Make more money and have more fun in your business with these Essential Blog Testing Tools.

Today I am going to discuss something that used to bore me terribly, but which today I find very exciting – Blog Testing, Research and Analytics.

Tracking and testing your website is one of key things you can do to increase profits and drive more traffic. Using the tools below you are able to do a lot of really cool things – from finding out where your visitor comes from, which pages your visitors spend most time on, where your visitor are looks on your web-page (eye tracking), what links they click and even which opt-in box color works best for your website.

Testing can mean HUGE money. For example is you were getting around 30,000 visitors a month to your blog and were making just $5000 there is no doubt in my opinion you can make a lot more by researching the actions / behavior of your visitors using the tools I am recommending below. You could see your earnings double, treble or even multiple 10 times plus as a result of using these tools. Indeed some testers have seen as much as a 1000% increase with millions of dollars in sales. For a business like Amazon.com it could even mean billions of extra dollars in sales.

Important Fact:

A lot of bloggers I meet find Testing and Analytic’s boring – it isn’t fun for them and generally anything that is not FUN we avoid doing. But I am going to suggest it can be a lot of FUN – indeed I like to think of Blog Testing as tweaking an already powerful engine to get even better performance. I compete with myself to find little tweaks and changes to see if I can beat my my previous best performance — a bit like athletes do I suppose.

If you can think of it like that then you will find these tools a remarkable addition to your blogging business.

Let me know your own thoughts on testing and recommendations for any tools I may have missed out in the comments below.

To Our Blogging Success

Michael

Top Blog Testing Tools

Google Analytics

OK I shall start with the one TOOL that I hope most of my readers are already familiar with: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the first tool you should install on your blog. Google Analytics gives you amazing insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Very easy to use and very flexible (Just like about everything Google creates) this tool allows you to see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites. Visit Site >>

CrazyEgg

Ever wondered how your visitors are using your website? CrazyEgg allows you to see a lot of really cool information about your readers, you can see where they are looking at a page, which links are being clicked the most and lot’s of other great information. Visit Site >>

Google Keyword Tool

I haven’t been using this tool much till recently when I have been working on SEO. What you do is you type your keyword of your post, for example Web Hosting and it will give you all the other search terms people will be searching for. Now I take these terms and use them as tags and meta keywords to help me rank high in Google. It also lets me know which term will get the most traffic so that I know which one to use for my post title. Visit Site >>

Yahoo Site Explorer

This tool is great, basically to rank high in search engines you need lots of great links. Find someone who is ranking higher then you in your niche, put their URL in the Yahoo Site Explorer and you can see all the sites that link to it. Now go to these sites and negotiate advertising deals, link exchanges and guest blog posts. Visit Site >>

Go Try This

One thing that is really important as an affiliate, is knowing what converts. This tool shows me where my affiliates are getting clicked, so for example, I sell HostGator on my site and I want to know which page is converting the highest, this tool will tell me which page is giving me the most clicks. Also, it will redirect your URL’s so instead of giving a long HostGator affiliate url, I can have a URL such as IncomeDiary.com/hostgator – which I have read, improves conversions. Visit Site >>

Alexa

Although not very accurate for their traffic details, it is a very useful tool. For those who don’t know how Alexa works, it basically ranks every website in the world by the amount of people who visit a site that are using the Alexa toolbar. Visit Site >>

Quantcast

Great piece of software for those though are buying advertising space, this tool allows you to see who you typically reader is, where they live, how old they are, how much they earn a year etc.. Visit Site >>

Market Samurai

Find out how to uncover “gold-nugget” keywords – each of these keywords can send hundreds, even thousands of free visitors to your site each day. Using this tool you can discover exactly how to beat the competition, and get front-page rankings in Google for high-traffic keywords in weeks or days – not months or years. Visit Site >>

Google Website Optimizer

This is one of the hottest pieces of software I’m using right now to test my site. It allows you to test different aspects of your website, for example say your not sure if your sidebar is converting well, design a second sidebar and use Google Website Optimizer to test which one pulls the most clicks. Visit Site >>

Website Grader

This tool basically allows you to learn everything about your site, how well it’s doing in the search engines, is it getting much traffic, how many social sites are linking to you.. etc. Visit Site >>

Tests You Should Try On Your Website

Increasing Affiliate Box Clicks

Go to your Google Analytics and pick one of your most visited pages, for me it was my Top 30 Earning Blogs post. I had a paragraph in it where I was promoting affiliate product, I knew it wasn’t making me much money so I decided to run CrazyEgg on this blog post. Over a couple days I saw that the affiliate links didn’t receive any clicks at all, I remember my friend told me using a stop sign really helps draw eyes to things. So using these two bits of information I tested different stops signs and ended up using a green sign to match the site. Adding this sign increased the clicks on affiliate links from 0 to 12 clicks a day. Admittedly not a lot of clicks but a lot more then what I had before, I now have rolled this out so that I use it at the bottom of every blog post because I used these tools and found it worked.

Finding Whats Converting Readers The Most

As an affiliate blogger, I need to know which page is making people take action. Running the GoTryThis software on my blog, I can see which pages are getting the most clicks on affiliate links and then comparing them to other pages, can see what call of action is making the reader take action.

‘Why is my blog not earning me money’ or as I like to put it: “WHY DOES MY BLOG SUCK!” is one of the most frequently asked questions in my mailbox.

Today’s post (video and enhanced transcription) is all about that subject and what you need to do to eliminate the SUCK factor!

But first – how do you define the SUCK Factor? For most it is of course lack of earnings or very low revenues but really that is the wrong way round. You see in ‘theory’ if the Blog did not SUCK then there would be plenty of revenues. In this video I attempt to highlight some of the most critical factors that will increase the SUCK Factor, but before you watch the video I’d like to throw in a couple of other FACTORS that are crucial.

1) Does Your Niche Suck?

You see I have seen plenty of pretty decent looking blogs, where the blogger is doing most of the right things and where in theory the blog does not suck but the blogger is earning very little just because the NICHE SUCKS! We don’t often talk about niches sucking in blogging but for sure if your goal is to earn money, then some niche’s really do suck. Lots of bloggers advise you to ‘build a blog around your passion’ but I would change that and say ‘BUILD a blog around a passion that also has a PROVEN Revenue model’

A friend of mine used to run a celebrity blog that even of occasion got over 100000 visitors in a week but rarely earned more than $1000 in a month from it. You see people who are interested in celebrities can get all the information they want for FREE – so finding away to monetize the blog (other than with very low paying Google Adsense clicks) is very difficult. Of course there is exceptions like Perez Hilton (PerezHilton.com) – but Perez is the exception, not the rule!

Basically, when selecting a Niche to Blog about, do your research and make sure you have a definite strategy for monetizing the blog (And Google Adsense and setting up some Amazon Affiliate links – while good, are not a great strategy in my opinion)

2) Action Beats Perfection

Honest, despite what I say in this video: Action Beats Perfection. Just about everyone’s blog (including mine) sucks until you have the time to tweak it / perfect it. If the points I raise apply to you, don’t get disheartened because now that you know them you can go about fixing / perfecting. Congratulate yourself because you took the first and most important step of TAKING ACTION!

By the way, you never stop perfecting. I am constantly making tweaks and changes on this website - and what is more, they don’t all work. Take ACTION, Measure RESULTS and CORRECT / PERFECT (Or READY, FIRE, AIM as I said in previous post)

Let me know your thoughts and comments below. What makes a blog suck in your opinion? What change did you make to your website to stop if SUCKING?

Share your experience below.

To Our Blogging Success

Michael

Why Your Blog Sucks | Intensive Care For Blogs

Why Your Blog Sucks – Enhanced Transcription

Today I want to talk to you about something very important, and that is, why blog sucks.

Getting a blog online, getting traffic and earning money from it does not have to be difficult.

For me there are four vital categories that bloggers need to focus on when launching their blog:

Creation, Content, Monetization, and People

We’ll start with creation and the first point I often end up making is that: You’re domain sucks.

I know it may not seem that critical, but often it is the first thing a visitor discovers about your website and having a great domain name is a good way to make a first impression.

Choosing a Domain Name:

Use two words (a maximum of 3) that clearly explains what you are about. Look at incomediary.com I like the word diary and other variations of it are: fitnessdiary.com, or weightlossdiary.com Anyone seeing those domain names would have a pretty good idea what the website is about straight away. Of course you don’t have to use the word diary (that is just my example) – but it is critical in my opinion (unless you have a huge budget for branding) that your domain name makes a STATEMENT about what you do.

Also, try to avoid dashes in a domain name – ie don’t go with: Michael-Dunlop.com. Also for me, it always has to be a .com (not .net. .org. .info etc)

Imagine you are meeting someone and giving them your domain name but they don’t have a pen to write it down – would they remember your domain name when they get home? That is my test for a ‘good domain name’

Design

Design is very, very important. However, it’s very, very easy to get right these days. Just go into WooThemes.com or any of the premium Word Press theme sites and invest in a well designed THEME. I always say WooThemes.com, but there’s loads out there.

Get a WooTheme, put it online, choose a color, and then put a logo up. That is it – no more things need to do, until you get into the big time. That’s what I did.

I started with just a WooTheme, and only after I had hundreds of thousands of visitors and started to make some serious money (tens of thousands of dollars) did I then start to invest in an even better design with features that would be unique to me.

It is quite incredible but I regularly have people tell me they will launch their blog once they have the design sorted and then a month or two later they are saying the same thing. Don’t over think it to start — just get a good theme from WooThemes.com and crack on with launching your blog ASAP!

Get Online Today!

This frustrates me and is related to above (over designing) – but get online ASAP. A lot of people fiddle around with design, ‘perfecting’ their blog but never really get going!

I speak to people and they say, “Oh Michael I don’t want people to see my blog until the design is sorted, perfected” or “I don’t want people to steal my design.” Look here is you are worried about people stealing your design — don’t bother about getting online in first place.

Like it or not, no website / blog is ever really ready – there is always something that can be improved. Remember: Action Beats Perfection

Income Diary has never been finished. I’m constantly doing more things. Just get it online, even if you’re not ready to share it with anyone. Let Google come along, index it. It will make a big difference when you are ready to officially to launch.

Buzz!

If you are going to make a big launch of it, a new site, get the word out there. I call this creating BUZZ! Tweet about your new site, Facebook it, mention it on related Forums, tell people what’s coming. Keep the buzz authentic and helpful (maybe release an article of the results of a survey you have done, so people get an idea of what to expect. Then when people do come, it’s going to be a lot easier to get people inside and start commenting, posting, and telling their friends about it. I have never done this — but you can also easily add a COUNT DOWN Clock to the website detailing when you officially launch.

OK, that covers the CREATION side of things — but what about CONTENT once you have launched?

Consistency

Content is where a lot of people go wrong. Consistency is the first thing here. If you’re not consistently posting, then it’s annoying to the reader, and it just sets a bad standard. So, even if you’re only posting it once a week, that’s fine as long as you post every week on the same day — and don’t miss a week. Or it could be every two weeks, once a month, once a day, three times a day, it doesn’t matter, as long as you are consistent. I have to admit that with a busy life I have struggled at times to be consistent on when I post, but this is one time I would advise you not to always do what I have done.

Be consistent – for example doing a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is a good target to aim for. If you’re writing them all in the same day, don’t post them all on the same day. Just make sure people know when to expect a post.

Being An Authority

Authority is vital. Readers want to see you as a big guy, a guru, someone they know and can trust.

Two strategy’s that I have found work amazingly well for building authority for yourself is 1) Interviewing other Gurus in your niche and 2) Creating TOP LISTS for you NICHE (Example ‘30 Richest Weight Loss Experts” – if weight loss happens to be your niche)

I have spoken a lot about this in the past so I am not going to overdo it here – just take my word – IT WORKS!

Value

Are you delivering value? Are your blog posts well thought out? Are you delivering information and observations and angles and creating discussion that your competitors are not?

Honest, I cannot over state this – I see so many bloggers put time and effort into design, buzz and they are even quite consistent (to start with) but the blog posts they create are short, offer little value (basically a rehash of someones post) and BORING!

Ultimately you will not succeed as a Blogger – unless you are prepared to work hard / graft and deliver top notch content. Every post I create takes several hours to put together – and while I may occasionally fire something of in 20 mins or less I have found the posts that get the most comments, get the most Google Juice (in terms of link backs) are the posts I took hours and occasionally days to create.

There has to be some reason for visitors returning to your site. Your post answers a problem, or it teaches them something, or they are just bored and want to be entertained. Your visitors have a ‘problem’ and your blog has to provide the solution. Very important.

Delivery

How do you deliver your information / blog posts?

Here is a varied delivery example, this time related to interviews. Try delivering the interview in different formats for your visitor. For example Audio, Video and Text. (That is why I have every video I do transcribed – it costs money, but I also know many readers prefer to read and of course having all that text on the page is great for search engines as well)

Another variation on the delivery example – if for you to occasionally have guest posts from other bloggers. Not something I do a lot of myself, but one advantage of Guest Posters is that they tell their ‘fans’ about the guest post they did which brings you more traffic — especially if it is a Blogger with a good following. And of course it adds variety to your blog and a post you did not have to write yourself.

