Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

If you missed the first part of this 2007 rap-up article, please go back and read it first here -

• How I Made Six Figures In One Day - 2007 Year In Review Part 1

The Eye of the Storm

The span of May - June - July was simply crazy. During this period I conducted my first online product launch, which is a massive task in itself, I bought a house, moved from my mother’s place to house sit my father’s place while I waited for the tenants to move out of my new house, completed the transfer of BetterEdit and maintained the status quo here at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, writing several times a week.

Oh, and I bought a new car too.

Looking back it’s hard to imagine I managed to do all these things at once, but besides the few days around the launch of Blog Mastermind, I was quite calm and relaxed the entire time.

Nothing is more important than your health, so I made sure I kept exercising, sleeping and eating well, and avoided too much continuous computer use. I also have a core belief that despite how “major” all of these things might be to a person’s life, they are still all related to material possessions and not that important in the grand scheme of things.

If something went wrong, for example, I didn’t get the house loan or the BetterEdit sale fell through, or my membership site tanked at launch, it wasn’t that big a deal. I would move on and be okay. However, I was confident if I focused on staying patient and just getting things done, it would all unravel fine and I could look back with a feeling of satisfaction.

I’m happy to say, that is exactly what happened.

Choosing A Car

For about six years I didn’t have a car. I got my first car when I was 21, a second hand $3,000 Mitsubishi Cordia, but it was written off in a car accident a couple of years later. I then moved to West End, which was close to everything and has access to trains and buses to get anywhere I wanted to go. Then I headed to Canada for six months, so I didn’t need a car.

Posing in front of my new car

With the sale of BetterEdit and moving further away from town, I knew it was time to get mobile. Given the world is the way it is, with the rising price of petrol and the environment falling apart around us, fuel economy and low environmental impact were top priorities for my new car.

In 2007 Toyota released the Yaris in Australia, a car that matched most of my criteria and just happened to have a “cool” name - Yaro in his Yaris was already being bantered around by my friends. However the car isn’t all that pretty and I briefly fell under the temptation to purchase a more fancy car with part of the proceeds of the BetterEdit sale.

I looked at cars like crazy, from Mazda 3s, MX5 convertibles, RX8s, to Alfa Romeos, and Peugeot Cabriolets, the hybrid Toyota Prius and other small fuel efficient cars. It literally drove me crazy for a while, then I said bugger it, I’ll get a Yaris, until one day I was skating past a car lot and saw the Suzuki Swift. The Swift is a lot like the Yaris in features, but, at least from my point of view, doesn’t suffer from ugliness.

It’s amazing how your attitudes change over time. I thought I’d never buy a new car because new cars lose their value as soon as you drive them away from the car lot and I thought it made more sense to buy second hand.

Since I was busy with business and how I value my time changed, I went from a bargain hunter, who would rather spend time to get the best price, to preferring to save time and avoid the hassles by buying new, which includes a warranty and eliminates the dramas of inspecting a second hand car for faults.

I went straight to the car lot, ordered my Swift and had it delivered to my door a few weeks later.

Me and my new 2007 Suzuki Swift, purchased outright with cold hard cash!

My attitude adjustment has impacted the way I run my business, stemming back to my initial adoption of the 80/20 Rule. I know even though I may pay more when I buy some things, I definitely make more money as a result because I make better use of my time on higher value activities. With less mucking around, I can fill my time with what I enjoy and what produces the most money for me. I’d rather spend more to reduce hassle and increase time.

You can read about my attitude adjustment and how you can save money by not being a bargain hunter in this article -

• Kill the Bargain Hunter and Change Your Attitudes Toward Money and Time

Blog Mastermind Goes Live

For me, my greatest achievement in 2007 was definitely the launch of Blog Mastermind. You won’t be surprised when I say I had doubts about it. I wasn’t sure people would actually pay for what I teach, given that everything I had published to that point was free and even more important, I wasn’t sure people would actually benefit from my work.

That may seem foolish to some, but every creative has self doubt and until you present something to the world, you never really know what will happen. Before launch I told myself that as long as I got at least 20 students, the program would go on, but I wouldn’t call it a success unless I got at least 100 students, especially considering how much work I put into the launch process.

The Blog Profits Blueprint

It’s funny, I can’t actually remember the time I spent writing the Blog Profits Blueprint. This one report was by far the most important part of the Blog Mastermind launch process and ultimately responsible for the success I enjoyed when the doors opened in June.

The Blueprint is 55 pages of some of the best content out there on making money with blogs. I didn’t hold anything back, but of course there is only so much information you can put into a report. I used the Blueprint as the linchpin of the Blog Mastermind product launch, offering it to affiliate partners to give to their audience for free to promote the program and used it as my credibility tool to demonstrate I knew what I was talking about.

The blog entry I made for the Blueprint release back in May currently has 215 comments, most of which are positive feedback. This alone made the launch process worth it. I’ve lost track of how many times the Blueprint has been downloaded, but it’s at least over 15,000 times. To get the Blueprint and read the comments you can view the post here -

• The Blog Profits Blueprint Now Available

The Launch Process

I started having regular meetings with my Blog Mastermind launch team of Rob, Nick, West and Mick in March and we went to work preparing for the pre-launch and launch. Everything progressed well enough, although it was a slow process with many things to do.

Initially I wasn’t sure what information to release to the public for the pre-launch. After the success of Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto, I was thinking about releasing a similar report for the blogging world and eventually decided that was the best strategy. I gave myself about a month to write it, during which I would also have to coordinate the launch and continue to write to Entrepreneurs-Journey.com.

