The post did well: 100+ Tweets, 50+ comments (half mine), and Michael even told me, “when I saw it, I was like, this is what I like.”

One reason that post did well was because I followed the advice in the post (with the exception of #5).

Another reason it did well is because I followed up with many of the 10 blog post marketing steps that I want to tell you about today.

1. Schedule Instead of Publish

I always schedule rather than publish because scheduling gives me one last chance to look over the post.

I also schedule my posts to be published at midnight for three reasons:

1. So the published on time is 00:00. I’m a little OCD about it.
2. So it has the maximum number of hours with the current date.
3. So it has a few “live-hours” before Feedburner/Aweber emails out between 7am-9am. This gives it a chance to have a few Tweets, Likes and comments before it gets emailed out.

2. Read it Again

Immediately after your post is published, read it again. You should’ve already looked it over for grammar. Now is the time to look for ways to improve the final post.

If you don’t enjoy spending a few minutes reading your post one last time, then you probably didn’t do a very good job of writing it.

It’s like fixing up an old car. Once it’s complete, if you don’t spend at least a few minutes admiring it, then you know you could’ve done better.

3. Tweet it Out

Simple enough, eh?

I don’t use any auto-tweeting tools because I like to adjust the tweet and I like to be able to say, “hey world… I just now finished this post. Come be one of the first to see it.”

4. Share on Facebook

Facebook, on the other hand, is a bit more strategic.

When you publish your blog posts on your personal profile, understand that those people are primarily your friends and family. They probably don’t care too much about the content of the post but they will be interested in the fact that you wrote it. So when you add the comment to the link, include something a bit more personal.

When you post your link on your Facebook page, know that these are people who have “Liked” your blog/brand/company. So here, add a comment mentioning the benefit of taking a few minutes to read the post.

It’s important to share the article on both your personal profile and Facebook page at the same time because people who follow both are more likely to see it. It’s the same reason you’re starting to see the links that multiple friends recommend.

5. Set Up Automatic Pinging

If you’re unfamiliar with pinging, there are a number of sites and platforms (including Google, Yahoo!, and Technorati) that allow you to automatically notify, or “ping,” them when your site is updated with new content.

If you’re using WordPress, it’s easy to set up.

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Writing and scroll down to Update Services.

In that box, copy and paste these URLs:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.twingly.com/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bloglines.com/ping

http://ping.feedburner.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

I’ve gathered this collection of pinging services over the last three years. Let me know if I’m missing any.

6. Email Broadcast

Assuming you’ve started to build your email list, email out your blog post to people who have signed up for your blog updates.

You can simply write up and send out an email with a short introduction and link to the post.

Or, depending on your email marketing service, you can automate this step.

I use Aweber’s Blog Broadcast function and integrate it with Feedburner. This way, every time I update my blog, my list automatically gets an email with the blog post between the hours of 7am-9am. I chose that time so it’s sitting at the top of their inbox when they start their computer in the morning.

If you’d like to know how to set up the Aweber Blog Broadcast function, let me know in the comments.

7. Link from Old Posts

Last week I talked about interlinking by adding links to old posts before you publish a new post. You can also do the opposite.

If you’re doing a good job of optimizing and writing evergreen content, then your old posts will continue to get traffic. An easy way to get traffic to a brand new post is to dig into your archives and link from a few relevant posts to the new post with the keyword as the anchor text.

It counts as a link and a trackback. If you’re struggling to get that first comment, consider doing this because the default settings in WordPress count trackbacks as comments. I’ve found that people are more likely to comment if they see other comments.

8. Link from Other Sites

About a year ago I was considering starting a new blog by taking an existing blog and putting it on a new domain. I asked Michael for his opinion and he told me that it’s nice to have two high-traffic sites (his being IncomeDiary.com and Retireat21.com).

One reason that it’s nice to have multiple sites is that you can link between them.

Whenever I publish a post on my new blog, I search the archives of my old blog for relevant articles until I find at least one chance to link to the new blog post.