Monetization

My favorite subject – monetization!

Wrong Techniques

Here is a TIP I have gave you before. If you really want to make big money online (rather than easy money) then stop trying to sell banner advertising, paid reviews or text links. Cut it all out. Affiliate marketing is where it’s at. You’ll make more money promoting affiliate offers.

I have two sites in the same industry. One, retireat21.com has been around a lot longer and relies on selling banners / advertisers. It makes OK money, but it does not make LIFE CHANGING money! On the other hand, Incomediary.com has affiliate offers and Incomediary.com out-performs retireat21.com by at least a factor of 5, on an average day!

Also stop trying to sell services and consulting, because that’s exchanging time for money. The whole point of having your own website in my opinion is so that you can have a passive income, and can work less and make more.

Wrong Promotions

You’re promoting the wrong things. Test things. Don’t just keep promoting something because it looks like a good product to you. It may be not what someone wants in a site. Test different products and once you’ve found some that converts… Cool, keep that. Then look for another cool product to add to that winning product – and repeat the testing until you find another winner.

Very Important – you have to keep testing. It’s taken me a long time to find the right ones. However, now I have, because I spent time doing it. It’s making me five times more, I’m not joking. Testing is important.

Not Monetizing The Site At All!

Believe it or not, some of the blogs that suck have no monetization at all. Some people it appears are embarrassed to make money from their blog? I even had someone say to me recently — “I cannot be ‘independent’ if I am earning money from affiliate offers”. In the past I would have teared my hair out over that kind of comment but when he said that I just shrugged my shoulders and said: “yeah, you are probably right” (Of course he was not right — someone is going to earn from the products he his reviewing, so why no him, but I’m, getting a bit wiser these days — try as you may, some people don’t ever get it!)

NO LIST!

The final one in this section – NO LIST (note the BIG LETTERS!). Without a list, you’re just not going to make as much money. 80 percent of my income comes from my list. One of the reasons for me releasing PopUp Domination was so that more people could build their own list faster. Please see my List Building post for more details of how you can build your list faster — also How To Drastically Increase Your Email Opt-in Rate

List building is VITAL – connect with people, deliver them value, keep connecting with them (again always delivering value) and then they will be much more receptive to your offers when you email them. As a guide on how often to “PROMOTE” one of my new mentors suggests one time in three is a direct Affiliate Promotion – no more than that. Email people daily with “OFFERS” and they will soon get tired of you. Also, one email in three at least should be nothing but TOP QUALITY, Valuable information. (The other post in three can be a mixture of both)

Building a list does not cost much money to start with. AWeber does an offer for just $1 in the first month and then $19 after that.

Finding Good People To Support You

You want to have a good network of people around you.

You want to talk and connect with people in your niche, people to interview, for example. Once you interviewed people, take that relationship further. You also want to be able to bounce ideas off of people, off your readers…

Top Tip: Don’t let your ego get in the way – you may be good, but I have found you learn a lot more by asking questions of your peer group. Amongst the people I hang out with most of the time I am sure I am pretty well respected, but the more you learn the more you earn — so in my case I am always asking questions / opinions from friends in my niche. This is very important also – don’t expect them to always agree with you. Indeed having your view challenged is the best way to discover if you have the right view / angle on something in the first place.

Make sure you have lots of great people around you, that’s what I do. I’m always on Skype, chatting to different people. Helping them, being interested in them and what they are doing, looking for ways we can work together. If you are helping them you can be sure they will want to help you. It is called the law of reciprocosity.

I know some real networkers out there, especially on Skype. And actually, I had a great conversation with a friend recently about it. And really, you can build a business just on contacts. Like they say, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

If you didn’t have a good network around you, and haven’t been talking to people and networking on Skype, or at events, or Facebook or Twitter, then when you try to do a promotion you are going to struggle simply because no one knows you, respects you.

On the other hand if you do a promotion and people know you and respect you chances are very high they will promote you and your offer.

For example, I’ve promoted for most of my friends at one time or another. Then when it came time for me to pre-launch PopUp Domination guess what happened? All my friends have used it, and they’re all promoting it, and it’s really as simple as that.

You’ve got people you can talk to in your industry that are going to be good for your business. Make a list of the influential people in your niche. How could you work with them? Connect with them? These people will also give you valuable feedback, they can tell you what their readers are saying (this is vital because it from this that you overcome objections to the product and make the product even better)

The list of benefits from networking is virtually endless

The point here is to have a FOLLOWING amongst your NICHE even if you don’t have much of a list yet….

Homework: Connect today with some one in your niche that is an authority that you have not connected with before. Drop them a genuine, sincere email telling them how much you admire what they do. There is no need to include information on yourself (they can pick that up from your email signature)

If you are genuine and say something different chances are they will respond — even if only to say thank you. From that you can progress to perhaps asking for an interview sometime — or even you can offer to help them with something. For example if they ever visit your town offer to show them around. A few hours in their company may just be the difference your business needs.

Thank you, Happy Networking and Prosperous Blogging

Michael Dunlop

As many of you know I recently launched my own product. This post is about that experience, what I learned from it what you can learn from it also.

I have been asked for quite sometime when I would release my first ‘product’ and frankly up until very recently I had been having so much fun and doing very nicely promoting other peoples products that I really did not see any need to have my ‘own product’.

This video and enhanced transcript tells you how I did it — but first I’d like to make a confession. PopUp Domination is not my first product idea – indeed previous to PopUp Domination I had been working on two other Make Money From Blogging Information Products – but somehow never got around to finishing them / releasing them. I confess this because as much as I am about taking ACTION, I certainly have dragged my feet about launching my own products.

So what was different this time?

I suppose the main difference this time was ‘speed of implementation‘. My development team, James and myself had already created PopUp Domination for use on IncomeDiary so launching a product in a matter of days was a real possibility.

This is critical – Speed of Implementation.

The longer you give yourself to do something the more likely it will not get done in my experience.

There was also one other strategy that we used that I have become more familiar with over last 7 days. It is the ‘READY, FIRE, AIM’ approach. (Rather than Ready…aim…fire)

I did not consciously consider that I was doing that – but having now launched a software product that is I think perhaps the best way to describe it:

Steve Pavlina explains READY FIRE AIM perfectly in this article:

As Steve explains – the ready-fire-aim approach, rather surprisingly works a lot better than the more common ready-aim-fire approach.

“The reason is that after you’ve “fired” once, you have some actual data with which to adjust your aim. Too many people get bogged down in planning and thinking and never get to the point of action. How many potentially great ideas have you passed up because you got stuck in the state of analysis paralysis (i.e. ready-aim-aim-aim-aim-aim…)?”

Of course Ready Fire Aim does not always work — just look at the trouble Apple has got into with ‘reception issues’ on the new iPhone 4 – but hopefully you get the picture.

Really when it comes down to it, taking action and getting something done and out the door now – even if it is not your best product is better than never launching at all. Dangerous talk I know and of course you can’t release a totally rubbish product but especially with software the only way to find out all the BUGS is to release it. That is why just about every decent piece of software I know has regular updates – to cope with those Bugs! I have to admit PopUp Domination is no different and we already have a number of tweaks and updates planned – as well as increasing the price as we continue to improve the product.

Enjoy the video (and enhanced transcript) – as always I look forward very much to your feedback and comments.

best wishes

Michael

PS: Enhanced Transcription is really worth a read – I have included some extra information and links there.

How To Launch Your First Information Product

Enhanced Transcription – with additional resources.

Today, I want to show you these some very exciting. It is exactly how I launched my first product – a Wordpress Plugin called: PopUp Domination . A Plugin that allows you to easily add a Lightbox Opt-in to your blog which can get you 4, 4 or even 10 times more Opt-ins.

This is how I did it.

First, I found a problem which was that people wanted to create lightboxes and get more opt-ins but they were struggling to create Lightbox Forms that had compelling offers, nice graphics etc.

All the best Product Creators go with this premise – create a product that solves a problem. No matter what your industry people have problems that need solving. Can you solve their problems?

In my case I personally needed a way to even better monetize my blog and get more opt-ins. I had been looking at using Lightbox opt-ins from AWeber and while I liked the idea, most of them did not really inspire me so I set about creating my own easy way to add a AWeber Lightbox to my blog. In the end I can up with 4 distinct designs that are easy to edit from the admin area along with a multitude of color options. (Not only that we adapted PopUp Domination to also work with: iContact, GetRESPONSE and Mailchimp plus more to follow.)

This became the basis for me launching: PopUp Domination

To solve problems is pretty much why you need to create a product.

The product could be a resource or it can be a software. It could be a Wordpress Plugin like PopUp Domination

Or, it could be an ebook or a membership site or an ecourse or an interview of the month or a Daily Industry Alert (or Tip) to name but a few.

Find a problem, create a solution and bill your customers!

Once you’ve decided what YOUR PRODUCT is you need to work out how you will deliver it to your paying customer. This could for example be via email, a membership website or a Download link on a Thank you page
Decide what’s going to work for you and then we can start building this sales page, and the thank you page, and doing everything else.

Sales Page

I really encourage you to add video to your sales page – that is what is working right now! People like video. The more authentic the video the better (indeed a professional sounding “radio voice’ can actually be a disadvantage in some instances)

Personally, I’m not great with video. (well, I’m improving) It went all right. We sold a few hundred in the first day. And, we’re still selling more every single day. So, we’re getting ready to have a big launch.

Quick Tip: Don’t show how long the video is on the player controls – in my case I set video so that if some one clicks on it it pauses and then to start playing again the just need to click again. (Less controls, less distractions)

Most important – have a Prominent BUY BUTTON – - or Add To Cart Button.

Lots of little tweaks can make such a difference to conversions. Check out the Belcher Button – from my friend Perry Belcher.

The Thank You Page

Never assume buyers are inside your head and what is obvious to you may well not be obvious to them. So explain everything very carefully and in detail. Including an email address for contact on thank you page is a good idea as people don’t always download straight away.
We all mess us and people creating thank you pages often don’t think like their customer so they miss essentials. Make it real simple with plenty of “Click Here” , Arrows and “Download here” instructions. If you’re going to sell a lot, have a Customer Support area … so you don’t get bombarded personally with emails and all service requests go straight to Support. Later it is also a good idea to add FAQ’s to cover the most frequently asked questions.

The Shopping Cart

For us, we chose Clickbank but there are loads of different places you can go for delivery of digital products such as Nanacast, and E-junkie, and a bunch of other ones. Clickbank works for us because we wanted to get lots of affiliates and Clickbank has TONS OF AFFILIATES!

But if you have your own affiliates in mind then there are other alternatives such as Nanacast. Typically you pay Clickbank 10% of sale for their service but with Nanacast you just pay a monthly fee to use their software.

With ClickBank, it took us just three days to get accepted. Clickbank often ask you to make some changes in order to be accepted as they did with us. I really like Clickbank – they know what they are doing and getting accepted within three days is pretty good considering we hadn’t fully created the product. Indeed, we started creating the product only 11 days before we actually planned to sell it.

As I mentioned in my introduction – Speed Of Implementation is Everything when it comes to launching a product! Also, as I said:

The longer you give yourself to do something the more likely it will not get done in my experience.

You need to learn to just take action. So, many people think, “Oh, I’m going to launch in like six weeks. And, when you know you’re going to launch in six weeks, they often just bum around and come launch date they have only half the work done!

Once I decided that PopUp Domination would be my first product we spent the next 11 days hard at it with programmers working around the clock. Quite insane really – but fun as well!

Conversion Boosters

OK, once you have your sales page up and running you may like to consider some conversion boosters. One that we tried (that you may well have seen on many other Clickbank Product pages) is that of offering a discount if someone does not buy and attempts to close the page.

Personally I have never been super keen on this approach but I was encouraged to give it a try. I will admit it works – but it is not without its disadvantages. For a start you upset all your customers who bought at full price. So what we did in the end is offer a $10 discount but buyers at that price did not receive the Product Presentation or the Photoshop files.

You really need to have a reason to offer the discount in my opinion – it has to be credible so if you go with this approach I suggest you bundle the product slightly differently, leave something out.

This in fact increased our sales by 40% which is an incredible number, so anyone who has got a product or service online, you definitely need to check out the software we used, it’s called Exit Splash!

Of course the other angle to this is to also offer an more expensive option (an Up-sell) — for example offering to install the Plugin for an additional $20. That is not something we have done, but I wanted to give you that angle with Product Offerings as well.

Finding Affiliates

Affiliates is the driving force of your business. The more affiliates you have – the more sales you’re going to make. (I like to think of this as Work Less, Make More money strategy)

We found our affiliates through ClickBank. My product is about Blog Marketing so I went to every person who had a Blog Marketing product on Clickbank and offered them the opportunity to be a Joint Venture Partner (JV / Affiliate) Of course not everyone responds but those that did generated a substantial number of additional sales that I would never have otherwise had.

I really encourage you to go with this approach to finding affiliates for your product offering. Believe it or not most of these other product creators are actually happy to hear from you.

If you would like to promote Popup Domination – Click here!

