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

After I finished writing my previous article that featured a very basic diagram of the three steps you go through to create an online conversion process (the Squeeze Page, Email Follow-up and the Sales Page), I was struggling with what to title the article. In the end I went with the decidedly simple, “How To Make Money Online“, and please read that article first if you have not already before finishing this article, otherwise this article won’t make sense to you.

If you’ve done keyword research in the Internet marketing niche then you will know that one of the most heavily searched for terms is “how to make money online”. That is the reason why so many bloggers use that phrase in their blog articles and blog title, if their topic is something to do with online business. The hope is to rank well for that term and get some search engine traffic as a result.

Personally I’ve never believed in going for the very top, most competitive terms. I consider blogs much better for a Long Tail search engine strategy, targeting secondary keyword phrases with each article and thus ranking well for lots of different terms. A blog can attract plenty of traffic from Google without ever ranking well for a very popular phrase, simply because it ranks well for hundreds of not quite as popular phrases. The traffic is much more targeted because of this, since secondary phrases are more specific in nature.

If you’re confused by this and have never heard of the Long Tail, please read my primer article here –

What Is The Long Tail?

My choice to use the “How to make money online” title on the previous article (and this article too now) was made because I couldn’t think of anything else more applicable. Since that article covered the “macro” viewpoint of how to make money online, I felt it was the best title.

I stated in the previous article that my diagram was missing two key ingredients -

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I was at the World Internet Summit (WIS) a couple of Sundays ago when it was held on the Gold Coast, an hours drive away from Brisbane (my home), on the coast of Australia.

Brett McFall, co-host of the WIS, was up on stage doing the last formal presentation of the event. During his presentation he had a diagram of what he does to make money online in its simplest form.

All subjects have a macro and micro view, that is a view from the very top, the “big picture”, and the micro view, which looks at all the tiny elements that go together to make up the big picture.

You can drill down most subjects to a near-infinite number of micro views, taking each element and breaking it down to its components and then doing it again to those elements. This can repeat until you hit base elements, at least according to science (metaphysics can take you a little further, but let’s not go there now).

Internet marketing is no different and Brett’s diagram of what the macro view of what he does inspired this blog post. I’m going to break down how Internet marketing works in it’s simplest form, so you know how people make money online.

Ready?

Here it is…

I drew this diagram myself, so you better be impressed.

Step 1: Squeeze Page
Step 2: Email Follow-up
Step 3: Sales Page

This essentially is the macro view of a typical conversion process that makes people millions of dollars from the Internet every single day. I woke up today to a $497 sale of my Blog Mastermind course, which was generated by this exact process.

Obviously there is a lot more to actually making this work, so it’s necessary to add to the picture somewhat, and there are also many derivatives of the process. In its simplest form, this is all you need to understand and if you can grasp this, you have the keys to making a ton of money online.

Let’s Break It Down A Little Bit

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Bear with me here, this is going to sound a little strange, especially for a business blog, but I promise you there is a very powerful lesson to be found within these words – powerful for business success too.

Last night (as I write this article) I found myself sitting down on the floor in a half circle of people facing some musical instruments that were waiting patiently for their musician masters to come and start playing. I was told that I was attending a “Kirtan Session” with David Stringer and there would be chanting involved.

My immediate response when I found out where I was going was – “Will I have to chant?”

I’ve chanted before, a couple of times at least, at the end of yoga sessions at some of the more eastern-philosophy yoga schools I’ve attended. They’ve always been very short experiences, made more comfortable due to the preceding yoga workout and its mellow effects. During chant time I’d lightly sing along, enough to be included with the group, but not loud enough for anyone to notice.

You don’t need a good singing voice for chanting mind you, and it’s certainly not about performance quality, rather wholehearted participation is the main criteria, but let’s just say I try and avoid using my voice for anything other than talking. I was cast as the voice-over guy in my grade school musical and there was a reason I wasn’t singing.

So, I find myself sitting on the floor of a yoga studio on a Wednesday night in anticipation of my first Kirtan session. The musicians sit down, David Stringer the lead singer…err…chanter starts talking about chanting, a projector fires up with some decidedly yogic words lighting up the wall above the musicians, and the chant begins.

The leader begins by chanting the words, which are very simple, usually two to four words repeated over again in basic sequences. Then the audience (including the other musicians) chants the words and then back to the leader, then to the rest of us again, and back to the leader, and so on.

The whole processes is driven by the music and the leader, with the pace increasing, different inflections and melodies help make it interesting, but essentially you are chanting the same words over and over again.

And yes, I had to chant.

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I’ve been in communication with Nate Whitehill from Unique Blog Designs for many months now and today his team have released something that all affiliate marketers should be excited about.

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.

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To cut straight to the chase and make sure you are front of the line when the 5,000 copies of Butterfly Marketing 2.0 are released for free on March 24th, register here –

• Register For Your Free Copy Of Butterfly Marketing 2.0

Way back in 2006 (that’s a long time in blogging years) I was busily writing an ebook that would eventually become a course, that would eventually be scrapped altogether and morph into what today is Blog Mastermind, my elite training course for people interested in professional blogging.

During this time I played around with different technologies to deliver these products I was planning. I was also studying Internet marketing and it was around this time I was actively observing the work of successful Internet marketers like Jeff Walker, Brad Fallon, Rich Schefren and…. Mike Filsaime.

Mike was relatively new on the block compared to the other guys, at least in terms of having mainstream exposure, and it wasn’t until he released something big in 2006 that he really made his mark. That something big was Butterfly Marketing, one of a handful of million dollar launches that occurred in 2006, and what truly put Mike on the map of Internet marketing superstars.

Initially I didn’t buy into the Butterfly Marketing launch because I was cautious when it came to spending $997 on a product. A few months later I was in a position to actually make use of exactly what Mike was teaching and offering with his Butterfly Marketing script, so I purchased just before the price increased to $1497 (and more recently $1997).

What Is Butterfly Marketing?

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