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.

As a classic example, and something that Affiliate Theme is perfect for, you might choose to target a dating affiliate offer. To do this you set up a website that offers dating tips and advice and send people to dating websites using your affiliate link and earn commissions whenever a person signs up via your site. Some people make hundreds of thousands of dollars right now using this exact strategy.

With the Affiliate Theme you can set up your dating website, or as many dating websites as you like, in a matter of moments just by clicking a few links in the admin area. You could then test different theme layouts to see which gets the most clicks so you can maximize your conversion.

The theme is ideal for people who are practicing any form of niche marketing online, who set up multiple websites to sell different offers in different niches. It’s especially good if you’re not technical but can’t afford a tech person to help with every change, because Affiliate Theme let’s you easily control the most important elements of your site – the elements that you test to make more money – without ever needing to look at code or upload files to a server.

If this sounds like something you do now, or you’re currently learning how to do niche marketing and want a very easy way to set up websites, Affiliate Theme is a very good choice – the best WordPress theme I know of today for this in fact.

Click here for more details about Affiliate Theme

Are There Any Problems With Affiliate Theme?

When I first logged into the Affiliate Theme admin area in the test site I had access to, I was initially overwhelmed. Given the amount of control you have over your site, the amount of options you face can be daunting. Once I started to play with the settings and see how they impact the look of my site, it started to become much easier, but you need to prepare for a learning curve.

Normally I find with technology like this and of course as the 80/20 rule dictates, after some playing around and developing a few sites you will only end up using a handful of the options available. It will be your ability to test by changing those few options that you will deliver the real leverage, but it will take some time to figure out what those options are.

Let me also state the obvious – simply setting up an affiliate website is not going to make you money. You need to go to work to drive traffic to your site using whatever techniques you know and start making sales. Affiliate Theme is not a magic button, rather a tool to make the process much simpler and more efficient.

Nate has assured me that in future versions of the Affiliate Theme, there will be support for easily adding an opt-in box to the layout and also options for creating squeeze pages and sales pages, so effectively a blog theme for Internet marketers. I’m truly excited about these ideas, but of course for now the focus is on affiliate marketing, so the theme is lacking the email integration options I’d like to see.

There really aren’t any major issues with the theme, except of course if you can’t afford it. This is a premium theme starting at $97 for a single site license and $147 if you want to use it across multiple sites. If you’re focusing on one authority blog then you only need the single site license, but if you are a true affiliate marketer operating in many niches, you will need to purchase the multiple use license so you can set up as many sites with the theme as you like.

The Extras

To help combat that initial overwhelm I mentioned, the UBD team have put together a video resource library to show you how to make use of their theme. There’s also a knowledge base and a support forum.

Pre-made templates are plugged into the theme, which you can select with a drop down box. The templates are great if you are in niches like dating, home business, health, anti-aging, weight loss, ringtones, car insurance and skin products, or you can make adjustments on an element-by-element basis (header, footer, background, etc) to construct your site how you want it to look.

If you like to get your hands dirty and play with the code (you sick puppy), then Affiliate Theme has a clean designers interface with fully commented code. Of course you can do pretty much everything with this theme without ever looking at code, but the code interface is there if you’re an advanced user.

By far the best bonus are the interviews with expert affiliate marketers, including me . You can listen to guys like Ryan Wade, Zac Johnson, John Chow, Gobala Krishnan, Jonathan Volk and Jim Kukral talk about how they make hundreds of thousands of dollars with affiliate marketing.

Of course the reason why you would buy this product is for the theme, but there’s some pretty good support features and bonuses to help sweeten the deal.

You can see the full breakdown of what you get here –

Affiliate Theme complete details

Do You Need This Theme?

If you like to have control of how your blog website looks but can’t afford a tech person to make the changes for you, a once off fee of $97 is a pretty darn affordable option to give you more power over your site. If you operate in more than one niche, then $147 is still very reasonable for an unlimited site license.

If your blog is functioning well and you are comfortable making design changes by yourself, then you don’t need this theme. If you find yourself setting up new blogs every week, then using Affiliate Theme will make things a lot easier and much more effective, plus you get the power to easily test different aspects of your site – and testing is the key for big success online.