In Conclusion

Of course this is not everything you need to do — but it is the most essential first steps. So now the QUESTION is:

When Are You Going To Launch Your First Problem Solving Product?

I’m really excited to share this with you guys, it’s my very first Wordpress Plugin which has done wonders for 100’s of people already and it can do the same for you. I have heard from users that they have had increases in conversions from anywhere between 150% and 1100%! It’s called Popup Domination and in today’s post, I will be showing you around the Plugin and you will be able to see for yourself just how easy it is and the results you can get.

Most of you will know that email marketing is a big part of my income, without it I wouldn’t be where I am today. This is how it works: You get people to opt-in > Promote Something On ThankYou Page > Sell Affiliate Products in Autoresponder > Email List at Any Time Promotions and Updates! I personally believe that anyone who has a mailing list should be giving something away to entice people into signing up, in my case I created a 7 day free eCourse to creating your first profitable blog. I then set up an autoresponder in Aweber so that every day for 7 days they get lessons, then after that I switch to weekly and in between weeks I send out promotions.

Having a mailing list can be quite simply and it really is the biggest game changer you can have for your business, ask any guru or big internet entrepreneur and they will say the power is in the list and this is because they can keep sending back visitors time after time to their sites promoting new offers and content. Take a look at this post for example, over 75% of the people who will read this article will of read it because they are on my list. Now it’s time to not just create a list, but to super charge it so that you can play catch up and get a lot of subscribers from DAY 1!

If You Don’t Yet Know How Great Email Marketing Is, Check These Posts Out:

More Opt-ins, More Leads, More Sales – Email Marketing Made Easy

How To Grow Your Email List Fast!

Building Your Mailing List and Making Money From It

In case after that you are still not convinced, check this screen shot out, literally 2 months ago I had more traffic and was only getting around 15 opt-ins a day, now I’m in the 100’s!

Popup Domination Results!

Video Review By Michael

Designing Your Lightbox Opt-in

Once you install the plugin you need to click PopUp Domination on the left hand side under Settings and you will be presentation with a page like this, you will see in the top right that it is turned off and that you need to activate it once you have added the settings you want. You will see across the top is the links to different pages in the plugin and down the left side are all the styling options.

Start by choosing from one of the 4 great designes, personally I like number 4 because you can add an eCover which increases conversions. Then select the colour of the button, personally I think this should match the colour of your site, so if you have a blue site, pick a blue button. Now you get to choose from 15 colours, I really like some of the colours, it may sound odd but I think the Grape colour looks quite cool! For this design, I went with the colour black, you will notice that their is a preview of the template and the colour you chose to the right.

Choosing Your Theme and Colours

Next you need to insert your mailing list HTML, so in my case I have to go to my Aweber account and grab the HTML (not javascript version) and paste it in the field, it will now automatically pick up all the important things and make your opt-in on the light box work.

Adding your Email Providers HTML

Next we have to add the text we want to see on the lightbox, we have let you fully customize this from the title to even the text you see on the submit button. On the theme I chose for my lightbox I have the option to add a image so I uploaded an eCover design of the course I was giving away – this will increase your conversions further and by a lot! If you want to get a well designed eCover, check out the eCover Creator 3D tool, you can design it yourself, similar to using Popup Domination, all you do is pick from options and it generates it for you.

Adding Text To Your Lightbox

Adding your list fields is easy, add the text you want to see on each line and it’s really as simple as that. If you want to add more bullet-points just click Add new and you can add more.

Adding Bullet-Points To Your Lightbox

Scheduling your lightbox is really important, you want to make sure you choose the right options, personally I like to show it every 7 days, however for mass exposure you can choose 0 and it will show on every page or you could choose 999 and it will only show once ever. Another thing we let you do is choose is how long after landing on your blog do you want the lightbox to appear, I personally thing 0 or 2 seconds is best, if you leave it much longer people will of started reading your posts and then it can become an annoyance.

Scheduling Your Lightbox

Now if you click Preview, you will see what your lightbox looks like!

What Your Lightbox Will Look Like!

Under the lightbox you will notice the text “Powered By PopUp Domination” – this is an option we added to the lightbox so that you can sell the lightbox through your site, all you have to do is paste in your Clickbank nick name and it will automatically create your affiliate link and link to it.

Just looking at forums, reviews, twitter, facebook and personal emails from buyers excites me so much because the results are increadible, this really will make a big difference to everyone who buys it, they will see a big difference in their bottom line. Make sure to visit Popup Domination and buy it today!

]]> http://www.incomediary.com/popup-domination-review/feed/ 32 http://www.incomediary.com/designing-a-membership-site-in-adobe-photoshop/ http://www.incomediary.com/designing-a-membership-site-in-adobe-photoshop/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:02:03 +0000 Michael http://www.incomediary.com/?p=4212 How To Design Your Own Membership Area In Photoshop

The idea for this design was to create a membership area for the software WishList Membership which is a Wordpress plugin, however the design could be used for any membership site or even a blog, if you get the right coder.

Being quite a well known blogger and marketer, I’m often asked to review products and give testimonials – one thing that most sites have in common is the poor design and usability, it seems to always be an after thought. The thing is, if people are paying you to have access to the content and the site is hard to navigate and not nice to look at, it will take away from their experience and will increase the chances of refunds and negative feedback.

Creating a custom designed site for more people will seem daunting but really the benefits are huge and a small amount of investment goes a long way! My friend Ryan lee loves membership sites because, unlike selling a eBook, you will get paid, month after month as long as they stay a member! Just remember when you are putting together any website, whether it is a blog or a membership site – make it easy for your users to navigate around because this will encourage your readers to view more pages which in turn will make you more money!

Resources You May Need

Finding a Designer: Although this is a step-by-step tutorial using Adobe Photoshop, if you are new, you may find it hard to do. I recommend you check 0Desk for a cheap web designer.

Getting the Design Coded: Just like finding a designer, 0Desk also has a great selection of programmers at a much discounted rate.

Software To Use: I highly recommend WishList Membership site for your membership website.

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a blue web layout for a “how to make money online” course website. Let’s get started!

What You Will Be Designing

This is the web layout that we are going to create. Click on the following image to see the full size version.

Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop with the dimensions 1400px by 2080px. Create a new group and name it “navigation”. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and create a rectangular selection with the height 44px. Create a new layer, select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag a linear #0e6da3 to #005e95 gradient from the top of the selection to the bottom. Name this layer “top bar”.

Step 2

Ctrl/Cmd-click on the thumbnail of the “top bar” layer to select it. Then set the foreground color to #007fc3, select a soft brush (B) with the size 200px and paint with it over a small area from the left side of the blue bar.

Step 3

Use the Line Tool (U) to create a horizontal line with the weight 1px and the color #0180c3 beneath the blue bar. Add a black mask to this layer (Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All). Then select a white soft brush and paint with it over the left area of your blue bar. Name this layer “1px line”.

Step 4

Select the two layers from the “navigation” group and hit Ctrl/Cmd + E to merge them. Double-click on the new layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image for Drop Shadow.

Step 5

Set the foreground color to #52c3fd, select a soft brush with the size 70px and paint with it over the left area of the blue bar. Name this layer “light” and set its opacity to 35%.

Step 6

Use the Line Tool (U) to create a white line with the weight 1px at the top of the blue bar. Name this layer “1px line” and set its blend mode to Overlay 45%.

Step 7

Select the Type Tool (T) and write the name for your navigation menu items. Then add a subtle shadow to your text layers using the settings from the following image.

Step 8

Use the Pen Tool (P) to create a small triangle beneath the first navigation menu item. Name this layer “rollover”, double-click on it and use the settings from the following image.

Step 9

Create a new group and name it “searchbar”. Then select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px and create a white rounded rectangle with the dimensions 190px by 26px. Double-click on this layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image for Drop Shadow. Name this layer “searchbox”.

Step 10

Select the Type Tool (T) and write the word “Search…” in the left side of the search box using the color #28537d. Then select the Custom Shape Tool (U), select the search icon and create one in the right side of the search box using the color #52b3d6.

Step 11

Create a new group beneath the “navigation” group and name it “header”. Then select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and create a selection with the height 140px. Create a new layer and use the Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill the selection with the color #22476a. Name this layer “header bg”, double-click on it to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image.

Step 12

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a rectangular selection with the height 15px beneath the header. Then create a new layer, select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag a #b2b1b1 to transparent gradient from the top of the selection to the bottom. Name this layer “gradient” and set its opacity to 70%. Leave a distance of 1px between the header and this gradient.

Step 13

Create a new layer, select a white soft brush (B) with the size 300px and click once over the left area of the header. Then set the blend mode of this layer to Overlay 77%.

Step 14

Create a new layer and use the Line Tool (U) to create a horizontal white line with the weight 1px at the bottom of the navigation bar. Name this layer “1px line” and set its blend mode to Overlay 50%.

Step 15

Use the Type Tool (T) to write the text for your layout’s header. You can also add a subtle shadow to your text layers using the Layer Style window. As you can see in the following image I also used an image of a blogging e-book.

Step 16

Create a new group and name it “content”. The content of this layout is split into three areas: ‘Modules’, ‘Bonus Reports’ and ‘Accelerate Program’. Select the Type Tool (T) and write the word “Modules” in the left side of the layout, beneath the header. I used the font Museo Sans and the color #272b2d. Then add a tagline in the right side of the layout using the font Helvetica and the color #909090.

I created the quotes that you see in the following image using the font Gill Sans Ultra Bold with the color #e1e1e1 and the layer style settings from the following image. Select the Line Tool (U) and create a horizontal line with the weight 1px and the color #e6e6e6.

Step 17

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a rectangular selection with the size 311px by 127px. Create a new layer and fill this selection with white. Then add a 1px stroke to this layer using the color #d9d9d9 and the settings from the following image. Then add an image inside this rectangle and some text beneath it.

Step 18

Repeat the previous step to create more images for the ‘Modules’ area. As you can see below, my second image has a thicker stroke. I used the a 9px size for the Stroke layer style and I also created an arrow in the right side of the image using the Pen Tool (P).

Note: you can also use guides to organize your images better. To create guides, activate the Rulers (Ctrl/Cmd + R), click on the top ruler or on the left ruler and drag guides towards your document.

Step 19

Repeat the previous three steps to create the ‘Bonus Reports’ and ‘Accelerate Program’ areas.

Step 20

Create a new group and name it “Footer”. Then use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a rectangle with the height 280px and the color #e7e7e7 into a new layer. Name this layer “footer bg”.

Then select the Line Tool (U) and create a horizontal line with the weight 1px and the color #cbcbcb at the top of the rectangle. Name this layer “1px line”.

Step 21

Select the Type Tool (T) and start adding the footer content. You can also use an image for the ‘about’ area.

Step 22

Select the Line Tool (U) and create a horizontal line with the weight 1px and the color #cbcbcb. Then use the Type Tool (T) to write a copyright statement beneath this line.

Final result

Here is the final result of this tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it and you learned something new. Click on the image below to see the full size version.

This is a guide to help you set up your first ad campaign on Facebook – one of the cheapest and highest converting traffic sources on the net!

While at an event in Washington DC, I was talking to a friend called David Sinik (who runs a Online Advertising Agency), trying to get to know more information about how he is driving traffic from Facebook Ads for so cheap and how he’s making money from it. After catching up with him a few weeks later, he agreed to share some of what he knows with you guys, I hope you enjoy it:

So I’m not really big on hype – but it’s hard for me to contain my excitement when talking about Facebook advertising (or any online advertising, for that matter. I’m a huge geek.) There is literally nowhere else on the internet, or in the offline world (that I know of) that has such comprehensive targeting abilities. You can target 24 year old single women that like to read “Think And Grow Rich”, are conservative, play Farmville, located in New York City, on their birthday. Not that you’ll ever really need to go in-depth, but the point is – if you know anything about your customer, you will be able to find them on Facebook.

The best part is that with this insane targeting ability, you are able to put yourself in a position where you’re dealing with minimal advertiser competition.

So let’s run through Facebook Advertising, shall we?

There are 5 keys to advertising on Facebook, they are:

• Read The Help Section!
• Targeting
• Ad Copy/Pictures
• Landing Page
• Testing, Testing, and more Testing

Read The Advertiser Help Section

The first thing you should do before you jump into advertising on Facebook is run through their help center. It should only take 20-30 minutes at the most and will give you a good foundation and understanding about their program.

Targeting

Here’s a rundown of what you can target on Facebook:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Sexual Preference
• Birthday
• Relationship Status
• Languages
• Interests (Books, Movies, Applications, Games, Political Views, Job Title, Religion)
• Education
• Workplace
• Connections (Groups, Pages, Events, Applications)

The ability to niche-down your targeting allows you to get the absolute best quality visitors to your site (the ones most likely to be interested in what you have to offer), and allows you lots of room to avoid dealing with competition. The tighter you get with your targeting, the less competition you will have, and the cheaper your advertising costs will be.

Creating An Advert For a New Site Of Mine

So here’s how I approach targeting. Before I even begin any ad creation on Facebook, I want to do research about my target audience first. The main way that I get information about my audience is through Quantcast. If you are unfamiliar with Quantcast, it’s basically an analytics-type plugin that some websites use on their pages that records demographic and traffic information about their site. Quantcast also can give you data on sites that don’t use their plugin (the data is estimated, but it’s pretty accurate).

