Whether you’re an e-commerce seller, a software vendor, an info-product peddler or anything in between, you need an email list.

Beyond that, you need to send really stellar emails if you expect people to buy. While you may have become a better blogger, and have been brushing up on your landing page resources, these are further up the marketing funnel.

Email digs a little deeper, because it is your chance to get personal.

Email is the gateway to sales.

Master the email, and the sales process becomes so much easier.

Do it wrong, and risk annoying your prospects and customers and possibly turn them off from buying from you altogether.

In the vein of our new Friday tradition, here are 29 resources on email marketing.

These deal with high-level subjects like etiquette, to the nitty gritty details like list segmentation (which is so important there are 8 articles on it).

You’ll also learn how to earn more clicks, write stronger subject lines, and determine the frequency at which you should click “send” to your list. As always, I’d like to invite you to bookmark this page for easy reference.

5 Cardinal Rules Of Email Etiquette

When you send an email to your list, remember: it’s going to one person.

Even if your list contains 10,000 people, the person receiving it does not care about the 9,999 others. Keeping that in mind, here are the 5 cardinal rules of email marketing.

Develop a Better Email Marketing Strategy

Anyone can start a newsletter or create an auto-responder series, but it takes a real strategy. A real strategy doesn’t just define outcomes, it also accounts for the steps taken to get there.

This article from emailmonday.com gives you 5 things to help get your thinking straight when it comes to strategically planning  your email marketing. It’s a simple and perfect place to start.

5 Best Practices for Email Marketing in 2012

Yes, “social media” might get all of the buzz.

But let me ask you this… Which is busier? Twitter, or your Inbox?

Surveys say more than 93% of online consumers are “subscribers.”

Social Media doesn’t have nearly the same adoption rate. If you want to stand out, you need to do it in the inbox. Here’s 5 guidelines to follow in 2012.

How SEO, Social Media, And Email Marketing Work Together

This is one from our very own Nick Tart on his blog 14clicks.com.

His post does an excellent job at getting you to think critically about the calls to action on your content.

He does a very good job at explaining the different traffic cycles of Search, Social Media, and how you can get email to play into it.

I certainly learned a few new things from this article, and will be considering many of these concepts as I redesign my website.

Email Plus Facebook Marketing: Fresh ideas from FreshPair

This interview between Daniel Burstein of Marketing Sherpa and Lindsay Masse of Freshpair.com is nothing short of insightful.

In this interview, they discuss how Freshpair.com uses their Facebook presence to learn more about their customers and improve their email campaigns.

What I found particularly interesting is their hint at how followers who are engaged on Facebook are also much much more likely to read their emails and take advantage of the offers. Click Here to Read the Interview

How to Get More Subscribers For Your Email List

Ok, so now that we’ve talked about best practices, and how email ties into your over all strategy…

Let’s get some people on your list.

This article courtesy of Copyblogger is a primer to getting inside your prospective subscribers’ heads in order to think around what may be preventing them from handing over their email address.

Things like social proof, clear calls to action, and overcoming objections are covered.

To get into their in-box, you first have to get into their head

21 Awesome Ideas to Grow Your Email List

This is what it says it is. Every single one of these ideas are fantastic. Read them here.

 1. How To Mobilize Your WordPress Site

You’re probably missing out on quite a few readers, and you’ll miss out on more if you don’t go mobile with your blog. In January 2012, nearly 9% of all global pageviews were from a mobile device. This number is expected to keep growing, to the point where in 2015 the pageviews from mobile devices will outgrow the pageviews from laptops and personal computers. Upgrade your site to have a mobile version!

The easiest way to do this is through the free plugin WP Touch. Once installed, you edit some settings, create a few icons or use stock icons, reformat some pages if necessary, and you have a beautiful mobile site that looks and functions like an app! Now if someone opens your blog (let’s say from an email, or from a Facebook link) on their phone, they’ll actually be able to consume your content easily, as well as comment on it and share it, rather than zooming in and out in frustration trying to navigate your site.

If you want to take things to the next level, upgrade to the premium version WP Touch Pro, which has some additional options to customize even further.

A lot of newer themes are also mobile friendly (responsive), meaning they already have a mobile version built in, so you don’t have to worry about it. So if you’re thinking about changing themes, keep this in mind while doing your research.

Here is how a post on my personal site looks in mobile when the mobile version is active:

Here is how it looks when the mobile version is not active:

Which is easier for someone to read? Which will they stay on longer and engage with longer?

Upgrade your site to mobile and be better prepared for the future.

2. Speed up! Some Plugins to make editing your posts more efficient

Viper Video QuickTags

If you have ever embedded a video, you know that you need to use HTML code to make it happen. Make your life easier and save time by utilizing the Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin.

After installing the plugin and adjusting a few settings, you will have the ability to copy and paste the video link and embed videos with the click of a button. The plugin is super simple to use and gives you the option to embed more than one video at once!

Check out the activation details below:

1. Viper’s Video Quicktags will show up on your Dashboard Menu under “settings”
2. Uncheck everything under “Show Editor Button” except for YouTube
4. This will create a button when you add a page/post
5. Click on the new button above the WYSIWG visual page editor
6. Paste the direct URL to your video and edit the size by opening the accordion below
7. Click okay and this will populate a shortcode into the post box
8. Click on update and check out your super slick videos once you refresh the page!

Mission accomplished in a quarter of the time and you didn’t even have time to think about it before the video was embedded and sized.

Faster Image Insert

Embedding images into a page requires a couple of steps. You need to click on the media button and this opens a light box. Once you upload the image, you can edit the size and insert into the page or post.

The process is slow because a lightbox has to load in between every image that is added. It’s easy to imagine why waiting for a lightbox to open in between inserting each image can get pretty annoying, and not to mention time-consuming. This is where Faster Image Insert comes in.

Faster Image Insert allows you to upload images much faster because it adds a meta box (no more lightbox) right below the WYSIWYG visual editor. You can insert multiple galleries or images at once, including NextGen Galleries, which is pretty awesome. You can also change title/captions on a mass scale with a single click.

It appears right below your post, whether in visual or HTML:

3. Plugins to boost your SEO

All In One SEO Pack

This plugin is a must have for anyone interested in getting search engine traffic. It is great for both the beginner and the advanced user. The plugin is intuitive and includes features like automatic optimization of your titles for search engines and meta tags. This is a plug and play plugin, which means that it is effective as soon as it is activated.

Advanced users are able to fine tune just about any setting, such as the ability to override any title and set any meta description and meta keywords you want. This is going to increase your SEO presence drastically, which will definitely help you increase your sites traffic.

Google XML Sitemaps

In order for your site’s pages and posts to be found in Google’s search engines, they need to be indexed/stored in Google’s massive database of websites and other web content.

There are many ways to get indexed faster by Google such as Tweeting your new page or post but using this plugin makes the process simpler.

Each time you create a new post or page, the plugin will update your site’s XML sitemap (which the search engines use to index your site) and automatically let the search engines know about the update. The benefit here is obvious. Get the plugin asap and start sending your message to a larger audience.

SEO Pressor

SEO Pressor takes the SEO within your blog posts to a new level. It allows you to write for a specific keyword, and measures your post white you write for how effectively you are writing for that keyword. It even gives you an overall score along the way. Here’s a screenshot of what it does:

4. How To Uncrash Your Site! (for plugin issues)

Steps to Uncrashing Your Site

This is one of the easiest problems to fix, yet I still notice a ton of forums being bombarded with questions like “I Installed a plugin and my site crashed!! I need a developer ASAP!”

Take a deep breath, regain your composure and listen to me. Even though the issue may appear to be fatal, it is actually one of the simplest issues to fix.

Here are the 5 easy steps to uncrash your site:

1. Login to your FTP Client
2. Find the Plugin Folder in your Directory
3. Sort Plugins by “Last Modified”
4. Select the Plugin in Question
5. Delete the Plugin
Once Plugin is deleted, it will no longer show up or crash your site. You can thank me after you calm down!

5. Plugins to Make Affiliate Marketing Easier

Pretty Link

Say you have an affiliate link: www.domain.com/longconfusingmess

Let’s also say you have a domain called: www.incomediary.com

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could customize the link and still get credit for the referral? Wouldn’t it also be valuable if you could track both the total number of clicks as well as the total number of unique clicks to monitor performance – regardless of if the link is in your email, WordPress site, or anywhere else?

Pretty Link allows you to do both. The process is super simple and it creates a ton of value. Here is an example:

Before Pretty Link: www.hostgator.com/longconfusinglink
After Pretty Link: IncomeDiary.com/hostgator

In addition, it tracks both total and unique clicks and displays the respective numbers in the plugins options. Pretty damn awesome.

It also makes it easy for you to remember all your affiliate links in case you ever need them on the fly while chatting with someone. This alone has easily hundreds of extra dollars in my pocket .

Amazon Associate Filter Plugin

Amazon is one of the largest and most well known internet companies in the world. It would only make sense that the Amazon Associate Program is one of the best affiliate programs, aS they offer a massive number of product categories, which is great for Niche sites that are unable to find relatable affiliate programs.

Amazon makes it very simple to integrate the program with your current site. If you don’t have an account, I highly suggest that you head over to the site and sign up.