This adds a trackback, adds a link, increases traffic, and strengthens the structure of my mini network of sites.

9. Submit it to Article Directories

If you’re serious about blogging and would like to boost your SEO, consider submitting your posts to article directories.

Here’s the process:

1. Rewrite your post so it’s new content.
2. Submit it to a few article directories (EzineArticles, ArticlesBase, GoArticles, and ArticleDashboard).
3. Include a link back to the original article or one of your article directory articles.

This process takes awhile so it doesn’t make sense to do it for every post. Once a post starts getting a fair amount of search traffic, consider going through this process to boost it even higher.

10. Reply to First Comment

The first comment is the hardest to get, unless you have a site like IncomeDiary. So you want to reward that commenter by replying to their comment as soon as you can. This does two things:

1. Rewards the first commenter.
2. Shows other commenters that you listen which encourages them to leave comments as well.

For me, I choose to reply to almost every comment simply because I like answering questions and interacting with smart people. It takes a fair amount of time, but I enjoy your comments.

If this post helped you at all or taught you something new, I’d like to know. Leave a comment below and you’ll likely see my reply within a day.

Image by: Stuck in Customs

It’s a valid question, so why don’t you put more thought into it?

You hear having a Facebook Page, being on Twitter, and writing a blog are all great supplements for your business.

You’ve set each of these things up, and even craft what you think is pretty good content, but still…

No one shows.

Believe it or not, your customers aren’t just “out there” floating around in the ether of the Internet. In fact, they might be closer to you than you think. You just have to start being a little more strategic about where you find them.

1. Go Down The Rabbit Hole

Everyone including your grandmother has a Facebook.

If they’re a little more savvy, they’ll also have a Twitter, and maybe even a secret Tumblr blog.

But what are the other lower-profile sites that are hiding your customers?

I’m not talking about the really well-hidden, backchannel type places (not exactly, anyway).  Instead I’m talking about social platforms developed specifically for a smaller group of people.

I’m talking specialized forums, blogs, and ::shudder:: yes, maybe even a celebrity gossip site.

It’s not always intuitive to seek these places and join in, but that’s exactly what you need to do in order to set up camp among the folks you need to talk to and hear from.

Don’t just rely on the top three-to-five biggest social platforms to be sufficient. Seek out your customers in the other places they’re active.

If you sell lighting equipment, find photography forums.
If you sell car parts, interact with car enthusiasts on Twitter.
If you sell Facebook Pages, get active website design blogs…

See where I’m going with this?

2. Stalk People

It’s 75% research and 150% practice.

If you’re trying to catch the eye of key players in your field, you need to know who they are and where they hang.

You also need to know how they interact with each other and how they expect to be spoken to. It seems simple, but if they’re not the type to call people “dude,” and you approach them with, “duuuude!” you look like a moron.

Use Twitter to “spy” on key influencers. Watch their tweets and get a feel for their sense of humor, their workload, and most importantly places where you might be able to offer a hand.

Many influential people will vent their frustrations, or make an offhand joke about something on Twitter, so if you’re able to either A.) offer help or B.) make them laugh, that’ll go a long way in building a relationship with them.

Same goes for your customers, at any given time you should be monitoring for “Keywords” that are related to your product or service.

Lend a hand to someone in need. (without being spammy!) Use what you find in their previous tweets to get a feel for them. Do this enough and you’ll begin to identify your “ideal” customers, so you can work only with people who you will enjoy working with.

3. Be nice to the “Little Guy”

There are no “little guys,” there are just differing levels of success.

Don’t expect that you’ll only ever need to speak to the major figures in your niche: networks are full of guys like you, and guess what? They’re the ones who make you a success.

Never forget that without the support of the average joe, there would be no big names, no key players. So, don’t be a jerk just because you don’t recognize someone’s name right away.

4. Shut Up, Just Listen

Before you start pushing content in your new networks, learn to listen.