If my site already is receiving significant traffic, I would check out that URL on Quantcast. If I’m running an affiliate offer, I would check that sites URL on Quantcast. If I have no traffic and I’m not running an affiliate offer, I would use the URL of my competitors sites to get a feeling for their audiences.
Once you enter in the URL, you’ll get a page back that looks like this.

The data is presented in two ways – the percentage on the left is the % of the sites visitors that are in that demographic, and the number on the right is the index of the amount of visitors to the site in that demographic related to the internet average. So 100 is the internet average – if your site is a 213 index for African American, that means your site has around 2.13x the average amount of African American visitors to it compared to the rest of the internet.
I am usually just focusing on the gender demographic and the age demographic for my baseline targeting. The other information is good just to give you ideas for what kind of copy/pictures to use in your ad.

Some other resources to learn more about your audience are Google’s AdPlanner, Alexa’s Audience tab, and simply making a Facebook account of your target demographic. If you’re looking to target 34 year old single men, you can make an account that age and see what kind of advertisements pop up. This will give you a better feel for what your competition is doing, and give you some ideas for what types of ads to run with.

• Ad Copy

Here’s where you need to dig into your copywriting skills. If you haven’t read Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz – purchase it immediately. It’s pretty much the best copywriting book ever written and also has a chapter with 37 different types of headlines to use (very helpful for Facebook copy, as your headline is extremely important)
Here’s some copywriting tips broken up into the 3 sections – Headlines, Pictures, and Body Copy.

Headlines

• Capitalization (capitalize the first letter of each word, try capitalizing full words if you can (“FREE!”))
• Punctuation – Use different punctuation to make your ad stick out from the crowd ($, “”, –), also use exact numbers (43,382 instead of 40,000)
• Questioning – Ask your audience a question, challenge them (“Can You Handle It?”) – these types of ads generally get pretty good clickthrough rates.
• X vs. Y (Nascar vs. Indycar, Dogs vs. Cats) – take advantage of hot debates that are going on in your niche.
• Shock Headlines (“Steal This Car.”) – they attract more attention and will definitely help increase clickthrough rates.
• Keyword – Use the keyword that you’re targeting in your headline (“Like Think and Grow Rich?”)

Example Of Your Facebook Advert

Pictures:

Pictures are the most important aspect of Facebook ads – they are the first thing that people see, so it’s extremely important to stick out from the crowd. It’s also important that your picture isn’t deceptive – it might get you clicks, but it’s not going to help you make sales.

• Sex sells – if you can get away with it, use attractive people in your pictures.
• Bright colors – The more you can make your picture stand out, the better. Try putting some neon colors in your picture using MSPaint.
• Borders – You can also try adding borders or mini graphics on your pictures (stars, etc.)
• Text – You can white out the bottom of your picture and add in some extra copy.

Body Copy:

• Call to action – This is EXTREMELY important – the person has read your ad – what are they supposed to do next? Tell them what they need to do (“Click Here!”)
• Scarcity – Tell them that it’s a limited time offer, that there’s a limited quantity of your product, or that the offer will be coming down by xx date. This incentivizes them to click now.
• XX Value – FREE! – Explain the value of the purchase that they are about to make in exact numbers ($457 instead of 400)
• Truthfully, body copy doesn’t have that great of an effect on your clickthrough rate, though it can have a large effect on your conversion rate. Make sure that your copy is not deceptive.

Landing Page

It is very hard to get sales letters to work on Facebook. The simple fact of the matter is that people on Facebook are not really looking to be sold to – they are not in a buyers mindset. The key is to send them to a page that offers free information. Sometimes you can send them to a page that has an email opt-in, or you can make the process longer and put a page in between your ad and the e-mail opt in page. We’ve had pretty good conversions with pages that look like the one to the right. We offer a free report in exchange for the users name & e-mail.

It’s important to make these pages non-threatening. The way we did this was through keeping the colors on the page similar to Facebook. If possible, try to use the same fonts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that this will always work – it’s just what has worked for us in our campaigns. Generally, the shorter pages on Facebook convert better.

The most important thing is to make sure your page is relevant to your ad. If there is a disconnect (A picture of a model in a bikini leading to a car insurance offer), your ad will obviously not convert. Also – the more relevant your page is in terms of your targeting, the better. So if you’re targeting 18-24 year olds – mention something about being 18-24 on your landing page.

Testing

Before we go into testing – let me just quickly run through how bidding works on Facebook. First and foremost, you do not want to start your bids at Facebook’s suggested bid. They are always going to overestimate how much your clicks will cost (so they can make more money!), so we usually start at 50 cents and lower from there.

Facebook’s bid prices are determined based on your clickthrough rate. The higher your clickthrough rate, the cheaper your clicks. So with that in mind, you want to maximize your clickthrough rate. However, you want to make sure you are not doing this at the expense of your conversion rate – as if you aren’t making any sales, who cares how many people are clicking on your ad, right?

I always do CPC bidding. You used to be able to bid CPM rates and get much cheaper clicks, unfortunately, Facebook just recently changed their policies so that now if you bid CPM, they will send you less clicks.

The last thing to know about bidding is that if you lower your bid prices too much, you will stop receiving impressions. We generally will lower our bids slowly – usually down to whatever average CPC we are receiving. However, Facebook bids are can be screwy, so it’s important to test as sometimes no matter what you do, traffic will stop flowing to your ad.

When we’re testing a campaign, we usually start off with 15 different ads/pictures. You don’t necessarily have to go this crazy, but it can definitely help expedite the optimization process. Make sure when you’re starting that your ads/pictures are completely different from each other – this way when the results come back, you know for a fact that x ad is better than y ad.

Once you’ve run your ads for a day or two, sort through them and turn off all the ads that are getting low clickthrough rates. We usually are searching for .08% CTR – however, you need to make sure you understand your numbers. What I mean by this is, you might have a CTR that is below .08, but a conversion rate with that ad that is very high, and therefore justifies the cost of the ad. Make sure you’re tracking conversion rates with Facebook’s conversion pixel for this.

Anyway – so as we eliminate poorly performing ads, we want to take our best performers (best copy, best picture) and try to mix them around some more (Try new pictures, try new copy, mix and match) to see if we can optimize them even more. You pretty much repeat this process until you’ve got a profitable campaign – and then you can scale it by increasing your daily budget, and making copies of your best performing ad.

I hope that I was able to provide a comprehensive enough guide for readers here at IncomeDiary! Happy bidding on Facebook!

Making Money With FaceBook Ads

Now that you can see you can get highly targeted adverts for very cheap compared to other networks, all you have to do now is find a affiliate offer to promote them, I highly recommend you check out how my friend Jon did it or perhaps use my affiliate post to find your own affiliate program to promote and go at it alone!

If you want to find out more about how to drive traffic from Facebook and make a lot of money from it, $3693.21+ per day in Jonathan Volks case! When it comes down to it, the most important thing for an internet business is traffic, without it, you can’t make money, with it, you can make as much as you like. I highly recommend you check out Jonathans course or at least just watch his presentation so you can see how powerful it REALLY is.

It’s been around 2 months since we released the new IncomeDiary design, however I still come across people copying the old design day after day, perhaps because it was just that damn good! Some do a great job, taking the concept further and others, well they do a really bad job, that’s why I have decided to share with you all, how we did it, so you can do it yourself. Let us know in the comments how you found the tutorial and what you plan to do with your own blog.

Originally when I created IncomeDiary we used the BusyBee Theme by Woothemes and after 4 explosive months of blogging and receiving well over 200,000 visitors, I decided to upgrade the blog. The frame work of the BusyBee theme was great so I didn’t want to get rid of it, it did everything you wanted, that’s why we only modified the homepage. Your homepage should be used to funnel your readers through your site in the way YOU want them to, for me I wanted them to go to sign up to my eCourse, followed by looking at all my best affiliate posts.

Imitation is the highest form of flatter.

If your doing something great, people will always copy you, at first I use to get really annoyed, spending hours and hours brainstorming new ideas just so other people could copy it the next day. These days, I want people to copy me because like I just mentioned, if they do, it’s because your doing some great. If I’m really honest, I even copy a few things from people, what I like to do is copy all the best things from people and put them altogether to make one really GREAT thing. Looking at it that way, we would be stupid not to copy ideas from people if they are proven to work well!

Some Friends and Readers Using IncomeDiary As Inspiration

How To Design a Blog Using Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial I will show you how the home page of the Income Diary blog was created.

Final Image Preview

This is the web layout that we are going to create. Click on the following image to see the full size version or visit www.incomediary.com to see the functional website. Let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop with the dimensions 1240px by 1200px. Then go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color and use the color #dce0d2.

Step 2 – Creating the header

Create a new group and name it “header”. Create a new layer inside this group. Then select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), create a selection with the height 27px at the top of your document and use the Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill this selection with the color #283409. Name this layer “top bar”.

Step 3

Select the Type Tool (T) and add some text onto your top bar. I used this area to add links to certain pages of the website and the RSS links.

Note: You can start using guides to organize your layout better. To create a guide, activate the Rulers (Ctrl/Cmd + R), click on the top or on the left ruler and drag guides towards your document.

Step 4

Create a new layer. Then use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a selection with the height 132px. Select the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and fill this selection with the color #3c4c16. Name this layer “header bg”.

Ctrl/Cmd-click on the thumbnail of the “header bg” layer to select it. Then create a new layer, select a big soft brush (B) and paint with it over the upper left area of the header using the color #788e42. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + D to deselect. Name this layer “light”.

Step 5

Select the Type Tool (T) and write the name of your layout using the white color in the left side of the header. Use the Layer Style window to add a shadow to this text. Then write a tagline beneath the first text using a light green color.

As you can see in the following image I putted a money illustration next to the text and some banknotes with a low opacity beneath the text.

In the right side of the header I used an image of the Income Diary Blogging Course.

Step 6

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a selection with the height 40px. Create a new layer, select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag a vertical #fefefe to #e6e6e6 gradient from the top of your selection to the bottom. Name this layer “navigation bar”. Then select the Type Tool (T) and write the name for your navigation menu items using the color #212121.

Step 7

Create a new group and name it “background”. Then create a selection with the height 325px beneath the navigation bar. Create a new layer and fill the selection with the color #b8bda9.

Step 8

Create a new layer and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a selection like the one you see in the following image. Fill this selection with the color #c8ccbc and hit Ctrl/Cmd + D to deselect. Then use the Erase Tool (E) and a big soft brush to erase the left and right areas of this rectangle.

Step 9

Use the Single Row Marquee Tool to create a selection with the height 1px. Create a new layer and fill this selection with the color #dde1d3. Name this layer “1px line” and put it beneath the dark rectangle.

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a selection with the height 20px. Then use the Gradient Tool (G) to drag a #d1d5c7 to transparent gradient. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + D to deselect and put this gradient right beneath the line which you created.

Step 10

Create a new group and name it “content”. Create a new layer and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a white rectangle like the one you see in the following image. Name this layer “content bg”, double-click on it and use the settings from the following image for Stroke.

Step 11 – Creating the ‘Sign Up’ area

Create a new layer and use the Rectangle Tool (U) to create a green rectangle like the one you see in the following image. Double-click on this layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image for Gradient Overlay. Name this layer “bg” and hit Ctrl/Cmd + G to put it inside a group. Name the group “Sign Up”.

Step 12

Ctrl/Cmd-click on the thumbnail of the “bg” layer to select it. Then click on the “Sign Up” group and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection. Now everything we put inside this group will be visible only over the rectangle area.

Step 13

Download some rays brushes and install them. Create a new group and name it “rays”. Then set the foreground color to white, select one of the brushes which you downloaded and use it to create rays on your rectangle. Use each brush in a new layer and set the blend mode of each layer to Overlay 5-8%.

Step 14

Create a rectangular selection like you see in the image below. Then go to Select > Modify > Feather and set the radius to 2px. Select a white soft brush (B) and paint with it over the bottom edge of your selection. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + D to deselect. Name this layer “Extra Highlight Wall” and set its blend mode to Overlay 30%.

Step 15

Create a new layer and use the Single Row Marquee Tool to create a selection with the height 1px at the bottom of the green rectangle. Fill this selection with black. Then set the opacity of this layer to 20% and name it “1px dark line”.

Step 16

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a green rectangle with the height 10px into a new layer (I used the color #3f4f1a). Then create another rectangular selection beneath the green bar and drag a vertical white to transparent gradient (G). Name this layer “Feature Highlight Gradient” and set its blend mode to Overlay 75%.

Step 17

Create a new layer and set the foreground color to black. Then select a big black soft brush (B) and paint with it over the edges of your green rectangle. Name this layer “shadows” and set its opacity to 35%.

Step 18

Now we will use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to change the color of this rectangle into blue. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation and set the Hue to +123.

Step 19

Use the Type Tool (T) to add some text inside your blue rectangle. To create bullet points use the Ellipse Tool (U). You can also add a shadow to your text layers using the Layer Style window.

