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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This post is going to seem like a blatant testimonial sales pitch for my Blog Mastermind program, and it is, but I’m publishing this for other reasons as well.

The post just before this one was a guest article by Krizia who blogs at Eat Smart Age Smart. Her article if you haven’t read it already, was a fairly in-depth look at how food, in particular bad eating habits, affects your ability to perform as an entrepreneur. It’s pretty clear after reading the article that Krizia is passionate about healthy eating and she did a great job of creating an article tailored to my audience. You can read the post here -

7 Eating Habits That Sabotage Your Productivity As An Entrepreneur

This is a perfect example of how to really leverage your opportunity when you have a chance to do a guest post on another popular blog or website. Krizia put some real time into her post and gave me (and you) some of her best stuff. She invested real effort – and she did so months ago because it took me more than a month to publish her article. In a sense she gave me some of her best content with “blind faith” hoping that she would reap some rewards and understanding fully that by giving something special she had the best chance of coming out on top.

This is such a rare quality in a blogger, and it’s the reason why Krizia’s trajectory is so good right now with her blogging business.

In a moment I’m going to publish a lengthy report from Krizia where she explains how her blog business has grown during the previous months after she joined my program. Krizia’s outlook is good, and I can confidently say that is entirely because of how much effort she puts in each and every day into her business, on top of the job she still keeps (which hopefully she won’t need for much longer).

It’s sad for me sometimes to accept the realization that many – the majority in fact – of people who join my coaching programs will not get the result they want. I can rest well at night because I know it’s not my fault, I provide the tools and the knowledge to succeed, but only a few people have the energy and commitment to make it work.

This is why I like to celebrate success stories like Krizia’s. Not only does she demonstrate that it’s possible to succeed with a blog and make good money and enjoy all kinds of other benefits thanks to blogging, but she shows what kind of effort it takes across the board. I say across the board because you need to approach your entire blogging strategy with enthusiasm and energy, including what you publish on your blog, what you do to market your blog and in every interaction you have where there is an opportunity to build your blogging business.

This is of course a “life rule” as anything you want success in you must approach with your purest enthusiasm, anything halfhearted will deliver halfhearted outcomes.

Over the past few years I’ve had a lot of people send me guest posts for this blog or just ask to submit them. Generally I say no, though I do like to consider my students as a way of rewarding them for their support. Only the best articles make it live to my site, as is the case with Krizia’s.

I’ve also received a lot of testimonials over the years from my students and general readership thanking me for my work, which is always a wonderful thing. As you will read in a moment though, Krizia went above and beyond with her feedback. She sent me a testimonial that is not only a glowing recommendation for my program, but can actually serve to inspire and teach other bloggers who want to see what a blog can do for you.

It’s because Krizia put in significant effort into both her guest post for me, and her testimonial, that I’m shining a light on her now with this post. It wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t put in so much effort to help me and to help her readers, and thus get rewards in return.

Thanks Krizia, and keep up the good work!

Testimonial for Blog Mastermind

I found out about Yaro’s Blog Mastermind 48 hours before it re-launched in summer of 2008. I found out about the program from my daily surfing of Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger.net site.

I didn’t know who Yaro was, but the sales letter, and more importantly the video testimonials from ordinary people, were compelling enough to get me to sign-up for the program in an attempt to increase traffic, revenue and notoriety to my site with a guy I had never heard about before.

When I joined Blog Mastermind I had been already blogging for one year, but I had made so many “newbie mistakes” and I was trying to process an overload of information from another coaching program I was part of at the time that was quite cumbersome and didn’t provide a clear step-by-step guide, so I really wasn’t seeing much results. Right up to September 2008, I considered quitting working on my first blog because the time and results ratio where out of whack. I’ve decided to hold on to my first site until my new site on nutrition picks up and then I will focus all my attention on the second site and will sell the first one.

I found Yaro’s sales letter to be so devoid of hype and I was hoping that it would translate into the Blog Mastermind program… AND it did!

From the very first lesson, it was clear this program was broken down into such minute parts that it was easy to follow and for someone like myself who had been blogging for one year, it was good to learn where I needed to focus my attention in order to get REAL results.

There are too many “ah-ha” moments in the program for me to list them all, but I can tell you that it didn’t take me long to apply all the new techniques I was learning on a weekly base. I was only able to focus on the course a couple of hours a week, but I took everything I learned and applied it throughout the week to my blog.

When I first started Yaro’s program I was maybe making $200 per month between affiliate sales, Adsense and ads served on my site (I work with a media company for that and I don’t sell the ads directly because it’s a bit trickier for my niche).