Affiliate Theme has the backing of a team of people who are by far the leaders in their field. I don’t know of any blog design company I would recommend above Unique Blog Designs and Nate Whitehill is just a great guy. The fact that it’s these guys who created Affiliate Theme and are backing it, is a real confidence boost, plus of course you have the usual money back guarantees with Affiliate Theme, so you have no excuses for not giving it a shot.

Here’s the link one more time -

• Affiliate Theme for WordPress

Yaro Starak
Affiliate Marketer

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Download the MP3 [ 25 Minutes - 11 MB]

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]

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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

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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

Blogs with existing traffic or the ability to grow traffic are the new gold in a downward economy. Good blogs are focused on a single topic and tend to attract a definable psychographic or demographic. Though far from being a cure-all solution, traffic indicates the presence of an audience, who is also the target market of some company that just lost its bank financing or ability to raise private equity, and doesn’t know when or if either will return before the company runs out of time.

Many companies and individual innovators are losing the ability or the appetite to roll out products across a big market. They just don’t have the cash or stomach for the risk involved. They need to take smaller steps and attract paying customers along the way. They also want to find something that already works, even on a smaller scale.

The ability of a blog to connect its audience with meaningful innovations is a game-changing event for the blogger looking to make money from their blog. The blogger should not abandon its purpose, independence, or writing voice that connects with the audience. These are important pieces of why the blog is now a valuable resource for products and companies with products.

As an IP professional, I have closely examined the changing valuation power of bloggers. My conclusion: conventional forms of blog revenue can be dwarfed by IPR arrangements.

For example, two blogs of roughly equal readership and attention may differ by more than 50 times in their valuations due to the impact IPR can create.

How can this be? A number of factors can cause this huge valuation difference, but here are two foundational principles.

First, remember this rule: “Good IPR extends time. Time magnifies value.” Therefore, it is not necessary to generate seven figures of revenue in order to achieve a seven figure valuation. You will sell the IPR based on its valuation, so this rule is critical to your success.

IPR Examples

Let’s look at an example. A patent can provide as much as twenty years of legal protection. You acquire certain IPR after five years of patent life have already passed, perhaps with no money down, since it’s been sitting on the shelf of its former owner. Depending on the industry and nature of this innovation, you may only need to generate high five figures or low six figures in actual revenue in order to achieve a seven figure valuation for that IPR. Why? You own the rights to the remaining patent life (up to fifteen years).

Now let’s break our example down further, and compare physical and digital products. Physical products can retain their value longer than many digital content products, especially eBooks. You write a $27 eBook and sell 2,000 copies over the course of a year. At year end, the content of your eBook may be nearing obsolescence. Now you need to update your eBook or create a new one and start the product launch all over again.

You have IPR in the form of copyright, and copyrights do extend time. But in this case, the shelf-life (market life) is much shorter than its copyright life. You may find your eBook has already peaked in value. If it hasn’t yet, your selling price is likely a multiple of 1.0 to 1.5 last year’s sales, if you can get that much. At $27 multiplied by 2,000 that’s $54,000, which multiplied by 1.5 equals $81,000, but nearing obsolescence can drive your value down to less than $10,000.

Alternatively, you sell a patented product for $27 through your blog and you sell 2,000 units over the course of a year. Rather than approaching obsolescence, you are just getting started.

Again, five years of patent life had passed before you acquired it, and you’ve spent one year selling the product, so you have fourteen years of patent life remaining. Though most products sales rise after the first year, let’s say that your conservative forecasted plan is 2,000 units per year over the remaining fourteen years. $27 multiplied by 2,000 equals $54,000, which multiplied by 14 equals $756,000. But your value does not end there.

[NOTE: Valuation math is actually not this simplistic - it can be quite complex. But it is built on the principles outlined here and this example is fine for the purpose of teaching the basic concept of relative value.]

Let’s look at the second rule: “Online success contributes to off-line value.” The patent is not only for your direct sales or online presence. It includes off-line rights too. If you have international protection it could also apply to multiple countries. Your $756,000 is perhaps just part of your value. It is not unrealistic or uncommon for a patented product like the one in this example to achieve a value of $4 million or more, once all factors are taken into account. Compare the digital product’s best case value of $81,000 to the patented product’s middle-of-the-road value of $4 million. Which one would you rather own?

Does that mean you should not use Private Label Rights or write eBooks for your portfolio? No, it does not mean that at all! Think of your portfolio as a team. Each team member has a unique role that contributes to the overall success of the portfolio especially if they help you discuss your other products. Private Label Rights and eBooks can be valuable members of your team.

