The Power Of Purposeful Action – Krizia Blogging Case Study
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:
When Is The Right Time To Begin Outsourcing?
There was an interesting discussion in the Blog Mastermind forums that began with a question about when you should start outsourcing.
The impression this particular student had was that outsourcing is the key for success, and it is something that I emphasize over and over again inside Blog Mastermind. The problem in this case was the lack of cash flow to pay for outsourcing and whether it is worth going into debt to pay for help if it is indeed that important.
I was quick to explain that outsourcing is important and it’s worth paying a few hundred dollars to get your blog set up with a nice theme, a domain name and get a few key plug-ins installed for you if you can’t do it yourself, but beyond that you don’t really want to start using credit to pay for outsourcing.
What Do You Do When You Have No Money?
Hiring In The New Economy Requires A Proactive Recruitment Process
How To Create Recruitment Systems To Hire People Before You Need Them
I was recently asked how I hired quality editors when running my previous business BetterEdit. As I responded to the question I realized the information provided might well serve others, so I’m going to explain my system for staying on top of the recruitment process here in this blog post.
Before I begin, a brief caveat – this system as I implemented it only worked because I had a website that received a continuous stream of traffic from Google. It was by no means a huge amount of people, perhaps a few hundred daily unique visitors, but because the traffic was targeted and due to the supply and demand ratio for editors versus work, I was in a good position to make the following system work.
However, that doesn’t mean this can’t work for you if you don’t have consistent search engine traffic or if the dynamics of the employment market in your industry are not as favorable, you just have to work a little harder to find the good people and bring in the traffic. If your website already receives consistent search engine visitors then you are position to immediately benefit from this technique, so make sure you write this down on your to-do list after you finish reading.
Slow Companies Fail
If you read Rich Schefren’s recent report, the Uncertainty Syndrome, you may remember he talked about hiring solutions that bring good people to work for your company BEFORE you need them.
Due to the speed of today’s markets, those who are quick and stay ahead of the curve generally win. Your company is only as good as the people working for it. If you combine those two ideas, then it makes sense you need the best people working for your business and you need them yesterday.
Think about any time you learned something new that you just knew you could apply to your business and immediately benefit from it, yet you don’t personally have the time to do it (nor does it make sense that you do it – it’s not your core strength), none of your current staff are available to take on the role and of course hiring new staff is never quick if you start from scratch. By the time you have the right person you’ve missed the boat – the market has moved on to the next thing and your prospective customers have already been captured by faster-moving competitors.
An even more common problem in successful organizations is business growth. In order for your business to take the next step you need help. Perhaps you require someone to take on the extra administration responsibilities, new talent to deliver the services your company provides, added customer support, maybe a project manager or a new tech person to help handle increasing technology demands.
If you are hiring reactively, then every stage of growth is hindered significantly by each new hire you have to make. This can be such a huge problem that you have to turn down work, work that is your company’s core strength that you would love to take on, simply because you don’t have the capacity to deliver the results due to limited resources. That’s VERY frustrating for an entrepreneur.
Be Proactive
Delegate or Die – How to Hire Locally to Grow Your Business
This is a guest post from Jason Katzenback, otherwise known as the current incarnation of John Cow (just like Dr Who, a new Cow is born each time the previous one quits the show)…
Have you heard the expression “No man is an island“… well perhaps to be more politically correct “no one person is an island”?
One of the hardest decisions any entrepreneur faces when starting a new business is the concept of delegating. At first we are more often then not responsible for all activities of our business including; research, planning, bookkeeping, webdesign and the list goes on and on. For most people this is not a problem for the first few months because you are in a start up mode where you are still getting your feet wet. As your business starts to grow momentum however, this quickly starts to become a burden.
Too Much To Do in Too Little Time
Suddenly it happens, you start looking at the clock and realize the day is done. Your spouse is calling for supper and you impatiently yell back “Give me a Minute”. You are frantically trying to get as much done as possible because of the complete and utter frustration of having too much to do in too little time.
Life continues like this for awhile and then suddenly tax time comes and you become exasperated because for the next week you will not be able to do anything but focus on getting your bookkeeping done and all your projects are on hold…. never mind the 150 emails you are getting every day.
STOP THE INSANITY!!!
If your business is at a point where there is revenue coming in and you just have too much to do in too little time, then perhaps it is time to consider hiring local employees to help. With today’s virtual world, there are many options available from outsourcing to hiring virtual assistants and depending on your situation these may be better options. If however you are ready and wanting to start an office with local employees then my hope is this post series will offer you some guidance.
Why Should I listen to YOU?
Don’t Wait As Long As I Did To Learn This Business Building Lesson
It’s Monday morning in Australia and I’m about to have a group meeting at my house with my team to begin work on something new.
For most of my Internet business career I worked solo – and I really mean solo.
I built my website myself, created marketing materials like flyers and posters, promoted my websites, located and managed sponsors and provided customer and sales support. The only thing I didn’t do was actually provide the services, I had contractors do the editing when it came to BetterEdit.com my proofreading business and I had writers write the content on my first successful online venture, MTGParadise.com (although I did a lot of writing myself on that site too).
It’s amazing how far your enthusiasm and work ethic can take you in business. I’m proud of my achievements as a solo entrepreneur and I’m amazed at what I did manage to get done by myself. However after about 7 years of working without any support I realized that I couldn’t keep it up for ever, plus there was another pressing reason to get help – I had reached a ceiling point in my growth. Your business can only get so big if it’s just you doing the work.
With typical timing, it was around this time that Rich Schefren came to town with his first ground breaking report, the Internet Business Manifesto. I read Rich’s report and found myself agreeing with everything he said. I wasn’t exactly shocked by the revelation as some Internet marketers were when they first read the report. I knew I was working too hard and doing too much by myself, my problem was lack of action to change the situation.
Things finally did change in 2006. With my blogging business growing and my cashflow increasing I knew I could realistically outsource tasks to other people. With a looming trip overseas I decided I to do two things -
