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

In 2007 I launched a program called Blog Mastermind, which as far as I could tell at the time, was the first blog training program created by someone who had a profitable blog.

Of course there were many other bloggers out there at the time who made money blogging – many who made more than I did – but most weren’t in the business of teaching how to do Internet marketing. They focused on creating content to feed their hungry audience in whatever niche they targeted, monetizing with methods like advertising and selling affiliate products.

Even those bloggers who where focused on teaching others how to make money online, hadn’t adopted the idea of creating a products or even building email lists. Everything was about earning more from AdSense, or how to increase your pageviews so you could charge more for advertising.

In my case I had spent the previous two years studying the work of Internet marketers, who didn’t blog, but instead used landing pages to build email lists and then drive that traffic to sales pages to sell products. Up to that point I was like every other blogger, making a solid almost-full time income thanks to sponsors and promoting affiliate products like ebooks, DVD courses and live workshops.

I won’t go into detail about what happened after I released my own product as that story is well accounted for in my free report – The Membership Site Masterplan – and in the video on my Membership Site Mastermind sales page, so check out those two resources if you want the details.

In short, creating Blog Mastermind and doing a full launch campaign for it, changed my life because it pushed my income above six figures for the first time.

The Lifecycle Of An Information Product

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I’ve made some form of income from the Internet for the past ten years. That’s incredible for me to consider, as I look back over the years how for such a long time I felt very insecure about where my next paycheck was going to come from and whether there would be another one the following month.

For the first five years, roughly from 2000 to 2005, my income from the Internet varied, reflecting the choices I had made and my own variable focus. It went something like this…

• I made spare change money selling stuff from around my house on eBay
• I played a card game called Magic: The Gathering and began selling the cards I won at tournaments in online trading forums and newsgroups
• I built a website focused on the same card game, eventually earning a few hundred dollars a month from banner and newsletter sponsorship
• I started an e-commerce card shop from the website and continued to sell my winnings from tournaments, and began buying product at wholesale prices to sell online at retail (until credit card fraud forced me to shut it down)
• I started a proofreading business, which after a slow start, eventually earned enough income to pay me a full salary, equivalent to a first year university graduate

This is a list of the projects that I made money on during those five years. It doesn’t include the websites I built that shortly after I abandoned, my brief experiments at AdWords arbitrage and other various false-starts because I was so easily distracted by new methods to “make millions” online.

During this time I finished my university degree, held a couple of casual jobs and traveled too. I also watched, often resulting in plenty of self-doubt on my part, as my friends entered graduate jobs, which looked a whole lot more secure than what I was doing at the time and often paid them better as well.

Looking back over those five years the money I made proved surprisingly reliable, even though at the time my confidence in the income stream wasn’t there (good old hindsight). I had enough time to work on new projects because I focused on ideas that didn’t need too much personal time from me once set up, for example getting volunteer writers for my card site and using contract editors for the proofreading site, so I could easily manage them both at the same time.

The end result was a diversified online income stream that continued to grow as long as I did a few key activities (like put up posters to promote the proofreading business), plus I was creating assets that I would later sell.

The Era Of Rapid Income Growth

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This was the most highly anticipated podcast interview I have ever done (for me anyway) because it combines two of my all time favorite subjects -

• Making money from the Internet, and
• Tennis!

That’s right, my guest Will Hamilton is a professional college tennis player, who leveraged his knowledge and skill with the game to create a six-figures a year information publishing business, based around a model that uses a blog, videos and a premium membership site area (that model should sound familiar to you).

You can check out his site at FuzzyYellowBalls.com – that’s a tennis ball reference in case you couldn’t guess.

How Will Built His Business

Will started by creating instructional videos on how to play tennis, which he circulated via YouTube (his channel is YouTube.com/fuzzyyellowballs).

His angle was to create videos of a better standard than anyone else out there and capitalize on the YouTube traffic, bring those readers back to his website and then get them on to his email list.

A few short years later and it’s worked really well. He has several hundred videos, resulting in a million video views a month and an email list of 60,000 subscribers – one of the largest email lists in the tennis industry, and it all started as a simple two-man operation (Will and his tech partner Adam).

Once Will established traffic, he realized that his original plan of monetization via advertising wasn’t cutting the mustard, so he decided to follow the premium membership strategy, launching a $25/month a membership site, which currently boasts over 600 paying members. Do the math and that’s over $15,000 a month).

Will’s story is definitely worth a listen because it’s yet another great example of someone starting with a skill, and through consistent work, launches an online business that results in getting paid really well to talk about something you love.