There are tools available to help you scan the “chatter” of the internet – feed readers, alerts, keyword filters, etc.

Finding and utilizing tools that aggregate fresh content for you means you’re as well-informed as possible.

You can find and absorb content from others in your field, keep an eye on key players, and locate content belonging to other contributors that you don’t mind sharing.

Listening is always more important than self promotion. You can push content on others all day long and be ignored, or you can catch the eye of the folks whose attention you want, by re-sharing their information and helping them on their way.

5. Share Others, But Be Selective

Some folks will start following you before you’ve even said anything.

Others engage with you only if you’re a team player. No one will like you if you spend all your time massaging your ego… don’t be that guy.

Be a team player by interacting with other people’s work. Retweet it, share the link, “like” it, post it in a forum… you get the idea. Be vocal in your encouragement of other folks’ work.

Show them that you’re not just here to push your work down their throats.

When you do share, do it selectively. Three email blasts a day is too much… sometimes one a day is too much if your other conversations are lagging.

And furthermore, while you’re sharing selectively, be thorough.

If you’re going to talk about your own content, make sure you’re alerting everyone at close to the same time.

There are tools at your disposal, such as an RSS feed, that can be plugged into various profiles or networks so that your message is thoroughly saturating your networks without overdoing it.

If your RSS has posted on your behalf, don’t follow it up immediately with your own personal version.

Let your tools work for you so you can focus on building important relationships.

Bonus: Be Yourself

You have to interact.

You wouldn’t buy a cellphone from a salesman who stares at you blankly while you’re asking questions out loud in the store. So why would expect your customers to do the same?

There are literally thousands if not millions of articles on how to make money online using social media to assist in growing your business. What it really all comes down to is having a network of people who’s lives are better from knowing you. And in order to know you, you must be active.

Enrich people’s lives and help them acheive their goals, and they will remember you forever.

Try to push them into buying stuff from you, and you’re as easily forgotten as everyone else who tries to do the same.

No amount of tips, tricks or tactics can teach you how to be a good person, that you have to find within.

But the tips in this article will assist you to find the right people so you don’t end up staring at the computer screen waiting for money to appear.

What do you think? Anything I missed?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Start A Writing Schedule

I write three times a week, without fail, and I have done since I started my blog. I publish content on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday or Saturday, depending on how busy I am. It is very important for me to stick to this schedule, not because people are expecting content, because I doubt there’s too many people that do, but because I need to build a constant following. If I write everyday for a week and then not again for a month, I’m going to lose a good number of followers.Think of it like a gym schedule, if you start to let it slip, you end up not going at all, and you’ve wasted your time.

How can you make sure that you keep it up? This is pretty simple for me, because I have an agreement with my brother who owns the website with me, that I write on these days. Whenever I’m tired from work and don’t want to think about writing, then I know that there’s another force behind me that doesn’t allow me to quit. If you don’t have this, then simply telling someone close to you your plans, is often motivation enough to get the job done. It may sound silly, but as soon as someone else knows what your plan is and you’ve encouraged them to ask them about it, the fear that you haven’t done it when they ask is enough of a motivator to make sure that you do it.

Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas

A big problem that we all have is that when we’re trying to write content, is actually coming up with post ideas. I thought I would have run out months ago, but I’ve managed to keep going just fine, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, it’s not. For me, coming up with a relevant and interesting subject matter is half the struggle with writing, I’m fairly knowledgeable in my niche, so when I have that, I can write for hours. Here’s some ideas to help with your blog post ideas.

• The best way to come up with ideas yourself is to do a simple brainstorm, and think about all the sectors in your niche that you can write about.
• Browse your competitors websites and see what they’re doing so that you can get ideas and clearly see what you have to do to make your content better.
• As I have a good following on Facebook, I’ll put the question to my fans about what they want to learn, and use their ideas to shape my future content.
• I’m always taking notes on my phone so that I can immediately write any ideas that I have, so that I don’t forget them.

