Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

A quick short post today as I’m busy getting ready with my final preparations to head for Canada (more on this soon).

If you are into search engine optimization you know the importance of back links. In a newsletter I sent out to my email subscribers back in February (you have to be on my blog tips newsletter) I told you about a neat little software tool from Neil Shearing called Real Link Finder.

The software lets you search the blogosphere for blogs that do not use the “no follow” tag (which makes links near useless for search engine optimization purposes - see this for more). I had a play with it and while it was okay at finding blogs, it was a bit hit and miss with the how on-topic the results were.

Just this week the “Jasons” (Jason Katzenback and Jason Potash) released a very similar software tool called CommentKahuna. There’s not much different with this tool compared to Neil’s in terms of functions, but since it runs its own search engine and queries a few other sites, the results can be different.

If you are looking to run a comment marketing campaign to build links and traffic, or if you just want to isolate blogs related to yours that do not use the no follow tag, both these tools are useful. The creators of the software do ask you to opt-in with your name and email address, but the program itself doesn’t cost any money.

You can get CommentKahuna here.

The Jason’s have a follow up product (surprise!) released today called TrafficKahuna, which I haven’t had a chance to play with just yet, but is some form of community traffic building resource. It’s not free and since I haven’t had a chance to actually use it I will reserve judgment for now.

You can find out more about TrafficKahuna here.

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I was reading a post over at DoshDosh where Maki notes his RSS readership broke the 10,000 subscriber mark and what he did (or really, what he didn’t do) to realize that result. Here’s his post -

Dosh Dosh Reaches 10,000 Subscribers (and the Reason Why People Subscribe to a Blog)

I have to admit to feeling slightly irritated reading the post, or really, wanting to add more to the topic raised by Maki to clarify what I see as a keep point, something top bloggers sometimes forget about, so here goes…

Maki Has Talent

Maki is a great blogger (and writer), everyone knows this and his blog has grown into one of the top in the industry as a result. In his post he outlines a list of what I would call “traditional advice” about what it takes to grow a successful blog and how he didn’t do any of it, including -

• Not displaying his feedcount as a social proof tool until after he broke 10,000 subscribers
• Not submitting guest posts to other blogs
• Not running contents
• No paid advertising to promote his blog
• Not writing a blog post every day

…and the list goes on.

Maki has not done any major promotions with a free report, or video or podcasting either. Essentially he has sat down and week after week put out solid written content, responded to comments and emails from his readers and not been very proactive beyond that to grow his traffic. I don’t think he has an active comment marketing strategy either - in that I mean he’s not commenting on other blogs to bring traffic to his in a strategic and focused manner.

Basically, he has pretty much bucked the trend and not done anything I recommend in Blog Mastermind or countless other bloggers suggest as good practice to grow a successful blog (things even Maki recommends to other bloggers).

So do we have it all wrong? Should we follow in Maki’s footsteps and put out solid content week after week as the only marketing strategy we need to grow a top blog?

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It’s been a crazy last few days. I sent out a lesson to Blog Mastermind students about direct advertising and it was a huge lesson, more than 5,000 words, plus an extra video and audio - there is so much to teach about making money with blogs!

In between finishing that lesson for the current students I’ve also been putting together a few resources to give to the public because I’ve decided to close the Blog Mastermind doors to new students on Monday, December 10.

Yep, that’s right - I won’t be taking on any new students from Monday and only the people in the program now or who join before Monday will get to complete their training.

I must say that the course has come together very nicely, I think there is something in it for everybody if you are interested in making blogging an income source and a lifestyle.

How To Market Your Blog With Conversations

I know a lot of people are not sure whether Blog Mastermind is right for them, so rather than send out a bunch of emails and blog posts telling people how good it is, I decided to release one of the lessons to the public and let you make a decision for yourself.

