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Last night was the Toronto bloggers and blog readers meet-up organized between myself and John Chow.

I forced John, his readers and my readers to go to the Live Organic Food Bar in Toronto, which I realize is not everyone’s cup of tea (no meat). I was secretly curious to see what John would post on his blog about it because he always covers the food he eats when he goes out.

John wasn’t too harsh thankfully and enough people ordered food, so I think we pulled it off. Who knows, maybe I even converted some people to organic vegetarians or even raw foodists (not likely! - I’m not there yet myself).

You can watch John’s video of the event below and read his recap here -

I’d like to thank everyone who turned up. It was great as always to talk to so many like minded individuals all following the blogging path.

If you attended the event and want to keep up with anyone you met, don’t forget you can go to this Facebook event page and find a list of people who attended (or at least who RSVP’d).

A Common Thread

We talked about all kinds of topics but one thing stuck out in my mind after the event as the most common thread, something which people continued to ask me about throughout the night in some shape or form.

I have to blame Tim Ferriss for this, it’s his fault.

Everyone is dying to emulate the 4-Hour Workweek.

As testament to how much people don’t like their day job and desire travel and lifestyle freedom, I was asked how I manage to travel and blog and earn a good living running a business several times by different people. I think that has to be the greatest motivation for a lot of people to start an Internet business and one of the main reasons you read this blog.

To answer this question, last night I mentioned two factors -

Read the rest of this entry >>

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I had the Conversion Blogging video transcribed into a text document for people who prefer to read.

You can grab it right now as a free PDF download from here (right click “save as” to save it to your computer).

In case you can’t remember, the Conversion Blogging video explains my system for combining blogging with a traditional email marketing system to create a $100,000+ Internet business.

Grab the transcript and you can read all the details, but of course if you want to actually see my examples, you need to watch the video (which is still free).

Update: Jack from VidSummary.com has also put together a summarized version of the Conversion Blogging video. He’s stripped out the best bits so you can consume what you need quickly, however he does charge $7 for the summary. You can take a look here.

400 Students Strong

New people are joining Blog Mastermind every day and we’ve almost hit the 400 student mark, which is awesome. We’ve already done the first of many live group coaching calls and the questions came flying in. The forums are hot and the feedback from the students is fantastic - I love you guys.

If you haven’t jumped on board what I consider the best blog coaching program available today, please come join the party -

http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/

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I’ve become good friends with the recently revealed man behind the John Cow mask - Jason Katzenback.

Just this week he grabbed me for a half hour session to talk blogging. During this chat we cover some interesting topics, such as how to drive traffic to your blog, the mindset necessary to carry you through to success with an Internet business or blog and how to choose a topic if you are new to blogging.

The free download is available at JohnCow.com.

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Thanks to everyone who replied with such positive feedback about the Conversion Blogging video and the interview with Alborz, a million dollar blogger. It’s been truly overwhelming how many messages I’ve received plus there’s nearly 200 comments made to my blog in reply to the content, and it’s not even a week since I released it!

What I’m most happy about is how inspired you all sound and how you are ready to take your blogging seriously. If I can help a few more people realize the full time income from a blog dream, then I consider it job well done.

But we’re not finished yet!

How Does A Blog Make Money?

Next I have two videos, which are not quite as long as the previous videos, but definitely as compelling and full of great tips to help you make more from blogging.

Both videos are completely free and take you behind the scenes of this blog. The first shows you how I make money and the second shows how much I make. You can view the practical implementation and the financial outcome as a result.

These two videos should help demystify ambiguity you might be experiencing regarding how a blog like mine can make $10,000+ a month. Here are the videos…

Please reply with comments and let me know what you think of the videos.

Blog Mastermind Opens This Tuesday at 10 AM

By now you should well and truly realize that I’m not just giving away these videos because I can (well, I am in some ways… it is gratifying to see my work benefit people regardless of financial outcomes for me).

I’ve distributed all of this great content in part because I want to convince you to come work with me in my blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind.

I showed you some of the concepts I teach with Conversion Blogging and the Blog Profits Blueprint. I brought Alborz on stage to demonstrate that other, normal people just like you, can do this if you stick to it long enough to realize success. Today I’m showing you how I do it and giving you proof of what I earn.

All I want you to do in return is consider whether what I’ve shown you has been helpful and if so, whether more training of this quality, delivered in a structured format and all nicely packaged in a friendly community environment, is something you would like to take part in.

My coaching program opens on Tuesday July 29th - that’s this Tuesday. I’m aiming for a 10 AM EST USA time opening.

We should make that deadline, but of course I’ll let you know if there are delays. We have a couple of tests to run Monday and if they go okay, we will be good to go on Tuesday.

You might be wondering whether there will be a time limit or a limited number of spaces in the program. Let me put your mind at ease - I’m not closing the doors this time, nor will I be capping the number of people who can become members.