I’ll be honest, from the end of July when I started Yaro’s program to the end of November not much happened in terms of revenue, but my traffic and my opt-ins were growing steadily and that gave me confidence.

I was writing about 90% pillar content on my site and I also had a traffic assistant help me with generating more direct traffic to my site. By the end of November my revenues had jumped to about $400 per month. By end of December, my revenues had increased by another couple of hundred dollars and I closed the month with about $600 and I was now getting monthly cheques from Adsense (I’m still not getting huge cheques, but at least I’m getting money every month to help with expenses of running the business).

In January 2009, my revenue increased to $1600 and by February 2009 I surpassed the $2000 mark. I was pretty proud of myself and I was beaming like crazy. I even posted feedback in the member’s forum because my beauty niche is not that easy when it comes to affiliate type products so I thought it might encourage other members.

Nothing prepared me for March 2009 because my revenues spiked to about $5400 for that month and it was such a considerable spike that Account Managers from some of the affiliate companies I was using placed a “courtesy call” to see if I needed their help for anything.

My month of April 2009 was a bit slower compared to March 2009, but it’s one million times better than what I was making in April 2008. May 2009 was an excellent month and it more than double what I made in January 2009!

This is an approximation of my growing income from when I started the Blog Mastermind Coaching program with Yaro:

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

• Download the MP3 [ 35 Minutes - 16 MB ]
• Download the Text Transcript [ 18 Pages - PDF ]

This is the third in a series of case-study podcast interviews with successful Blog Mastermind students, where we look at what they do right in order to achieve above-average results.

First it was Mitch, who’s blog exploded in popularity ramping his traffic quickly beyond 5,000 daily visitors. Leigh’s interview was extremely popular as she explained how she went from making $20 to $4,500 a month with her online business. Today I interview Leslie, who made almost $32,000 in 2008 working part time online (he’s a full time teacher, and we all know how hard teachers have to work!), and has an interesting story to tell because of the unique way he makes money.

How To Make Money Giving Away Freebies

Leslie’s market is freebie offers and rather than explain how it works here, you should listen the podcast. It’s interesting that you can actually make money by offering freebie giveaways that other companies provide, and that’s how Leslie makes the majority of his online income.

Leslie has taken his expertise and transformed into into a thriving blog called The Freebie Guy. His next step is to launch a membership site and in preparation for this, he just released a new free report called – The Freebie Report – which teaches how Leslie does what he does with freebie offers.

In this interview you will learn…

• How exactly freebie trading works and how Leslie made $70 in his first DAY doing it
• How Leslie experimented with different methods to make money online and eventually found something that worked
• Why Leslie decided to start a blog and join Blog Mastermind
• What were the biggest lessons for Leslie as he grew his business
• Why Leslie wants to position himself as an authority in his industry

Leslie is not only a Blog Mastermind student, but he’s taking part in every single coaching program I have on the market as I type this. What I love about this is every week I see more evidence of how much effort Leslie is putting into his business and how much output he creates every day, DESPITE having to work a full time job.

Leslie is proof that, with discipline and enthusiasm, you can juggle your salary job as you need it to pay the bills, while you build up your online income. I expect in Leslie’s case that sometime this year (2009) he may say good bye to his job as his online income grows.

Here’s the download link again for the MP3 -

• Download the MP3 [ 35 Minutes - 16 MB ]

Yaro Starak
Loving Success Stories

Update: Looks like Gideon did the old switcheroo on me without telling me (to be fair I was on a plane from Dubai to Singapore at the time), so the deadline is actually 6PM now, not 4PM. You’ve got two extra hours.

I’ll make this brief since you have probably made your decision already, but I want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline if you still haven’t decided…

Become A Blogger Premium, the video training course presented by Gideon Shalwick and myself, is open for new members at the special introductory rate of $27 a month until 6PM EST US time, Thursday 11th of December 2008, one week since we opened the program. After that the price increases to $47 a month.

You can find out all the details about the course and sign-up here -

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

Welcome To New Members

I’d like to welcome on board the 600+ members we already have and all the new people who join in the next few days.

For the past few months and in particular during the last two weeks Gideon and I have been focusing our energy preparing this program. As is the case with many information products released online, we spend a lot of time on marketing initially, however now that our opening period is almost over, we’re turning our focus on to the members.

The first group of members are special because they help frame how the program evolves. We have a basic roadmap ready to go (no pun intended), however with feedback from the active membership we will be modifying the program as it progresses. We are also inviting members to request videos on any topic they want covered.