You can read and/or listen to the lesson here -

Lesson 11: Marketing With Conversations

The lesson covers the most popular topic in blogging - how to get traffic. It’s actually the very first lesson on traffic in the program and introduces you to some core concepts about building an audience and then teaches you one of the most powerful yet simple techniques available. I actually debunk a few myths about this particular traffic technique, because sadly, most bloggers get it wrong.

From that point forward in the program there are another eight lessons on building traffic, then the we dive into monetization.

If you want to see what sort of content and structure Blog Mastermind contains, this free lesson should give you a good idea. Note that most lessons also have a video or additional audio component as well (lessons come in audio and text format). All lessons have actions steps at the end so you know what you have to do after the lesson is done.

Remember, the doors to Blog Mastermind close on Monday, so if you want to join, you have to decide between now and then. There is a 30 day money back guarantee, so if you don’t like it, there is no risk, plus you can cancel at any point beyond the first month.

The program goes for six months and you get one lesson per week, plus lots of extra resources like interviews with professional bloggers, my Master The Mindset audio series, case study videos where I review the blogs of students and offer recommendations to help them improve their performance, plus loads more.

If any of this is appealing, please check out the free lesson and consider signing up. Here’s that free preview lesson again.

Lesson 11: Marketing With Conversations

If you have any questions about the program or the advice I talk about in lesson 11, leave a comment.

Yaro Starak
Blog Mastermind Mentor

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This has to be the most common traffic tip professional bloggers give to newbies: Leave comments on other blogs.

You know what I did when I was newbie blogger? - I left comments on other blogs, like crazy.

I did a lot of other things too, all of which I go through in some detail in Blog Mastermind, but commenting was definitely an integral part of my early marketing activities for this blog.

You might wonder though, does commenting actually work to drive traffic today in the more crowded blogosphere?

I actually argue that most people go about a blog commenting strategy the wrong way and there is a higher leverage technique that most bloggers don’t do, but even if you follow the basic advice and just get out there and be a prolific commenter it will build traffic, and here’s proof.

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Well if this isn’t the most talked about topic in the blogosphere I don’t know what is! Every blogger is raving or complaining about how good or bad BlogRush is so I thought I should do a little follow up to my original post - BlogRush - Will It Increase Your Blog Traffic? - and throw in my opinion.

First though, let me share my BlogRush stats since a few people have been asking me how I am doing.

My credit balance as at today, Friday the 21st September Australia time, which is about 5 days of running the program:

As you can see I have no shortage of credits and plenty of bloggers under me delivering more credits. Quite frankly, as long as BlogRush doesn’t go completely under, I don’t think I will run out of credits in a long time since all the bloggers in my referral downline are delivering nearly 70,000 credits to me a day, and growing. At this stage, I don’t think BlogRush can deliver enough impressions to me to even spend the credits, although I hope that changes.

If you are wondering how I managed to build such a large downline, it really wasn’t that clever, I just blogged about it as soon as I could on the weekend and was one of the first to do so (of other bloggers I only noticed Jack Humphreys and Andy Beard blogging about it before me, although I know others did, I just noticed their posts about it in Google first - Andy went on to write two more posts about BlogRush - and counting!).

However the real clincher for me was having a targeted email list of nearly 12,000 bloggers who I emailed about BlogRush. As I wrote about in - Will Blog Marketing Replace Email Marketing? - being able to send an email is still more effective at eliciting a response than RSS is because email is “in your face marketing”.

People read their email on weekends, but they might not read RSS feeds and blogs, so I had a distinct advantage in that I could tell all my loyal subscribers about BlogRush before they read about it elsewhere. Plus people tend to respond to emails better than blog posts, click through rates are higher and they are “forced” to read it since everyone watches their inbox like a hawk.

If nothing else, this should serve as a lesson to every blogger - make sure you are building a loyal email subscription base at the same time as you build your blog readership. These two assets work brilliantly together. AWeber and GetResponse are great email autoresponders if you need an email list service by the way .

Here is my referral downline:

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