Step 20 – Creating a sign up form

Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px and create a white rounded rectangle with the dimensions 240px by 35px. Double-click on this layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + J to duplicate this rounded rectangle and move the new one down using the Move Tool (V). Then use the Type Tool (T) to write the text.

Step 21 – Creating the submit button

Use the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) to create a new rounded rectangle with the dimensions 240px by 60px and the color #779234. Double-click on this layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image.

Step 22

Ctrl/Cmd-click on the vector mask of the button layer to select it. Then create a new layer and drag a vertical #dfeaac to transparent gradient from the top to the bottom of your selection. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + D to deselect.

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to select the bottom half of this layer and erase it. Name this layer “Gloss” and set its opacity to 40%. Then use the Type Tool (T) to write a text onto your button.

Step 23 – Creating the ‘From the blog’ area

Create a new group and name it “From the blog”. Then use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a light gray rectangle with the dimensions 300px by 185px into a new layer (I used the color #eaeaea). Add a 1px stroke to this layer using the color #dadada.

Add a photo inside the gray rectangle and add a 1px white stroke to this layer.

Step 24

Use the Type Tool (T) to write the text for the “From the blog” area.

Step 25

Now we will create a dotted line between the two headlines of the gray rectangle. First, we’ll need to create a pattern. Create a new document with the dimensions 2px by 1px and transparent background. Set the foreground color to black and zoom in as much as you can using the Zoom Tool (Z). Then select the Pencil Tool (B), select a 1px brush and click once in the left side of the document. Go to Edit > Define Pattern, name your pattern and click OK. Now you can close this document.

Use the Line Tool (U) to create a horizontal line with the weight 1px between the two headlines beneath the photo. Double-click on this layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image for Pattern Overlay. Set the blend mode of this layer to Darken 10% and name it “dotted line”.

Step 26 – Creating the ‘Featured interviews’ area

Create a new group and name it “Interviews”. Then use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a square with the dimensions 85px by 85px and the color #eaeaea. Add a 1px stroke to this square using the color #dadada. Duplicate this square three times (Ctrl/Cmd + J) and use the Move Tool (V) to organize your layers. Then select the Type Tool (T) and add some text next to each square.

Step 27

Add a photo in the middle of each square. Then create a dotted lines between the posts just like you did at step 25. However, use the settings from the following image for the dotted line layers and set the blend mode of each of these layers to Lighten.

Step 28 – Creating the sidebar

Create a new group and name it “Sidebar”. Create a new layer and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a rectangle with the width 290px and the color #ebede6. Name this layer “sidebar bg”.

Step 29

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a selection beneath the blue rectangle like the one you see in the image below. Create a new layer and drag a black to transparent gradient at the top of the selection. Leave a distance of 1px between the blue rectangle and the gradient. Name this layer “black gradient” and set its opacity to 25%.

Step 30 – Creating the ‘About’ area

I putted a photo of Michael Dunlop at the top of the sidebar, a short description of him and a button that leads to his full story. To create the button I used the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) with the following layer style settings.

Step 31

Create a new group inside the “Sidebar” group and name it “Forums”. Create a new layer, select the Rectangle Tool (U) and create a gray rectangle with the dimensions 290px by 96px. Double-click on this layer to open the Layer Style window and use the settings from the following image. Name this layer “rectangle”.

Step 32

Use the Type Tool (T) to add some text in the middle of your orange rectangle. Then select the Line Tool (U) and drag a black horizontal line with the weight 1px at the bottom of this rectangle. Name this layer “1px line” and set its opacity to 11%.

Step 33

Ctrl/Cmd-click on the thumbnail of the “rectangle” layer to select it. Then select the “Forums” group and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection.

Step 34

Duplicate the “Forums” group by dragging it over the ‘Create a new layer’ button from the bottom of the Layers panel. Move this new rectangle beneath the first one and change its text. Then go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation, set the Hue to +180 and put this layer right above the “rectangle” layer.

Step 35

Duplicate the “Resources” group and move the new group down. Change the text of this new rectangle and set the Saturation of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to -100.

Step 36

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a selection in the left side of the sidebar like you see in the following image. Then create a new layer and drag a black to transparent gradient from the left side of the selection to the right side. Name this layer “shadow” and set its opacity to 30%.

Step 37 – Creating the footer

Create a new group and name it “footer”. Then use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a rectangle with the height 66px and the color #3a3e31 at the bottom of your document. Name this layer “footer bg”. Then use the Type Tool (T) to add a copyright statement.

Step 38

Create a new rectangle above the previous one with the height 33px and the color #b7bda9. Ctrl/Cmd-click on the thumbnail of this rectangle layer to select it. Then create a new layer, select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag a radial #d5d7ca to transparent gradient from the center of the rectangle to the edge of your layout. Hit Ctrl/Cmd + D to deselect.

Step 39

Use the Line Tool (U) to create a horizontal line with the weight 1px and the color #e8eae0 at the top of the smaller rectangle. Then select the Eraser Tool (E), select a big soft brush and erase the left and right sides of the line.

Step 40

Finally, create a new layer and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to create a border with the weight 8px and the color #b2b6a4 around the blue rectangle.

Final Result

Here is the final web layout. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and you learned some new Photoshop tricks. Click on the following image to see the full size version.

Want To Take Your Photoshop Skills Further?

Do you want to know the fastest way to master the basics of Adobe Photoshop? Check out Learn Photoshop Now Free Course!

My post last week: 10 Reasons Why You’re Not Making Any Money Online Yet seems to have struck a raw nerve with many of you. It has been a while since I have had so many people say that a post really got them to take action – so I am very pleased about that.

I have to admit now I was in a bit of a ‘rage’ last week (in a good way) as I meet so many talented people who just don’t seem to get this blogging thing! I woke up and fired off that post very quickly and yes I was at my dyslexic best with lots of spelling and grammar errors – but I just had to RANT, let of steam!

I was speaking to a business coach recently who said that the biggest challenge is not that of getting people to understand what they need to do – but rather to get people to actually do it!

Every post I write is intended to get my readers to take action – clearly I am more successful at that sometimes than others.

Today I want to tackle a big subject:

How I Really Make Money With My Website and How You Can To!

Notice the word: REALLY – that is deliberate as I am sure some people still think I make money in a different way to how I explain it in all my blog posts. I REALLY am telling you as it is – all you need to do is follow and take action.

On first glance of my website, you probably wonder how I even make money from my website as there are no visible adverts like you would see on most other websites. In some cases I even have readers email me to thank me for all the great information and asked if there was any think they could buy of me to thank me. When you’re readers don’t even know your monetizing your blog, you are doing a real good job. Some of the following may be different from what you have been taught in the past, so it’s only right I reassure you with some figures:

I have two websites, both in the same niche, both with the same amount of traffic, one has advertising and the other promotes affiliate offers. The second blog with affiliate offers makes at least 5 times the amount as the other one.

Real quickly, I will tell you why you don’t want to sell advertising:

• Customers are hard work and they blame you for their mistakes
• Constantly adding/editing/deleting advertisers
• Paper work – trying to keep up with them
• Ugly and take away from user experience
• Most importantly… makes you less money!

In most cases I would say traffic is the most important thing for a website, without it you can’t make money – but if you don’t know how to monetize your website, then surely the traffic is pointless?

If you could only take 3 things away from this post, I hope they are:

1. Using a Lightbox optin I was able to significantly increase my daily email opt-in rate (304% +). I wish now I had used one sooner.

2. Test promoting different products, one product I promote out sells all others by at least 20 to 1 and I wouldn’t have know that if I had not switched around promotions on my site.

3. ASK! My conversions and sales continual to increase because I’m always asking my affiliate managers for more, a free trial, coupon codes, different landing pages – if it’s going to make you more sales, it’s going to make them more money and so they should at least make an effort to help you.

Finding Affiliate Programs To Promote

The majority of my income comes from promoting eBooks and online courses. Compared to other things I promote, I don’t sell as many eBooks say compared to services and software, however the commission is much higher, usually between 50% and 75%.

At this point, most “gurus” would tell you to search ClickBank and pick a product to promote on your website but it really isn’t as simple as that, depending on what you pick, your conversion rate will differ. Typically I will pick a product from a sub category such as eMarketing > Blog Marketing and choose a blog marketing eBook (for a blog like this), such as Blogging to the Bank.

Screen Shot From ClickBank.com

From the above picture you will see two things, on the left, the subcategory I chose and on the right, the stats of the top converting product, in this case, Blogging Espionage. When you go to any category or subcategory page, at the top of the page will be the highest selling product, note GRAV (Gravity!)- the higher the number, the more sales it’s making. Also you want to look at ‘future’ in the Stats, because this is the money you can make on top of the Total Sale if people who buy the product you are promoting then go on to buy other products from the seller – for example, they join a membership website. Apart from this, you also want to make sure the product is a good match for your site, would it add to what your offering? Would you buy it yourself? These are questions you should ask yourself, if every box is ticketed then click Promote and you will be given an affiliate link to use. One thing I would also add, is to ask your readers and followers what products they have bought in the past? This has helped me understand better what products interest my readers. (For those of you who are wondering the %/refd: STAT above refers to the percentage of sales that have come from Affiliates – in this case, 89% of the sellers sales have come via affiliates)

Depending on what type of products you want to promote, you may also want to try Commission Junction for services, Amazon Associates Program for physical products and E-Junkie has a few good things to promote, however I never find their sales pages convert as high as the previous mentioned sites.

Promoting Affiliate Products On Your Blog

This is where a lot of people go wrong, they simply add a couple affiliate offers to their blog and cross their fingers, hoping someone will buy from them. There is a lot, a lot more to it than that!

Promote Things You Use

This works because people can actively see you using the service or product, for example with IncomeDiary I recommend my hosting company, domain registrar and my designer. This can be used for any niche, for example a Cookery or Restaurant review blog could promote cookware from their favorite celebrity chef via an affiliate link to the Kitchen & Dining store on Amazon. I actually am at the moment transferring my website over to VPS.net because of a recommendation on a sidebar of another blog – I did this because I respected the guys opinion and could see it was working well for him.

Below we have an excellent example from ChrisBrogan.com showing how he is promoting a product (a wordpress theme) that he actually is using himself. If your readers see you using a product then they are more likely to respond to your offer.

Here's an Example of Chris promoting the blog theme he uses.

Promoting Recommended eBooks

I have found that two things that convert really well – the first being the ‘Offer Box’ below. In the past I have used banners provided by affiliate managers and also had some really snazzy boxes designed however this real clean, simple box with a green stop sign converts the highest.

My Top Converting Offer Box:

Recommended Reading Box Used On IncomeDiary.com

The box above is one of my best converting strategies and because of that, I will allow any IncomeDiary reader/fan to use it on their blog, dozens already are! I like to promote two offers in the box, one low priced and one high price. Fortunately for my higher priced offer above, I was able to secure a $1 trial and that has seen conversions go even higher. (Top Tip: If you are promoting a higher priced offer – try and get a special rate or introductory offer to get people interested in taking action. I do this with AWeber also and it works a treat)

The second thing that converts really well is adding a text advert at the top of my list posts, such as on my Top Earning Bloggers post. I add a link saying, “Want to follow in their footsteps? Check out this product”. This works because as the read the post the reader is highly motivated and inspired and wants to see themselves – on this list one day.

Comparison and Resources Page

These pages are usually to reinforce and to monetize other blog posts you have on your site. When you are selling any service or product, there are always other products to compare to and on most occasions these other products have affiliate programs also. I personally promote web hosting, domains etc.. but you could choose anything from computer games to house insurance. (Anyone notice how successful Price Comparison websites are these days? – I am just using the same principle)

You can see my website hosting comparison page here: Website Hosting Comparisons

The goal of the comparison page it to do two things. First to make it clear that the original offer that you mentioned in your post is the best priced and the one they should choose. The other is to increase conversions. It is quite likely that your visitor will want to shop around – it is natural and the right thing to do. You are giving them the opportunity to compare offers without having to go and search Google – and the longer the visitor is on your website the more chance there is you will earn a commission, either with your No 1 recommendation or via some of the comparison offers. Special Note: It is also OK to put in some comparisons that will not earn you any commissions – if you are being authentic and creating trust, which you should be, then your visitors, especially your more ‘internet marketing aware’ visitors will appreciate your ‘impartial’ approach.

Email Marketing Funnel

Getting people to Opt-in is perhaps the most profitable thing you can do with your blog – especially if you then followup with quality information and interesting offers.

If you ask any big internet marketer, one of the main things they would tell you is that they wished they had started to build their list earlier. Done right (which means first delivering quality information — not some load of spammy offers) than email marketing to a Strong List of followers is about as close as it gets online to printing money.

A brief overview of how my funnel works:

1. Opt-in boxes are displayed through out my website – for this I offer a special free gift to entice people into signing up. I also add a well designed eCover to give even more value to this FREE product. I display opt-in box’s in 3 ways, a squeeze page, a sidebar box and the highest converting, a lightbox advert, which increased my conversions by over 200%!

2. Visitors sign up and confirm their email address.

3. When I find good quality offers related to my niche (for example on Clickbank) I email subscribers. Sometimes I can earn several thousand dollars from just one mailing by doing this.