Now you may be asking, who would buy your IPR for $4 million? Companies and individuals buy investments that work. Even with just modest sales like those presented here, you are making it easier for a company to justify purchasing your IPR. Why? You are proving that the product works and the market wants it.

Most companies would rather pay a seven figure price tag to acquire an opportunity with a promising track record that they can scale up to a higher level of sales, than risk wasting time and money experimenting. A price tag of $4 million can be a great deal for that company and a homerun for you.

What Does This Mean For Bloggers?

I have only dealt with a patent example here. A strong portfolio includes all forms of IPR, and the portfolio impact drives up the value of your blog.

For our last example, let’s assume you build a portfolio of just five IPR-based products that you monetize through your blog.

As a blog owner, you have many options. You can decide to retain ownership of all the IPR and the blog and just put your life on cruise control while you collect the money. You may decide you want to sell off one of the IPR assets and make a major purchase, using your IPR to do it debt-free. Finally, you may decide to sell everything – the blog, the IPR and all that goes with it. The point is you get to decide what works for you.

Innovation will play a powerful role in the recovery of our global economy. Bloggers everywhere can now achieve greater financial results than many people thought possible. The skills and resources required to build your own IPR portfolio are within the grasp of most anyone. It is a great time to be a blogger!

Shane Lashley

For more on this subject, see The Coming Economic Boom For Bloggers

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& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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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]

Get your bonus copy of my book
"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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We’ve just flicked the switch to open the doors to Become A Blogger Premium video coaching program and I’d like to invite you to sign up as a member at this link -

Become A Blogger Premium

How Much Is The Course?

Gideon and I are focusing this program at beginners and we don’t want to restrict anyone because they can’t afford hundreds of dollars a month, especially given the current economic situation. I realize many people wanted to join my other coaching program, Blog Mastermind, but they simply can’t afford it.

If that sounds like you, then you should be pleased as we have a special price for Become A Blogger Premium –

It’s just $47 a month and the course goes for six months.

We are using Clickbank as the payment processor, which means you have a guaranteed 60 day refund period offered by Clickbank. You can try the program for a full two months and at any time during that period you decide it’s not for you, go to Clickbank and ask them for a refund.

Of course I know you will love the program and as with all the products I release, I’m not going to just abandoned this after I’ve made some sales. Gideon and I are committed to making Become A Blogger Premium a leading video course and will be refining and enhancing it for a long time to come as we get feedback from the first group of students who join this week.

Here’s the link to sign-up -

Join The Program Here

What Do You Get If You Join?

The core training materials in the course are videos presented by Gideon. You will receive two to three new videos a week for six months, delivered via email, that take you through the curriculum, broken down into the modules you will find listed on the sign-up page.

This is important: we don’t give you access to all of the videos immediately.

I find programs that dump you with 50 videos in a database to go through on your own very overwhelming – it’s too much work and you never get it done.

We’re not going to do this to you.

In our course we are giving you only a few videos to watch each week, with a few steps to follow in each video so you take a gradual step forward and build on previous videos. This is a sequential course that requires a few hours of devoted effort on your part each week to get a result.

If you do what we show you in the videos and work at a consistent pace that you feel comfortable with (it’s not a race!), you will get a result – I guarantee it. If you can handle that, you will really enjoy this program.

We haven’t actually finished creating all the videos yet, since we are going to actively ask the membership what new videos they want created on top of the core module content. If you are part of the first group who join now, you get a say as to how this program will develop.

Be Part Of The First Group – Sign-up Here

Additional Bonuses

On top of the core weekly video training, we provide the following additional resources as part of your membership. You have lifetime access these resources and the training videos, as long as you complete the full six month course.

1. Access to the very popular private forums I offer only to paying members. You can get help and discuss any aspect of your blog with your fellow students and blogging mentors, including myself and Gideon, at any time.
2. Access to regular question and answer live group “mastermind” teleconference calls, led by myself and Gideon. These are hugely popular and a great way to get direct access to me to ask any questions you have about your Internet business. You can use a normal telephone or Skype to call in and listen or ask questions.

   If you ever wanted to personally talk to me, joining this program is the cheapest way ever possible to get a direct line of contact.