The Amazon Associate Filter is a great time saving plugin for Amazon affiliates. It automatically will change any links to the amazon website to your affiliate link without revealing it to the reader. Say goodbye to being slowed down by finding and pasting your affiliate link into your page or post. Amazon Associate Filter is a must have plugin for any Amazon Affiliates!

6. Contact Forms – you have options!

When you first logged into WordPress you may or may not have notice that there is no page or theme option to add a contact form to your site. Contact forms allow visitors to contact you with questions, complaints, suggestions, etc.

Here’s some good news: You have options! I introduce you to three here, but use Google to find more information. You may even discover a brand new plugin that makes Gravity Forms look like childs play. Don’t spend too much time, but definitely check out a link or two.

Contact Form 7 (Flexible)

If you value simplicity and flexibility, Contact Form 7 is a great option. It allows you to design the form, email, and even lets you manage multiple contact forms. In addition, it supports many features including AJAX submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering, file uploading, and more.

Contact Me

In addition to providing you with a neat and flexible contact form, this plugin allows you to have a floating contact me/us floating button on the side of your site on every page, like this:

It’s a nice call to action, especially if you provide any services or are looking for leads to get in touch with you. While the plugin itself is free, to remove the Contact Me branding and get more options, you do have to upgrade to the premium version.

Gravity Forms (Premium)

If you prefer a premium contact form that includes an intuitive user interface and the works in terms of options, then Gravity Forms is the best option for you. While the plugin costs a little bit of money, the time it saves you and the improvement in quality is well worth it, especially if you are building multiple forms.

7. Make Your Site Neater and brand more visible!

Favicon! – plugin and creation tool

A Favicon is the little image that shows up on your browser’s tabs when browsing your site and can really help brand your site. It may be a small image, but has potential to be a significant part of your branding effectiveness.

An awesome site for Favicons is: www.favicon.cc. You can even draw a custom Favicon but I don’t recommend this because it has proven to be less effective – unless you’re great with design. You can also upload an image and turn it into a Favicon, or find tons of free favicons that might match your brand.

Plugin: All in One Favicon

All in One Favicon uses the favicon you created and displays it on the browser tab for the public. You can create both front end (what the viewer see’s) and back end (what you see in your dashboard). If you don’t have a favicon, you are missing out on an opportunity to brand your site.

Logo – cooltext.com

While creating a custom logo in Photoshop or Illustrator is great – a lot of new bloggers don’t have the skills, time, or money to do so. You can actually create a unique text based logo in minute using this cool tool. It’s a lot better than having a plain text header on the top of your site!

Enter: CoolText.com to save the day (or at least a few minutes). They offer a ton of customization options which makes the experience much more personal.

You can choose from a boatload of fonts, effects, colors, sizes and file types. I promise that you can create very professional logos as long as you make sure to explore ALL of the options first. The best part is – it’s all free!

8. Speed up your Site!

Get A Caching plugin

I’m sure you have been on a blog or even corporate site that feels as if it is taking forever to load. Why would you want someone to have the same, annoying experience? A slow site can have devastating effects on site traffic, but thankfully there is a plugin to make it easy to speed your site up.

There is a solid selection of Caching Plugins on the web. The most popular ones are W3 TOTAL CACHE and WP SUPER CACHE, but don’t let this stop you from researching and trying out other programs.

A caching plugin is valuable because it saves your page the first time that a visitor visits it.It then will used this saved information to automatically load the page based on the information. It will also automatically re-cache your site if any content changes!

One less thing to worry about.

Some tips: One of the simplest ways to speed up a slow site is to be sure to deactivate all of the plugins that you are not currently using on your site. We recommend a lot of plugins here and I know this may appear to contradictory, but it’s important not to go overboard! Deactivate unimportant plugins, especially those that work on the outside of your site vs. the admin panel, and you will see the difference in speed.

Decrease Image Sizes before Uploading – Some people just upload images and then resize them using the WordPress (HTML) image editor. Try to avoid this when you can. Go into Photoshop, Save For Web and Devices, and resize the images to your desired dimensions. That way you get smaller file sizes, which load faster, and speed up your site, sometimes very significantly.

9. Get Social!

You work hard putting great content on your blog. Make sure it’s easy for people to share and discuss so you get more traffic, credibility, and user engagement.

Sharing

I recommend using the Digg Digg plugin. It’s the quickest, simplest, and neatest way to get all your social media sharing buttons on your posts.

If you want to look cool, use the floating option (like you see to your left). There are a ton of sharing options, and which ones you use depends on the nature of your content.

I recommend including at least: Facebook Like, Facebook Share, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. The rest is up to you.

Comments

I STRONGLY recommend Facebook comments. They will get you more comments (people are so familiar with Facebook comments already, it’s more natural for them to Like and

Comment via Facebook than through the WordPress commenting system), they will reduce your spam comments, and they will ultimately get you a lot more social links back to your site, so more traffic! Make sure you make the settings such that it automatically posts the comment on Facebook unless the commenter disables it.

The other social commenting option is Disqus. It’s also a free plugin which allows people to comment through social profiles, but since people are usually logged into Facebook when surfing the web,

Facebook comments will likely get you more traction than Disqus.

10. Get Personal!

Make sure you brand yourself in your posts and your comments on others blogs!

Start by completing the profile in Users > My Profile with your complete bio, and include this bio on the bottom of your posts (this is usually just a theme option). Your bio helps people connect with you and makes them want to learn more about you. They’re not just reading your content – they’re reading you!

Next – and this is very important – head over to Gravatar.com and create your Gravatar. This is like your profile image on the Internet. You should add all the email addresses you use in WordPress sites, whether on your own site or any you might guest blog on. Add a cool image of you that people will remember (for example, see my Parrot picture in Aruba below!).

If you made a WordPress.com account at some point, you might already have a Gravatar and not know it. Try logging into Gravatar.com with your WordPress.com details before making yourself a new account, to make sure you can get the username you want and your primary email address.

Save Your Save Some Time, Energy, and Money

Do you think some of the tools and tricks in this post will save you some time and create more money for you with your blog? When applied, of course they will.

This is just a small list. You can literally become a total WordPress master – and save yourself a LOT of time, energy, and money by taking this course: Make WordPress Easy. It’s not only the best course on WordPress – it’s also extremely entertaining to watch. Enjoy it!

I hope this list helped you out a lot. If you have any questions about any of these, or have any additional tips, please comment below!

Are you a good writer?

The answer to that question has never been more important. Between emails, text messages, and blog posts, we’re writing more than ever.

If you own your own website, you know that good writing means more search-engine traffic, more social shares, and ultimately more customers. Bad writing means being ignored.

Become a better writer with the 20 tips below:

#1 Read More

“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

Stephen King

Don’t expect to be a great writer unless you’re familiar with great writing. Seek out writers that you admire and make reading their work part of your daily schedule.

Their skill with words will seep into your sub-conscious and start showing up in your own writing.

#2 Listen to “Writing Music”

Not all music is created equal. Some music makes you dance, some makes you cry, and some makes you write.

For me, slow-tempo piano compositions make for great “writing music”.

You can put together your own writing playlist to put you in the mood when you write, but you don’t have to. Click here to begin listening to an 8tracks playlist created specifically for writing (it will open in a new window).

#3 Know Your Audience

We’ve spent so much time thinking of writing as an abstract collection rules and principles that we sometimes forget that our words are eventually read by real people.

Ultimately, it’s our writing’s ability to communicate powerfully to these individual people that determines if it’s any good.

That’s why it’s important to learn as much as you can about the people who are reading your work. Find out their average age, gender, and location. More importantly, find out about their lifestyles, aspirations, and problems.

You can do this by putting a poll on your website or simply by following up with comments and retweets. The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to help them.

Photo Courtesy of Anirudh Koul.

#4 Do Your Research

I’ve never liked doing research, but I’ve always liked the effect it has on my writing.

The better informed you are on your subject, the more informative and valuable your article can be. Research thoroughly and you’ll know just what to write for every section.

#5 Write with Confidence

Do you want to impact people with your writing?

Then be direct, passionate, and unyielding. Take a stand.

Don’t hedge. Don’t use the passive voice. Don’t begin sentences with, “I think.”

Your readers deserve a confident message. If you don’t believe fully in what you’re saying, then why are you writing it?

#6 Make it Easy to Read

“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”

Enrique Jardiel Poncela

At some point in school, most of us decided that good writing had big words and complex sentences. Ever since, we’ve been cramming our paragraphs with syllables and commas.

But the best writing is so simple that it’s almost like it’s not there at all. You read a sentence and its meaning just slips comfortably into your brain.

Always choose clarity over complexity.

#7 Write Without Stopping

“Don’t get it right, just get it written”

James Thurber

Free writing is the practice of writing without stopping for a set period of time. Your fingers never stop moving. If you can’t think of what to write next, you simply continue to write the previous word until something else comes to you.

This may sound ridiculous and, obviously, the result will be full of grammar errors and run-on sentences. But there’s something powerful about the stream-of-consciousness that free writing produces. There’s also something powerful about producing a page of words in just minutes.

Give free writing a try some time and see if you’re not surprised by the results.

