This conference is not for people new to SEO/SEM, for $5,000 USD plus travel you could probably arrange one on one training from a good SEO. I think “Elite Retreat” can charge so much because they stick you in a room with five proven marketers and quality attendees and then they just brainstorm and talk. I’ll post some reviews from people that went so you can get a better idea in a second. Here is a breakdown of the people who run the conference.

The first is Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney fame. He is known for his affiliate marketing expertise and running some large lucrative websites. One of his most popular posts from 2005 was a picture of his Google Adsense check for $132,999.97. He is a marketing expert and if you want a preview just grab some of his old podcast shows from his site or Webmaster Radio.

Neil Patel is a marketing expert who is known for his skill in social media, viral marketing, and search engine optimisation. I ran into him at a conference in Chicago and talked to him for a while, he cusses like a sailor and is wicked smart. He gave a great presentation and came up with some great viral ideas for a pretty boring industry.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com also runs the conference. Aaron literally wrote the book on search engine optimisation and now offers online training courses as well as consulting to fortune 500s and other sites. Smart guy and you should read his blog for great SEO tidbits.

Brian Clark of CopyBlogger. Brian has written the book on blogging and made a lot of money blogging. His focus was on conversion tracking, blogging for business, and marketing via some alternative methods.

So solid speakers and small class size sound great to me but what do previous attendees say about the conference? Onto the reviews of Elite Retreat by previous years attendees!

Self Made Minds flew all the way from the United Kingdom to attend the 2008 session. He says the real value was the one on one time with the speakers and interactions with the other people attending.

Justin Goff went to the 2008 retreat and loved it. He wrote a really good entry about it with more details than most of the others, here is a short quote:

There were some absolute baller attendees there. Tons of guys were pulling middles 6 figures every month from a wide variety of stuff that ranged from affiliate marketing to membership sites to PPC to e-commerce sites. It was pretty impressive to say the least.

Read the rest of his review here and here.

Scott of Search Commander wrote a review of Day 1 and Day 2 at the conference. Long reviews and worth reading if you are thinking of going. Here are two quotes that from his post:

So far the Elite Retreat has been great, but as I suspected, the true value in attending has been networking with new people and forging relationships that could go on for years.

and

After lunch Jeremy introduced Aaron Wall, claiming to have “saved the best for last”, and Aarons presentation certainly did not disappoint anyone. I’ve always considered my biggest strength to be organic search, so this was the session I was really waiting for, and Aaron was a huge draw for me to attend…

Aaron talked about an algorithm anomaly that’s been going on for about four months, and how to specifically take advantage of it. I’m afraid I won’t be talking about it here, sorry.

Scott also left a comment on the bottom of this article that explains where he thinks the value of the conference is.

Winning The Web asked if it was worth $5,000 dollars after going in 2008 and the answer for them was yes although they won a contest and got to go for free. Here is his short description of the expierience:

The experts outlined some of their successful marketing techniques and website business plans, audited real-life websites thrown out by the attendees, and provided one-on-one consulting sessions for everyone interested.

and

I definitely would not recommend Elite Retreat to newbies – you really need to have your foundation down before attending something like this. But if you own a successful online business and want to take it to the next level, this will certainly help.

John Hasson attended Elite Retreat in April of 2008 and wrote a short review of the conference here. He enjoyed the small group atmosphere and said it was worth it.

Chris Hooley went a few years ago and he really felt it was worth the high cost.

The fact is, buying consulting from top industry experts is expensive, and when you have one leader for every 3 or 4 attendees, you basically are buying consulting. Imagine that, a few grand a day for some kick ass consulting.

This was not general advice for the masses. At times it was a workshop about my site(s). When speakers spoke about broad topics, they either spoke about them DIRECTLY as it relates to one of our verticals, or about one of THEIR verticals. In explicit detail.

He wrote a very detailed entry on the conference and you can read the rest here.

Wendy of eMoms went in 2008 and says it is worth every penny. Not too much info in the post but she goes over the speakers.

My Thoughts?
I’m not sure if I will go to the next one but I will give it some thought. I think the conference would be useful for someone who has a solid business and needs to get some ideas and insight on how to increase it to the next level or someone who is looking for some one on one consulting from experts. I’ll let you know if I plan on going to the next one. As Scott pointed out below sometimes the best reason is the contacts and possible partners you meet when you go, and if someone is dropping $5k to go to a conference you probably want to know them