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

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

Press the PLAY button on the video below to begin watching.

Text Transcript of Video

• Download the text transcript [ PDF ]

Last night the 500th member joined Become A Blogger Premium, which is an awesome result. We now have a great community who are ready to dive in and build fantastic blogs.

However, if you still haven’t decided whether our new video course is right for you, Gideon has put together some sample videos so you can see what the program is like. This is the caliber of video that is going to be released to members over the coming months.

We thought we’d start by sharing an X-Factor strategy video, since it’s clear people love the X-Factor concept to help make your blog stand out from the crowd.

The video above helps with Milestone One (Topic Selection) from the The Roadmap to Become A Blogger report we gave away last week. Make sure you download and read or listen to the report (there’s an MP3 audio version too) if you have not done so already.

Helping You Find Blog Topics

This video is for those of you who have yet to choose a topic for your blog, or perhaps your three test blogs if you are following that blogging strategy. In the video you see one way to gather live feedback from real people about potential topics and also gauge how popular topics could be.

Press the play button on the video that is at the start of this post to watch.

More Videos

Gideon and I have some more free sample videos to come out during this week leading up to Thursday, when we raise the price of membership from $27 to $47 a month.

Stay tuned and keep up the blogging!

Yaro and Gideon
X-Factoring

During the last few live question and answer sessions with my Blog Mastermind students at least one person every call asks for help determining whether they have a good choice for a blog topic.

Given that new people join the program each week, it’s not surprising that question crops up over and over again. Everyone new to blogging faces the challenge of topic selection as the first big hurdle, and while I can never offer the “right” solution, as only the market can tell you that, I do my best to offer my suggestions and tips for conducting research to aide with topic selection.

What Topic Is Right?

Topic selection for a blog is similar to niche selection for a business. What you decide to write about determines what type of audience you attract and how you make money from that audience. In today’s e-commerce landscape, content is the driving force behind traffic and purchasing decisions online, so topic selection is a big deal.

Today I want to offer a simple answer to this problem, to help choose what topic and niche is right for you. I say simple because it’s possible to make this a very complicated choice, with in-depth keyword research, market analysis and other assessable factors weighing in on the decision process.

Unfortunately I find that many people who do extensive research become paralyzed. With more data comes more awareness of the different variables at play. Sometimes knowing less is a good thing because it gives you a clear next step – an action you can take that actually moves you closer to a result.

This is especially important for newbies and people with personalities that demand they know everything about everything before taking that first step into the big wide world. As someone new to Internet marketing, learning about all the different ways to research a potential topic may be so much work and such a big learning curve that it takes months before any action is taken to actually test the topic in the market.

You have to learn how to choose a niche before even choosing a niche!

I’m not saying you should bury your head in the sand and take a leap of faith when choosing a topic, but you can certainly make it easier on yourself.

Spotting Opportunities

Let me explain how I have selected topics for the businesses I have run in the past. In almost all circumstances the process has gone something like this -

Read the rest of this entry >>

Desperate Buyers Only – by Alexis Dawes

Name: Desperate Buyers Only
Creator: Alexis Dawes
URL: www.desperatebuyersonly.com
Purpose: Learn how to create e-books for people who actually want them.

The ultimate guide for profiting selling e-books and short reports, with a focus on finding markets with buyers who have pressing problems and are willing to spend money to solve them. A great book for any person struggling to find a profitable topic to begin their quest to earn a living from the Internet – but does it provide all the answers?

Desperate Buyers Only Review

At the start of Desperate Buyers Only, an e-book by Alexis Dawes, is the following -

How To Choose Topics That Attract Buyers Like Bee’s to Honey – (It has NOTHING to do with “Doing What You Love”)

Online infopreneurs fail for 3 main reasons–

1) They focus on general topics.

2) They focus on so-called ‘hot’ niche topics.

3) They follow the all-time favorite, and frequently quoted, adage, “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

Nice. Very nice.

I found a book that teaches only what you need to know about the making money part of selling online. Forget anything about loving the topic, or having a passion for what you do – this is the book for those lost souls who are passionless, money-hungry, wannabe information sellers.

Okay, maybe that’s too harsh.

This is the book you need if you are still struggling to find a way to make money online and you need help picking a topic that has profit potential, despite it being the most dry and boring topic ever.

I come from the world of “do what you love” but I’m well aware there’s no point doing what you love when you can’t make money from it, at least if you want all the trappings that modern society offers. The harsh reality is, for some people – “what you love” is not going to be profitable.

It could be because you don’t have the marketing skills, maybe your passion is a saturated market or maybe what you love is not something that people spend money on.

For whatever reason, some people have to find ways to make money and what they love simply won’t cut it. In this case, no amount of passion for your topic can put food on the table.

Ideally, we all want the holy grail combination of passion and profit, where you make great money and love the work, which is why I direct my students towards looking at passions first. An important factor is motivation and, as I know from my own experience, sometimes the only way you stay motivated long enough to realize results, is to a choose a passion-based topic.

Thanks to Alexis and her e-book, you can use her techniques to chase the dollar by focusing on “desperate buyers”, people ready to spend money to solve urgent problems. Your motivation is your desire to make an income and if that is enough motivation for you to do the work (and it was for me when I first started Internet business), this is a book that offers a straight-to-the-point blueprint for turning on the cashflow.

The Challenge of Topic Selection – Solved

For most newbie Internet marketers, topic selection is the greatest challenge. Desperate Buyers Only provides an easy to follow breakdown of how to find topics that can make you money.

Here’s a rough breakdown of Alexis’ methodology for locating a profitable topic -

Read the rest of this entry >>