3. 3. My Master The Mindset ten part audio series, that until now has only been available to Blog Mastermind students, is included as a bonus for Become A Blogger Premium.

   This is a special ten part audio series, with text transcriptions, that covers the core “mindset” issues you need to grasp if you really want to succeed at professional blogging. Topics include the 80/20 rule, blog marketing, outsourcing, monetization, and more. It’s 100% me (Yaro) presenting to you.

Become A Blogger Premium Rego Page

Who Should Join?

If you are considering starting a blog, or you are a new blogger, then this is the course for you.

Our videos are targeted at beginners. Gideon is going to hold your hand and gently guide you through the steps to set up your blog, optimize it, market it, implement X-Factor techniques, and then monetize it.

If you have seen Gideon’s presenting style at the current Becomeablogger.com free site videos, you will know how he teaches. He’s a soft spoken, south-African accented guy, who is free from hype and could probably teach your grandparents how to blog.

If you want to learn how to -

• Set up a blog the right way using the best platform and plug-ins
• Capture traffic from search engines
• Learn how to write content that attracts readers and converts them into raving fans
• Establish yourself as a leading expert in your field so you can sell books, or present on stage, or create an information publishing business
• Make money from advertising programs and by selling affiliate products

…then you will benefit from our course.

In short, if you want to learn how to build a great blog and have it change your life, like my blog has changed mine, this is a great way to get started towards that goal. Plus you get to (virtually) hang out with me and Gideon, which honestly is worth the price of admission alone .

Who Should Not Join?

This is a program only for those who like to learn through video. This is a video course, so if you don’t like video, don’t join.

If you are already a veteran blogger, this course is going to be too easy for you. It’s for beginners who need a step-by-step formula to follow.

If you already know what plug-ins to install in your blog, you know how to write great content, you’ve studied traffic building techniques, and the “X-Factor” concepts we introduced to you in the Roadmap report were nothing new, then you are too advanced for our program. If your blog already works well then you don’t need our help!

This is a less is more course, which means you won’t learn everything about everything and we’re not going to overwhelm you with resources. You get some videos, some community support in forums and teleconferences and that’s it. We focus only on the 20% of elements that get you 80% of results (or really, the 1% for 99% return).

It’s up to you to actually do what the videos teach – we won’t set up your blog for you or do any technical work, and we don’t provide any blog themes or hosting services or anything like that. We are the guides, you still have to do the walking.

The Program Starts Immediately

That’s enough from me about the program. You can read the typically long sales page (though not too long!) of what’s in the course if you want more details and sign-up if you have decided to participate, at this link -

www.Becomeablogger.com/signup/

If you have any questions, please leave a comment reply to this post or email Gideon – supportATbecomeablogger.com – and he will get back to you within 24 to 48 hours.

The program is ready to go immediately as soon as you join. I look forward to seeing you on the inside.

Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick
The Become A Blogger Team

Get your bonus copy of my book
"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
Download Here

I’m very excited to announce that my latest report, co-authored with Gideon Shalwick, my partner in the Becomeablogger.com video site, is now ready for download.

Gideon and I have been working hard for the past few months preparing this report for you. It’s called “The Roadmap To Become A Blogger“, or as I like to simply call it – “The Roadmap“.

You can download the free report right now from here -

http://www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

Why Another Report About Blogging?

I don’t release new products very often. The reason why is because I prefer to invest time in something to make sure it delivers tremendous value and I like to have the opportunity to develop a product with feedback from active participants.

Back in 2007 I hired Gideon Shalwick to produce a series of videos I had envisioned for a domain name that I acquired called becomeablogger.com. I wanted to have some very basic training presented in video for people new to blogs so they could learn how to begin the blogging process by themselves, no matter what skill they currently possessed with technology.

Fast forward to today and we are nearing 60,000 viewers of those videos. Gideon did a fantastic job and I’m so pleased the site has truly taken off.

Gideon and I both agreed that if the videos were well received we would like to do more. However, in order to devote the time and resources into creating the videos (the free videos we currently give away cost several thousand dollars to create), we would need to make the service a membership site, and hence the idea for Become A Blogger Premium was born.

This new premium video membership site will open December 4th 2008 to invite the first intake of students. I’ll have more news about that soon.

As soon as we decided to launch the new training program I knew we would need something to give away as a teaching tool to introduce people to the concepts we are presenting in the new series of videos. After going back and forwards between delivering the resource in video or text, we decided to use both, but focus our core message in one document – The Roadmap.

