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

This post is going to seem like a blatant testimonial sales pitch for my Blog Mastermind program, and it is, but I’m publishing this for other reasons as well.

The post just before this one was a guest article by Krizia who blogs at Eat Smart Age Smart. Her article if you haven’t read it already, was a fairly in-depth look at how food, in particular bad eating habits, affects your ability to perform as an entrepreneur. It’s pretty clear after reading the article that Krizia is passionate about healthy eating and she did a great job of creating an article tailored to my audience. You can read the post here -

7 Eating Habits That Sabotage Your Productivity As An Entrepreneur

This is a perfect example of how to really leverage your opportunity when you have a chance to do a guest post on another popular blog or website. Krizia put some real time into her post and gave me (and you) some of her best stuff. She invested real effort – and she did so months ago because it took me more than a month to publish her article. In a sense she gave me some of her best content with “blind faith” hoping that she would reap some rewards and understanding fully that by giving something special she had the best chance of coming out on top.

This is such a rare quality in a blogger, and it’s the reason why Krizia’s trajectory is so good right now with her blogging business.

In a moment I’m going to publish a lengthy report from Krizia where she explains how her blog business has grown during the previous months after she joined my program. Krizia’s outlook is good, and I can confidently say that is entirely because of how much effort she puts in each and every day into her business, on top of the job she still keeps (which hopefully she won’t need for much longer).

It’s sad for me sometimes to accept the realization that many – the majority in fact – of people who join my coaching programs will not get the result they want. I can rest well at night because I know it’s not my fault, I provide the tools and the knowledge to succeed, but only a few people have the energy and commitment to make it work.

This is why I like to celebrate success stories like Krizia’s. Not only does she demonstrate that it’s possible to succeed with a blog and make good money and enjoy all kinds of other benefits thanks to blogging, but she shows what kind of effort it takes across the board. I say across the board because you need to approach your entire blogging strategy with enthusiasm and energy, including what you publish on your blog, what you do to market your blog and in every interaction you have where there is an opportunity to build your blogging business.

This is of course a “life rule” as anything you want success in you must approach with your purest enthusiasm, anything halfhearted will deliver halfhearted outcomes.

Over the past few years I’ve had a lot of people send me guest posts for this blog or just ask to submit them. Generally I say no, though I do like to consider my students as a way of rewarding them for their support. Only the best articles make it live to my site, as is the case with Krizia’s.

I’ve also received a lot of testimonials over the years from my students and general readership thanking me for my work, which is always a wonderful thing. As you will read in a moment though, Krizia went above and beyond with her feedback. She sent me a testimonial that is not only a glowing recommendation for my program, but can actually serve to inspire and teach other bloggers who want to see what a blog can do for you.

It’s because Krizia put in significant effort into both her guest post for me, and her testimonial, that I’m shining a light on her now with this post. It wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t put in so much effort to help me and to help her readers, and thus get rewards in return.

Thanks Krizia, and keep up the good work!

Testimonial for Blog Mastermind

I found out about Yaro’s Blog Mastermind 48 hours before it re-launched in summer of 2008. I found out about the program from my daily surfing of Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger.net site.

I didn’t know who Yaro was, but the sales letter, and more importantly the video testimonials from ordinary people, were compelling enough to get me to sign-up for the program in an attempt to increase traffic, revenue and notoriety to my site with a guy I had never heard about before.

When I joined Blog Mastermind I had been already blogging for one year, but I had made so many “newbie mistakes” and I was trying to process an overload of information from another coaching program I was part of at the time that was quite cumbersome and didn’t provide a clear step-by-step guide, so I really wasn’t seeing much results. Right up to September 2008, I considered quitting working on my first blog because the time and results ratio where out of whack. I’ve decided to hold on to my first site until my new site on nutrition picks up and then I will focus all my attention on the second site and will sell the first one.

I found Yaro’s sales letter to be so devoid of hype and I was hoping that it would translate into the Blog Mastermind program… AND it did!

From the very first lesson, it was clear this program was broken down into such minute parts that it was easy to follow and for someone like myself who had been blogging for one year, it was good to learn where I needed to focus my attention in order to get REAL results.

There are too many “ah-ha” moments in the program for me to list them all, but I can tell you that it didn’t take me long to apply all the new techniques I was learning on a weekly base. I was only able to focus on the course a couple of hours a week, but I took everything I learned and applied it throughout the week to my blog.

When I first started Yaro’s program I was maybe making $200 per month between affiliate sales, Adsense and ads served on my site (I work with a media company for that and I don’t sell the ads directly because it’s a bit trickier for my niche).

