Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Down-To-Earth Advice For Bloggers and Internet Marketers

In 2007 I launched a program called Blog Mastermind, which as far as I could tell at the time, was the first blog training program created by someone who had a profitable blog.

Of course there were many other bloggers out there at the time who made money blogging – many who made more than I did – but most weren’t in the business of teaching how to do Internet marketing. They focused on creating content to feed their hungry audience in whatever niche they targeted, monetizing with methods like advertising and selling affiliate products.

Even those bloggers who where focused on teaching others how to make money online, hadn’t adopted the idea of creating a products or even building email lists. Everything was about earning more from AdSense, or how to increase your pageviews so you could charge more for advertising.

In my case I had spent the previous two years studying the work of Internet marketers, who didn’t blog, but instead used landing pages to build email lists and then drive that traffic to sales pages to sell products. Up to that point I was like every other blogger, making a solid almost-full time income thanks to sponsors and promoting affiliate products like ebooks, DVD courses and live workshops.

I won’t go into detail about what happened after I released my own product as that story is well accounted for in my free report – The Membership Site Masterplan – and in the video on my Membership Site Mastermind sales page, so check out those two resources if you want the details.

In short, creating Blog Mastermind and doing a full launch campaign for it, changed my life because it pushed my income above six figures for the first time.

The Lifecycle Of An Information Product

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I recently received this unsolicited email from Craig Shinney (slightly edited to protect identities) –

I just wanted to write to tell you that about one year ago, I started getting into Internet marketing and experimenting with all sorts of different methods of the various types of blogs and tools that all the different marketers recommend. It was an amazing journey.

The reason I’m writing is to say that you were the first “expert” to catch my attention. I read through your archives almost religiously before branching out to other marketers. After putting up a bunch of crappy websites (that did in fact make me some money), I have since completely abandoned reading anything by those other marketers and have remained a faithful reader of your blog.

I’ve since come to the conclusion that it’s all about creating quality content, as you instruct your readers to do, not “trick” your visitors into buying something you’re not at all an expert on, written by Filipinos who can’t even use proper English.

Obviously Craig is generalizing when he talks about Filipinos, as there are no doubt plenty who can use proper English and are subject matter experts. The point he’s making is that many marketers teach a business model that relies on using outsourcers, who often don’t have English as a first language, to create ebooks and other information products, which are then sold online using clever marketing.

The quality of these information products is sometime suspect, yet with the right marketing process, including some good copywriting, sales will come.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about this model. You find a need in the market, then use other people to create products to meet that need. Your job is to wear the marketer’s hat, do the research, find demand then put the pieces together to serve that demand, then rinse and repeat.

I call this a horizontal business model because instead of going deep in just one industry, the strategy is to move from market to market, creating websites and products to sell to unrelated industries until you have a small army of small income streams. If each website you set up can make $200 a month in profit, then you only need ten or twenty successful implementations of this system to reach “quit your job” money.

This model has proven very successful for many people and is taught in various forms as an entry strategy into the world of Internet marketing.

I’ve promoted many courses that teach a version of this system, with the most successful from my point of view being Niche Profit Classroom. If you want a much more detailed breakdown of this strategy, check out my interview with Adam Short, the creator of Niche Profit Classroom.

Why I Chose To Go Vertical

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It was early 2006. I had been blogging for over a year and felt I had achieved something.

My blog had recently surpassed 1,000 RSS subscribers (what is RSS), making it at the time the most popular website I had ever built. The income was solid – up to $2,000 a month at best – and it was growing. I loved what I was doing.

My plan, based on all the Internet marketing advice I studied from the experts to “create a product”, was to start by releasing an ebook to test the waters as my first product. I had already begun to grow my email list, focusing on the idea of teaching other bloggers how to build traffic, since I felt that was something I was becoming good at.

One of the keys to my success with traffic was how well I was doing in organic search results. I was literally famous in the Internet marketing space because all the top Internet marketers would find my blog when searching for their name or their products or terms related to our industry.

This is incredibly powerful leverage, if you want to meet important people in your industry, or as an affiliate marketing technique, because you can just write about something often enough if you want a top ranking for a certain term or name.

My blog’s solid search engine performance has continued as a trend today, with about half the traffic I attract to this blog still coming from Google search queries. Considering how much more competitive the environment is now, with so many blogs on the same topic as this one, I consider my consistency an achievement.

I don’t really talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) much on this blog anymore, mainly because I don’t believe much has really changed over the past few years. The fundamentals are still the fundamentals. You will find plenty of articles on SEO in my archives under the SEO category if you’re keen for study materials.