#8 Don’t Chase Perfection

Maybe you’ve been a great writer since you could first lift a crayon.

You’ve probably got a healthy confidence in your writing. But you’ve also probably got some unrealistic expectations. If you think everything you write needs to be perfect, then you’ll struggle to ever get words on paper.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Ernest Hemingway

If Ernest Hemingway considered himself an apprentice-level writer, then what does that make the rest of us?

Writing is impossible to master. So while your articles should be well-crafted, they shouldn’t be perfect.

#9 Take Risks

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Scott Adams

Part of the creative process is adopting a mindset where anything is possible. The best writers explore these possibilities, even when the chances of them working out are slim.

For instance, it’s probably a mistake to start your article with a dialogue between two fictional characters. Then again, it could be totally brilliant. You’ll never know unless you’re willing to take that risk.

Next time you get a risky idea, explore it. Even if you don’t keep the results, you’ll likely have learned something that you can bring into your final draft.

#10 Understand that Writing Online is Different

Online writing can be multimedia, so always be looking for opportunities to enrich your article with images, audio, or video. It can also be interactive. Linking out to useful information and websites is a courtesy to your readers. Since online writing is global, you may want to avoid using colloquial expressions or relying on cultural references that will only be understood by people in your country.

One of the most commons mistakes people make while writing online is using too many long paragraphs. While five sentence paragraphs are the norm in academic writing, online readers are turned off by big blocks of text. When I’m writing for the web, I’ll rarely use more than three sentences in a paragraph.

#11 Use Your Voice

“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”

John Jake

Have you ever finished reading an article and felt like you had just made a real-life connection with the author?

Voice is the word for when writers let their personality shine through in their writing. It’s more engaging to read and it helps people relate to you as a real human being. So loosen up.

#12 Record Yourself Talking

If you’ve already got a great idea for what you want to write about but you’re having trouble putting it on paper, try recording yourself talking it out.

Talking is simply easier than writing and it helps us to get to the heart of things.

When you reach a good stopping point, play back the audio and transcribe it. The result will be raw, but it will also be a great starting place for your article. It’s also a good way to give your writing stronger voice.

#13 Put Your Blinders On

Q:  What do writing and performing brain surgery have in common?

A:  Both require your full attention.

Writing on a computer can be a constant battle of distraction. But in order to work efficiently, a writer must be very focused.

That’s why, as I type this sentence, I only have one program running (my word processor) and my Wifi radio is disabled.

Yes, the Internet is an amazing research tool. But you don’t benefit from being connected to it the entire time you’re writing. Collect the information you’ll need before you begin writing and then disconnect.

#14 Do More

“Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.”

Sholem Asch

We write best from experience.

If you’re having trouble coming up with good ideas for new articles, maybe the problem is that you don’t have very much to say about your niche.

So throw yourself fully into the subject of your writing. Try something different. Learn something new. Make a new connection in the industry. The broader experience you have to draw from, the easier it is to write.

#15 Write to One Person

When we think about the thousands of different people who will eventually read our words, we tend to write very broadly so that all of them will understand what we’re saying.

That’s a nice idea, but broad writing is typically uninspiring. When you try to include everybody, you just make everybody bored.

Instead, create a single, imaginary person who represents your target audience. Write your article as if you’re talking to that one individual. Without trying, you’ll find that your writing becomes more specific and intimate. And you’ll be surprised by how many people feel like you were writing just for them.

#16 Don’t Forget About Search Engines

Your audience isn’t just people. Search engine spiders are also “reading” your articles in order to rank you for keyword phrases.

So what do Google’s spiders like to read?

They like longer content (think 2,000-4,000 words). It also helps if you incorporate your chosen keywords throughout the headings and body (without over-doing it). A little keyword research would be a good idea before you begin writing your next article.

Your human audience is, of course, more important – and their linking, sharing, and +1’ing your content will certainly help with your search rankings. But paying a little bit of attention to the reading habits of Google will help ensure that human readers are actually able to find your writing in the first place.

#17 Don’t Take it Personally

Writing is a personal thing. You’re pulling thoughts out of your head and putting them into sentences for complete strangers to read.

This is part of the reason people suffer from writer’s block: we let our thoughts about writing get tangled up with our thoughts about ourselves. But your writing isn’t a reflection of your worth as human being.

Cultivate a sense of detachment from your writing. The more separate you feel from the words on the page, the more freely you’ll be able to produce them.

#18 Trim the Fat

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Elmore Leonard

I often write whole sections to an article that I later realize were unnecessary. When that happens, I’m forced to highlight the paragraphs and press ‘delete’.

It’s difficult to cut out something you may have spent a half-hour perfecting, but it’s also necessary. If you force your audience to read something that they don’t benefit from, you’re wasting their time. They’ll stop reading – even if the rest of the article is spot-on.

#19 Read it Out Loud

Writers get very close to their writing. Maybe too close.

By the time you’ve rewritten a sentence a few times, you know it so well that you can’t read it objectively. Since you know what you’re trying to say, you’ll understand the sentence even if it’s awkward or confusing.

That’s why using just your eyes to re-read your article before you click ‘publish’ isn’t good enough.

Read over your writing with your mouth and take note of every time you stumble over your words. Then rewrite those parts so that they sound natural when you say them out loud.

#20 Only Writing is Writing

“You have to sit your butt in the chair and write. You have to do that every day. That doesn’t mean you lie on your couch and play with your navel. That doesn’t mean you go shopping when the words don’t flow the way you think they should. That never works. It means you sit your butt in the chair and get to work. No excuses.”

Harlan Coben

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I need to write. Sometimes I even fool myself into thinking that I’m being productive. But the only way to make progress in your writing is to do write – pages and pages, day after day.

You’ve finished reading. Now get to writing.

Featured Image Courtesy of Gilles Chiroleu.

They want a website. They want to get traffic. And they want their website to be a lead generator rather than a cost center.

Yet, they don’t want to put effort into blogging and they don’t want to pay for traffic. Well, it’s one or the other.

Let me explain.

How Blogging Leads to Traffic

Your website will not get substantial traffic without a blog.

Want proof?

Name one website that you visited today that wasn’t different from the last time you visited it.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and every news site on the planet gets tons of traffic because they’re constantly being updated with new content.

Content, after all, is the only reason somebody visits a website. I challenge you to think of any other.

Blogging and Search Engine Optimization

Let’s recap what we know about search engine optimization:

• Search engines like sites that are regularly updated.
• Search engines like sites that have quality content.
• Search engines like sites that have lots of content.
• Search engines like sites that have backlinks.
• Search engines like sites that have lots of social shares.

Now let’s see how blogging fits in:

• Blogging is the easiest way to regularly update your website.
• Blogging is the best way to showcase quality content.
• Blogging is the most practical way to post lots of content.
• Blogging is the most effective way to generate backlinks because people link to useful content.
• Blogging is the best way to accrue social shares because people share interesting content.

If you want free traffic from search engines, you need a blog.

Let’s look at two different websites.

One is your standard business website with the homepage, about page, contact page, services page, and maybe a few product pages.

The other has all of those pages plus 500 blog posts.

Which one do you think is going to get more search traffic?

Blogging and Social Media

Now, let’s take a look at the core of social media:

People post content to their walls and profiles that they believe their friends and followers will find interesting because they want to be perceived as interesting.

Blogging gives you a chance to be interesting.

Let’s look at those two examples again. Rarely will a stranger share a link that points back to a home page, about page, or product page. But, frequently, people share links with fascinating stories, creative videos, and interesting articles.

Once your blog starts getting search and social traffic, it’s time to start converting it.

How Blogging Leads to Lead Generation

By now you should be convinced that the most high-trafficked pages on your website will be blog posts. (If not, look at your Analytics.)

With that in mind, we need to work on converting those people. The conversion method of choice for most bloggers is an email opt-in.

Blogging and Email Marketing

Email opt-ins are often the goal because saying, “I want to receive emails from you” is the most engaged somebody could be prior to becoming a customer.

From a traditional marketing perspective, let’s look at why email works:

1. Email is permission-based. People are more likely to consume your marketing message if they’re expecting and looking forward to receiving it.
2. Email is targeted. The only people on your list will be people who have visited your website and liked it enough to sign-up for updates.
3. Email is seen. Unlike most advertising, people will at least see, usually open, and ideally read every email you send them.
4. Email is consistent. It follows the marketing principle that people need to see your marketing message seven times before they’ll purchase.
5. Email builds trust. The longer people keep you in their inbox, the more they’re going to trust you.

I know there are lots of strategies and philosophies behind email marketing. One of the more popular strategies is to email out your blog posts. This does three things:

1. Gives them free content so they’ll stay subscribed.
2. Keeps you top of mind as long as you regularly update your blog.
3. Provides a platform for your email subscribers to connect with you and other subscribers.

After all, the reason they signed up for your list is probably because they liked your blog. And if you don’t send them your blog posts, what are you going to send them? If they start getting too many pitches, they’re going to unsubscribe. So you need to send them valuable content. And if it’s valuable enough to put in an email, you might as well make it a blog post.

How Blogging Leads to Making Money

Since traffic generally starts on and subscribes through your blog, how does your blog lead to your business making money?