All of this put together, means that I no longer struggle for good content ideas. If you collect as many ideas that you can right now, then you can schedule them into the days that you want to write them, so that you keep your following entertained. I write tutorials on composition, and I know people want to learn them, but getting them to actually read them is another problem altogether. I still write them anyway, but they need to be spaced out over time so that the reader can take them in, so I currently write one once every 6-10 posts. Small attention to detail like this will help you to maintain your following.

Open a Facebook Fan Page

If you’ve bought a URL for your website then you should have a fan page on Facebook to go with it. As soon as you’ve followed the simple steps it takes to create a page, you need to pester 25 of your friends to like the page so that you can claim the custom URL that Facebook allows you to use. When you’ve got this, it’s time to stop pestering your friends. If they’re not interested in what you’re selling, then there’s no reason for them to like your page; you’re not getting anything out of it, it’s just vanity. Use your page to collect committed followers who are interested in what you have to say, and you’ll be much happier with the results. Facebook is one of the strongest marketing tools that I can recommend, and if you don’t have one then you should, but if you really want it to work well, you need help from its friend Twitter.

Open a Twitter Account

I had never tweeted in my life before I got my website up and running, because quite frankly, I didn’t see the point as all of my friends were on Facebook. But just because I didn’t use it, doesn’t mean that other people weren’t, and that it couldn’t be useful. I currently have 3322 followers on Twitter, and every single one of them has received a direct message from me in the past asking them to either view my website or come to my Facebook. I changed my message a few months ago to only direct people to my Facebook because I knew that if I managed to get them on there, I had a good chance of converting them into visitors who will regularly come to my website.

I also have a plugin installed called ‘Tweet Old Post’ which does exactly what it says on the tin, it chooses random links from my website and tweets them to my following at intervals that I set (every 5-10 hours). This helps to send traffic to my website and convert more followers into fans. I also use TweetAdder to send an automated message every 12 hours asking people to come to my fan page, and in the past month, that’s sent a total of 635 people. The automated direct message, which is also sent thought TweetAdder, sends 206 people a month, which is about a quarter of the new followers. 

Learn to Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is by far the most useful tool at your disposal when it comes to studying web traffic, and best of all, it’s completely free. Google lets you track your website’s growth, as well as where your traffic has come from, and what your visitors are doing on your website. The sooner that you have this up and running, the sooner you’ll be able to learn how you can start to make improvements. Some particularly useful tutorials are the one on Google Analytics and the one on how to track and improve the quality of your visitor. Just in those tutorials alone, you’ll be able to make changes in the way you use the program, which will help you to grow your website.

Install SEO Smart Links

This must be at least the fifth time that I’ve spoken about this plugin now, but I wouldn’t keep pestering you about it if I didn’t know that it was proven to work. You simply input keywords into the plugin and assign links to them, and SEO Smart Links takes care of the rest. All of the keywords around your site will now be linking to relevant content within your site, which helps to improve the pages per visit, and time on site of each visitor, which will ultimately make them more likely to become a fan on Facebook or click on an ad that makes you money. I update mine every week or so, but if you’ve not started yet, or you’re behind like this website was, it doesn’t take long to input all of the links. I must have put in nearly 200 links the other day and I don’t think it took me more than an hour to do. Either way, it won’t take long before you start to see an improvement.

Customize Your Header

Most people who get into blogging start with WordPress and a theme that they like the look at, but the problem with this is that you start to look like more people who have gotten into blogging. I use a WOO theme on my website, much like a lot of people, but we’ve gone to the effort of customizing a large part of it so that it doesn’t look the same as my competitors. One of my biggest competitors website looks almost exactly like mine did when I got started, but we put some time and a small amount of money into a good looking header so that we stood out. This is the first thing your customers will see, so make sure that if reflects your brand the way that you want it to, or your reputation will start to suffer, or worse, people will click away before they even start to read anything.

