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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This is the third in a series of case-study podcast interviews with successful Blog Mastermind students, where we look at what they do right in order to achieve above-average results.

First it was Mitch, who’s blog exploded in popularity ramping his traffic quickly beyond 5,000 daily visitors. Leigh’s interview was extremely popular as she explained how she went from making $20 to $4,500 a month with her online business. Today I interview Leslie, who made almost $32,000 in 2008 working part time online (he’s a full time teacher, and we all know how hard teachers have to work!), and has an interesting story to tell because of the unique way he makes money.

How To Make Money Giving Away Freebies

Leslie’s market is freebie offers and rather than explain how it works here, you should listen the podcast. It’s interesting that you can actually make money by offering freebie giveaways that other companies provide, and that’s how Leslie makes the majority of his online income.

Leslie has taken his expertise and transformed into into a thriving blog called The Freebie Guy. His next step is to launch a membership site and in preparation for this, he just released a new free report called – The Freebie Report – which teaches how Leslie does what he does with freebie offers.

In this interview you will learn…

• How exactly freebie trading works and how Leslie made $70 in his first DAY doing it
• How Leslie experimented with different methods to make money online and eventually found something that worked
• Why Leslie decided to start a blog and join Blog Mastermind
• What were the biggest lessons for Leslie as he grew his business
• Why Leslie wants to position himself as an authority in his industry

Leslie is not only a Blog Mastermind student, but he’s taking part in every single coaching program I have on the market as I type this. What I love about this is every week I see more evidence of how much effort Leslie is putting into his business and how much output he creates every day, DESPITE having to work a full time job.

Leslie is proof that, with discipline and enthusiasm, you can juggle your salary job as you need it to pay the bills, while you build up your online income. I expect in Leslie’s case that sometime this year (2009) he may say good bye to his job as his online income grows.

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• Download the MP3 [ 35 Minutes - 16 MB ]

Yaro Starak
Loving Success Stories

You probably saw and read my review of Blogging to the Bank 3.0 by Rob Benwell from just over a week ago. That post sparked quite a bit of discussion, with 106 comments so far as I type this.

Many of the comments were the usual, asking questions about the product or thanking me for the article, but there were also a few strongly worded criticisms of the book and the author, as well as some positive words about the book from Rob’s supporters and replies from the man himself.

I’ve been writing product reviews to this blog for a long time. In fact the very first ever attempt to make money from Entrepreneurs-Journey was selling an affiliate product back in 2005 with a review post that unfortunately didn’t do to well, although this blog didn’t really have a huge audience back then.

Over the years I’ve made thousands of dollars thanks to product reviews on this blog, with some help from my email newsletter to send traffic to the reviews. I’ve refined and expanded my review writing formula but one thing has always been clear to me – a review that is purely positive is not as effective as a review that points out good and bad points.

Most Internet Marketing Reviews Are Sales Pitches

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Update Oct 14: The PPC Classroom people are in the process of launching their coaching program so the links for the free report have changed and now instead go to the sales page. I’ll chase them up about finding alternative access to the report – but it may be gone. Apologies if you missed out!

Go straight to the free report and videos that explain the details here -

• Free Report and Videos

Here’s the background story…

I remember this feeling quite clearly. It was about 3 years ago. I was living in a share house in Brisbane and my Internet business ventures were doing okay, but far from brilliant.

My proofreading business was paying the bills and ensured I didn’t need a job. My blog was growing and starting to make some money, but let’s say I felt far from comfortable with my financial circumstances. I’m sure many of you can concur with those feelings right now.

As a result of my situation I was easily swayed by different methods to make money online, but there was one thing in particular that I was really interested in because it seemed like a very FAST method to generate a return and potentially earn big dollars online in a period of months.

The method I’m talking about is using Pay Per Click advertising, like Google AdWords, and selling affiliate programs.

You buy traffic, send it to affiliate offers and tweak your campaigns to the point where you make more money in affiliate commissions than you spend on the per click traffic.

Once you get the numbers right you can really open the traffic floodgates and spend thousands a day on PPC traffic, knowing for each $1 spent you will make more than a $1 back. At least, that’s the theory and how the professionals do it.

There’s literally thousands of people who still use this technique to make anything from a few hundred dollars a month to a few million. In fact I know a friend in Sydney who last time I spoke to him, was spending about $5000 a day on AdWords, to make $8000 a day in commissions for a total profit of $3000 A DAY – amazing stuff!

I Got Distracted

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I wanted to use the word “honesty” in the title for this blog post, but I expect the word “Lying” will pull more attention. However don’t let that mislead you, this article is about using honesty in your marketing, not lying.

At the start of September you may recall StomperNet offered their Stomping The Search Engines 2 course for the cost of shipping if you were willing to try their new print newsletter. They made money off this offer because of the multiple upsells involved during the ordering process and the potential for rebills if customers decided to stay subscribed to the print newsletter.

I had no problem with this offer, in fact I thought it was a good deal and promptly blogged about it and sent a notice to my newsletter too.

Besides a brief hiccup that killed the opening day, StomperNet did well, and many of you, my readers, grabbed the offer.

A few days later Brad and Andy at StomperNet decided to up the ante a little and with the help of many of their top Internet marketing friends, put together a bonus package that was, well, a little over the top.

Guys like Ed Dale, Jeff Johnson, Jeff Walker, Rich Schefren, Mike Filsaime, Paul Colligan and Shawn Casey (and others) gave everything from teleseminar downloads, audio files, free months in coaching programs, reports and more on top of what was already offered by StomperNet, just for the cost of shipping. That offer has since passed, though you can still buy the course and trial the first month of the newsletter if you pay for sending it to you.

Why Do They Do This?

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