Let’s look at the big blogging picture:

• Blogging encourages Google to rank your site higher.
• Blogging enables people to spread the word about your company.
• Blogging persuades people to keep you in their inbox.
• Blogging helps you become a trusted authority.

The reason you opened the email or clicked the link that sent you here is because Michael has done a wonderful job of building this blog.

The alternative to getting traffic is buying ads that send people to boring sales pages where some will buy but most will leave, forever. It’s a lot less work, but a lot more expensive.

Even in Michael’s case. Let’s say he pays his authors $100 per blog post and the average IncomeDiary post is viewed 10,000 times over the life of the article. That may seem pricey, but to get the same amount of traffic through ads, he’d have to pay anywhere from $5,000-35,000. (The average cost-per-click with Google AdWords is between $0.50 and $3.50 depending on the keyword.)

You see? Blogging isn’t just part of your internet marketing strategy. It’s the core of it.

If your site is getting traffic and building trust, your business will make more money.

The only difference between Facebook/Twitter/YouTube and your blog is that they found a way to get people to update the content for them.

Have I convinced you?

I’m curious. If you’ve bought one of Michael’s products or purchased something he recommends as a result of finding his blog, let us know in the comments.

For me, I use Aweber because IncomeDiary originally introduced me to it.

Image by: cloud_nine

If that’s not you, leave now, this article has nothing for you.

However, if you’re willing to get your hands dirty, by the end of this article you will learn exactly what it is that separates the successful from everyone else.

The First Thing Nearly Every Entrepreneur Does Wrong.

Before we start on doing things right, let’s first look at what nearly everyone in business does wrong. Focuses too much on Technology.

You see it all the time, “I need to get on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Blogging/etc”

They think the technology will be the cure to the problem, when really focusing too heavily on technology can cause more headaches than it’s worth.

Without fail, when nothing comes from simply being represented on the platform, they either:

1. Claim their customers aren’t there.
2. Seek refuge on another platform, only to find the same outcome.
3. Give up entirely and curse the technology as a whole.

Here’s the thing about technology…

It’s just a device to communicate a message.

Blaming Facebook for failing to generate leads is like blaming a piece of paper for failing to make more sales.

I can almost guarantee you that at some point in history, there was someone who said “We need to make this telephone thing work for our business.” which of course is silly when you think about it. The telephone is only a device, and has very little to do with the actual income generating part of your business.

In short, technology is the least important aspect of your money making efforts. It’s important, just not as important as most people make it out to be.

The Second Thing Nearly Every Entrepreneur Does Wrong.

Next, nearly every entrepreneur thinks if they just have stellar marketing, they’ll sell a ton more product, and everything will be right in the world.

Don’t make this mistake.

Marketing by itself doesn’t make you money.

I recently had a guest post for chrisbrogan.com go viral netting 38k visitors in the first 2 days of being live, and eventually it got picked up by Google, and still, despite excellent marketing and exposure for myself and my business, it did not make me a single cent.

Now, it is true that a killer marketing campaign can lead to a ton of sales of a shitty product.

But the big money that’s made on the front end is usually lost on product returns, customer service issues, and in some cases, law suits.

In short, if you’re marketing a bad product and you make a ton of money, at some point karma’s going to come around and bite you in the ass.

The Most Important Thing Very Few Entrepreneurs Actually Get Right.

The most important thing that very few entrepreneurs actually get right is the product itself.

Sure, you put a product out, but how good is it really?

How above and beyond does it go?

It’s not about whether or not you’re able to set your personal best either,it’s about whether or not you’re delivering something that is of massive value to the market place.

Think about the iPhone for a second. Whether or not you’re a user is irrelevant, because when the iPhone came out, it was undeniably one of the coolest, and most useful devices on the market.

It allowed you to watch full length movies, surf the internet, listen to music, search for directions and more.

“Marketing” for the iPhone didn’t really have to do much beyond just show you what it did.

Really, that’s what makes a superior product. If you can simply put it in front of a person and they get excited about everything it does, that’s when you know you’ve created a superior product.

What separates the truly great from everyone else is that they’re putting the time in to understand their customers wants and needs, then delivering a product that far exceeds their expectations.

This is why Facebook killed Myspace, Twitter killed FriendFeed, and why Youtube still remains the Number 1 video sharing platform online in spite of countless imitators.

Want to make more money GUARANTEED?

Spend every hour of every day learning exactly what it is that keeps your customers up at night. Explore every aspect of their problem and understand it so intimately that it becomes a part of you.

You need to understand their fears, their frustrations, and their limitations, then deliver something that exceeds anything they ever thought possible.

When you want to create a superior product, spend your time listening. Not just to what’s being said on the surface, but read between the lines as well.

You also need to know what specific outcome customers will achieve by using your product, and how it can improve their life.

Only then can you truly understand how to create something that will be almost magical to the customer. Only then will they not be able to live without you. Only then will you make more money guaranteed.

In fact, a 2010 report from Cisco stated that 30% of Internet traffic is video – and that number is only getting bigger and bigger. They project that video will account for a ridiculous 90% of Internet traffic by 2013.

So how can your blog get a slice of that big video pie?

How to Use Video to Increase Blog Traffic

Blogs thrive on quality content – and since video is so dynamic and engaging, adding it to your posts can help make your content more exciting and shareable.

Since video search ranking is less competitive than traditional search, posting a how-to video can bring in more visitors from search engines as well.

But if you’re posting videos that are too long, too dull, or that don’t offer anything more than a written post, you’re actually doing your blog and your readers a disservice.

Three Types of Effective Video Blog Posts

Tutorials

When you’re explaining something that visual or auditory, words alone can be clumsy and confusing. Anyone who has tried to follow an instruction manual knows this all too well.

But with a video tutorial, you can show people exactly how something is done – whether that means recording video of you building a table or capturing video of your computer screen to demonstrate how to create a website.

Not only are video tutorials more valuable to your readers, they can also be easier to make than a lengthy written tutorial.

Example:

Interviews

Interviewing people who’ve found success in your blog’s niche is a tried and true tactic. Not only do interviews offer fresh perspective and valuable advice, they give you an excuse to meet interesting people.

While posting text or audio from the interview is great, recording and posting video (whether in person or over Skype) is almost as good as being right there in the same room as the interviewee.

Example:

Entertainment

If you’ve got a creative streak in you, video is a great way to let it show.

You don’t have to be an expert video editor. Some simple ways to make a fun video are using stop-motion or time-elapse footage.

Strike the right chord and your video could go viral.

Example:

Note:

All the views in the world don’t mean much if nobody’s actually visiting your site. If you’re planning on people watching your video on YouTube or Facebook, it’s essential that your video ends with a call to action and incentive for the viewer to visit your blog.

Don’t make the video content the end of the story. If people find your video elsewhere like on YouTube or embedded on another site, you must provide them with a means and incentive to reach your blog.

Write some related content that you can dangle before viewers at the end of the video, so that they’ll have an incentive to go visit your site. In the above example, the video directs to a post called, 21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs.

Video Advantage #1 – Shareable

Video posts are more socially viral than their written counterparts.

When you share a standard blog post on Facebook, what you’re really sharing is a picture, a title, and a link.

When you share a video post on Facebook, you’re sharing much more: with one click, people can begin watching and benefitting from your content. This makes a video post a very potent tool on the world’s most popular social network, because people who otherwise wouldn’t bother to follow the link may well click play.

How to Use Video to Increase Product Sales

If you’ve been to many sales pages lately, you know that the best ones feature a video front and center.

Video simply increases conversion: an April 2010 report from Internet Retailer stated that consumers who watch a product video are 85% more likely to buy.

A video is a 24-hour salesperson:  all a shopper has to do is press play and they’re immediately hearing and seeing about everything that makes your product great.

Selling Your Product through Video

While the videos on your posts can be a bit amateur, a sales page video must reflect the professionalism and quality that you want people to associate with your product.

That doesn’t mean that the video has to be flashy. Many videos on sales pages are nothing more than a human voice and some simple background text – a little dull even by the standards of a PowerPoint presentation.

The point isn’t to entertain the viewer or to wow them with special effects. Instead, the goal of your video should simply be to enumerate the features, advantages, and benefits of your product in a straightforward and honest way.

Video Advantage #2 – Easy

To read a web page, one must be active – reading paragraph after paragraph while scrolling downward.

But once they’re watching a video they must actually be active to stop watching.

This is a huge advantage on your sales page because half of the battle is just communicating your full message before the potential customer decides to bail.

Video Advantage #3 – Persuasive

When somebody is watching a video, they’re using a different part of their brain than when they’re reading – and while that part of the brain is very spatially intelligent, it’s not quite as good at coming up with rational arguments.

This is why television commercials feature so many supermodels. Though our rational minds would never think, “If I drink more Coca-Cola, I’m going to be more attractive, like those people,” our visual minds make an association between healthy, beautiful people and the bottle of Coke.

People are easier to persuade when they’re watching a video than they are when they’re reading text.

Example: Pop Up Domination

To see a simple but effective sales video in action, check out this page for Income Diary’s very own PopUp Domination.

How to Use Video to Build a Stronger Brand

The world’s biggest brands have been promoting themselves with video since the first television commercial aired in 1941.

