Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Down-To-Earth Advice For Bloggers and Internet Marketers

I have a confession to make – I’m obsessed.

With what I hear you ask?

With cars.

I’ve officially become one of those men I never previously understood. Why devote so much of your brain space to knowing the ins and outs of every car ever made? Surely there are better ways to spend your time and more important things to study than those little boxes that go around on four wheels?

While I can’t place the blame for my new infatuation squarely on just one thing, there was definitely a catalyst for how this addiction began. His name is Alborz Fallah, or as I call him, Al.

Al and I have been friends for a long time and you may know him already as the founder of CarAdvice.com.au, the most popular independent car blog in Australia. If you haven’t heard of him and his blog, stop reading this article and go and listen to the hugely popular podcast interview I published with Al here –

Interview With Alborz Fallah – A Million Dollar Blogger

Al is a basically a car encyclopedia you can access directly through voice command. You ask him a question and he dispenses a vast amount of wisdom about cars.

I’m often baffled by how he can know the intricate details about so many different cars. He knows the features, advantages, faults, price, target demographics, history, latest news, and all kinds of nearly-useless information about cars. Of course what he knows isn’t useless, because the market for cars in Australia is huge (Australians buy one million new cars a year, with a population just over 22 million, that’s pretty significant), hence Al has been able to translate what he knows into a very lucrative online publishing business.

I Don’t Buy Much Stuff

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I’m not 100% sure, but I believe the very first email list I subscribed to was David DeAngelo’s Double Your Dating free newsletter. At the time I didn’t realize David D. was a nom de plume (fake name) and that the real person behind the newsletter was Eben Pagan, who I would later come to know as a leading Internet marketer.

In more recent years I’ve studied Eben’s work extensively, however it was my experience on his alter ego’s email newsletter all those years ago that I count as one of the most beneficial in my own career as an Internet marketer.

The reason why the Double Your Dating email newsletter was so valuable to me was because it was the only time I can remember studying an email list from the frame of two very important perception points in a completely “raw” state of mind -

1. As a customer who was suffering the pain that the newsletter purported to help cure
2. As a newbie Internet marketer studying how to make money online

When I first subscribed to Double Your Dating I was a young single guy struggling to figure out how to meet and date girls. I subscribed because the sales copy “spoke” to me. The benefits struck an emotional cord with my own desires. It was as if this person understood where I was coming from and where I wanted to go.

Like many young men at the same time as I was looking to gain experience with women, I was also looking for ways to make money and establish myself as a business man. In this case, the Internet was my chosen landscape to build my fortunes and I was studying what those who already had made money online did to build their wealth.

Given Eben Pagan created one of the most effective (and substantial – each email was MASSIVE) email marketing sequences in existence today, the foundation for a twenty million dollar dating empire, I had happened upon one of the best resources to study, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

Unfortunately in some ways, from that point forward as I became more familiar with Internet marketing, I found it increasingly difficult to fully engage with any online studying materials because I was constantly analyzing the “how” of what they did (the meta-analysis), rather than engaging with the “what” of what was being taught.

The Customer Avatar

I’ve been going through the recordings of Eben Pagan’s Get Altitude training, a high level coaching program for entrepreneurs who want to take their business to greater success.

One of the fundamentals that Eben teaches is to truly understand where your customer is coming from. This is not just knowing the needs and wants of your ideal customer, but understanding who they are, how they live, who they associate with, what their general attitude to life is – AND, more importantly, what are the underlying emotional conditions driving the actions they take.

To facilitate a deeper understanding of your customer, Eben teaches a concept known as the Customer Avatar.

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I’ve done a lot of online launches – about eight all up if you include closing down and reopening promotions – and each one included heavy support from affiliates, some of whom run popular blogs, including Problogger, John Chow, Shoemoney, Copyblogger and DailyBlogTips.

During a launch, to get a feel for the pulse of how the campaign is going, I spend time reading the comments made to other blogs on the posts relevant to me, my products and the free resources I release.

This is always an interesting process, but it can be very misleading. Most forms of feedback you get online, including comments made to your blog, other blogs, emails you receive and any other discussion points like forums and social media, should be considered very warily.

The problem with this sort of feedback is that it comes from people who rarely represent the majority, yet because they are vocal, what they say does have an impact on the silent majority, those who read the posts and comments but never write a comment of their own.

As the creator of a product feedback is a great thing, but it’s so easy to read a negative comment made about you or what you do on another person’s blog and read into it as indicative of what everybody thinks, which it rarely is. The same goes for positive commentary too, but most people don’t stress about good comments – it’s only the bad ones.

Reputation management is important, but being careful not to involve yourself on an emotional level is important too.

Setting Expectations

The selection of blogs I listed above are very different. The personas behind each blog are different, thus the voice and writing style is different and hence the type of audience they attract is different too.

This is an important consideration, because you have to realize that what is being said on one blog relates to the environment established at that blog from prior blog posts and interactions with that particular blogger. Darren Rowse is different from John Chow, who is different from Brian Clark and Daniel Scocco.

