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

I’ve been in communication with Nate Whitehill from Unique Blog Designs for many months now and today his team have released something that all affiliate marketers should be excited about.

Back in August of 08 Nate and his team decided to begin work on a special WordPress theme that would make life easier for affiliate marketers to create websites.

Many online marketers today use WordPress blogs as their default website content management system to set up landing pages, mini-sites and review sites - stock staples for affiliate marketers. This new premium theme makes the process of creating affiliate marketing sites a select-and-click process, much easier and more efficient than hacking standard WordPress themes or building sites from scratch using Frontpage or Dreamweaver for example.

The theme has been given the very obvious name - Affiliate Theme - and you can read more about it here -

• Affiliate Theme for WordPress

What Is Affiliate Theme?

Affiliate Theme is a premium WordPress theme with a customized back-end administration system that allows you to easily control and test the elements of your website.

I’ve had access to the theme for a few days now and had a play with the interface. If you’ve ever wanted to control the most crucial elements of your WordPress blog without needing to go in and hack the code, this is the theme you need, especially if you set up blog websites to sell affiliate offers.

Here’s a list of some of the customization options -

• With a single click you can change the entire layout from 1-column, 2-column, 3-column, 4-column, left-column sidebar or right-column sidebar. That effectively means you can test six different website layouts without needing multiple themes.
• You can control the background colors or images, font typography, homepage title and header graphics.
• You can easily insert tracking code without needing to hack your theme.
• Your blog’s navigation system can easily be changed, as well as the footer elements.
• There are settings for a featured offer on your homepage (like a highlight box) and also individual page offers.
• and a WHOLE lot more…

Frankly it’s hard to explain this using text, so the best introduction you can have is this video that Nate put together to introduce you to the Affiliate Theme -

How To Profit With Affiliate Theme

Affiliate Theme is designed for affiliate marketers, in particular marketers who use affiliate networks to find offers in many different niches they then promote with websites.

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Robb Sutton is the owner of Mountain Biking by 198, a blog devoted to mountain biking, a subject that Robb is passionate about.

Robb is a member of Blog Mastermind and also runs a personal blog at RobbSutton.com. He came to my attention after he revealed how he was able to score over $10,000 worth of free biking products for review on his blog. His blog is growing well and while I tend to focus on the direct monetization aspect of blogging, there’s a perk that isn’t talked about too much when it comes to blogging - how much free stuff you can get - and Robb is definitely enjoying this benefit.

It’s usually easier to get free products for review from companies rather than convince them to spend money sponsoring your blog, so this is an especially good tactic to get a reward for your hard work when your blog isn’t super big yet. Assuming the companies can see the benefit that your blog can potentially deliver, working a proactive approach to secure free goods is a good strategy, and certainly something Robb has done extremely well.

Robb’s also become an excellent review writer, which as you will hear in this interview is a powerful technique for affiliate marketing on blogs, something I’ve been doing for a long time and making very good money with.

Show Notes

• Robb explains how he got into blogging and his topic of mountain biking
• We learn how Robb is able to secure so much free stuff
• Robb breaks down his approach strategy to proactively seek free goods for review on his blog
• We learn how Robb was able to initially build traffic to his mountain bike blog, including three specific techniques that have worked really well for him
• Robb offers some feedback on how helpful participating in the Blog Mastermind course was for his blogging

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 25 Minutes - 11 MB]

Gideon Shalwick and I had a long chat last week and we’ve decided to close the doors to new members for our Become A Blogger Premium video training program for a while.

We opened the program in December 08 and had well over 850 members join the program, which to be honest was a bit better than we expected. We feel that our capacity is about 1000 people, so we’re going to shut the doors since we are getting close to that number, so we can ensure the first group of students finish the program around the same time and so we can make technical changes to the system.

In case you don’t know what this program is all about, I invite you to head to the sales page and read the details -

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you grab the free report Gideon and I put together, The Roadmap To Become A Blogger, which has now surpassed 13,000 downloads with several hundred new downloads every day coming in. It’s a great report and a great introduction to what we are about as blog trainers.

If you haven’t got your copy yet and you’re interested in succeeding as a blogger, make sure you grab the Roadmap report from here (it’s available in PDF and MP3 audio) -

The Roadmap To Become A Blogger - Free Download

Be sure to read the second half about the X-Factor strategies, as that has proven to be the key learning lesson from the report, especially for those of you who are already experienced with blogs.

The 10 free Become A Blogger videos are always available if you haven’t set up your WordPress blog yet and have now been viewed by over 118,248 people.

The Deadline Is This Friday

We are closing the doors to the premium program on Friday the 6th of February at just before midnight Eastern USA time, so you’ve got a little over 5 days at the time of me posting this article to join.

Now that our program has been running for nearly two months I can report back how well it’s doing. It’s safe to say in terms of member retention, this is the best training program I’ve been a part of yet. We have had an overwhelmingly supportive and enthusiastic group of people join, who are sticking to the plan and following the process carefully.

We set up a special blog post inside the membership site to collect feedback from our members so we can improve the program and as a tool to collect testimonials from our members. Here’s one of the comments we received -

Honestly Gideon your videos are great! Now that I’m looking at doing business on the internet and watched a few videos from others who claim to be gurus; theirs are really awful, too fast to see what they’re doing and not explaining things in a logical sequence as if done on the fly.

Your teaching skills and videos are in a class of their own. Keep up the good work!