I’ll be honest, from the end of July when I started Yaro’s program to the end of November not much happened in terms of revenue, but my traffic and my opt-ins were growing steadily and that gave me confidence.

I was writing about 90% pillar content on my site and I also had a traffic assistant help me with generating more direct traffic to my site. By the end of November my revenues had jumped to about $400 per month. By end of December, my revenues had increased by another couple of hundred dollars and I closed the month with about $600 and I was now getting monthly cheques from Adsense (I’m still not getting huge cheques, but at least I’m getting money every month to help with expenses of running the business).

In January 2009, my revenue increased to $1600 and by February 2009 I surpassed the $2000 mark. I was pretty proud of myself and I was beaming like crazy. I even posted feedback in the member’s forum because my beauty niche is not that easy when it comes to affiliate type products so I thought it might encourage other members.

Nothing prepared me for March 2009 because my revenues spiked to about $5400 for that month and it was such a considerable spike that Account Managers from some of the affiliate companies I was using placed a “courtesy call” to see if I needed their help for anything.

My month of April 2009 was a bit slower compared to March 2009, but it’s one million times better than what I was making in April 2008. May 2009 was an excellent month and it more than double what I made in January 2009!

This is an approximation of my growing income from when I started the Blog Mastermind Coaching program with Yaro:

Read the rest of this entry >>

This is a guest post from Krizia from Eat Smart Age Smart, who is also a graduate of Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind (reopening soon!). Krizia’s expertise is food and health and she’s written some advice for us entrepreneurs. Enjoy this tasty article…

I still remember being quite surprised when I read Yaro’s August 8, 2008 post because it didn’t deal with business or the basics of blogging or even increasing traffic to your blog … it dealt with food and nutrition. At first, I thought it might have been an error but after reading Yaro’s post I realized that he is as careful as I am about what goes into his body.

Here’s the post in question if you missed it -

If You Don’t Take Care Of Your Body You Are Harming Your Business Too

It’s true that I have an unfair advantage as a formal personal chef (nope, I didn’t train at a prestigious school, I’m a self-taught personal chef who happened to have helped many other people make better food choices with the recipes I’ve prepared for them) and I have an immense passion for good food (I’m always careful to choose foods that will benefit my body and I’ve read an insane number of books on nutrition and sports nutrition).

I still remember something Yaro said during the introduction of the sales video to launch his Membership Site Mastermind program. He said that people constantly tell him that he has this ability/gift to explain complicated things in a simple way. It might have taken me a long time in my life, but I think my gift is that I’m able to get people really excited about good food and I’m able to change people’s way of seeing healthy food options.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t have my list of cheat foods (because I do), but as a rule of thumb I make sure that I always eat high quality foods and keep the cheat foods to about 10% of the foods I eat.

I’ve found that this discipline has served me well as an entrepreneur. You see I own a media company and I also blog daily for two sites (one on nutrition and one on beauty) and as you might know, when your run your own business there is no such thing as a 9-5 at the beginning and you often put in much longer hours than you would in the corporate world.

I learned very quickly that food is my fuel and it could help me be more or less productive … it was all up to the food choices I made.

Many entrepreneurs make some pretty damaging decisions when it comes to their diet and many don’t understand the implications of their actions, so I thought it might be good to highlight some of the biggest mistakes many entrepreneurs make when it comes to their diet. I’ll also show you how what you eat and how you eat can really affect your productivity.

7 eating habits that sabotage your productivity as an entrepreneur

1) Skipping breakfast:

Read the rest of this entry >>

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 46 Minutes - 21 MB]

Download Part 2 here –

How To Profit From Niche Websites By Adam Short – Part 2

I’ve been asked many times whether I own other websites in various niches, all making money. The answer is no, I don’t. All my websites focus on the same niche, and while in the past I spent some time buying and selling websites in different niches, now I focus on maintaining authority in one marketplace.

Today I’m giving you part one of an interview with a man who does the opposite of me. His specialty is creating profitable websites in various niches. In fact, he owns 90 different websites all making money. His name is Adam Short, and in this call you will hear Adam explain exactly how he can build sites and make money from them despite targeting so many different topics.

This Is Powerful Information

I had to break this call down into two parts because Adam and I ended up speaking for an hour and twenty minutes. Adam really spilled the beans about everything he does, including how he chooses a niche (it’s ridiculously simple), how he generates a list of keywords to target, how he gets content created, how he drives traffic and then turns that traffic into money using automated email marketing.