What Is The Roadmap Report?

The Roadmap is a completely new guide to successful blogging based on my core strategies for building a great and profitable blog, but with an added dimension, because it’s been interpreted and augmented by Gideon.

Of course I didn’t want to produce *just* another guide to profitable blogging since my Blog Profits Blueprint already does a very good job of that. That’s why the Roadmap deliberately take a different approach, yet still introduces you to the fundamentals of good blogging.

You can look at the Roadmap as an extension of what was started in the Blueprint. Some of the materials overlap, but you will see in particular the second half of the report is a critical update for our current blogging environment. Things have changed and the Roadmap gives you some tools to excel in the current Internet landscape we all operate in.

Rather than me try to explain everything here, go download the Roadmap for yourself and set aside 30 minutes to read it. You will be glad you did.

Here’s the link again (it’s free) – http://www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

Gideon Teaches Me Something New

After working with Gideon and becoming his friend, I began to experience what unique talents he possesses. The first thing that was pretty clear to me after our initial collaboration is that Gideon is great at teaching beginners through video. Just watching the free videos at becomeablogger.com is enough to see that.

I joke with Gideon that he’s like a “sesame street” presenter for blogging, teaching people how to use blogs and web tools with a style simple enough that children could follow his instructions. This is a good thing of course, because when explaining what can be complex tasks on computers, you need to clearly present what people need to know without overwhelming them.

As I got to know Gideon better another talent surfaced, and it was something I was very pleased to see as it’s not a strong point of my own (it’s good to surround yourself with people who are good at what you are not).

Gideon has an uncanny ability to keep up with the latest and greatest marketing trends online that use social media and multimedia. It’s no coincidence that Gideon decided to become an expert at video – there’s a passion driving that motivation. Gideon constantly buzzes me on Skype with links to new tools, interesting videos, social media sites and all kinds of resources.

All these resources, when used in the right way, can be powerful marketing tools and I wanted Gideon to teach me and others how to use these tools to promote a blog.

Blogs, as we all know, do not succeed without marketing and it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. I came to realize that what Gideon knows is a differentiation factor. By implementing his Web 2.0 techniques your blog becomes a dominant player – and I’ve been using his ideas ever since.

Now it’s time to share them with you.

The X-Factor

The Roadmap really is Gideon’s creation. I wrote the introduction and I advised him on what should be in the document and my advice led to him completely scrapping the first version of the report and writing it again. This turned out to be a very good thing and the latest document is fantastic in my opinion. This is Gideon’s baby and he should be proud.

The first part of the Roadmap is exactly what it describes – a roadmap for going from a standing start, setting up your blog and then completing a set of milestones in a sequence to build a successful blog.

For experienced bloggers, this may not be something new to you, but it’s definitely worth reading because it will tell you what you are not doing that could be stopping you from building a great blog.

The second part of the Roadmap contains Gideon’s magic – what we call the “X-Factor” techniques that you need to apply to your blogging in order to stand out in the current environment.

Today good writing alone is not enough and the X-Factor is what you apply to your blog in order to take it to a level, where you start to realize all the big benefits of blogging, namely -

1. Huge traffic
2. Preeminence in your marketplace
3. And of course, significant profit

Once you learn the X-Factor techniques presented in the Roadmap, you will have the keys for finally realizing what you want from your blog.

You can download your copy right now from here -

http://www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

Why You Should Download The Roadmap

If you like what I have to say about blogging in my newsletter and on this blog, if you have benefited from Gideon’s training videos at Becomeablogger.com and you are a devoted fan of the blogging dream, then you need to pay attention to this report.

For some of you this will be partially old news, but there’s enough in the Roadmap that I believe even seasoned veterans will benefit. If Gideon can teach me something new and I’ve been in this game for four years now, he can definitely do the same for you.

If you are completely new to blogging you are in for a treat. The Roadmap is a fantastic – and most importantly – a basic introduction of the world of successful blogging, plus it has some absolutely killer new ideas that most people won’t know and certainly don’t do, that you can start your blogging journey with a big advantage.

Here’s that download link one last time…

http://www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

After you finish reading the Roadmap stay tuned for some more great resources coming up. Gideon has some short videos to teach you a couple of the X-Factor techniques and then of course, on December 4th, Become A Blogger Premium is open to new students.