These guys all have followings of people who have come to expect certain actions, types of posts and standards. It’s safe to say that the audience of a blogger generally likes the person behind the blog and shares some, not all, but some of the opinions and viewpoints of that blogger. In other words, they resonate with the person behind the words, hence they read their blog.

This is why, when you head out there and conduct a launch, which is presented in your voice and style, there’s a friction between how you “speak” and how the blogger who writes about you as an affiliate speaks too. The best affiliate is able to use their understanding of their market, and take what you give during a launch and promote your offer so it lines up well with the desires of the audience they have the attention of, using the right language.

Of course there are times when the alignment isn’t there and certain things you do as a marketer are frowned upon by some audiences and not others. This is why you have to be careful when reading comments on other blogs. If your style contradicts the expectations of the vocal minority at that blog, you’re going to hear about it.

State Based Opinions

Another interesting observation I’ve noticed when looking at feedback I receive is how state-based each situation is. This applies to comments made on your blog, or any other blog or any feedback anywhere you get.

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I spent some time yesterday manning the live chat interface we have running on the Become A Blogger Premium sales page.

The live chat is a little innovation Gideon and I came up with to help any person who is reviewing our sales page by making ourselves available to answer any questions live.

At any given point in time around 30 to 50 people are viewing our sales page during this week, while the program is open. Being available to answer questions live is a great way to help these people decide whether our program is right for them, but it also gives us valuable feedback on where people are “stuck” in their decision process.

We don’t man the chat 24/7, but whenever we are online and particularly just after we send an email about the program, we are there. When we’re not there, we just remove the chat interface.

I strongly recommend you consider some kind of live support during a launch campaign or even in general on any sales page. Demonstrating your commitment to your customers and showing your availability at the point of purchase, is a powerful persuasion tool.

What If You Don’t Know What To Blog About?

During the time I spent on the chat yesterday morning there was a common theme of questions.

The biggest “sticking point” people are facing when considering becoming a blogger is what topic to cover. The language used to describe the issue varied and included the following -

1. I don’t know what topic to write about
2. I’m not an expert at anything
3. I don’t know whether my topic can be profitable

I really feel there is a strong insecurity and a general lack of understanding around what makes a profitable topic. This is a unique challenge for bloggers, because we don’t necessarily have a product to sell, especially when you first begin. In essence, your content is your product, and if you choose a product no one wants, then obviously you’re not going to make money.

The Subtle Elements Behind Choosing The Right Subject

I’ve long been a student of niche marketing and the initial choice of topic for a blog is the same as choosing a niche for any business. You’re choosing what market to enter with the hope of success, whatever that success is for you.

In most cases success includes some kind of monetary reward, but with blogging it’s a bit different, because for many bloggers, it’s just as much about creative expression, recognition and reputation as it is about raw dollars. You have to consider your potential to make money and whether you want to immerse yourself in that industry to potentially become an expert.

People don’t always look at blogging as the path to preeminence. Some just create a blog, stick some adsense on it, get some content created through outsourcers, then move on to the next blog. I’ve never been about this method because it lacks a soul. It’s purely about money and not about passion, and I don’t see that as something that will last long term.

It’s worth studying this method however because the people who use it are very good at figuring out where the money is, which unfortunately for those of us who focus on passion, often struggle the most with. There are plenty of struggling bloggers with a lot of passion and no dollars, so you owe it to yourself to use whatever resources you have available to make sure you’re not one of them.

The holy grail of blogging is a mix of what you love and what you can get paid for – and paid really well. Most book authors never make money from their work, yet with a blog you can put in as much effort as you would to write a book, and end up with a very cash positive asset. Best of all you can do this independently, from your home, without the need of distribution from a publishing company, who would take a large chunk of your profits.

I’m Going To Help You Find A Topic

Since I see the issue of topic selection such a major problem for people, especially those entering the blogging game for the first time, Gideon and I have decided to do something special for the new members of Become A Blogger Premium 2.0.

If you join before we close on Friday at midnight EST US time, you will qualify for a special live coaching session we’re going to do with this group if students to specifically address the challenge of topic selection.

The coaching will be live and we will do it next week once the program begins in earnest after we shut the doors to new members. This is ONLY for members, the public will not be invited and it will be focused 100% on the issue of topic selection. I hope we can also help some people live on the call by having a dialogue with anyone struggling to find a good topic.

There’s already resources in the program to help with topic selection, but I see this issue as something where you need as much help as you can get, including a chance to ask me and Gideon directly for help, so we’ve decided to put in the extra effort.

Once you have your topic, the rest of the blogging process can be quite straight forward. It takes work of course, but you will be comfortable because you will know what you stand for and who you are trying to talk to. That’s the magic of clearly understanding your audience and what you want to be to them.

If that sounds good to you, sign-up today so you qualify for the coaching session…

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

I’ll speak to you soon,

Yaro Starak
Blog Mentor

PS. If you want to read more from me on the subject of niche selection, check out of my previous article – How To Simplify The Niche Selection Process