When it comes down to email marketing and autoresponder software, I believe there is only one you should use and that’s AWeber which is who I use and pretty much all my competitor, if you order today you can have your first month for only $1. Apart from AWeber, you may want to consider iContact.

Content Orientated Blog Posts

This has started to make me more and more money as I test different affiliate offers. Their are 3 main types of blog posts that make me money. They are Interviews, Guides and Reviews.

I shall point out the advantages of each below:

The easiest way to get affiliate sales with blog posts is to find out when a new Clickbank product is being launched, or even an old one for that matter. As long as the sales page converts (view the stats as I pointed out above) – you are going to make money provided it is targeted correctly for your niche / list. Contact the creator of the Clickbank product and email them requesting an interview. I recommend you do the interview over the phone (I use Skype) and record the call and get it transcribed. You then add the call to your site as an MP3 / Podcast and add the transcription for those who prefer to read rather than listen. (The transcription also gives you lots of valuable search engine content). When conducting interviews you can also review the interviewee’s products, ask them questions about it – and then at the end of the interview you can add if you wish your own mini-review of the product and the reasons why visitors should buy it.

Typically your interview will only touch generally on the strategies the interviewee uses but done correctly your listener / reader will be left wanting more. This is when you promote the Interviewee’s product as away for your followers to followup / learn more and grow their own business. Depending on the interviewee and the product, you can easily walk away with dozens of sales and continuous future sales depending on how often future readers find the interview.

Below is an example of the offers I was able to provide to my readers after I interviewed: Adam Horwitz

Promoting an Interviewees Affiliate Products at The Top Of His Interview

Another tactic I use is producing “How to’ or Guide Posts – just like this one. You give away great content that really helps your readers and at the same time you promote affiliate products. Visitors can see you using the products so they can decide if it’s for them or not and those who do notice you are promoting an affiliate product don’t mind because you are helping them out for free. Very Important: This is very important – do take the time to produce good content / how to posts. Despite what some gurus try to imply — there is no such thing as Free Money – you need to work at providing real value to your readers — do that and the money will follow via affiliate sales. So often I see bloggers making ‘half efforts’ at producing guides – frankly you may as well not bother if that is what you are going to do. Readers can tell your passion and commitment in your posts!

Review Posts: Just about every post you do can be a partial review post if you are doing it correctly. This is the essential bit here — no one is really going to pay any attention to your review posts unless they respect you, believe in you, have rapport with you. In other words they feel you can be trusted. As mentioned in previous posts this is why pages such as the ABOUT PAGE and the MY STORY PAGE are so essential.

To start building that trust and rapport you must first provide good content, valuable content. So often readers tell me they cannot believe how much good content I give away for free – if you start to get comments like that then you are doing it right. Build rapport and anything your recommend will stand a far better chance of being sold. I don’t do that many purely review only posts – but one recent example is: My Review Post For MarketMeTweet

Increasing Your Conversions

Although the following may seem like small things, the increase in conversions can be as much as 1000% in some cases so do pay attention.

Ask For a Coupon Code

Most companies will have the ability to create custom coupon codes, all you have to do is ask for them. These are great for increasing conversions as the coupon can make a huge difference such as making it a trial offer or get something free.

Offering Coupon Codes Increase Conversions

Ask For a Special Offer

Some of my best converting affiliate links convert so well because of the special offers I am able to offer my readers. For example a $1 Trial or a Bonus offer only available to my readers.

I could go on – but as I said at the beginning, the most important thing to do is TAKE ACTION. I appreciate you reading this of course, but ultimately unless you put these strategies into action they count for nothing.

Take Action Today

And just in case you have not already done it – do check out my Blogging eCourse – it is the Blueprint I followed myself to get where I am today.

My biggest site to date has been RetireAt21.com – which has received millions of visitors! I often come across big name marketers, bloggers and even the odd guru who told me they started their make money online journey at RetireAt21.com which is of course quite amazing and humbling considering I was a teenager and seriously dyslexic at the time.

Recently I was speaking to one of my readers from those early days and I asked them why did RetireAt21.com help them so much. His answer surprised me a little – but it appears my Richest Young Internet Entrepreneurs post inspired him so much he would come back twice a day to look at the same post – as he wanted to be on that list so much!

There are loads of reasons I could of added to this post such as, Everyone’s trying to be something they’re not, Wasting To Much Doing Rubbish and so many more.

Well it is nice to know people like your content — but more importantly it is essential that people take action on your content. Reading a post is great and FOCUSING on success is essential but unless you take action on that FOCUS you are wasting your time / day dreaming.

1. You are too busy complaining about other people

This is No1. for a lot of reasons, despite my young age, I have been in business for 7 years now and have enjoyed it but a few times a year you are going to come across complete IDIOTS – honestly, no better words for them. Here are some great examples:

- You hire someone to do a job, they don’t do it but still want to get paid, you said NO! So they go to all your competitor blogs and forums and message about you being a scammer – you clearly are not one and they ripped you off however you end up paying them because you want the madness to end and they still think they are right.

- You create a HUGE forum, beat all your competitors in a very little time and so they gang up on you and hack your forum day after day till you leave.

- You tell a close work colleague your online business idea so that they will promote it and instead they go of and create it themselves because they are GREEDY!

- You do a 10x bigger job for someone than anyone else but at the regular price and they still complain and don’t appreciate your work. (that annoyed me the most, there is just no helping some people!)

I’m just like most of you guys, when these things happen, I hit the fan, I go crazy but the thing is, all that time you are complaining about these idiots, going crazy, thinking about getting revenge etc YOU are not building your business. Fortunately for me I come to my senses fairly quickly and get on with what I should be doing which is Building my business rather than being bothered by small minded people who frankly will never make much of their lives anyway.

2. You are Too Busy Being a Douche

I was at one of the many events I go to every year and one guy in the audience decided it wasn’t for him so he refunded after the first day. (as per the offer the organizer made when people signed up). I have no issue with that individual requesting a refund – but when they then take a picture of themselves holding the refund cheque and Tweet it – they are behaving like a complete douche in my opinion

This guy wasn’t prepared to listen, learn and ultimately make more money because when it came down to it – he was to busy trying to be a jackass. Focus on yourself and stop wasting your time thinking about other people.

Here’s Another One: So often people like to point out my bad spelling because they really don’t have much going on in their business, leave me alone and focus on yourself. (I know some of you do it in a nice way but honestly, we all know I can’t spell already)

3. You buy every single product, crap ones included

There’s nothing wrong with buying lot’s of product, myself, my friends and even the top gurus in the world spend $100,000’s a year on their own training. The problem comes when you buy EVERY single one and you get confused because some will contradict each other because their teaching you different things. If your into blogging, buy all the blogging books, but don’t then buy into all the product creation books, affiliate marketing, facebook marketing etc if your not ready to even implement what you have learn’t. Get an idea of where you want to go and the work out how to get their – that’s exactly how I go about it and if Facebook marketing isn’t included in my plan then I don’t buy the products.

4. You go to every single FREE seminar

I myself go to a couple a year as I find it gets me excited again and I love hearing how they pitch from stage as it really is an art form. But some people go to EVERY single one and frankly if your spending all this time going to free events that have the soul purpose of pitching you something, when will you get time to implement?

5. You’ve Been Pitched Crap | Your Teachers Have Got It Wrong

There are some people (‘gurus’) teaching rubbish or selling ’systems’ that went out of date in 2002 – often at ‘FREE’ seminars. Unfortunately some people as per my example above get so caught up in the PITCH and want out of the rat-race so much they BUY — but ultimately never take action. The thing is, so many people are DESPERATE to ESCAPE the rat race that they will believe anything and I don’t blame them. Don’t misunderstand — not all “gurus’ are scammers – far from it, but as you can tell I personally have an issue with so called FREE seminars that are nothing more than Pitch Fests!

I do believe in Karma — and if you knew how little these so called ‘millionaires’ really made you wouldn’t buy their products either.

Here’s another great example:

Twitter and Facebook make it easy for people to get noticed and connect with other people. Some idiot obviously made a product teaching people spamming is effective because it seems anyone who can’t make money decides to spam us on social sites with offers we don’t want and they do it in a very unappealing way. Don’t ever tweet me an offer because I will not take an notice of you and I would really recommend you find out more about your teacher. For example, I was at an event recently where a lady was teaching how to make $10,000 a month with Twitter and a friend of mine told me she said she only made $8,000 a month, now if shes willing to admit she makes $8,000 she probably makes closer to $5,000 and that could be a one of? Look for someone with a great track record and lot’s of social proof.

6. You are Lying To People

This one goes out to some people I know off that think they run with the big name gurus. Listen, the reason your still broke is because your lying to your audience, you don’t make millions a year, you don’t get 100,000s of visitors to your site and you don’t live on your own private island where you work from your laptop on the beach. Your audience are NOT, I repeat, ARE NOT dumb, so when you try to teach them how you supposedly did something, most people can tell when you actually know jack shit (can I really swear on my own blog?!?!) about it!

7. You are Forever Copying Someone else

So copying isn’t a bad thing, I actually tell my students to copy me because, I have tried it, tested it and it works so why not share the love, right? The problem is, when people copy a whole system without fully understand how it works. Remember from reason 1 and I mentioned a colleague who stole my idea that I showed him, well I really got the last laugh because he would of gone of, spent a few days copying my product and I actually found out how much he made, ZERO, Zilch, Nothing! The reason was simple, he had no right doing the same thing, just like number 6, if you don’t know something about a subject, then don’t try to teach it because your readers will notice.

8. You are Too Busy Dreaming Small to Ever Dream Big

We all know the big money comes when you do big things so why are you wasting your time thinking small? Here’s an example for you, when creating IncomeDiary I could have niched it down and made it only about driving traffic to a blog, sure I would of got some traffic and a following but nothing like I have today. Instead I went for the whole niche, Blogging and now even opened up to blogging about Income Online in general.  That’s a tip right there, always make sure you know where your going, don’t enter a niche if you can’t scope it out and go REALLY big. If I become the top site for Online Income, I would be on the level with BusinessWeek and Entrepreneur.com – definitely where the big boys hang out.

9. You are Not Prepared To Listen

Around 15 months ago I met a reader of my site, I told him a few things that should help him make money online. A year later, I see this guy again and he’s still not doing anything online but is writing mad amounts of notes at a seminar just like the year before. I couldn’t bare to watch him waste his time so I grabbed him, took him to a quite area outside and got my laptop out and gave him a blueprint to what he needs to do to go big online, I found him an amazing domain (which I was quite jealous about but I already said he could have) and sent him off to go make it big! 1 week later he emails me telling me basically he’s doing something else online, which sounds to me like a really bad version of the idea I gave him, basically he decided to over complicated it.

10. You are Not Implementing

So the ones who actually do decide to listen to my great advice, where are they? Well of course I have some great students which makes it all worth it but I would have a lot more if EVERYONE implemented what I teach. If you are not prepared to implement, why bother learning?

Which of the above apply to you? What do you think is stopping you from making it big?

Adding more…

11. Your To Focused On What Other People Are Doing that You Don’t Focus On Yourself

Every day on my blogs I go to my comments and their is someone talking crap about me or my posts – if you don’t like it, LEAVE, go somewhere else! Stop focusing on making my life harder and instead work on yourself.

12. Your Trying To Do To Many Things

This one probably applies to the most us, if you try to do to many things you will end up lots of tiny websites that don’t make you any money. Focus on making one thing big, it doesn’t have to be your BIGGEST idea, you just need to see it through.

13. You Think Everything is Harder Then It Is

So many people don’t want to do things, including myself because you think it’s going to take a lot longer then you think or it’s really hard to do. Stop giving excuses and work out a way to do things – here’s a couple problems with solutions:

- A product will take me months to create – A: Create a 90 minute presentation offering your solution.

- Can’t Code a Site – A. Get someone else to do it for you.

It really can be that simple, don’t over think things.

14. Time

Real simple, MAKE TIME! I can handle my whole business with a hour a day if I have to.

Today I have an interview with one of biggest stars of Video Blogging – Gideon Shalwick of RapidVideoBlogging.com and Become a Blogger. Gideon teaches aspiring video bloggers (like me) how to be better video bloggers.

Make sure to download Gideon’s FREE eBook on how to create video and make money from it, click here to download!

You will have noticed that recently I have started to do some video blogging – and the remarkable thing I have found is just how ‘NATURAL” blogging on video feels to me. I say this in particular because less than 12 months ago I would not have thought of Video as being a blogging medium for me but as I have discovered many times in my life some of the things you ‘fear’ the most turn out to be the things you enjoy the most.

I accept that for some Video Blogging will never feel that natural but I would encourage you to at least give it a try. One of the big advantages of being a Video Blogger is that you don’t have to be Tom Cruise to succeed at it. Indeed it appears that the more you are ‘yourself’ and the more authentic you are the better your videos are received.