Write Your First Top List

There is no better way to get noticed when you first start blogging then to write a top list and gain recognition from other people in your niche at the same time. My first top list was called ‘Top 20 Photography Websites’ (something I knew very little about at the time), and because of the nature of the post, I had a lot of people link to my website. Because all of these websites have social media outlets, or are just a single person, the majority of them decided to share their new accolade, which in turn provided me with recognition. Spikes in traffic do great things for your website, but that’s another subject really. The point is, it gives you a big push in the right direction when you’re first starting out. I would makes sure that you have at least 10 articles up before you publish this list, and your website doesn’t look like a bog standard theme, otherwise you may find that you’ll have trouble with people taking your post seriously. Also, make sure you read the Income Diary post on how to write the ultimate top list, if you want it to look awesome.

Network With Other Bloggers

This is a lesson I learned early on when I first decided it was time to write a top list, but didn’t know who to include. The writing of my first top list opened me up to a world of competition in my niche, as well as opportunity to make some friends too, it really depends on how you look at it. I’m of the opinion, that so long as no one is stealing content off of each other then there’s no reason why we can’t help each other out, even if it’s just because we hope the people will scratch our backs too one day. When you recognize other bloggers, they start to recognize you too. I regularly tweet content from other people and hear back from them, and when I do want to contact them, I find the best way to do so is through Twitter. You’ll find that a lot of people use Twitter for their marketing and as a way to interact with their following, so it’s pretty easy to get their attention like this.

Share Your Content

When I first started, views were hard to get, so I had to work to receive them. Sharing your content takes very little time and can provide you with plenty of traffic that lasts. When I write a top list, I submit them to websites like Reddit where they typically do pretty well and send lots of traffic my way. Another step that I took in the beginning that still provides me with traffic is tutorial submission websites such as Good-Tutorials.com. They rank well in Google, so even when you don’t, you’re being found by people who are searching for what you’re writing.

Writing a blog isn’t as time consuming as you may think and so long as you put in the ground work at the beginning and come up with regular content ideas, the website will do a lot of the work for you. I only spend about 12 hours a week working on my website, and I want to show you that it’s possible for you to do the same.

8 Hours – Writing

Content is king. I do my absolute most to write the best content for my niche on the internet, and that’s why I dedicate so much time to writing. Even more important than writing though is planning, as in some cases it can literally halve your writing time. I’ve written before in detail about how important planning is, and I really can’t stress it enough, because when you start writing with no idea how you’re going to structure your post or what to include, it can take a lot longer.

I work Tuesday – Friday for other people, so I have the weekend and Monday to work for myself. I try to get all the writing out of the way on a Monday so that I’m set up for the week and not having to work evenings, and this usually works pretty well. It’s important to treat it like every other work day, and get to your computer at a sensible hour. Because I know much more about photography, I can write content pretty easily once I’ve thought of an idea, and you should be able to too, if you knowledgeable about what you’re writing about.

I find more than anything that half of the work is done as soon as I’ve thought of an idea that I can write about. I’m pretty good at writing, but once I’ve got an idea, or even just a vague title, I can start planning what I want to include in that post and build it up from there.

It’s hard coming up with good ideas all the time, but the trick is to keep thinking along the lines of what you know the most about, what people are asking to learn and what other people in your niche are writing about. I subscribe for about 50 RSS feeds of people in my niche and take inspiration from a combination of what they’ve written. It’s good to see what’s out there because then you know what you have to compete with and how well you have to write to create better content than them. That’s always my goal, because if you’re not writing content better than everyone else, then what’s the point in writing at all? My website survives the way it does because my readers stick with me after they’ve read a couple article, knowing that I’m writing important and relevant content.

2 Hours  - Original Content

For me, this is photography, but for you it may be something completely different. When I say original content, I don’t mean text, I mean something else that sets you apart from the competition. This is relevant to everyone, even if you’re just spending some time making a diagram, or arranging an interview with someone – there’s always something that you can do.

