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

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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

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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]

I’m doing a lot of interviews lately, but this was definitely one of the best. Ray Edwards has embraced blogging wholeheartedly and is making serious changes to his business model to focus on his blog as the linchpin of his operation.

Ray’s core skill is copywriting and he has a lot of students who learn from him how to use words to their advantage. We’re talking authors, freelancer writers, copywriters, speakers and general small business folk who use words to sell (pretty much all of us who have an online business!).

I jumped at the chance to present to Ray’s audience through an interview and offer my thoughts on how blogs could be used to help authors, speakers and writers who want to translate their words into an income stream through blogging.

You can download the podcast here – Blogging For Six Figures? Writers Take Note!

It’s worth listening to this podcast to hear Ray speak too. As a copywriter he knows how to speak good copy as well, so listen how Ray leads this interview and you can learn a lot about good podcast technique.

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• Download the MP3 [ 110 Minutes - 26 MB ]

Live on the Radio in California

Last week I got an email from MZ, a DJ and radio owner who had a last minute drop-out guest for a show he was doing on his independent radio station.

He asked if I could come on the show and talk about making money from blogs and if possible, could I do it the next day.

I managed to free up some time but I didn’t realize he wanted me for a full two hours! I’ve done a little mainstream media before, but not for that long. I had another appointment so I only made the show with MZ for three quarters of the time, which was a fun and unique experience.

I got to mention my website addresses several times, which I hope will introduce a few new Californians to the world of blogging.

If you listened to the radio show and you came to this blog from there, you might want to start your introduction to the world of blogging by visiting http://www.BecomeABlogger.com, where you can get free training videos on how to start your own blog.

During the show the topics moved all over the place and we had some call-ins from people listening who had questions. MZ knows his Internet (he’s a self proclaimed geek), so this show was not like your typical mainstream interpretation of blogging, which can be very boring and basic – we actually covered some interesting things, though it definitely was aimed at beginners.

Note that I’m on the show for the first 75 minutes, after that MZ has to wing it without me.

Thanks MZ for having me on your show and I hope everyone enjoys the audio.

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Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]

I meant to have this out to you on Wednesday last week after I recorded it, since the prior evening I attended a Third Tuesday meet-up in Toronto, which was the inspiration for the podcast. However, you see, I bought a new macbook pro.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my new mac, but this is my first mac and since I recorded the podcast on the mac there was a BIG learning curve to figure out how to get it ready for publication on this blog. As you will hear, it’s not quite right, but the message is definitely clear enough to enjoy. Apologies for the change in volume and odd shuffling noises.

How Do You Measure Social Media?

This Third Tuesday meet-up was a good one, the topic being – How do we measure social media? – with three expert panelists (Katie Paine, Marshall Sponder and Marcel Lebrun) taking questions from the audience made up of mostly PR and communications professionals, and related consultants and small business owners.

The idea of measuring the impact of social media is akin to measuring the effect of branding. Social media, much like branding, is often difficult to directly correlate with a business outcome, despite it obviously having a big impact on business results. I won’t go into here since I do so in some depth in the podcast, so have a listen!

If you are a blogger, a business owner or a person interested in the business side of social media, you will enjoy this rambling podcast.

Thanks to Joseph Thornley and his crew for putting on a great meet-up.

Show Notes

1. Introduction to the Third Tuesday event
2. What we mean when talking about measuring social media
3. What this means for bloggers
4. Why it’s the conversation that matters most, not the influencer
5. No industry wide standards for measuring social media are available
6. Not many people are actively measuring, only monitoring
7. There is an opportunity to provide a database of influential sites ranked by social media analysis
8. Use social media to assess how your competition is perceived and use that information to compete
9. Consulting firms providing social media data mining services
10. What changes to ad budget spending at companies means for bloggers
11. Why being an influencer in any niche is so important

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]