Gideon shares so many Golden Nuggets of information in this interview, I don’t really know where to start. Indeed, I’d say Gideon is one of my most generous interviewees ever – he gives away a ton of amazing information here for free. One of the things Gideon discusses is creating a:

Video Domination Hub

According to Gideon a Video Domination Hub is a YouTube channel linked with your video blog. And a video blog is just a normal blog with your YouTube videos on it (along with transcripts if you really want to do it right). You use YouTube for traffic, credibility, and exposure and you use your video blog for capturing the traffic. Then, you use a list building mechanism like AWeber on your blog to build your email list. Gideon is shortly releasing a report on this at RapidVideoBlogging.com which I encourage you to get.

There is also the other point about going for QUALITY over QUANTITY. It doesn’t take that much longer to create an exceptional video, so go for quality. Nearly one third of YouTube videos have less than 100 views and only around 10% get more than 500 views. More stats and related links at Gorumors.com

As Gideon says it is not difficult to stand out from the YouTube crowd if you are prepared to just put a little more effort into creating quality content – that people will actually get pleasure from watching. And with those stats above it is relatively easy to become a Star Video producer as well.

Listen to the Podcast or read the Interview Transcript is below – I think you will be impressed with everything Gideon has to say.

I look forward to your comments and also I’d love to hear about your own experiences with making videos – what worked for you, what did not.

And yes, I know it is a little ironic this interview is on audio and not video. Gideon is in beautiful Australia and I am in the UK (but I do hope to record some SKYPE Video calls in the near future)

To our Video Blogging Success

Michael

**** Gideon Shalwick Interview Transcript ****

Michael Dunlop: Hello, everyone. This is Michael Dunlop from Income Diary, and today I’m interviewing Gideon Shalwick, who is one of the top video bloggers I know. He has a few blogs and is very well known for his site, BecomeABlogger.com, which he does with Yaro Starak. Welcome, Gideon.

Gideon Shalwick: Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to the call and sharing whatever knowledge you’d like me to impart.

Michael: I think we’ll start straight off: why should be people be video blogging? Because I’ve started it recently. I know how powerful it can be. So I’d love you to share that with my readers.

Gideon: Simple answer: massive exposure. If you haven’t been on YouTube yet, which I highly doubt, it’s an amazing place. It’s an amazing place to hang out. Just so many people go there, and it’s just an amazing place to use to help you get seriously massive exposure for whatever you’re doing online. To give you just an example of what I’ve been able to achieve over the last 12 months, with a side project that I did with a friend of mine in the magic niche, we decided to put together a YouTube channel, where my friend — his name is JJ; he’s a professional magician — he does magic tricks, and we teach people how to do magic. And so we do these little videos where he does the magic trick, and then he teaches it after-wards.

We’ve been doing that for about the last year and, so far, we’ve built up a following of around about 23,000 people. That’s an email list of 23,000 people. We’re getting about 100 opt-ins a day to our email list.

We’re getting close to about 30,000 hits to our website every month. And most of our traffic is coming from YouTube. And if those numbers don’t convince you that there’s something going on there that is useful [laughs] and incredible, I’m not sure what would.

I mean, some more statistics. I love statistics, especially about things like this. YouTube, you may have heard this, but they’re getting around about a billion views a day. That’s billion with a B, for Bobby. It’s huge.

So, why get on video marketing or use video to help market your business? Because it’s one of the biggest opportunities to hit us, ever, in the history of the world

Michael: All right. Cool. And you mentioned that a lot of your traffic comes from YouTube. How do you drive them from YouTube itself to your site?

Gideon: There are a number of things we do. Just before I tell you some of the strategies we use, I think people are probably wondering: why bother driving people back to your site? A number of reasons for that. The first one is, of course, that you don’t own your YouTube channel. It’s a bit like having a Facebook page. You don’t actually own it. And so, you don’t know what could happen in the future. YouTube could go down. I mean, look at MySpace: used to be really hot, and now no one talks about it anymore. [laughs] So, same thing could happen to YouTube. You never know.

You don’t actually own it. And therefore what you need to do is get people back to your blog or website and capture that traffic somehow. We use an email-collection method to get people on our email list. But the idea is to get people back to your blog or your website, and that’s where you have the conversation with them, and that’s where you keep on building the relationship with them.

Jay Jay, Yaro and Gideon - The Three Monkeys as described by Gideon.

Some of the things we do to help us with that is, first of all, to create great videos, to create video content that people enjoy and love and want to keep on watching. That’s the first thing. If you have crappy videos, no matter how many different strategies you use, people are not going to come back to your site. So that’s the first thing: make sure that you provide value with your videos.

The next thing you could do is to make sure that you always create some sort of a link or an image with the URL of your website or the domain name of your website on your videos. If you want to see some examples of this, you can go to the magic blog, which is at freemagiclive.com.

You’ll see some of the videos there. On pretty much all of them, you’ll see our URL inside the video: freemagiclive.com. It’s somewhere on the bottom or somewhere inside the video. It’s embedded. So what that means is, when people watch the video, if they want to check out our website, they can just easily see it there and type it into the browser and go there. Done.

The other thing we do is, also, to tell people to go and visit our website. So they’ll watch the video. Normally towards the end we say, “Hey, if you want to get access to a free report, or want to find out more information, or want to watch other videos like this, or interact with the community, go and check out our website. Go to freemagiclive.com,” for example.

So those are two things that we do. There’s one more thing that we do that’s, I guess, the three main things we do for getting traffic back. And that is, of course, having a clickable link inside a description area inside YouTube for each of our videos.

And that just means, whenever you create the description for your video, you just add the “http://”; in front of your domain name when you enter it in. That just makes it clickable, so people can easily click on that and come back to your website.

So those are the three main things we use for getting people back, and of course, given that you create some nice, quality content and make sure that people keep on coming back.

Michael: Very good. And one thing I found with video myself is that you’ve got to, obviously, share top advice and provide great value. What’s your tips to making sure you come across right on video so that you can deliver you content to the highest level?

Gideon: Well, I think on YouTube it’s different to other mediums that we’ve been brought up with, say. If you compare it to television, for example, it’s a totally different medium. Compared to radio even, it’s a very, very different medium. And what I’ve found is the content on YouTube that has a better chance of going viral are the content that is more real than, say, the kind of stuff you get on television. So it’s the unpolished stuff. It’s the reality-TV kind of stuff you get on YouTube that is the good stuff. And so that’s actually a good thing, because it means you don’t have to worry too much about your production quality. You just need to make sure that it’s what actually appeals to people. And for that, you don’t need a Hollywood production. You can make some pretty simple videos and get them to go pretty viral.

So that’s the first thing to keep in mind. The other thing is to look at what else is happening on YouTube. Go and check out other people’s channels. Look at the most popular channels on YouTube. Go into the browse section, look at the different categories, and see who comes up at the top for the videos.

Look at the top channels on YouTube and see what they do. How do they create their videos? What kind of content do they have? What kind of followers do they have, and what kind of comments do they leave? Just do a bit of research like that and see what is it that actually works on YouTube. And it’s pretty simple once you start looking. All the answers are there.

And I think, if you can figure out, through a method like that, what people actually want, then your job as a content creator becomes a lot easier. Because instead of just guessing what people want, you actually have a much, much clearer idea of what they want, and then you just give it to them.

And you keep on refining. As you build your audience, you can actually start asking them directly, say, “Hey, you’ve been my follower now for a year or whatever, and I want to find out what it is that you want from me. What kind of videos do you want me to create?” And then they tell you. [laughs] And then you do it. You just create it for them. And they love it. And that increases the interaction a lot as well.

Michael: Cool. So you’re pretty much saying good enough is good enough. You don’t have to do 100 takes. Just make it good enough. If your cat walks across the screen or anything, don’t worry about it.

Gideon: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And in fact, if it is perfect, people will probably be put off by it a little bit, because that’s not what YouTube is about. It’s not about Hollywood productions. People don’t go there to watch big movies and stuff. I mean, I know that you can, but most of the popular videos are like only two, three minutes long. And they’re simple: simple production, simple editing. Most of them don’t even have any music or any fancy graphics in them. It’s just real people.

Just the other day, I was doing a recording for one of my products. It’s not actually going to be a YouTube video. But my wife actually came in the door as I was recording, and I just kept on going. And afterward’s, I was thinking, “Should I rerecord?”

And then I thought, “No, I’m not going to,” because people, they want to see that I’m a human being. I’m not a machine. They want to see that there’s a human behind the camera. And I think that’s why YouTube is so successful is that it’s a social site. People want to interact. They want to see that you’re a human being. And the more human you can come across, the better.

Michael: Great. Cool. Yeah, that takes a couple worries away from me. [laughter]

Michael: So, we’ve mentioned mainly YouTube. Should people be just using YouTube, or other services, like Viddler.com?

Gideon: That’s a really good question. Of course, the more exposure you can get on the more different mediums, the better, of course. The only trouble with trying to spread yourself too thin is that you don’t have any focus. And so what I recommend, especially at the beginning, is to look at YouTube as, I call it a beachhead, a YouTube beachhead. Geoffrey Moore, he wrote a book called “Crossing the Chasm,” for the high-tech marketing industry. And basically what it talks about is that there’s this chasm that exists at the beginning of the product life cycle for most new high-tech products, and these companies just fall into this chasm because they run out of customers and they can’t get into the mainstream. And he explains this beachhead that successful companies would use to get into the mainstream.

And all it was was, basically, a massive amount of focus on one big player in the mainstream. They will just focus all their attention on this one player, get them to buy their products. And once this big player would buy their products, they would immediately give them this massive social proof for the product, and then everyone else in the mainstream would look at this big player and go, “Oh, they’re using it. We’d better start using it, too.”

And that way they get this breakthrough point, where they reach the tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell talks about in “The Tipping Point.” And so that’s the beachhead strategy.

I look at YouTube in the same way. I look at YouTube sort of as that one massive player that I can use for leverage. And so at the beginning, I recommend, if people are just starting out, to just focus just on YouTube. Just build your audience there. Build your credibility there and get involved there. Put all your focus and effort into getting to know the players and getting to know the community.

And, if you have time, then start using everything else, or then start syndicating your content to other sites, like Viddler.com or Vimeo.com or Metacafe.com or revver.com, all these other sites. There are so many. I don’t think it can hurt.

The only reservation I have about sending your videos to a whole bunch of different other video-sharing sites is that, to me at least, it comes across as a little bit spammy

There are some services around, like TubeMogul.com, for example, and I think it has a good purpose, when used well.

But some people have really crappy videos, and they use TubeMogul to distribute their videos to dozens of video-sharing sites with the click of a button and essentially spread a lot of rubbish on the Internet. And I don’t see how that’s beneficial to anybody.

So that’s why I say, just focus on YouTube. And then as you build your audience, start introducing other syndication streams and see how you go. And test everything. Test it and see what happens.

Michael: All right. Great advice. You mentioned earlier that you don’t have to have a big Hollywood sort of setup. What setup do you use, and what sort of recommendations would you make to any new video bloggers to be able to record at home?

Gideon: Yeah. I think, that said, I’ve gone full-circle with this. Seriously. I’ve been at it for about four years now, with focusing on online video in particular and online video marketing. So I’ve seen the whole gamut. I’ve tried pretty much everything. And I started off with a pretty low-level consumer camera. Then I moved onto something a bit more pro. I’ve worked with people with really professional cameras, costing thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. And now I’ve gone back. I’ve gone back to a very, very, very, very simple solution. [laughs] And you’ll laugh. I mean, my actual solution is… I’ve done a few things extra to make it a little bit better, but you can get away with maybe having a budget of $500 and get a really, really good solution for YouTube, for online video.

So let me explain it. What I recommend, if you’re just going to be creating online videos, or YouTube in particular, get a camera like the Flip UltraHD camera. That’s what I use now. Awesome little camera. The quality of video that you can get on it is just amazing.

A drawback with it is that it doesn’t have an external microphone. But that’s cool. You can solve that. All you do is you get an external voice recorder, like a Sony digital voice recorder, and plug a lapel microphone into that. And then during the editing phase, you just match up the sound with the sound from the video, and then you’re done. You’ve got beautiful audio.

Of course, you can get a camera like the Kodak Zi8. That’s a pretty popular little camera, too, and that comes with the external microphone jack. What I don’t like about the Zi8 is that it has a built-in rechargeable battery. That’s cool, but it means that when you run out of juice and you’re in the middle of nowhere, you can’t replace it. Whereas, with the Flip UltraHD, you can; you just put in a couple of AA batteries. So that’s great.

Another cool little camera that I’ve just been looking at recently is the… Vado Pocket Video Cam.

And what’s really cool about that little camera is that you can use it in any part of the world. A challenge with the Flip, as well as the Zi8 camera, is that they’re designed for the States. The power source in the states is 60 Hertz. And of course, if you’re in Australia or a country similar to Australia, the power source is 50 Hertz.

And what that means is that if you’re recording with either the Flip or the Kodak camera, you can notice a flicker. When you record inside fluorescent lights, that is, you get a flicker on the screen. And that’s not so nice. Whereas with the Creative Vado, you can actually switch between 60 and 50 Hertz, which is cool, which means that’s not an issue.

Michael: I did notice that in one of your videos, actually. I was curious. [laughs]

Gideon: A bit of flickering? [laughs]

Michael: No, why you didn’t have it.

Gideon: Why it didn’t have flicker?