Ever since, video has been the primary platform for the development of major brands. Just think of all of the striking logos, talking animals, memorable taglines, and catchy jingles you’ve seen.

Video and Your About Page

The about page is every blogger’s best opportunity to establish their all-important personal brand.

People read your blog posts because they want to be instructed, engaged, or entertained – but they visit your about page because they want to know more about you.

So even if you don’t want to post video regularly, you should consider creating or commissioning a video for your about page. It will give visitors the impression that your website is a professional place, dedicated to providing quality content – and it can help forge a personal connection with your audience.

Advice for Branding through Video

Instead of reciting goals and data, try telling people your company’s story.

It’s a good idea to put your logo at the beginning and end of each of your video, to keep your brand at the forefront of the viewer’s mind.

Ideally, you’ll create an audio signature to go with your logo. It can be simple as a short melody or sound effect – anything that can get stuck in your head.

Video Advantage #4 – Personal

When we meet a person for the first time, the actual words that they say take a backseat to everything that they’re “saying” with their tone of voice, facial expression, and body language.

It’s all of these hard-to-describe visual and auditory cues that make up our first impression and allow us to begin connecting with somebody at a personal level.

So when you put a video on your about page, you’re inviting your readership to understand a little bit more about what it would be like to know you in real life. When people start seeing you as an actual person, they’re more likely to start seeing you as a friend – and that’s when loyalty and community can really blossom.

Ready to Feature Video on Your Blog?

I hope that this article has you motivated to utilize video to help your website reach its full potential.

If you have any questions about web video, don’t hesitate to ask below and I’ll do my best to respond.

I have tried lot’s of different methods to make more money from my business, I have launched my own product which is now used by tens of thousands of people, sold consulting (briefly) and offered bonuses on product launches. Here are the 11 things that made me money last year:

What Makes My Business Money

1. Interview People With Products

One of the very first interviews of the year was with Adam Horwitz, he had just applied to be one of Yanik Silver’s scholarship winners and before I spoke to him I had seen his sites. Admittedly I thought he was a scammer and was surprised when he applied, after a few nights of talking, I interviewed him for IncomeDiary and since then have sold thousands of dollars worth of his product on autopilot. This worked well because the advise in the interview inspired everyone and wanted them to proceed with what he was teaching, the only way to get a jump on the competition was to buy his product.

2. Launched My Own Product

About a year ago I sat down and tried to calculate if it was worth doing a launch or not. At the time I thought it was a lot of work to give half to affiliates then half of whats left to the tax man. It wasn’t till June when I was talking with my web developers and looking at the results of my lightbox popup that I realized we had a great opportunity to sell this to a lot of people. Spreading my risk, I offered a 50% share to my web development team who would put in the hours and I would put in the knowledge of online marketing. In 3 months we did two launches earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. The best thing about launching the product was the feeling of putting something out there that people respected and loved, looking back, it didn’t matter if I didn’t make any money from this, just have all these marketers I look up to, now come to me for business, that was enough.

3. Launched My Own Service

Early in the year I was doing a service called “Done For You Blogging”, everyone coming to my blog wanted a blog just like me so I once again went into business with a web developer, they would do the blogs and I would do the marketing. This was highly profitable but I found without the right systems in place, it was not worth the money it made. We recently put it back online, working with a new developer, we greatly improved the service to provide customers with a best possible blog for the lowest price possible. A service with a set system is attractive to me because it doesn’t require to much work as long as you have the right team in place.

4. Sold Consulting To Readers

Selling my time for money is something I will most likely never to do again. Although being paid any where between £150 and £200 a hour is “nice”, please don’t judge me but I felt some clients made me dumber, along with my health not being great at times, I felt it wasn’t worth my time.

5. Tried Webinars

I tried a couple of Webinars as I had heard from several good friends that they were very profitable for them. First one made me nothing and only had 40 people turn up, this was mainly down to not promoting it hard enough, you need to email hard to your list and promote it everywhere. I also probably didn’t promote the right product on the webinar. The next webinar was more successful, unfortunately at the time I was having an operation and wasn’t able to be on it, however Lewis Howes had my back and ran the whole thing, it was a lot more successful but for the amount of promotion to my email list, it wasn’t more profitable then doing a directly email promotion, at least that’s what I found. Perhaps if I gave it more time and found more targeted products it would of gone better.

I don’t plan on using this technique again for promoting other peoples products, although do think it will be good for promoting my own products.

6. Bonus Pages

I had never promoted a high price product to my list before when Gideon Shalwick asked me to promote his $1000 video blogging launch. I like Gideon and what he represents so wanted to promote it and help him out. I decided to put together a bonus page which was a short video of me going over the product and what you get if you buy it through my affiliate link. I offered a few free bonuses and it did convert fairly well, this is something I will be trying and testing a lot more in 2011.

7. Reviewed Products

Just over a year ago I was speaking to some marketing friends and wanted to release a review blog on IncomeDiary, Ryan Deiss told me it won’t work because you can’t be always promoting great products and if you do decide to say something bad about one, then they will no longer want to work with you. He was right and I decided against it. I use a lot of different products for my internet businesses and when promoting there site direct in an email, it never converted that well because it didn’t look right. I decided to review some of the products myself, showing them how I use it and why it’s great. This increased conversions greatly and I have seen upwards of $6 a click from a review.

8. Perfected My Guide Posts

I love writing information to show people how to do things, the best thing is when it includes the reader having to buy something. This way, they see the benefits and how to do it and know the importance of it, they naturally want to go and do the same. Unfortunately they have to go buy something, perhaps some software or hire someone, when they do, they purchase through my affiliate link which earns me money.

9. Got Rid Of An Affiliate Promotion <<=== READ THIS ONE

This was great how this worked out. I had made over $7000 promoting a Twitter product on my blog, I had begun promoting it because they were friends of my Dads and had done quite a lot of work for our businesses. They were hired to do some work for me, a long story short it was some software, instead of delivering on there promise they went out and tried to sell it to my competition (all of them) and after getting turned down by everyone (people like me) they decided to launch it as there own product. I didn’t need there money that bad so decided to cancel there promotion and replace it with a different Twitter product which perhaps was better, this doubled my conversions and is earning me twice as much. What can you learn from this? Test lots of different affiliate products and don’t betray your friends.

10. Sold Advertising

If you have read much of my previous posts you would know I have a love/hate relationship with advertising. I think I have found a good model now, small amount of advertisers, privately sold, giving them results so they stay for ever. This is a work in progress and hope to have things set up by the end of March.

11. Email Marketing

I use this in two different ways, the first one is my eCourse, which has been running for over 2 years now and still remains one of my most profitable parts of my business. I provide value and monetize it, simple.

The second part is emailing affiliate promotions to my list. This has been really hit and miss, some promotions making me A LOT of money and some being really bad. I have decided to give this technique a rest for a few months, perhaps I will come back to it, but personally I believe writing more content which is well monetized and emailing my list a link to that will convert better over time. It also makes my readers love me a little more

What Will Make Me The Most Money In 2011?

Something most internet marketers don’t even consider is creating a business which you can sell one day. Most just focus on today, making as much as you can to pay for your lifestyle. I have always had it in the back of my head that I’m building a business which I can sell.

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.

Today I decided to do something different, one of the most asked questions people ask me, is how do they decide what to blog about? Well today I have got together with fellow 6 figure blogger, David Risley to answer that question.

Among the important issues we address in this podcast are: 1) choosing the right niche for your blog, 2) choosing a stand out / memorable domain name for your blog, and 3) making sure the Niche you have selected has potential to develop further down the line.

To listen to this Podcast, click the play button above the post.

David Risley and Michael Dunlop

Below are just a Few Notes from our Podcast ~ things to remembers when starting your blog:

Choosing the Right Market for Your Blog:

The first thing we suggest you do is create a list of all the things you enjoy and have a passion for. So many people out there just start a website because they see other people make money with it but know nothing about it and really don’t have a passion for the subject. A great example of this is Make Money Online Blogs. Just yesterday I had someone email me about their make money online blog and they asked me for some advise because it was their first blog. This guy will never become a success with that blog because he doesn’t know anything about his niche and his readers will see this. Instead if he enjoyed Cookery and decided to create a cooking blog then he would be able to publish content with out any problem, day after day. Its important to have a passion for the subject and to know you can provide quality content and better then your competition.

Let me repeat that last sentence:

Its important to have a passion for the subject and to know you can provide quality content and better information than your competition.

Does Your Niche Have Scope To Develop Further:

With every website I create, I always want to know I can launch a new website from it. For example, take a look at Retireat21.com which is about making money online young  ~ I then was able to easily launch a new website about making money online blogging. My next website I’m launching is about getting away from the 9 – 5 and making a living from the Internet. Doing this allows you to launch websites and they will quickly become a success because you have a proven track record. A great example of this is the Tutsplus network, they started with a freelance website and they realised a lot of people where web designers and photoshop users and wanted to learn more about better design, because of this they launched a design blog called PSDTuts. They then realised people wanted to code their designers and so they launched their next blog, NETTus which teaches people how to code and program websites. They have now launched dozens of related websites in their niche and just their tutsplus blog makes them $58,500 a month!