It’s also a great example of the little guy rising up to challenge the large media companies. Will receives press status just like mainstream media journalists when he attends tennis events. It’s quite impressive how far a blog can take you (and yes I’m a little jealous – I’d like to hang with tennis pros too).

Watch this video interview or download the audio file and listen to the full story how of how Will created his online business.

Continuing with the theme of giving you advice on how to launch a membership site or information product, I direct you back to two videos I did earlier in the year, which talk about some of the most powerful techniques I’ve used to build my online business.

This information is especially valuable if you’re just starting out as a beginner asking questions like this -

• How can I figure out what people will spend money on?
• What language do my customers use to describe their problems?
• I don’t have a list or an audience yet, how can I build one?

The first video I recorded to show you a technique I used before creating my first information product that helped me understand exactly what my customers wanted and what language they used to describe the problems they faced. You can listen to me explain the technique in this video here -

Video: How To Find Out What Your Members Want Before You Launch

The second video is half a slide show where I show you some of the places I visited in 2008 during a trip around the world. The second half of this video talks about building lists and shows you a couple of examples of people who are using blogs and videos to foster relationships with an audience in preparation to launch a membership site or coaching program.

You can watch the second video here -

Slide Show: How I Made $211,969 While Traveling The World & Two Unique Case Studies

You may have seen these videos when I first published them, but don’t let that stop you watching them again, the lessons never grow old.

I’m highlighting this content now because next week is the final opening of Membership Site Mastermind for 2009.

I’m really looking forward to working with the next group of students who will actually implement the techniques talked about in the videos. Watching videos and understanding the process is great, but taking steps to actually do it is the only path to success. If you want help in that direction, my course is available from next week, or you can do it alone – as long as you do something!

It’s About Time You Created Your Own Product

I expect you have some pretty lofty ambitions for next year. You probably have a lot you want to get done in the rest of 2009 too!

If you’ve done your research then you know to really ramp up how much money you make from your online business, you need your own product.

If you’ve made the decision to create an information product like a membership site, ebook, coaching course, or some form of expert based service as your path forward, now’s the time to get help and get educated.

Back in April 2009 I did the first public release of the Membership Site Mastermind coaching program and it was a huge success, and a lot of fun to teach.

I’m now ready to invite the next group of students to participate, and this will definitely be the last time this program is open for 2009, so if you want to take part, you have to join next week.

The doors open Tuesday October 27th.

Have You Decided To Make Changes?

I’ve published a very popular series on creating positive changes in your life in the articles on my blog that came before this one.

I love talking about personal development and mindset, as I believe they are keys to creating financial success in your life – they certainly are in my life.

I’ve been through many periods where I didn’t know if I would ever reach the financial goals I set for myself and at times it has taken a monumental effort to stay on course. This is why your mind is so important to your success as an entrepreneur, but you don’t have to go it alone all the time.

If you’ve been reading my series on change then you know one of the keys to getting what you want is to make smart choices. One of the other techniques I talk about is getting help and following success patterns from people who have done what you want to do.

Making the decision to take my coaching course could be a smart choice for you. If you have an intention to create and launch an information product, you want to make at least $100,000 next year and you want to follow by far the simplest system taught today, then you are a good fit for what I teach.

This is not training that you will find anywhere else online, nor is it taught in any university or college around the world. This is practical advice based on what’s actually working online today, with a focus on the simplest implementation process available so as to avoid as many technical challenges as possible.

Of course you don’t have to make a decision now, you can decide after you do some homework on what I offer. What I do and teach is not for everyone, so I’d like you to first make sure what I have will take you in the direction you want to go.

Your Homework Today: Study The Masterplan

If you have not already downloaded your copy of my free report, the Membership Site Masterplan, you need to do so today and study it before next week.

The Masterplan is the most comprehensive free report on the Internet for launching your own membership site. If you have any intentions of ever releasing your own information product or online service, you should read this report.

I have a reputation for producing free reports that people tell me have more value in them than most paid-for ebooks on the same subject. I do believe the Masterplan is a really solid report and is enough of a starting point to get you going towards earning your first $100,000 online selling your own products, and then a whole lot more.

The Masterplan is also a great introduction to my system and teaching style, so if you like what you find in the report – and it won’t cost you a single cent to download it – then you will be in a much better position to decide whether taking my full coaching course is what you want to do when it opens again next week.

So right now you only have one action to take: go and download the Masterplan free report.

You can get both a text copy in PDF and an audio version in MP3 (I’m the narrator) for free from here -

Download The Masterplan Free Report

Make sure you mark down October 27th (that’s Tuesday next week!) as the day I’m taking enrollments for the final time this year.