Christine

Here’s another that I’m particularly found of…

I am 59, going on 30 (I wish), I am just getting in to this blogging stuff, and I am intending to spread my knowledge of the Plumbing and Welding Industry I have gained in the past 43 years. I am very impressed with your style and the easy to understand methods in the videos. Your instructional skills are second to none. I am a bit of a hard copy freak, and I like that you are able to print out the instructions as well.

Top work Gideon and Yaro, keep it coming.

Ken

There’s plenty more where that came from, but I don’t want to make this page too long, so I’ll stop there.

Why Join Become A Blogger Premium

I’m not going to spend too much time selling our program as I think by now you have decided whether you are in a position to benefit from our training, and the sales page does a good enough job talking about what is inside the course.

If you’re new to blogging, enjoy video training, are the type of person who prefers to learn how to do things yourself (or you can’t afford to hire people) and blogging is a part of your online strategy for 2009, I suggest you join our program. There isn’t anything else out there like it, created by people who have actually had success with blogs.

Join Become A Blogger Here

I’ve been asked several times what is the difference between Become A Blogger Premium and Blog Mastermind, my other coaching program (there’s quite a difference). If you are also asking this question, please go read this post and especially the comments that follow it for the answers -

What is the difference between Yaro’s coaching programs?

No Risk To Try, But Don’t Be Late

We won’t be re-opening the premium program until the second half of 2009 after the first group of students graduate, so if you don’t join now you have quite a wait ahead of you.

Since this is a Clickbank product their mandatory 60 day refund period applies, so you can join now and try it for two whole months before you have to decide whether to continue or get a refund. The course goes for six months, but you can cancel at any time during that period.

You receive lifetime access to all resources that you pay for, so you shouldn’t feel pressured that the materials will be taken away from you if you don’t keep paying. There are six monthly payments and that’s it.

Thanks to all the members who have supported us thus far and engaged with our program and I look forward to working with all the new members who join this week and go through this journey with myself and Gideon. I’ll speak to you all in the member teleconferences and inside the private members forum.

Deadline: Friday the 6th of February
Sign-up: http://www.BecomeABlogger.com/signup/

Yaro Starak
Become A Blogger Mentor

This is a guest post by Shane Lashley, who blogs at www.InnovativeEconomy.com. If you have any questions for Shane after reading this article (I know I did!), please leave comments addressed to him.

The same economic meltdown that has wiped out stock portfolios is already opening opportunities for savvy bloggers, both entrepreneurial and corporate, to generate new - and more - revenue. This is not an opportunity to exploit those hardest hit. Rather, it’s an opportunity for bloggers to become a part of the economic recovery, and to help others and themselves at the same time.

At the heart of the opportunity are the rights to innovations owned by individuals and companies alike. These rights are referred to as “IPR” (Intellectual Property Rights). Some familiar with Internet marketing may have been introduced to IPR through Private Label Rights or Resale Rights for content. But the universe of IPR is far more comprehensive and it is rapidly becoming very friendly to bloggers.

Intellectual Property (IP) consists of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. IPR refers to the various rights attached to each form of IP, rights that can be transferred, shared, quantified and monetized. IPR exists across all industries in all free-market economies, and is the single largest source of value in many U.S. companies. Many other countries are experiencing strong growth in their development of IP and their reliance on IPR.

Bloggers are now in a great position to secure IPR that will generate revenue streams through tough economic times and continue to perform during the recovery. But in order to extract the value of IPR, there must be a market for the product it represents. That’s where blogs begin to add their value.

Traffic Is Value

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Download the MP3 [ 39 Minutes - 18 MB]

Caroline Middlebrook has been on my radar for a long time. I enjoy her writing style, her candor and her honesty and of course, she writes about the industry I love, and mentions my name now and then on her blog too, which is guaranteed Yaro-linkbait. It was about time that I invited her on to my podcast for an interview.

In this call you will hear Caroline recount her history online, and she’s been in the game for a long time, even doing pay per click marketing back when Overture was the main player and AdWords didn’t exist! You will also hear a lot about Caroline’s techniques for building traffic to her blog, how she built up her audience (currently 5000+ subscribers) and how she’s managed to make at least $1,000 every month (as high as $3,000 some months).

The Bloggers Bible

The Bloggers Bible is Caroline’s latest project, a new book that teaches her methodology for building a successful blog and then generating an income from it. Caroline has some very unique ideas, is a great teacher and is the least hypey person I know in the industry, and her book does a great job of representing all these aspects.

Caroline is offering a 30% discount off her Bloggers Bible just for my readers, but there’s a catch - it expires January 16th - so you have one week to save yourself some money if you want her book.

You might wonder why bother getting Caroline’s book if you already follow my training on blogging? There’s a simple answer to that - she’s different.

We share many of the same philosophies and Caroline is a Blog Mastermind graduate, but as you will hear in the interview, she doesn’t agree with everything I teach and has her own system, so if you like what she says in the interview, definitely grab her book while the discount is available.

You can find the discount offer here -

Bloggers Bible 30% Discount

Show Notes

• Caroline explains her first experiences making money online
• We learn how Caroline turned to internet marketing by taking Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge
• Next Caroline explains her time spent niche marketing and why she didn’t like it
• Caroline launches a blog after ending her niche marketing/30 day challenge days
• She offers some fantastic advice on building traffic to a new blog and how she did it
• Important: Caroline talks about her free report and how she used it to make thousands of dollars
• Caroline explains why she wrote her Bloggers Bible

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 39 Minutes - 18 MB]