Using a different Angle to STAND OUT as a Blogger:

So many people want to teach, but to be honest, a lot of people aren’t great teachers. Even if you are a good teacher, the chances are, what you need to say has already been said thousands of times before. So when I decided to launch IncomeDiary I didn’t go and post the same stuff every other make money online blog does, I decided to give bloggers and Internet entrepreneurs inspiration to do more online. Taking this approaching in the same market has seen me very quickly become one of the top names in blogging. This approach can be applied to any niche, for example you could interview top golfers, golf scouts, golf coaches and then do top lists such as the top 30 earning golfers, top 30 golf swing styles.

Choosing The Right Domain For Your Niche:

There are so many things people do wrong with choosing the right domain name. The first thing we want to make clear to you is it has to pass the “Tell a Friend Test”, this test works as followed. You tell a friend your website URL and hours later they must be able to find it first try. Now most people presume a few things straight away, the first being that it is a .Com domain. Make sure when you are looking for a domain that you choose the .Com and don’t settle for second best such as a .info or .net.

The next problem I see a lot, is if your domain is taken you include a dash, for example if you wanted LearnGolf.com you instead buy Learn-Golf.com ~ Most people will remember LearnGolf.com and forget the dash in between. Another common mistake is having a long winded domain, people usually do this because they want to get a keyword in the domain such as CheapDomainNamesandWebHosting.com, yes its very long and not many people have it quite that long but I’m trying to stress the point that long domains aren’t cool. I do believe Google gives some benefits to those with keyword domains but not enough to make it an importance to have a domain with your keyword. Instead try to have something short and memorable. Let me show you two examples of how I have done this:

When creating my young entrepreneur website I straight away noticed YoungEntrepreneur.com was taken so I decided to come up with something very catchy such as Retireat21.com ~ Doing a domain like this has given me a lot more publicity then if I had the domain YoungEntrepreneur.com. Another domain I came up with – this time for a friend was SaveTimeOutsource.com ~ this domain is short, shows the benefits of Outsourcing and is catchy.

For domain names we recommend GoDaddy, they have been kind enough to provide IncomeDiary readers 10% off all their orders, whether it is domains, hosting or designs. To get your 10% off, use the Coupon Code “cjcsave10“

David Risley has a FREE Blueprint to making 6 figures online blogging, I highly recommend you download the eBook and learn from him. He also has a membership program for those who want to make more money blogging, this program is more advansed and hes realy focused on those who want to make bigger bucks, this 14th July Midnight, so check it out quick!

To Our Success in 2009,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Let us know why you decided to use your domain name and looking back, do you think it was the right decision to use it.

I have known Yaro for sometime and he has always been an inspiration – indeed, when I was starting up RetireAt21.com Yaro was one of the very first Big Names to give me an interview.

If there was ever an example of someone living the Internet Lifestyle, traveling the world and making lots of money doing it then it is Yaro. But more important that all that as you will discover in this podcast, Yaro is also very generous of spirit and a tremendous giver – and frankly a great example to all of us and how we should live our lives for the higher good.

I give Yaro and his products, especially his Highly Recommended Blog Mastermind and his more recent Become A Blogger Premium Program which he created along side Gideon Shalwick my highest recommendation.

The Become A Blogger Premium Program is the perfect Step-Up program for anyone who has followed my How To Make Money Blogging eCourse.

PLEASE NOTE: I have managed to secure a $1 trial of Become A Blogger Premium Program! – So Test It Out Today!

Enjoy this Podcast or read the transcription below – I look forward to your feedback.

Michael

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hi Yaro

Michael Dunlop: Your most known for your blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and making money blogging. Would you like to give us a brief introduction how you actually started making money from blogging?

Yaro Starak: Sure. I will give you the short version because it could be a long story otherwise. I have been making, or at least running some sort of Internet based business, for almost 10 years now. I started while I was in university. I was given a free dial-up Internet access account back in 1998. That is when I started playing around with websites.

That led me to building my first profitable venture, the first website that made money. It was a website I built on a card game I used to play as a teenager called Magic the Gathering. I built a little fan site for it and started sticking up advertisements in there.

I made up to about $500 a month, so it wasn’t huge money, but it was pretty awesome as a university student to have that income stream. So I never had to get a part-time job or anything like that.

That was during the sort of dotcom boom area, so I started getting really interested in starting some sort of startup company that hopefully would get bought out for millions of dollars.

That didn’t happen. But it did lead me to start lots of different ventures. A few years later I found myself running an online proofreading business where I wasn’t the proofreader. I basically connected professional proofreaders with university students, particularly international university students. So I had a nice little business going there.

Someone told me that blogs were great for search engine rankings, so that is actually the main reason why I started — or at least investigated — blogging, was to start one for that proofreading business.

It was a short-lived experiment because I really did not like writing about that subject, proofreading. It is quite a boring subject. But I did enjoy playing with blogging. So what happened is I just switched it over from a slash blog at that proofreading website to what now is Entrepreneurs Journey and started to write pretty much what I enjoyed talking about, which is entrepreneurship, Internet business, just business in general, a little bit of self development; that sort of subject area. And four and a half years later I am still doing it, so it hasn’t stopped.

There is so much conflicting advice out there about making money blogging. What is the biggest thing new bloggers should stay away from right now?

Yaro: Well I think the biggest mistake, or at least the biggest attitude shift that people need to make, is the idea of quick money and a get rich quick scheme sort of idea with blogging, or with anything online really.

If people are looking to start making an income, there is really nothing out there that will make you quick money. You might make quick money because you get lucky, but very unlikely will it be sustained.

So I think a lot of people enter the making money with blogging area with sort of a desperation in their attitude, which is understandable. You might have just lost your job or you hate your job and you need to find an income stream, and you have got this sense of urgency or sense of panic. And when you are in that sort of mentality, people generally tend to look for quick money.

And unfortunately that is the absolute opposite of what they should be doing. You should look at this as a business and make that decision as you do starting any business. It should be something you do a bit of research in. You should be learning a lot and not expecting instant results and building something over time.

Yaro being a tourist at Niagara Falls ~ All part of the Internet Lifestyle!

That has been my philosophy with blogging as well. It is certainly possible to start getting results quickly, but if you need to be making $2,000 by the end of the month and you are hoping that some sort of online business, blogging for example, is the way to that, then I would adjust your expectations and have a fail safe. Get yourself a part time job first. This is what I did. I had a part-time job as I built up my blog. And eventually, that blog will become a full-time income source and become much more than a full-time income source. For me today it is a multiple six figure business. It is a center point of that.

But I have had to do some work. I have had to focus on what I think are my core strengths. I have had to learn a hell of a lot about running an Internet business and how to be consistent. So there are a lot of lessons to go through, and definitely a lot of education needed. But as long as you have got the right mindset, and really I think that is what I am talking about here, is having the right mindset about what you are doing, you will succeed.

Once you learned how to make money blogging,  I understand you then decided to create a membership website teaching people exactly how you have done that. How did you go about creating your first membership website and attracting your first paying customers?

Yaro: It is a bit insidious, that is, isn’t it? You hear of people making money and then they start a program to teach people how to make money, and then they start a program to teach how they teach to make money. So it can be quite insidious like that.

But I actually just wrote an article to my blog regarding this subject. No one should every feel bad because they are making money doing something and also making money teaching somebody how to do it.

That makes a lot of sense. If I was an investor in real estate, I would make money buying and selling property, and I would also make money teaching people how to buy and sell property if I was good at it.

The key there is being good at something. So in my case, I noticed that I was actually getting good at blogging. My income started at like $500 a month, then $1,000 a month, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000.

When I started seeing $10,000 a month, I’m going, “Whoa. There is a six figure income here.” Even before that, even at $4,000 a month, this is a salary. This is what most people dream of; quit their job, write to an Internet business a couple of hours a day of work, and a lot of freedom, a lot of free time. So I thought, “Wow. This is something that people want.”

So that was when I definitely decided, “OK. I can definitely have an angle here, first of all because I have done it and I have enough to teach.” So that was the belief I had to really have first.

That is pretty important, because a lot of people try to start teaching or selling products on how to do something when they haven’t done it. So credibility and authenticity is really critical.

So once I had the proof and I had done it, I made some money over many, many months and I had quit my job and I had paid for my house, and all this sort of stuff, I really felt that I was in a situation to start teaching as well.

I should also say that I was studying Internet marketing as well. I just love the idea of information publishing and selling your expertise. So I did some research. And I had a lot of false starts. I started an e-book. It took me six months to pretty much write it or get about 80 percent of the way through. Then I started playing with the technology to deliver it and it just took so long.

And after a year of pretty much false starts, I said, “All right. This is ridiculous.” I finally had someone say, “Membership sites are the way to go,” and I saw what they were doing and I said, “All right. The next two months I am going to sit down, get the membership site out the door, and actually have a product,” because I had heard over and over again two pieces of advice from Internet marketers. One, have a list, and two, have a product.

So obviously, I need to heed those wise words as a blogger, because bloggers don’t naturally build email lists, and they rarely produce products. And I wanted to be a very successful Internet marketer, not just a successful blogger. I wanted to use my blog to take me to the next level.

So I did launch that up-logging training program. It is called blogmastermind.com. It was quite a quick rollout, actually, once I finally put the pieces together and really committed to it. I had studied Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula.” I had studied Mike Filsaime’s “Butterfly Marketing.” I had his software.

