Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

I’m writing this from Manhattan New York, and it is an AMAZING place. I’ve been once before, but this time I’m in control of my trip (not a tag along for a two-family trip), plus I’m in a slightly better financial situation, so it’s like I’m a kid in a candy store who just got his allowance.

I’ve taken quite a bit of video footage as I wander the streets, which I’m going to edit together and publish on the blog in a series of New York videos (I’ve got an interview with Ed Dale in there too, who I met at the 30 Day Challenge meet-up on the evening of the day I arrived here). I’ll hopefully have a chance to stitch the first one together tomorrow.

Blog Mastermind Affiliate Bonuses

There is a deadline coming up tomorrow that I wanted to quickly let you know about before it passes.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the affiliates who are promoting Blog Mastermind. Many of them have offered fantastic bonuses if you join my coaching program via their affiliate link.

However there’s a catch - most of the bonus offers expire at the end of August 2008 - tomorrow (Sunday USA time) is your last day to claim a bonus.

I’ve listed below some of the bonus offers I could find that are expiring soon, so if you are still fence-sitting about joining Blog Mastermind, you might want to take a look at the bonuses on offer, some of them are too good to miss.

Make sure you clear your cookies before ordering from the links so you give credit to the right person - the person you want to claim the bonus from.

Bonus Offers from Affiliates

ITriedThat.com Bonus - Steve is offering a $25 cash rebate if you buy through his link.

Problogger.net Bonus - Darren is offering private one-on-one coaching to each person who buys through his link.

JohnChow.com Bonus - John is offering a $500 sponsored review on his blog if you order through his link. You also qualify for a prize draw to win a Slingbox Pro.

There are likely some more great offers floating around the net, so look around or pick one from the above.

As even more incentive to join, the Aussie dollar continued to slide further during the last few weeks. As I type this it’s down to $0.86 to the $USD, so you save 14% when you join Blog Mastermind if you are used to paying in US dollars, because I’m still charging in Australian dollars for the coaching program.

It’s time for bed for me. Good night from New York.

Yaro Starak
New Yorker

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A couple of weeks ago I spent the weekend at Niagara Falls, in Ontario Canada. We rented a car and then after a much longer than expected drive from Toronto (it was storming like crazy - lightning hit within 500 meters of our car), with a short detour at Niagara-on-the-Lake (a lovely little bed and breakfast/fancy European hotels strip with great restaurants), we arrived at the falls.

Here is a video I recorded of the adventure, including a trip on the smurf boat right up to the foot of the falls.

I’ve been to Niagara Falls once before and it always amazes me how much water there is, which this time was magnified even more given it rained most of the weekend I was there. As an Australian I’m used to dry weather, so it’s nice to get wet like I used to as a child playing in the rain. Thankfully it wasn’t too cold, unlike my first trip to the falls.

This week I’m off to New York city and as always will record video and share my experiences with you. I’m heading to the Ed Dale/30 Day Challenge meetup first, then off to the US Open tennis and then just exploring. If you want to say hello, make sure you make the meetup tomorrow night.

To people who email me during this time and my Blog Mastermind students, please be patient with me as my email response times might be a bit slower than usual during this period, but I will get back to you.

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Here’s the video footage taken from behind closed doors in the Skyloft at the MGM Grand in Vega, where Jeff Walker hosted the Product Launch Formula top partners networking event. Look for 30 second interviews with Brian Clark, Tom Beal and Michael Cheney, along with scenes from inside the Skyloft.

Back in February I received the fantastic news that I had just scrapped in as a top 25 affiliate for the release of Product Launch Formula (PLF) 2.0 by Jeff Walker (again, a really big thanks to everyone currently studying PLF who purchased through me and I hope you are enjoying the iRiver bonus I sent too!).

Jeff and his brother Jon decided to run a party/networking/mastermind event only for the top affiliates and this was the first time I qualified for such an invitation-only event. I was very excited at the prospect of meeting many of the guys I follow and look to as mentors in the Internet marketing world.

Prior to this event I had only been to one Internet marketing conference, Rich Schefren’s Strategic Profits seminar held February 2007 in Florida. There I met Rich and Mike Filsaime and many people like me, running Internet businesses. I had spoken to Jeff and Jon Walker on teleconference calls and through Skype, but this was my first face-to-face meeting.

Besides Rich, Mike, Jeff and John, I was excited to see that Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com would be coming too (the only other “pure” blogger) as well as Tom Ham, Tom Beal, Colette Marshall, Willie Crawford, Jeff Dedrick, Michael Cheney, John Carlton, Shawn Casey, Ray Edwards, Howie Schwartz and more experts from the Internet marketing world. My only disappointment was that Frank Kern was not making the trip down to Vegas as I’d really like to meet my fellow long haired Internet marketer.