Yaro and Gideon
Become A Blogger Trainers

PS. One last thing – Make sure you leave us your feedback about the Roadmap as comment replies to this blog post. We really love to hear what you think of the new report and the ideas presented within.

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Download the MP3 [ 42 Minutes - 19 MB]

I love stories about people making a ton of money with blogs, and here’s another one.

Timothy Sykes, as you will hear in this interview I did with him, is an excitable guy and he’s making a lot of money online (his most recent report was $100,000 a month!). His skill is stock trading, in particular short selling penny stocks.

Not only does Tim make money from stock trading, he makes even more by providing training and tips to others so they can also profit from penny stocks. His blog and email newsletter are the marketing tools he uses to sell his stock trading tips premium membership, which accounts for the biggest chunk of his monthly earnings.

This is a great case study example of Conversion Blogging (blog + email list business model), where Tim is able to leverage his passion and built-up years of experience and translate that into a huge income stream just using some fairly straight forward online communication tools.

In this interview you will hear Tim talk about how he made his first million dollars, then how he lost a big chunk of it, how his blog started and how he structured his current online business that generates six figures per month. You will also hear some strong opinions and a few segues as Tim and I take the discussion across a range of Internet related topics.

If you want to be inspired and hear exactly how someone uses a blog to make a lot of money, this is a must-listen interview. Enjoy!

Show Notes

• How Tim made his first million dollars and learned how to trade stocks
• Tim wrote a book and then started a blog to help market it
• Why scams and spam email are important to Tim
• How Tim created his “Tim Alerts” email list and segments his free and premium content
• What technology Tim uses to run his blog, newsletter and take payments
• How Tim generates traffic to his blog, including how he gets interviews on TV
• Why Tim does not like life-casting (Twitter, YouTube, etc)
• Tim talks about the importance of the money

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 42 Minutes - 19 MB]

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"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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Gideon Shalwick, the creative talent behind the Becomeablogger.com free video training site, and I have been hard at work the past few months planning an upgrade to the video service.

We’re calling it Become A Blogger Premium.

I’ve been really pleased with the response to the 10 free videos Gideon and I released so far. We’ve received some wonderful feedback from people who managed to set up their first blog who otherwise, for all kinds of reasons (disability, scared of technology, etc), would never have done it. The videos have well over 50,000 views and there’s hundreds of new bloggers now because these videos enabled them to set up their first blog.

However there’s a lot more to successful blogging than the 10 videos we have provided so far teach and we want to offer more. What Gideon and I are doing are combining my strategies and techniques for successful blogging, with his ability to teach in a very clear and simple style using online video.

I can’t reveal much more about the service now, other than it will have a very low entry price so we can help as many people as possible and it will be focused on video training for beginners.

We’re Looking For JV Partners

The key dates for the opening of the premium service are during the first week of December (next month).

We’ve just opened up the affiliate program and Gideon and I would like to invite any marketers or bloggers who have an audience interested in blogging, making money online, speakers, writers or any audience who could benefit from the traffic, credibility and income that a successful blog can deliver, to join as a JV partner.

If that’s you and you want to get on board with my next launch, please sign-up here.

Become A Blogger Affiliate Program

We’re running a JV competition with top ten prizes, with a “home theater” theme. We’ve got a brand new free report for the opening called the Roadmap, which I know your audience will love (and yes, my blog readers, you will get the report too!), and there won’t be any hard sell at all for this opening.

There’s no upsells or downsells or one-time-offer shenanigans – just a great product at an affordable price.

You can get on board as a launch partner and begin preparation for the December release here -

http://www.becomeablogger.com/affiliates/

If You Like The Sound Of This – Stay Tuned

I’ll have more details about Become A Blogger Premium soon. If you want to make sure you are in the loop for all the release details, head to Becomeablogger.com and join the early notice email list for the Roadmap report. Check out the free videos too if you still need to set up your blog or if you want a taste of Gideon’s teaching style.

Thanks and welcome on board to our new JV partners!

Yaro Starak and on behalf of Gideon Shalwick.
Prepping for launch

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Many of the comments were the usual, asking questions about the product or thanking me for the article, but there were also a few strongly worded criticisms of the book and the author, as well as some positive words about the book from Rob’s supporters and replies from the man himself.