I played with some scripts. I eventually installed, for my first launch of a membership site I used Butterfly marketing to deliver the product. I did a launch. I rolled out through, I guess, sort of the Jeff Walker technique. There was definitely a lot of influence from Jeff Walker and his techniques for launching products, and a lot of influence from some other people. I modeled their membership sites. Andrew and Dell Grant Pearson; they are some well known marketers here in Australia.

So I sort of combined those two and mixed in my own sort of style. Obviously I had a blog that was successful, so I used that as my launch pad and rolled out this membership site. I opened up for, I think it was a week at an introductory price, $47 a month. I think within the first week I got almost 400 members.

I had no idea what to expect. I was looking at 50 members as what I would call successful because that would be enough people where I would be making a couple grand a month. I was happy to teach the program.

The great thing about the model I used was I didn’t have to create the product until I started the members. I only had a little bit of product created. So I just spent the next six months teaching those 400 people creating the product, and within six months I could reopen it again. So it is a fantastic model and I really do recommend it to anyone.

You just touched on creating a mailing list. Do you have any tips on how bloggers should go about doing that?

Yaro: Well am I big, big fan of AWeber. I have been using their service for almost as long as I have been blogging. They are my email newsletter service. I have got almost 60,000 people on them, on my different email lists.

It is the basis of my business. Everything is through that list. So my advice to anyone listening is sign up to AWeber. If you don’t like AWeber for some crazy reason, Getresponse would be the next choice I would recommend.

You definitely want some sort of dedicated email auto responder that is focused on that and that alone and really has good delivery, good features in terms of what it can do with segmenting email lists and using follow up sequences, and moving one person from one list to the other; all these kind of features you get with services like AWeber and Getresponse.

And then the next thing I recommend you do is get an opt-in box on your blog. That is the obvious thing to do as the first step to start building that list. Create some kind of incentivized offer like a free report, or an email course, or a series of videos or audios; something that is a clear offer of value in exchange for that person entering their name and email.

Put that box on your blog somewhere at the very top, left side, right side, or maybe use a pop up if you want to do that, or both, those sorts of things, and start getting people who are targeted onto an email list.

Even if you don’t know what product you are going to release, starting that list now will mean, when you do have a book you have written or you had someone else write, or you do a membership site, or even if you just record 10 videos and sell that for $50, you have got a list to start selling to, as well as your blog. So you have got two ways to communicate with people. That is the strongest piece of advice I can give you right now if you are just getting started in this game.

So you make money from blogging and then you teach people how to make money from blogging. And then you have taught people how to make money from a membership website. Which makes you more money and why?

Yaro: I told you it was insidious, isn’t it? And now I can start the membership site…

Michael: Wait, wait. Let me just make this clear to everyone, actually. Yaro is a good guy. I can’t count the amount of times my Dad has called me down and said, “Hey, you have got to check this thing Yaro is doing.” Yaro is one of the top guys in the business and you can trust this guy. All right. You can carry on.

Yaro: To clarify all this, I could not even start my blog…If you want to go back to the real reason I am successful is I spent, before that four and a half years, five and a half years starting different websites and businesses. Some were successful; some were not.

They gave me the experience to create valuable content to write a blog on entrepreneurship. I can tell you right now, if we really want to say which one is the most profitable business, I have to say it is my blog, because the membership sites don’t exist without the blog.

I may not derive directly as much income from the blog. It is the membership sites that, in terms of cash flow, if I was to show you my accounting books, will show you much more money. But I don’t have any credibility, I don’t have any audience, I don’t have any relationships, I don’t have anything that gave me the leverage to launch those membership sites without the blog.

So there is a chicken and egg relationship here. You have got to build the blog first or some way of getting attention, getting an audience before you can have success releasing your own products like a membership site.

In my case, to create value or get some traffic back to me, get some attention, I had to have stories to tell. If you look back at my blog, you could go back to the first two years and you could see I was talking about my proofreading business. I was talking about running an English school which was in the real world. So I talked about how to find office space to run the English school, how to get clients, how to do gorilla marketing and putting up posters to advertise my proofreading business.

Before that it was the hobby website. So I talked about how to get forums populated and building a popular forum and how to put banners on websites and make money from banner advertising. So every experience I had I started to regurgitate onto the blog, and that created the value in the first place.

So it is easy now today to sort of look at the surface outcome and the surface situation and sort of think, “Yeah, wait a second. This guy is teaching how to make money using a blog that is on how to make money, and then he is teaching how to make money blogging on a membership site, and then he is teaching how to make membership sites and how to make money off that. That doesn’t sound right.”

But there is a sequence of events and there is value. Obviously no one would give me money if they weren’t getting any value from what I teach. And honestly, I couldn’t teach what I teach if I hadn’t done it. And that is the key here.

So first impressions can be a bit deceiving sometimes. So make sure you look and try and see what people are teaching you, first of all, for free. I always tell people, “Don’t join any of my programs or anything like that until you have read the free stuff I give, because that will give you an indication whether or not I am helpful to you.”

So read my free reports. Read my blog. Watch my videos. Listen to my audios. And then you will know whether it is of value to you or not.

You mentioned earlier that you are only opened your first blogging course, Blog Mastermind, for only a few days. Is there any reason why you only opened it for a few days, and how has it impacted on business?

Yaro: Well to clarify, the very first opening of Blog Mastermind was actually opening at a price for only a few days. So the first seven days it was $47. Then it bumped to $77. But it remained open and then I closed it a few months later after that. And it stayed closed for about four or five months while I was traveling overseas. I reopened it while I was overseas.

To cut a long story short, there is a reason why you do…Well there are multiple reasons, but let’s talk about the marketing first. Scarcity is by far the most powerful trigger point as a marketing tool.

People tend to fence it and they leave things for later. If there is a sense of urgency, a sense of scarcity, a need to actually make a decision, that is more likely to trigger them to making that decision.

In my experience, making something limited in terms of availability is the best way, and obviously also having a price incentive. If they save themselves 30 percent a month joining now rather than joining tomorrow, that is a simple decision and it will force them to make a decision, too.

On top of that, there are certain strategies I teach with membership sites. I am not the only person who uses these things, but if you develop a membership site over time…Like I said before, I launch my site with maybe 10 percent of the content of the membership site ready and then I build it over the next six months.

So the other justification for offering a lower price is you have a charter group. So the first group of members is getting a cheaper rate because they are actually helping you create the product. They are going through the lessons as you create them, or whatever content you produce. If it is not a teaching program, whatever the case is, and they are giving you feedback. So they are telling you, “I like this. I didn’t like this,” and that is very valuable.

So you reward that feedback they give you with a discount. And then when you reopen it it is a complete course. So when I close my program down and then when I open it again several months later, I have an entire program ready to actually sell. So I can sell it as an upfront product as well as a membership site.

That is benefit worth nothing. You usually make more money, or you certainly make easier money, on the second run through, depending on how you go, simply because you can sell the product as a standalone product as well as a membership site. So there are all kinds of subtle things like that that go into doing a launch.

You mentioned two great pieces of advice you have given, which has obviously impacted on your business. What advice would you give to someone else who wants to start their business?

Yaro: Well the first thing is to start.

Michael: Yep. Just do it!

Yaro: Yep. It is amazing how many of these interviews you might listen to from people who are making any kind of money online, or even offline, and the first thing they will say is do something. Take action.

So let’s just assume that you are going to take action. I find there are a couple of really big sticking points people have. Mindset is one thing. This is something that is difficult, because mindset is your set of beliefs, the way you have been brought up, the people you associate with, how you think. This is something that can be very difficult to change. And often you don’t realize how your thinking is actually holding you back. So what I recommend to deal with the mindset issue is actually education is huge.

That can be for free. You can get out there and just watch what other people do, read other blogs, read free reports, study videos, study audios. You don’t want to do that forever. Definitely, as we mentioned before, take action.

So a little bit of study to give you that general awareness. This is important because there is a phrase, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and that is the first thing you have to deal with.

So that education helps you to understand what you don’t know and become aware of it. And that gives you at least the awareness. And then you can decide what part you actually do need to learn. So it is important to do that first.

Secondly, after mindset, this is just a thing for the Internet-technology. It is a necessary evil. If we want to make money on the Internet, we have to do websites. We have to use email auto responders like AWeber. There are a lot of technical issues, especially for people who are brand new to the Internet, to struggle with, because it is just scary. People are scared of HTML code, or CSS, or servers, or FTP, and all these things that, for people that are not technically savvy, just make you want to run and hide.

So the piece of advice I recommend to a lot of people, if you are resonating there with what I am saying, is to actually outsource straight away. Acknowledge the fact that you are not good with technology and say, “Listen. I want my website to look like that, but I want my photo there instead, or something like that,” and just have someone else build it for you. It is going to cost you a bit of money up front, but it will save you a lifetime of headaches.

If you are technically able, just be careful you don’t spend too much time focusing on the technology, because in my experience, I started my blog and actually installed it myself. I started playing with scripts and plug-ins. I did a lot of work in the sort of first…Well, even before my blog I spent probably three or four years playing with technology. And the first year or so of blogging I did a lot myself, and it slowed me down tremendously.

