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When I got home from my travels I finally had some time to go through some of the DVDs and CDs that came in the mail from various purchases I had made.

I bought Traffic Secrets 2.0 from John Reese when he released it mid last year and Frank Kern was nice (smart) enough to throw in a couple of bonus DVDs to the first group of buyers, and I was one of them.

I’m a fan of Frank Kern simply because he’s a good entertainer in his videos and obviously he’s great at selling through email when it comes to Internet marketing products, but to be honest I’ve never been blown away by his marketing advice. That being said, I’ve never seen much of his work outside of his free videos, so I really need to spend more time with the surfer dude slash internet marketer.

With Traffic Secrets Frank threw in two DVD presentations. One of his very early Mass Control presentations and another on Core Influence, which I thought was the better of the two and the one I want to talk about now.

What Is Core Influence?

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As you likely know, Gideon and I wrapped up the opening marketing campaign for Become A Blogger Premium a couple of weeks ago. During that period we both wrote lots of emails to our various subscribers, email being the primary communication method and also the distribution channel for delivering resources like the Roadmap report.

Most of you haven’t met Gideon or myself in person, but if you did, you would see we are both down to earth and soft spoken - not your typical extroverted, in-your-face marketers. Of course what you perceive as over-the-top might be different to another person so you may not agree, but I’m pretty comfortable saying that Gideon and I are way below average when it comes to the hype-o-meter.

One interesting observation I made during our launch that you probably weren’t aware of, was Gideon’s email marketing style (his writing style when promoting), compared to how he is in his videos.

Gideon has difficulty doing any kind of “sales pitch” in his videos, he much prefers to focus on content, and if you watch the few parts at the end of his videos where he was promoting our paid course, you could tell he wasn’t pushing very hard at all.

However, when Gideon wrote emails, he wasn’t afraid to use his marketing skills. He knows the triggers, is quite comfortable pushing all the right buttons and isn’t afraid of saying whatever it takes to convince you that you need to do what he suggests.

This is important because if Gideon couldn’t sell the premium course when it came time to sell it, then our results would have been negatively impacted. At some point in business you have to be prepared to sell.

The same goes for anything else we promote through email, whether it’s to convince people to watch a free video, or download a report or read a blog post. It’s not always about eliciting a purchase, it’s any time you want people to click a link or even just open an email in the first place - any action at all is impacted by your ability to “sell” the benefits of taking that action through the words that you use.

I asked Gideon if he had studied copywriting - and he has - which explains his ability to talk in marketing speak when communicating via email when necessary, yet it doesn’t show up in other forms of communication with him. Gideon has learned skills that are vital to his success as an Internet marketer, and you can too.

Be Your Self

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I’ve been talking about it for long enough. Now is your chance to watch my latest video. Here’s the link -

This video covers a form of Internet marketing that combines the traffic and raw exposure power of a blog, with the direct marketing power of email lists.

I call it Conversion Blogging, and it’s the basis for my entire six-figure online business.

I honestly believe this system represents a much easier methodology for making money with blogs. I’m not saying you shouldn’t make money from traditional blog monetization methods like advertising (I still make a big chunk of change from sponsorship), but a blog can be so much more if you combine it with what has worked in the Internet marketing and direct marketing worlds for years (almost centuries when you look at offline mail order).

Of course for this system to work you can’t ignore blogging fundamentals - you still need to know what goes into building a great blog.

To help with this, after you watch the Conversion Blogging video, you can enter your name and email to watch my second video, a brand new visual presentation of the Blog Profits Blueprint and grab an updated copy of the text version of the Blueprint too.

I’ll let the videos do the explaining, so please go watch now, and then tell me what you think in comment replies here.

http://www.blogmastermind.com/video/

Yaro Starak
Conversion Blogger

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Over the weekend I worked hard on video presentations for the release of Blog Mastermind. Obviously the core topic of the videos is how to make money via blogging, however I’m introducing a new form of blogging for profit, something that can lead to income quicker, it’s more stable and in the long haul is a much better model for bloggers to follow.

I’ve got a name for this type of blogging that I will reveal when the video comes out but what I can tell you now, it is based on email marketing. I’m not the only person doing this form of blogging of course, but I’m one of very few compared to the total number of professional bloggers out there.

How The Humble Email List Changed My Business

Back in 2005 I started blogging. A few months later I began studying the work of some prominent Internet marketers and a trend arose - everyone talked about how you had to have an email list.

Strangely enough, I didn’t listen. Well, at least I didn’t take action, which is just as bad. I could see how having an email list was valuable, but my focus at the time was my editing business and I just didn’t see how email marketing was going to help it. My blog at the time was still more hobby site than a money maker.

Fast forward to the end of 2006 and I decided to finally launch an email list. However I still didn’t get it completely right because instead of leveraging my blog for continuous email opt-ins, I created an off-site landing page and wrote a few blog articles pointing towards it. At least it was a start.

When it came time to do a blog redesign I was well and truly convinced that I had to include an opt-in for my list on my blog. I asked my designer to put the opt-in in the right column at the top in the above the fold area. You can see it in action in most of the 2006 archives of my blog at the Way Back Machine.

Instantly my opt-ins grew and I quickly found myself generating an extra 20-50 new leads per day, which continued to increase as my blog traffic increased.

Since then, nearly every success I have enjoyed online has come thanks to making these decisions. I finally understood what Internet marketers were talking about when they said you have to have a list - and yes, that applies in EVERY niche online, not just the make money topics (email marketing is so good in non-business markets because not so many people use it well there).

How Email Will Make A Difference To Your Blogging

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