The first run through of the program is definitely the best time to do it because you save money and you get to partially dictate what is taught.

Plus don’t forget, you have 60 days to decide whether this program is right for you thanks to the mandatory Clickbank refund period (our payment processor). Try it for two months and if you don’t get your $27 bucks work, cancel. There’s no risk here.

If you can afford $1 a day and you are ready to build a successful blog by following along with Gideon’s clean and easy to action videos, here’s the link to join -

Become A Blogger Premium

Don’t Forget About The Free Stuff

Although it’s pretty obvious I’ve been promoting a video course on this blog and my newsletter for the past two weeks, you shouldn’t take that as an excuse to stop paying attention even if you never intended to join.

The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, which is nearing 10,000 downloads, is free and will remain free. It’s full of great content and regardless of whether you join our membership site, there’s a lot to take away and action from the Roadmap – so don’t ignore that resource (in both text and audio downloads).

Gideon has also been releasing a few X-Factor videos, which contain real tips that you can use. Yes they promote our program, but they do so by giving you ideas you can use. This is intended as a content launch that helps everyone – you don’t have to give us money to benefit.

And let’s not forget, watching a launch unfold is interesting in itself from an Internet marketing perspective. I hope you have been monitoring what Gideon and I get up to with your marketing hats on too, if you are nearing the stage where you are ready to release your own product online.

Thanks To Gideon

I’d like to thank Gideon especially as he has been working his butt off for the past month getting everything ready. This is his first major launch and as is often the case, he’s really had to put in the hours to keep things going.

Without Gideon you wouldn’t have all this amazing free content and for those special people who joined the Premium site, you have lots more from Gideon to look forward, and of course from me too!

Both Gideon and I look forward to meeting all the new members in the forums and the live teleconferences, which will begin in earnest starting next week once all the new members settle in.

Don’t Forget The Thursday Deadline

Make sure you mark Thursday at 6PM if you are going to join and want the $27 a month price. The course goes for six months long, and after that you enjoy lifetime access to all the resources and any future upgrades we release at no extra cost (you pay for six months only).

That’s a concrete deadline that we can’t change because it wouldn’t be fair to the members who acted quickly and signed up early. Join now or be prepared to pay more for the videos from Thursday night onwards.

Click here to sign-up

Yaro Starak
Still Blogging 4 Years Later

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

• Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 14 MB ]
• Download Text Transcript [ 15 Pages - PDF ]

After Mitch’s interview hit the airwaves recounting how quickly his blog grew to 3,000 daily readers in his niche of college football, another success story emerged in the Blog Mastermind private members forum.

A Simple Change To Leigh’s Blogging Made A Big Difference

Leigh runs a blog called The Fat Loss Troubleshooter, and also joined Blog Mastermind during July 2008. Since then her blog has enjoyed huge growth, getting as many as 5,000 unique visitors per day AND – here’s the really good news – she’s making about $4,500 a month now.

This is one of the screenshots she posted into the Blog Mastermind members forum showing her biggest income source – her Clickbank account. As you can see she’s doing between $500 and $1,000 a week from Clickbank sales.

When I hear success stories like this from my students I have to find out what they are doing right and learn what techniques are working for them. I asked Leigh to join me on a case study interview call to find out how she is getting such amazing results so quickly with her blog.

In this interview you will learn…

• The change she made to her blogging style that made the big difference
• How she is now able to learn what her audience wants, rather than guessing what she thinks they want, which means more sales for her
• The techniques Leigh implemented to build her audience, in particular how she uses interviews to drive traffic to her blog
• What exactly Leigh sells to make money from her blog
• Her opinion of how a coaching program like Blog Mastermind can change your blogging and present a clear path to success
• Leigh’s plans for world domination

Here’s the download link again for the MP3 -

• Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 14 MB ]

What I found particularly powerful about this interview was the way Leigh explained how her content writing changed.

The formula for a successful blog goes good content = more traffic = more money, so you can see how changes to Leigh’s content style made such a difference to how much money she now makes.

Success Is Not Guaranteed, But People Do Get Results

I’m never going to tell you blogging for money is easy. Every person I speak to who’s ever made good money from blogging talks about how much work they do, especially during the early days, however they also look at the work in a different angle – it’s fun.

When a passion is driving your work and you see results coming in, all you want to do is work some more. Positive reinforcement fuels passion and passion fuels work. It’s possible to get into a wonderfully positive cycle, if you are just willing to take the steps to move past the challenges and the naysayers.

Here’s to your blogging success,

Yaro Starak
Blog Coach