I play with my blog design and I am not a good web designer. It is not a strength of mine. So I would spend four or five days to do something that takes an hour for someone who is good at it. So it doesn’t make sense. It slows down your success. I really recommend you look for people and partner with people, hire people, outsource the people who are good at technology if that is not your strong point. And that will just accelerate your progress really, really quickly.

If you had to start all over again and you could get in a time machine, what would you tell yourself? What would you do differently to make more money online?

Yaro: To make more or to make quicker?

Michael: Up to you.

Yaro: Like I said, there were a couple of things, as I mentioned before, with the technology that slowed me down. So obviously I would outsource a lot quicker than I did now and learn to find my strengths quicker, too.

I think there was an issue, and this is emoting we all face when we don’t have a market. I noticed a lot of my students have this issue. They haven’t got a niche yet and they are trying to discover what it is they can make money with, and also what they want to spend time working on. It is tough to get those to line up together.

Often you can find a niche that is making money, but it is about some weird thing like fish tanks. And frankly, unless you are a fish tank fan, it is boring as all hell, so you are just doing it for the money. For me, that is not what it is about. It is also about really caring about the subject matter.

So there is a bit of a balance there. One of the key learnings I did, and this is only in the last couple years, was to really reflect on what it is I wanted to do for my business. What is the role I wanted? Did I want to write my content? Did I want to make my websites? Did I want to be doing regular coaching calls? Did I want to attend events and speak on stage?

All these opportunities were being presented to me and I know what I wanted to do and what my strengths are. In my case, I like to create content, but really I want to focus in writing online. And a little video, a little audio, but writing is my main thing.

So I tried to then take every other component of my business and get other people to do it, and also choose the opportunities that let me leverage that and sort of skip the ones that I don’t want to do right now.

I have said no to an awful lot of speaking gigs simply because I don’t want to travel around that much. Going back further though, if you are right at the start of this adventure, you need to figure out what your market is. So make sure you do a couple of things.

I would go back and do more extensive research on topics that can you money. I tend to do things like a war of attrition. I will pick a subject that I like and just keep hammering away at it, hoping that it will eventually make money.

I have had a couple of failures because of that. I had a website called youngactivists.com many, many years ago before I started blogging. I spent about six months just playing with the HTML to get it to look pretty like a magazine. This is before blogs were available and no WordPress or anything like that.

I launched the website. I wrote a couple of articles for it and then no one ever read it. And I lost interest completely because of that. I basically through six months worth of development work, because I was just having fun doing the development. I can talk about it now as a little case study of what not to do. That is the biggest extent of the advantage I got from doing that.

Pick your opportunities wisely. Don’t jump into anything too quickly. I would definitely gravitate to the money, but make sure you like the subject as well. I said this at the beginning, but find things you can really see a future for yourself in, unless you are just planning on building and flipping. Some people, that is their strength. They can just see where money is, create something to get in front of that money, and then just sell it. That is fine too if you love that aspect of what you are doing. I would definitely heed that if you are just starting this at the beginning of blogging or making money online, whatever you are doing at the moment.

One thing any reader of your site will know is you have traveled a lot and you live a pretty cool lifestyle. What is the top thing about being an Internet entrepreneur and living the Internet lifestyle?

Yaro: The freedom is the keyword and everyone will agree with me here. Freedom is what we all want. It is funny. People will sort of ask, “What do you want from your life?” I think there are a lot of different words to describe things.

Fran and Yaro Watching watching Nadal at the Canadian Open

Some people will say, “I want experience. That is what I want to do.” That is true. I think we all want to experience things in our life. We all want different experiences. Some of us love traveling. Some of us just want to stay home with our kids and not have to work. Some of us want to be constantly educating ourselves and hanging out with superstars, so they want to get on the speaking tour and meet people and become famous.

For all that to happen, you have to have the freedom to do so. So the reason why I love what I do is I have an income stream that is largely independent of me as long as I do a handful of core activities, which I have chosen to do and I want to do.

I love writing blog posts. And as long as I still love that, I get a lot of leverage out of it, so it builds my audience. And those people eventually, some of them, buy my products. They help me buy affiliate products. They click my advertisements and allow me to get sponsors, so I am able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from collectively 10 hours a week worth of work. So that is a fantastic return on investment there and the rest of the time is what I want it to be.

I traveled for eight months of the year last year. I really want to see a lot of places and do this sort of Internet running a business, see family in Canada, see Europe for the first time. And I did that. It was great, but now I want to stay at home and really settle in. At least this year I am not going to be doing any traveling beyond Sydney and Melbourne close to where I am now.

It is great that I have this freedom. I just bought a new apartment in the suburb I have wanted to live in for all my life. Everything is great in that regard. I have been watching a lot of DVDs, watching “Entourage.” I play tennis. There is no such thing as the weekend for me because everyday can be a weekend if I want to. But when there is a product launch to do, I love doing that too.

We just rolled out a reopening of a blog training program called “Become a Blogger” and that was a lot of fun. I love doing that as well as making the money. And let’s not forget, it is great to have people who appreciate and recognize what you are doing.

So whether there are people who just read your blog for free, whether there are people who buy your products and benefit from that, either way it is nice to have recognition for your work. So there is an element there that needs to be considered, too, especially if you are a teacher, or a mentor, or a coach, or some kind of leader in a marketplace. There is a lot of kudos there that I think people desire as a core human motivation for what you do in your life.

So those are the things: freedom, recognition, and enough money to do what you want when you want, good friends, travel if you want to; that is wonderful stuff.

Quick fire questions just to finish off this interview, just to learn a bit more about you.

What do you like most about the Internet?

Yaro: I like the globalness of it. I am amazed that I can now keep in touch with people around the world and people around the world know me. It is impressive. I land it all kinds of cities around the world and there are people who want to meet up with me just because of my blog, and that is incredible.

Like what we are doing right now. Where are you?

Michael: I am in England.

Yaro: Yeah. How far away is that from Brisbane? Like halfway around the world. So look what we are doing now. You sound like you are my next door neighbor. It is incredible.

What do you like least about the Internet?

Yaro: I would say as a health concern there are some issues with it. People tend to spend a lot of time staring at a monitor, often sitting hunched over and squinting at code. That is not good, people!

I have actually taken steps to avoid that now. I have a stand up desk and I am actually talking to you standing up right now. I am not sitting in a chair. I have got a massive screen; a 30-inch cinema display from MAC.

I don’t sit here too long because I know from the past, especially when I used to design my web pages, I got sore eyes, and that was not a good sign for a guy in your 20s. You don’t want to be getting sore eyes, so I made some changes.

Anyone listening to this definitely watch your body and your eyes when you are using the computer for long periods of time.

I know you have met a lot of really cool people. Is there anyone you look up to or model yourself on?

Yaro: Well in the Internet marketing community I do really admire a lot of guys. I mentioned Jeff Walker from Product Launch Formula. Rich Schefren from Strategic Profit. That is his company, and particularly his Internet Business Manifesto and the Coaching Program behind that. That was really good. I did that.

Yaro With Rich Schefren and Mike Filsaime

All the Internet Marketers: Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime, John Reese. Evan Pagan has been huge for me recently. I have been studying a lot of his stuff. These guys in particular — I don’t have heroes in my industry. The heroes, I think, are people you don’t see very much, the doctors, the nurses, and the people working in third world countries and saving lives. That is what I think is heroism.

But because I am interested in Internet marketing, as mentors, those guys I really connect with because we share the same interests, and I model what they are doing. I don’t even necessarily have to take their teaching program, but I study what they are doing. I study how they do it.

I might buy their product just to see how they deliver it and what they teach because it is very relevant to me. And let’s face it. We are all in the same industry, so we can be friends, and that is the community. Community is another, I think, thing that I think is really important to us as human beings. So those guys are really important to me.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

Yaro: I am going to get a bit spiritual here, but I think some of the stuff you might learn goes way beyond what we are talking about. If you study anything like Eckhart Tolle and living in the now, that basically you are in charge of everything and what happens to you…You are how you think.

Mindset is ridiculously important. You can be happy 100 percent of the time, no matter what circumstances you are in, even if you are not making a cent online, if you choose to be. I have read a lot of good advice from authors and spiritual leaders.

If you really want an interesting read, just go into Google and type, “What is the meaning of life?” And you will get some really interesting stuff there. That is where I think I get the best advice.

Thanks very much, Yaro, for this interview. Are there any plans or personal business that you would like to share with us?

Yaro: No, not really. Obviously you mentioned my blog already. If you want to find what I do, just Google my name. I find that is the easiest way. It is Yaro, and you will get my blog.

I think there is one piece of advice I will end with. If you are in any sort of teaching space, take a leaf out of Michael’s book here and get on a podcast like this or an interview and talk to someone, record it, and stick it up on your blog or your website as an interview, because what Michael is doing now is actually one of the key things I did to grow my blog. So definitely a powerful tip. I will end with that one.

Thanks Yaro — as I said in my introduction, you are an amazing inspiration and I love your comments about LIVING IN THE NOW — I shall check out Eckhart Tolle.

Find out more about Yaro at:
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Highly Recommended Blog Mastermind
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com