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 >>

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

Download the MP3 [ 139 Minutes - 54 MB]

We just wrapped up a mammoth, 2-hour 19 minute call with over 140 people live. The questions kept coming and Gideon and I didn’t want to stop until everyone’s question was responded to, so we kept at it.

This is a great call covering all kinds of topics such as -

• What is important when choosing a theme for your blog
• Using Ustream and video on your blog
• Why you need a strategy behind your blog
• How we host teleconference calls
• What systems we use to store and distribute video
• What the four successful components are to become a professional blogger
• How many blogs should you start when you begin blogging
• How to use blogging as a lead generation tool
• and loads more…

We even had one caller ask where Gideon and I get our accents from!

This is a full-on content call and if you’re new to blogging or looking to learn more about what it takes to succeed as a professional blogger, then make sure you download the MP3 now.

Become A Blogger Premium Almost Closed

If you enjoy this recording and want more opportunities to listen in or ask questions during a live coaching call, we’re doing plenty more of them for our members.

You have until midnight, Friday the 3rd of July to join here -

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

Gideon and I are looking forward to properly starting the course with the new group of students from next week onwards, starting with a special session focused on topic selection for bloggers.

I hope to see you on the inside too. Even if you can’t join, have a listen to the call recording, you will be glad you did.

Update: The MP3 audio version of the Roadmap report has been added to the download page and it’s free too. Now you can read and listen to what it takes to build a great blog!

I’m very excited to announce that my latest report, co-authored with Gideon Shalwick, my partner in the Becomeablogger.com video site, is now ready for download.

Gideon and I have been working hard for the past few months preparing this report for you. It’s called “The Roadmap To Become A Blogger“, or as I like to simply call it – “The Roadmap“.

You can download the free report right now from here -

http://www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

Why Another Report About Blogging?

I don’t release new products very often. The reason why is because I prefer to invest time in something to make sure it delivers tremendous value and I like to have the opportunity to develop a product with feedback from active participants.

Back in 2007 I hired Gideon Shalwick to produce a series of videos I had envisioned for a domain name that I acquired called becomeablogger.com. I wanted to have some very basic training presented in video for people new to blogs so they could learn how to begin the blogging process by themselves, no matter what skill they currently possessed with technology.

Fast forward to today and we are nearing 60,000 viewers of those videos. Gideon did a fantastic job and I’m so pleased the site has truly taken off.

Gideon and I both agreed that if the videos were well received we would like to do more. However, in order to devote the time and resources into creating the videos (the free videos we currently give away cost several thousand dollars to create), we would need to make the service a membership site, and hence the idea for Become A Blogger Premium was born.

This new premium video membership site will open December 4th 2008 to invite the first intake of students. I’ll have more news about that soon.

As soon as we decided to launch the new training program I knew we would need something to give away as a teaching tool to introduce people to the concepts we are presenting in the new series of videos. After going back and forwards between delivering the resource in video or text, we decided to use both, but focus our core message in one document – The Roadmap.

What Is The Roadmap Report?

Read the rest of this entry >>

I’m often emailed asking whether I do private, one on one blog coaching. As much as I like coaching I know how much time it takes so I always say no, sorry not at this time, I have my hands full with group coaching in Blog Mastermind.

And no, I haven’t changed my mind.

For those of you who want the personal attention that comes from a private coach, experienced blogger Chris Garrett recently opened up his Authority Blogger training program, which includes personal time with Chris.

Personally I think Chris is crazy offering his personal time as he will only be able to take on a few clients, but that’s the kind of work Chris enjoys, so hey, why not take advantage of him!

Seriously though, there are not many other bloggers I would recommend for coaching, but Chris is definitely one of them. He’s been in the game for years, his blog has thousands of readers and he’s focused his previous coaching on supporting individuals in a very personal capacity, so he knows how to teach and support people and help them to build great blogs.

Chris focuses on the Authority Blogging angle – in other words, how to build a blog that gets you attention, respect and trust from all the right people in your niche. He also has a system designed to take new bloggers from 0 to 1,000 readers, which is a compelling offer.

You can find out more details here –

Authority Blogger Coaching

You might be wondering if I run a blog coaching program why I would promote another coaching program? There are several reasons.

In case you haven’t realized, blogging when done right is about collaboration and support, not competition. Chris has supported me in the past so I’m supporting him now.

I also see the need for private coaching and this is something I’m not willing to do now and Chris is, at this time anyway!

Chris has a completely different teaching style and methodology to my own and there’s always room for multiple experts in any industry, so my readers deserve to know the options out there if they decide to take blog coaching.

If you are interested in becoming an authority blogger, see what Chris has to offer here -

www.authorityblogger.com/

Make sure you take a look at the offer he has now during his opening special because if you want private time with Chris, including direct email access to him and private consulting calls, you can save $300 if you order now.

His course has a one time fee too – which is a pretty good deal considering he’s willing to work with you so closely on an ongoing basis.

I had the Conversion Blogging video transcribed into a text document for people who prefer to read.

You can grab it right now as a free PDF download from here (right click “save as” to save it to your computer).

In case you can’t remember, the Conversion Blogging video explains my system for combining blogging with a traditional email marketing system to create a $100,000+ Internet business.

Grab the transcript and you can read all the details, but of course if you want to actually see my examples, you need to watch the video (which is still free).

Update: Jack from VidSummary.com has also put together a summarized version of the Conversion Blogging video. He’s stripped out the best bits so you can consume what you need quickly, however he does charge $7 for the summary. You can take a look here.

400 Students Strong

New people are joining Blog Mastermind every day and we’ve almost hit the 400 student mark, which is awesome. We’ve already done the first of many live group coaching calls and the questions came flying in. The forums are hot and the feedback from the students is fantastic – I love you guys.

If you haven’t jumped on board what I consider the best blog coaching program available today, please come join the party –

http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/