Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

The folks at the AWeber blog have produced a bunch of how-to guides on using the AWeber email autoresponder with popular shopping cart and payment processors, including -

• Paypal [ review ]
• Clickbank
• PayDotCom
• 1ShoppingCart [ review ]
• 2Checkout

You can read all the guides by clicking here.

At a very basic level you can get your online business going just by using an email autoresponder and a payment processor. Combining Paypal with AWeber gives you the tools to capture emails, promote to prospects, sell to clients and take payment - a quick and easy way to get started online and launch a real business.

Not sure how to get started? Try these article for ideas and help:

- How To Use Email Autoresponders For Passive Affiliate Income
- AWeber Review - Email Autoresponder
- How To FINALLY Start Your Online Business

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Last week was busy. Not busier than average, but a lot was done both in my personal and business life (what’s the difference again?). By the time Friday rolled around I was feeling in need of a break as my head was reeling from the mental checklist I was keeping. My problem was I just had too many things I wanted to do.

So what did I do?

I decided to do nothing. Yep, nothing.

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Download the MP3 [ 51 Minutes - 20.6 MB]

I have a special treat for you in my latest Entrepreneurs-Journey Podcast, an interview with Brian Clark, the guy behind the very popular Copyblogger.com blog.

Note the sound quality was a bit sketchy with this recording so I’ve up the bitrate and consequently the file download is topping 20MB. I apologize to all you dial-up users, but I promise you the podcast download is worth the wait. For you broadband users it will be nothing and the enhanced sound quality makes a difference, although it’s far from perfect.

Brian and I recorded this interview late last week so it’s very current and you will learn a lot about the guy behind one of the shining star blogs of 2006. Brian has an extensive background including time spent as a lawyer and an early adopter of the Internet as a tool for commerce. He’s been consulting to web companies before, during and after the dotcom boom and subsequent crash and his experience comes through in this interview. I hope you enjoy it and make sure you leave a comment to tell Brian how much you liked this show because he really doesn’t appreciate the attention :-).

Show Notes

• The show starts with a brief history of Brian’s younger days
• Brian discusses his first Internet ventures - email newsletters and consulting to dotcoms
• Post dotcom crash, Brian talks about the businesses that were left and how they used sound direct marketing principles taken from the offline world
• Brian alludes to some of the previous Internet projects he has worked on how he structures relationships with other talented people to help them bring their talent online
• We hear some comments about venture funding
• I ask Brian for some secrets to the success of his Copyblogger.com blog
• We learn about the original motivations behind launching Copyblogger
• Brian discuses some of his current projects, including Tubetorial
• We hear about Brian’s plans for the future including what his wife thinks about him working so hard
• At the end of the interview I ask for Brian’s wisdom regarding starting up a business in today’s online climate

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You may recall I signed up for ReviewMe and began with a review of ReviewMe, taking advantage of their opening promotion to pay bloggers to help spread the word about the new service. My review was more of a discussion of the viability of bloggers being paid for reviews, which you can read here - Should Bloggers Accept Money For Reviews?

Since that review I have been offered six more paid reviews between this blog and the Small Business Branding blog, which I am in charge of as well. For the Small Business Branding reviews I contacted a few of the writers who blog there and offered them the reviews, but they were declined because of lack of familiarity with the subject matter of the review. In my case for the reviews ordered on this blog, I have either felt the subjects were not relevant enough for my readers, were too difficult to write about in an interesting manner or I simply couldn’t slot the review into my hectic writing schedule. You only get 48 hours to accept a review so you have to act quickly.

It’s worth noting that I have collectively turned down $750 USD in review revenue in a month’s time, which for some may not be much, but for me is still significant enough cash that I care, as I’m sure many other bloggers would too. The effectively hourly pay rate would probably have been around $100 an hour - not so bad. It’s also a sign that this service has some attention from advertisers, but I am curious how many reviews are making on to blogs and how much impact the reviews are having for the advertisers who purchase them. I’m sure the staff at ReviewMe are watching the search engine and publicity data closely for each completed review.

MySpace Bulletin Postings

There were a couple of reviews requested via ReviewMe that spiked my interest, but I turned them down for the reasons mentioned above. Yesterday I received a review request for a service that grabbed my attention, so I decided to accept the review. As per the ReviewMe policies I would like to let you know that the following is a sponsored review, but I think this is a service you may be interested in - in fact I may even test it out myself!

Social Media Marketing

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In my previous post I introduced and discussed the importance of the website traffic monitor AlexaRank. Whether you value your Alexa traffic ranking or not there are definite advantages to having a high AlexRank. Many webmasters and business folk look at the AlexaRank as a reasonable representation of a site’s traffic. If you are selling advertising from your site the more “proof” you can demonstrate of your traffic - and in AlexaRank’s case it is an independent valuation of your traffic, which adds credibility - the more likely advertisers will come knocking at your door willing to give you some of their ad budget.

Make More Money From Text Links

It’s well known that many text link brokers, such as Text-Link-Ads.com (aff), factor in AlexaRank when determining the price to charge advertisers for links on your site or blog. The higher you raise your AlexaRank the more you potentially can earn, and this reason alone is enough to pay attention to methods to increase your AlexaRank.

An AlexaRank Experiment

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