As I said, I don’t remember the fine details of this time very well because I was managing a lot, but I do know I spent every single day writing at least 2,000 words of content. I gave myself a daily target to write a section or two of the Blueprint and then use any remaining work time to handle the rest. As long as I moved forward with the Blueprint, I felt good about the day.

I wrote the first draft of the Blueprint in two weeks. I then went to work adding graphics, editing it and sprucing it up with a few different elements. Mick lent some help by designing the fantastic Blog Profits Blueprint cover and added photos to augment some of the concepts in the report.

Nick meanwhile was busy setting up the membership site system using Butterfly Marketing. This was a huge task as we needed to complete a few custom changes and there’s quite a lot of tricky things to learn about the software to get it to do what you want. During this time I prepared the bonus audio interviews with professional bloggers, which I had recorded earlier in the year.

Once the Blueprint was done, my attention turned to ensuring the first group of students had something to do when they signed up. I decided I wanted to create a series of audios focused on the mindset needed to become a professional blogger. For seven days straight, I recorded a series of ten audios, five hours in total, which featured me talking about how to think and act like a professional blogger.

The mindset audios, combined with the bonus interview audios with professional bloggers were the initial materials I provided to paying students, plus the first lesson, which I wrote during the pre-launch week. I produced a crazy amount of content during this time - it shows how powerful setting yourself a deadline that you announce to the public is for forcing you to just get things done.

Pre-Launch Weeks

In late May the Blog Profits Blueprint went live and it was downloaded 5,000 times in the first week. During this brief period between the release of the Blueprint and the doors opening to Blog Mastermind I was broadcasting emails to my email list, writing blog posts and recording camtasia screencast videos. I kept the momentum going as any good product launch formula student should, but boy, it’s a lot of work!

The work paid off and based on the feedback I was receiving about the Blueprint, the emails from people saying they were ready to join Blog Mastermind and the general chatter occurring around the web, I had high hopes that my launch would go well, although secretly I still wasn’t sure - this was the first time I had done a launch after all.

Launch Week

In the third week of June I opened the doors to Blog Mastermind and I was totally exhausted. This video I recorded and posted to my blog the day before launch deadline pretty much summed up where I was at -

The night before I had stayed up late to make sure the system was working. I saw the first ten or so members sign-up, but then went to bed and slept for a few hours since I was well and truly fried.

I woke up the next morning and there were a few more members and by the end of the day I had my hundred members - I was stoked!

Throughout the release week I had the pleasure of watching paypal receipts pile into my inbox and in a nice twist of fate, by the time the early bird price discount period was over after seven days (the early bird price was $47, it went up to $77 after this), I had over 300 members. The last day before the price went up was particularly amazing to watch, as the rush of new sign-ups flooded in - the power of deadline marketing strikes again.

You can read this article to learn how to apply deadline marketing to your business -

• Read This Article Today Or You Miss Out! Deadline Driven Marketing

I worked hard during the release week and pre-launch phase of Blog Mastermind. Even after the program doors opened, I was sending out emails, making blog posts and circulating videos, showing people what was going on inside the program and enticing new members to join.

I felt vindicated that my efforts during this time paid off, but even after the launch the work had only just began. I had created a new commitment in my life - I had to teach my students each and every week, as well as run my blog, but I was up for the challenge and eager to provide value to my new paying customers.

Post Launch

In July I had a team dinner and brought together all the people who had something to do with the launch. Here’s a snapshot…

The Blog Mastermind Launch Team - From left to right, Mick Real, Nick Schoonens, Frances Kerr, Will Swayne, Me, Zahava (my mum), Robert Kingston, Andrew Poesaste and West Loh

After the launch there was still plenty to do and as I would learn, work would come in a rush all at once, with helpdesk tickets, people asking questions in the forums and emails coming in waves during specific periods, keeping me crazy busy for a week catching up, and then things would die down.

From the release of Blog Mastermind in June up to literally right now as I write this article in December, I have spent every week producing materials for my students. Each week I released a lesson and in the next few days I’ll write the final lesson, number 27. I recorded an audio version of each lesson, with me talking out the content, I provided a ton of videos and audios for the students, released PDF reports and did interviews with experts.

I can honestly say I’m proud of how the program has evolved and thankfully, I have enough wonderful feedback from my fantastic students to back this up and eliminate any of the insecurities I felt before launch. For this I am truly thankful. It is magical to have people appreciate and benefit from your work and make a great living from it as well.

Not everyone has stayed a member of my program and for all kinds of reasons some people left. Most of the time people who decided to quit early did so for personal reasons and were adamant it was nothing to do with my content. The majority are still in Blog Mastermind and as year 2008 is born, the very first group of graduates will complete the program just as another group started this month.

It’s been a huge learning experience running Blog Mastermind, discovering what people want, how to manage attrition, maintain ongoing marketing, provide customer support, deal with technology that doesn’t always work right and throughout it all, stay motivated enough to not just write content for my students, but also for my blog.

I closed the doors to new members in December and as a result 150+ students signed up eager to take part in the program while they still could join. I’m presently working with all the current students, interacting in the forums, producing new case study videos and other resources, while they work their way through the lessons.

I’m working on a brand new program for 2008 that some of the graduates of Blog Mastermind will test run with me starting January, but of course, this post is reflective on 2007, so I’ll have to save news about the new program for future posts.

Part 3

Here is the link to the final part in the series - You Can Make $20,000 A Month Online - 2007 Year In Review Part 3.

Yaro Starak
Remembering