Although Adam is not unique in what he does – there are plenty of niche marketers out there – his system is by far one of the simplest I’ve found and he was particularly good at explaining it on this call. He doesn’t hold anything back during the interview, there are no secrets, and you will even learn what are some of the specific niches and websites he uses to make money currently.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t feel capable of establishing dominance in one market and you’re looking for a system of making money with websites in topic areas that you are not necessarily interested in, this could be the answer. After listening to the interview you will definitely have an idea of how it’s done.

Download Part 2 here –

How To Profit From Niche Websites By Adam Short – Part 2

Show Notes

• Adam introduces himself and how he got into niche websites
• We learn Adam’s very simple system for choosing a niche topic
• What keyword research you should do to check whether a niche is viable as a profit source
• Adam explains his traffic/keyword system for finding the high traffic/low competition keyword phrases
• How Adam gets content created for his sites

In part two of the call you will hear the rest of the process, including how Adam builds traffic, turns that traffic into money by selling products and advertising, and how he uses email autoresponders to increase the income returned. His entire system is “templated”, which makes it very easy to replicate, so make sure you download and listen to part 2 to complete the full picture.

Download Part 2 here –

How To Profit From Niche Websites By Adam Short – Part 2

Part 1 Mp3 Download

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 46 Minutes - 21 MB]

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 58 Minutes - 53 MB]

Click Here For Instant Access To More FREE Stuff From Maria Andros

Gideon Shalwick interviewed the video marketing queen, Maria Andros, in this fantastic podcast.

Let’s state the obvious – social media is HOT right now and as marketers we are looking for ways to leverage these communication tools to further our business growth. Maria Andros was clever enough to see the opportunity early and cemented herself as a leader in the field of social media marketing.

Maria has taught thousands of people how to better leverage websites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for traffic, but not just traffic – for money as well.

It’s easy to see the potential in these sites to tap into large audiences, but do you know to convert those people into customers and members for your products and services? Maria can help you understand exactly how to do this.

Listen to this interview with Maria Andros and you will learn -

• How Maria got her start online (she worked for ten years in a completely different field before moving online)
• What are the top three social media services based on traffic growth
• How you can use your videos to get on the first page of Google search results
• How Maria begins her videos to capture attention with just one sentence
• What are “Long Tail” keywords, and how do they relate to getting traffic
• How can your Twitter bio help you get more followers
• Maria’s top twitter tips for building a huge following
• How Maria integrates Facebook into her marketing system

Maria works very hard to give away lots of great free training materials as a means to introduce herself to people by giving first, a philosophy I wholeheartedly endorse. One of the things that really stand out for me about Maria, is her focus on mindset and attitude. She’s extremely positive and motivated about getting results for other people, because she knows that will help her to achieve her goals.

After listening to the video, if what Maria talks about resonates with you, you can opt-in here for some more free videos from her –

http://socialmediatrafficblueprint.com/

A big thanks to Gideon as well for arranging and conducting this interview.

Enjoy!

In case you don’t know, Nate Whitehill and his company UniqueBlogDesigns.com did the design for my blog, which you are looking at right now if you are not reading this through an RSS reader.

I consider Nate and his team the preeminent WordPress blog theme designers and pretty much all my recent design work has been done by them.

A custom blog theme is not essential for success as a blogger, but it certainly helps. Having your own theme, something you are proud of that uniquely identifies you and/or your brand, gives you a sense of ownership, which is actually a motivating factor – it makes you want to blog more often.

Completely custom themes can be expensive, so the next best option is to buy a unique theme, which won’t be universally unique to you, but not many people will use it because it requires a small investment to purchase. Buying a theme is a great way to get something that looks good, is almost unique and helps your blog stand out from the rest.

Theme Wars Launches

Unique Blog Designs have just launched a brand new wordpress theme site called Theme Wars.

Theme Wars is like most wordpress theme sites. You can browse through the catalog of available themes, pick and demo the ones you like and then purchase and download your new theme.

There is one feature that makes the Theme Wars site unique: Designers can submit their theme to battle with other designer’s themes, with the public voting on which themes are the best. The winning themes are then created and made available for sale at the site. The winning designers get a cut of all sales of their theme.

If you’re a blog theme designer it’s worth checking out this service as a possible outlet to sell your work.

If you’re a blogger looking for a new theme it’s worth keeping an eye on the site to see what new themes become available.

You can find out more and see the themes currently battling it out here –

www.ThemeWars.com