I’ve been writing product reviews to this blog for a long time. In fact the very first ever attempt to make money from Entrepreneurs-Journey was selling an affiliate product back in 2005 with a review post that unfortunately didn’t do to well, although this blog didn’t really have a huge audience back then.

Over the years I’ve made thousands of dollars thanks to product reviews on this blog, with some help from my email newsletter to send traffic to the reviews. I’ve refined and expanded my review writing formula but one thing has always been clear to me – a review that is purely positive is not as effective as a review that points out good and bad points.

Most Internet Marketing Reviews Are Sales Pitches

Let’s set one thing straight. When I write a review part of the motivation is to make money. I derive a good chunk of my income from affiliate sales and reviews are one of the ways I do so on this blog. That’s not my only intention with review writing, I want to provide value to my readers and help them make the right decision as well, but money as motivation is certainly a part of the process and factors into how you write a review.

This is also true of thousands of other bloggers and affiliates who sell Internet marketing products through reviews. Unfortunately though, most people seem to think that writing something glaringly positive, even full of sales copy level hype, will result in more sales. It won’t.

People are jaded enough when it comes to making a purchasing decision for a make money product. When they research product reviews they find an abundance of emotionally manipulative, over the top positive claims, and talk about the millions being made by other people, and offer no concrete feedback about the product itself.

As a result, it’s easy to stand out from the crowd when writing reviews about products, and this applies to other niches as well – just give an honest, both sides of the coin assessment of what you are reviewing and if it has faults, tell people about them.

I don’t have the space to go into my entire blog review writing formula here, but there is a lesson inside Blog Mastermind that breaks my process down in some depth. What I do want to focus on today is to explain how important it is – and it was in my Blogging to the Bank review – to say a product is not brilliant when it’s not.

All Products Have Faults

All the reviews I write are of products that are not perfect. There really is no such thing as a perfect product, but some are certainly better than others. Blogging to the Bank 3.0 is a product that was easy to write something good and bad about because it’s far from perfect, yet it has a very compelling offer, which is why it sells so well.

Clearly based on the comments made to my review, there are mixed feelings regarding Rob’s projects, including his latest release book and some argue I damage my credibility by promoting him. You can read my comments in the review to see my stance on that matter, but I can say I certainly feel comfortable having that review on my blog because I know it helps people make a decision about the book and I feel there is value to be gained from reading it.

If the review wasn’t there, then the platform to provide feedback – whether good or bad – wouldn’t exist. What’s important as a blogger who writes affiliate product reviews is that you give people the platform by starting with your own assessment of the product, and then let your audience make the decision for themselves. Assuming the product has some merit, some will decide to purchase it and since your review was the introduction point, you receive the referral credit.

Credibility Counts

My reviews usually do well for several reasons -

• I pick products I have an interest in and that are relevant to my audience
• I take the time to write a thorough review after actually studying the product
• I have built up credibility as a trusted source for information in my industry
• I have worked hard to build an audience so when I say things enough people pay attention

There are a lot of ingredients there to get right, however assuming you go through the process of building a great blog, most of the elements you need will be in place, you just need to make sure you are careful with what you review, how you review it, how often you review products and – this is important – make sure your motivation isn’t always just about the money.

If all you care is about making the sale it will show in how you write the review. You have to act merely as the conduit for the decision making process and the platform for discussion.

If you consider what information you would want to know about something before buying it, then provide that feedback to your readers, you have a good review. Get inside the head of the person you are trying to help and you will do well – and yes, you will make money then too.

My review of Blogging to the Bank 3.0 was an interesting case study on many levels. As an affiliate, I’m happy with the results. As a business owner I’m also happy because I did some integration marketing with Rob so my coaching program was promoted to Rob’s customer base. Yet, based on feedback I know the review itself and the comments left, convinced some people not to buy the book, which is something I’m happy about too.

Review writing will never be a straight forward issue and as I’ve said so many times, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. I know with each new blog post I make, especially posts that include some component of promotion, like affiliate reviews, I lose readers, yet I also gain new readers too. They key is not to be overly sensitive to how people react to you on an individual basis, but be cautious of how your audience reacts as a whole.

If you want the best results when review writing, focus on the products closely related to your blog topic, write a review that talks about the good and the bad points, actually talk about the product and not just the hype surrounding it and then let your audience make the decision.

Yaro Starak
Review Writer

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