Michael: Yeah.

Gideon: Yeah. I’ve got to be clever with how I position my lights now, because I’ve got some nice fluorescent lights. And if I’ve got a really bright background, like a white wall, for example, that doesn’t work with my fluorescent lights. So I need to either choose a black or a really dark background or make sure that there’s not reflective walls or whatever when I’m using my fluorescent lights. But that’s really the only issue. You can easily get around it. If you have nice, natural light, it’s not an issue. The picture quality is just beautiful. So it’s not really a big issue. It’s just, if you’re anal like me about the video quality, you want to make sure it looks good. [laughs] But I really do hope that Flip does bring out a camera with a 50 Hertz option as well.

Michael: All right, Wicked! And I’ll just throw in one thing that I use, and that’s a white board. I know you use PowerPoint, sometimes, with video. But I find having it written up for me and sort of churning through it, and then just evaluate it and everything, that it really helps me perform much better video than if I had to remember everything.

Gideon: Yeah, that’s a really good tip. I’ve actually watched some of your videos, and I think it’s, as you say, it’s really good for you as the person recording the video because it helps you focus on what you want to talk about. But it’s also really good for the person watching the video because it gives them a bit more of a structure to see what’s going on. If you don’t have a whiteboard, what I did more recently is I actually created a mind map of what I want to talk about beforehand. Then I just print it out on a 8×4 sheet, then I actually just stick it on the camera just below the lens, then I just kind of look at that while I do the recording. I just refer to it every now and then to remind me what I want to speak about.

Yeah, I think that’s a really good tip to help you focus your presentation, really good.

Michael: All right, cool. So apart from the equipment itself, what about software? Do they need any software? Because I know certain cameras actually offer editing software so you can straightaway upload it. What’s your take on that?

Gideon: Yeah, it depends on your preference. OK, this is interesting what I’m going to say now because before I said you don’t need a Hollywood production type of quality video on YouTube, but you still need to have it good enough. There are seriously so many really bad videos on YouTube. So what that means is it’s not actually that difficult to stand out from the crowd. If you just do a little bit of editing, a little bit of editing to just round it off just a little bit. You can stand out from the crowd, seriously, so easy, it’s not even funny.

Normally what I found with the software that comes with cameras, it’s normally not very good. It’s normally very, very limited and you don’t have too many options. It’s a pain to use. I’ve used, I don’t know, probably hundreds of different software packages to try and get the best possible solution.

The solution that I’ve settled on right now with my Flip camera is on Macintosh to use ScreenFlow screencasting software, which is funny, but it does an amazing job. It’s easy to use and the quality that you get is just stunning. So I use that with my Flip. On a PC, you can use Sony Vegas HD. (Michael recommends using a Mac – so much better for video production than a PC – in my experience)

Gideon Having Fun - The Internet Lifestyle

Two very simple options. They’re both really affordable. I think Screenflow only about $100 or so. The Sony Vegas one, it’s called Vegas Movie Studio HD, that’s the one that I recommend. What’s cool about that one is that it’s got a few nice features that goes with YouTube, for example. Once you’ve edited your video, you can export or upload it to YouTube automatically. You just click one button and it’s done. So great piece of software.

So those are the two that I actually recommend. They do a great job. So you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on software. These two programs will do a fantastic job. As I said before, just using some little bit of editing, you can stand out from the crowd. It’s still not going to be a Hollywood production, but you don’t need that. You just need a little bit of editing, and that will be good enough.

Michael: Very good. As you mentioned, real quickly just talked about it, should people consider screen capture and run them through something on their computer itself, or would you say stick straight to video?

Gideon: I think a combination is a good idea. The trouble with screen capture videos, where it’s essentially just the screen that you’re recording that’s it, there’s no particular video movement like a face or a person moving around and talking, the issue with that is that it’s really easy for people to lose interest and to get bored and to click away. While it’s OK for longer educational club videos, perhaps, where people are really interested in the information, for shorter type of videos on YouTube where you’re trying to get people’s attention and trying to get them to your website, you need to do some pretty special stuff with screen capture videos to keep it interesting.

You need a lot of graphics moving, you need some music, you need things moving, basically, so that visually people are kept interested. So that’s why I’m saying if you can combine it with moving pictures, like normal video, you can have a very good combination.

Michael: All right, cool. So what would be your number one tip for video bloggers that they can go off and do right now to improve what they’re doing?

Gideon: My number one tip, that’s a tricky one because I’m not sure if there’s just one thing. But I think it’s probably one concept. I talk about this inside a report that I’m just busy with at the moment, I’m going to release it very soon. It’s about setting up — I’m giving it a fancy name but it’s really quite simple– it’s the Video Domination Hub. All it really is a YouTube channel with a video blog, which is just a normal blog with videos on it, and a list building mechanism. That’s it. So that’s your Video Domination Hub. So use YouTube for traffic, and for credibility, and for exposure. You use your video blog for capturing the traffic. Then, you use your list building mechanism like AWeber, for example, to help build your email list.

What you do is you set up that structure, that domination hub, and you just go nuts with providing high quality content to your audience because ultimately that is what’s going to help you get exposure, get traffic, and build credibility.

Michael: Great. I’m quite happy that you mentioned the high quality content site because so many people try and rush and get any post up, any video that they can get up just because they feel they have to get something up daily or twice a day. Focus on value, guys. Your content will go a lot further than if you did like 10 bad ones.

Gideon: Yeah, I kind of agree. I kind of agree more with that. Once again, if you just go through a little more effort of thinking about the content of your videos, once again, it’s not going to be difficult to stand out from the crowd, seriously. Most videos on YouTube, I saw the statistic today, I think it was something stupid like most videos only get 100 views or something like that. It’s not much. So getting to the higher levels of YouTube and getting more views is not all that difficult. You just need to stand out a little bit from the crowd and you can make some pretty big waves.

Michael: OK, cool. Blogging, you’re not just hot on video, I’ve seen you blogging. You do a very good job. You also co-founded BecomeaBlogger.com, I believe?

Gideon: Yes.

Michael: So, yeah, I want to touch on that quickly. You’ve got your videos, you’re driving the traffic, how should you lay out your blog to make sure you get the most out of these people coming to your sites?

Gideon: OK. I guess what I’m more moving towards now is, I guess, what I’m calling video blogging. Well, it’s not my name, but it’s…

Michael: [laughs]

Gideon: I’m not calling it that, that’s what it’s called. It’s video blogging. But it’s really just a normal blog, and all I do is I grab the videos from my YouTube channel and embed it on my normal blog. So each and every post that I have on my blog has a video on it. I do have some text on there, as well. I transcribe all of my videos, for example, and I sometimes give a quick summary of what’s inside the video just so people can quickly see that.

But every post has a video on it. I think what that does for your blog is it makes it look more colorful, it makes it look more friendly, and a lot more interactive, and it creates rapport really quickly if you’ve got video on your blog. Even if you don’t do it for every blog post, some of them will already help you achieve that. So that’s just the first thing.

Some of the other things, in terms of lay out, is building your list and having a list-building strategy in place. There’s a couple things I do there. One is I always have, for any new video blog I set up, I always have an opt-in form somewhere on the page at the top. I normally have it on the sidebar on the right-hand side. I’ve seen some people get some really good results just having it right on the top.

In fact, I think you do it that way, right, Michael?

Michael: Yes.

Gideon: You’ve got yours right at the top, right?

Michael: Yeah, definitely.

Gideon: So that’s where people’s eyes go first. So I think that’s a really good layout. Yaro Starak has moved to that now more recently with having the opt-in form right at the top where the main content is. But as long as you’ve got it there at the top somewhere so people can see it. The other thing to do is to, this is a bit more contentious but it works, is to use a pop-up opt-in form. A lot of people hate it. But here’s the thing, as soon as I started doing it, when I tested it on the magic site, the day that I did it, our opt-in rate doubled. [laughs] So I think we went from something like 30 opt-ins a day to 60 a day, at the time when I did it. Now we’re getting about 100.

So if you can double your rate of opt-ins, instead of getting 50 a day now, we’re getting 100 a day, so in a year’s time instead of just building 15,000 people on our email list, we build 35,000 people, 36,000 people. It’s a huge difference. In two years time, in five years time, that makes a massive difference.

So you might as well give it a go. It may put a few people off, but you just set it to come up for the first time for the first visitor, then after that, they don’t see it again. It’s not a big deal. But you can increase your opt-in rates quite a lot.

Michael: Great tip. So let’s end this interview with a couple quick fire questions at you. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Gideon: In general or about video marketing?

Michael: In life.

Gideon: [laughs] OK. I’ll relate it back to business because I think it’s applicable for this interview. It’s what’s called the hedgehog concept. Jim Collins talked about in his book, “Good to Great.”

It’s basically a way of finding out what is your main thing in life either for you as an individual or for you as a business. It’s basically the intersection of three things: it’s what you’re truly passionate about, it’s what you can become the best at in the world, which relates to your skill level, of course, and how you can make money from that.

So in my example, I’m really passionate about online video marketing. I’ve now developed a skill in that, and also a skill in being able to teach it. So there’s the passion, there’s the best in the world ad thing. Now I can make money from it. I can sell courses on it. I can do consultancy on it. Or I can get invited to speak at events. I have been doing that. So it’s a perfect hedgehog.

I think that’s a really, really, powerful concept. If you want to learn more about it, get a copy of Jim Collins’ “Good to Great.” Awesome book.

Michael: All right, cool. If it’s possible, I’m pretty sure it’s not right now, if there was a time machine, and you could jump in it and go back and do something differently in your business, what would it be?

Gideon: Actually, I think we’re not too far from that, that Hawkings did. Didn’t he just say that time travel is possible?

Michael: That would be interesting.

Gideon: Yeah, if it even worked. But no, seriously, one thing I would possibly do different in a way I would probably say nothing because all of it has been educational. But if there is one thing I would think would be a more clever way of going about it is, first of all, not go to university. [laughs] Start a business as soon as possible, so I could learn much faster. You know I started this real late. I was only 27 when I started my business. I’m turning 33 this year.

The other thing is to look for leverage points. One big one is just using outsourcing, for example, to help you get stuff done much faster.

So those are a couple of things. Don’t take the education system too seriously, and look for leverage points in your business and in life.

Michael: Great. What do you like most about the Internet?

Gideon: I love the fact that I can play on it all day, and people think I’m working from home but I’m actually playing from home, and I’m actually making money from it. [laughs] About, I don’t know, seven or eight months ago, my wife, she quit her job. Because things were going so well with us that she didn’t work anymore. So we’re both working or, I’m sorry, playing from home now on the Internet. There are just so many opportunities that are out there, especially now with online video. It’s just fun. It’s just so much fun. I love it.

Michael: That’s great to hear. What do you dislike most about the Internet?

Gideon: [laughs] I think distraction, that’s the clear thing that comes to mind there. As much fun as it is, it’s so easy to get distracted with the Internet, with your normal Internet browsing, there’s Twitter, there’s Skype, there’s Facebook, there’s YouTube. There are all these… Oh, and email. I haven’t even mentioned email. There are all these things that demand your attention or that pop-up and demand your attention here, demand your attention there. In terms of productivity, that’s just a killer. I’m a great believer in focus, if you can pull it off.

That basically means that you can’t do multitasking, and you’ve got to turn stuff off. The times that I get my best work done is when I turn the Internet off, and I go to a coffee shop where I can’t get Internet, and I just focus. I can just focus without getting a Skype message sent to me, or an email thing or wanting to even check my statistics, how many sales have I made or how many people have signed up to my new list.

So just turning it off I think works for me.

Michael: Definitely. I highly recommend just changing your surroundings area. It can really help so much, it just clears your mind to come up with all those new ideas. All right. Thanks very much, Gideon, for this interview. Before you go though, how can my readers find you? Would you like to quickly mention rapid video blogging because I’m sure this is something that everyone’s going to want to get their hands on after hearing you today?

Gideon: I think today was… I’m not sure how long it took, about 40 minutes or something. But I’m almost finished with this report that I’ve just written. Darren Rowse is actually writing the forward for it, Darren Rowse from Problogger.net. It’s about 80 pages long; it might be a little bit longer. But it’s chock full of some really good tips. It’s free; I’m going to give it away for free. It basically takes you right from the start, from niche selection to the exact video solution that I use for creating my videos, really, really fast and still get high quality. I go into my special content creation process that I’ve developed to help me increase the speed of that even further. I go into growth strategies for growing your traffic, growing your number of views, growing your email lists, all these things.

There are, I don’t know, 30 or 40 different growth strategies that I’ve identified. I’ve revealed some of them inside this report. I talk about some viral strategies to help you make your videos go viral. Then I also talk about how to monetize the whole thing, how do you actually make money from the whole show.

So that’s all inside that report. It’s going to be about 80 pages long or so. You can get it for free. Either go to just RapidVideoBlogging.com or check out my blog, you can get it there too, GideonShalwick.com

Michael: All right, thank you very much, Gideon.

Gideon: Thanks, Michael, and all the best to everyone else doing their video projects

Recommended Video by Gideon:

How To Make Sure People Watch Your Videos From Start To End Without Clicking Away!