The event started at 1pm and included an afternoon in a Skyloft, which is an uber-expensive ($1,000 a night) apartment style hotel room in the MGM Grand hotel on the Vegas Strip and concluded with dinner at Craftsteak, a fancy steak restaurant located inside the hotel.

I left my hotel room and went down to the VIP area where they have special private elevators to access the Skylofts and immediately bumped into Rich Schefren who was chatting to Colette Marshall, whom I had never met. Rich introduced me and we chatted briefly until Michael Cheney showed up. By then it was nearly 1pm so we headed upstairs to the Skyloft.

Jeff and Jon Walker greeted us at the door and gave us a tour around the Skyloft before we joined the main crowd that had already arrived. I started shaking hands with people I knew, some I didn’t know and some I didn’t realize I did know (don’t you hate it when someone’s Twitter profile photo doesn’t quite match their real life face - Hi Brian!).

Read the rest of this entry >>

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I’ve put together a new video of the footage from around the Vegas strip. In this video I take you for a walk down the main casino and hotel strip, showing all kinds of crazy sites and sounds.

The strip is obviously a very commercial area, probably one of the most commercial places in the entire USA.

Spending time in Vegas is like entering a different world, with airplanes flying low to land in the airport which was in the backyard of my hotel the MGM Grand (almost!). The lights and sounds and visual stimulation makes the place feel very surreal, like you have entered into a movie that features an entirely new theme every 100 meters or so.

There a few interesting observations to make when it came to marketing techniques that I took away and can relate to you now. Obviously a place as commercial as this has to be able to market themselves. Here’s some thoughts -

1. Vegas offers comparatively cheap hotel rates. Even the most fancy hotels can be booked for under a $100 a night if you search the web and you can go much lower than that if you stay at the hotels just off the strip. These are some of the most impressive hotels in the world (the MGM Grand is the second largest hotel in the world) and if you don’t drink or gamble it’s quite possible to have a “cheap” holiday in Vegas, especially if you just want to lounge around the pool and walk up and down the strip.

   As soon as you start spending money on shows or gambling or drinking, that’s when the cost tends to rise up. This is of course a deliberate technique - make the accommodation cheap to get people there and then trust that the will spend up big. There’s no many products that offer as good a profit margin as gambling, so the hotels are quite happy to let people stay cheap.

2. As I pointed out in the video, there’s evidence of social proof and other forms of proof all over Vegas. One casino had a “wall of winners” showing photos of all the normal everyday people who had struck it rich showing off their big checks. Some had even become new millionaires.

   This is a classic technique that creates excitement and most importantly - hope. The whole idea of gambling is to purchase just a little potential for winning big with every bet. It’s this hope that creates the excitement that keeps people gambling away more money, despite fully understanding how bad the odds are in most situations.

3. The whole marketing image Vegas has developed is one of decadence and uninhibited pleasures. The psychology means people who come to Vegas leave their usual self-imposed restrictions at home. It’s okay to eat bad, drink lots, gamble and sleep with strangers in Vegas because that’s what people do. This frame helps the businesses benefit financially since money is spent a lot more frivolously than usual.

In my next post I’ll have the video up from the Jeff Walker Mastermind, including some short interviews with the experts attending. The networking was by far the highlight for me and I think you will enjoy my behind the scenes take of such a high-level meeting of marketing minds.

As always, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed and follow my Twitter profile if you want the latest from Vegas.

Yaro Starak
Not Gambling

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Here’s a video I just edited together of some of the early footage I recorded after arriving in Las Vegas. Please excuse some of the commentary - I was quite tired so I went a bit silly at times.

I’ve been in Vegas for a few days now and finally found some time to string together some of the video footage from my Creative Vado.

It’s an amazing yet bizarre place, and I’ve got lots to share with you including about 15 minutes worth of video footage and some photos. I did some short interviews with people at the Product Launch Formula 2.0 Top Affiliates Networking bash plus some shots from around the hotel strip.

Today is my last full day here so I’m going to venture out now. Over the next few days I’ll publish more video and stories. It’s been an amazing trip so far, especially the networking yesterday with some of the top Internet marketers in the world.

Make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed to catch the videos coming up and I’ve also posted updates to my Twitter Profile, including links to some of the tools I’m using to create and edit the videos and what I’m up to around Vegas.

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