I will have some fast-action bonuses for the first 100 people who sign up, thus demonstrating their eagerness to participate (I like to reward the eager beavers with extra goodies). However, if you live on the other side of the world (Hi Australia - I miss you - I’ll be back soon!) or for whatever reason you can’t get to a computer when the doors open, don’t worry, you won’t miss out.

Get to a computer when you can and you will still be able to join my program.

How Much Will Blog Mastermind Cost?

The program is six months worth of training plus a members resources area and online community. You can participate in two ways -

Option 1: Pay $97 for the first month, try it and if you like it, continue to pay $97 a month for six months total. You will have immediate access to the member resources and online community and receive one lesson per week until you graduate in six months.

Option 2: Pay $497 upfront, save yourself $85 and get access to all the materials at once. You get instant downloads for all the lessons, the member resources and access to the online community.

There’s also a third “all you can eat” option, where you get all of the Blog Mastermind content (all of option 2 above) PLUS my second course, Membership Site Mastermind (currently not available to the public), which is my coaching program for people who want to start a membership site using a blog as a launch pad. You can get instant access to both these programs for the one time fee of $1497.

The sign-up page will break down every tiny detail about my coaching program, so bookmark the page below and on Tuesday you will be able to see all the details and join the program -

http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/

That’s it from me, enjoy the videos and get ready to begin your training with me from Tuesday onwards.

Yaro Starak
Demystifying Ambiguity

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

• Download the MP3 [ 49 Minutes - 22 MB ]
• Download Text Transcript [ 18 Pages - PDF ]

It All Started With A Blog

If you opted in after watching my Conversion Blogging video you would have received an email from me talking about a podcast interview with a student of mine running a million dollar blog.

My friend’s name is Alborz Fallah and he was one of my very first students and certainly is the most successful. His blog, CarAdvice.com.au is one of the top blogs in all of Australia in any category and competes right along with some of the biggest media companies in the world for the car enthusiast market in the land down under.

His blog gets phenomenal traffic, brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue each year and Alborz has traveled to Europe to drive some of the most prestigious sports cars ever created. His blog became a true business and Alborz has to be one of the luckiest people in the world, living out a passion every single day and earning big money along the way.

What’s really great about this story though, is that Alborz started out just like you and me. He wasn’t sure what topic to write about, so he created three blogs at once to see which one would stick. The car blog got the traffic so he dropped the other two and slowly built up his site off the back of his own content.

I convinced Alborz to test AdSense on his blog after much pestering and he immediately made around $10 per day. Over the next few months his income grew, AdSense reached about $100 a day and he started branching out and testing other forms of advertising.

I don’t know how much his blog generates today, but 12 months ago it was making $30,000 a month, so I expect the site generates at least half a million dollars a year now. I do know the site was professionally audited (necessary when you take on capital investors) and valued at 5 million dollars!

Did I mention during this entire time he was still working a full time job?

It wasn’t until Alborz sold some of his blog to investors and his blog became a real serious business that he finally left his job to focus 100% on growing his project.

Since then Alborz and CarAdvice have gone from strength to strength. He’s knocked back a million dollar buy-out (actually I think he knocked back a couple of offers), he’s had more people join his team contributing articles and he recently told me about a deal just made with one of the major online media companies to supply car related content to their network in Australia. There’s also new branches of the blog opening up in other countries.

It’s truly become a massive enterprise, which all started as an after-hours experiment to see if he could build a popular blog.

There’s A Lot To Learn From This Interview

The interview is very practical, and if you pay close attention you will learn a lot about the specific techniques Alborz implemented early on to grow his traffic. You will also hear the story of how he brought on investors to back his blog and help grow it to the next level.

Here’s some of the most important points to take away from the podcast -

• You can start a blog and choose top level categories in very competitive markets, if you niche it down based on geographical location. In other words, you can start a car blog and target just your country to differentiate it. There’s big bucks to be made as the leading blog in just one country for mainstream subjects.
• When you don’t know what topic to blog about, pick what you think might work and just put something out there and see what happens.
• You can build a significant blog based only on part time labor, if you are dedicated and get things done during the time you have available to work on the project.
• Sometimes, being controversial can do wonderful things for your traffic. Strong opinions will always stick out and grab attention.
• Search engine traffic is very powerful if you just do a few things right, like blog post titles in Alborz’s case.
• Think BIG with your blog, it doesn’t have to be just a small publication - consider taking things to the next level with the help of financial investors.

This is one of the most inspiring blog case studies I know of. I don’t expect everyone to do as well as Alborz, but it’s VERY realistic for you to enjoy even just 10% of Alborz’s success with your blog and make a good living as a result, if you can just commit yourself to the goal for long enough to give yourself a chance of success.

Here are the links to the Interview again -

• Download the MP3 [ 49 Minutes - 22 MB ]
• Download Text Transcript [ 18 Pages - PDF ]

I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did creating it. If you like this style of interview there’s another 10+ interviews with professional bloggers inside Blog Mastermind, which you can download and listen to any time after you join the program.

That’s it from me. I’ll speak to you again soon.

Yaro Starak
Blog Coach

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