However, SEO was a huge part of my early studies of Internet marketing, primarily focused on attracting more traffic to the business I used to own, BetterEdit.com, a proofreading service. When I was running that business, 50% of new client acquisition came from Google search, which was important – it made the business much more hands off for me to run when you have a steady stream of customers coming in without advertising expense.

As a result of the focus I had back then and the results with my blog, I considered myself half-decent at SEO. By no means was I an expert, and I certainly didn’t pretend to be one, but I felt I knew enough that I had something to share.

As a result of this, my intended first product, was to be an ebook called “The Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers“, which as you can guess, was designed as a guide to help bloggers improve their search engine rankings and attract traffic from Google and the other search engines. The ebook was almost complete and I even went so far as to have a cover created for it, which you can see inset (including the big haired, old suit photo version of me).

The book was never sold publicly because I decided to release a course on traffic. I can’t really remember why I decided to switch gears so late in the development of this product. It could have been because I thought selling a course at a higher price would make more money, but it was more likely due to some kind of fear based decision making or distractions. I just didn’t have the follow-through at the time to do a launch.

I registered the domain name BlogTrafficSchool.com, which I still own, and focused on releasing that program instead.

Of course if you know my story, the product never saw the light of day either, so I ended up having a 75% complete course on Blog Traffic, and a near complete ebook on SEO for blogs. Thankfully the third time I finally got something out the door, and released Blog Mastermind as my first product. The rest is history.

Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers – Revamped And Ready For Release

I recently began reviewing my ebook on SEO for blogs and was quite impressed to see that it’s still full of fantastic advice. It only requires about 10% revision work and I believe it could become one of the most helpful, and true to my style – simple guides – to follow on how to get more traffic from Google to your blog.

The book is over 100 pages and includes insights into how search engines work, how to optimize the internal structure of your blog, some very solid advice on linking strategies – including 75 link building techniques, with some case studies of my own experience using them – a quick launch checklist, and more.

It’s all content of course, direct from my experience and research, into your hands.

So do you want a copy?

I will release the book for sale later in the year, however I have some good news for you if you want a copy now.

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Rather than throw you head first into my very long sales page for the opening of Membership Site Mastermind, I’m going to show you just the video here on my blog, to help keep you on focus .

This video was taken directly from my sales page, however it’s full of great content – not just a pitch – including my story about why I decided to launch a membership site after spending the previous year writing an ebook (which I still haven’t released!), how I launched my membership site and why I think it’s so important you sell your own product online if you want to make serious money.

Here’s the video, just press play to begin:

I encourage you to watch this from start to finish whether you want to join my membership site training program or not and even if you have seen it before.

After watching this video if you’re keen to join the program, you can sign up here -

Join Membership Site Mastermind Here

Or if you want to read all the details about the program, you can view the full sales page right here –

Membershipsitemastermind.com/signup/

If you have any questions, please leave a comment to this blog post and I will reply as quickly as I can.

Yaro

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 40 Minutes - 55 MB ]

Dr Joanna Martin used to be a practicing medical doctor in Tasmania, then left that role to become an aspiring actor. Today she is a professional speaker focusing specifically on how to sell from the stage.

Joanna makes incredible money, to the tune of a seven figure business, by speaking around the world, however that’s not what this interview is about.

In late 2009 Joanna and her husband Greg were at an Internet marketing event I attended and we got talking about selling info products online. Joanna wanted to create a new income stream from the web, selling information products like continuity programs and home study courses, based on the materials they already had.

While Joanna loves what she does on stage, having a stable online income source to match her profits from speaking is an important goal, so she’s not dependent on being somewhere presenting live to make money.

I gave Joanna and Greg access to my Membership Site Masterplan report and the Membership Site Mastermind course and they went away and immediately took action.

The end result was a small trial launch of an info product to their existing list of just 1500 people, generating more than $60,000 in sales in a couple of weeks – not bad for such a tiny list and no affiliates.

In this interview I asked Joanna to break down exactly what she did to launch her product and get such a tremendous return on such a small starting point.

If you’re interested in learning more about Joanna and selling from the stage, make sure you visit
shiftspeakertraining.com/blueprint to download her free report, and also check out her personal blog, JoannaMartin.com.au

Here’s the download link again for the call –

Mp3 Download

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 40 Minutes - 55 MB ]

And here’s a reminder that Membership Site Mastermind is open too –