opportunities.

For example, there’s an affiliate convention going on right now in Vegas that must have a few hundred potential SEO prospects regardless of what niche you specialize in (if you specialize).

For me, it makes sense to do adult SEO because I have experience, traffic and contacts in that arena. I often turn down SEO consulting gigs on fledgling projects or from people I don’t click with. I’m at a point in my life where I don’t need anyone’s business so I’ll only do business with people that I like and on projects that are interesting or potentially very profitable.

But for those of you still a little hungry, here are some tips on how to get consulting business from trade shows:

1. Find out where the industry parties are and get invited to them. These mixers and parties are great for getting to know people in a social setting. I went to about 10 parties in 4 days in Vegas and met all kinds of cool and interesting people.

2. Be social. When you go to these shows, walk up to people and introduce yourself. People are much more likely to do business with you after they get to know you: unless, of course, you have no social skills.

3. Be confident. If you don’t have confidence in yourself, why should anyone else? I know success begets confidence so there is a bit of that chicken / egg problem, but if you have done your research and know your shit, you should have nothing to worry about.

4. Ask lots of questions. Find out exactly what the people you are talking to do. Find out what their company does. Talking to that cutie at the trade show booth may be fun and all, but if you’re looking for business you need to make sure you are talking with a person who has the authority to pull the trigger.

5. Take notes on the back of their business cards. No need to write an essay here, you just need enough so you can remember one conversation from the other.

6. Follow up. Unless you’re a leper you should have at least 300 business cards after one of these shows. Send 2-3 e-mails and make a few phone calls to everyone you liked and everyone you want to do business with.