I spend 2-3 hours each Thursday night either going out and taking photos by myself or seeing a model who will pose for my photos. I like to keep the photos fresh on my website so that I’m not constantly using the same ones over and over again. This means that everything on my website is 100% original and 100% the product of my hard work, which is starting to gain me some recognition. I would say I get at least 1 comment a day on my website, Facebook or Twitter, thanking me for my hard work and I even get comments from people asking where I get the photos from. This small step doesn’t take long, but dramatically improves your content and sets you apart from your competitors.

1 Hour – Twitter

This used to take me at least 5 hours a week, but I’ve got the majority of it automated now. I now follow people in my niche, follow back new followers, unfollow people who don’t follow back, tweet relevant content and tweet links to my own site and Facebook, all automated from 1 single program – TweetAdder. This now takes a lot of stress and time out of my work and allows me to focus on a more personal side of Twitter where I can interact with other readers.

The Twitter side to my marketing is actually pretty good fun and doesn’t feel like work, as I get to watch my following grow everyday and it’s a great way to interact with readers because not only do your readers get something out of it, but potential followers see that you’re actually human and not just an automated tweeting machine, which makes them more likely to follow you. One of my favourite parts about Twitter though is that I can use it to get attention from much more important people in my niche remarkably easily. Just today, I tweeted to someone with over 50,000 followers who’s at the top of their game and they replied. This means that they’re starting to notice me and over 50,000 people were tweeted my name.

30 Mins – Facebook

I treat Facebook very differently then my Twitter as I only post my own original content and photos, and I have the ability to have group discussions. I’ll post 2-3 photos a week on the fan page, along with the 3 tutorials that I’ve written and information about what I’ve been up to and what I’m doing next. I check my fan page multiple times in a day, but that’s merely out of interest, I don’t really do much work there, I wait until it’s the right time of day to start sharing content and discussions.

30 Mins – Analytics

The last thing that takes up any real time is checking my Analytics to see how well I’m doing. It’s important to know whether you’re having a good day or a bad day as there’s a lot that you can learn from it. I’ve learnt a lot more about what days to post and what time of day I should be posting to ensure that I’m getting regular visitors to my site. It also helps to know their traffic sources and amount of traffic because it’ll tell you something about the sort of content that you should be writing.

On days where I experience a large boost in traffic, it helps to know right away so that I can make the most of it. I can target the page and perhaps add a link to content that I want them to see, or I’ll re-promote relevant content in the featured post slider on the home page which will help to ensure that the visitors are spending longer on my site, and maybe even spending money. When you know that a particular site has sent you a load of traffic, then it’s always good to contact them or promote them too as they’ll recognise this and be more likely to promote you again in the future.

Summary

I hope I’ve shown you that it’s possible to make a website work and grow without having to work on it full time. It’s not really a full time job, it can just be a little bit of extra income, until it’s paying you enough money to go full time. I’m not really making much money at it yet, but it’s not taking me much time either so I can still go off and pursue other interests while my website is growing. That’s something I do a lot of, in fact, I’m going to Croatia for 11 nights at the end of the week, I just need to write a few blog posts before I go so that I can forget about writing while I’m out there.

Another video post today along with an enhanced video transcript (make sure to read). Today I cover the exact strategy I used in March 2009 to generate $5000 in my first month with this blog in.

I am enjoying creating these videos. I was just looking at some videos I made a year or so ago. Wow, I have come a long way in the last 12 / 18 months – from my original stumbling and nervousness.

Using the whiteboard as an aid has been a huge help to me – I strongly recommend it to anyone who is just starting making videos or even if you are an established YouTuber.

Some People Don’t Want To Get It

But before I go on I wanted to go back to a post I did a little while ago called Are You Too Clever For Success?. Readers may remember how some ‘sad people’ seem to only be able to feel good about themselves by putting other people down and I like most bloggers get the occasional negative and even offensive email.

These sort of comments ‘amuse’ me for want of a better word and usually I just delete them but I know from the feedback that some of you have sent me that it is an issue – so I just thought I would highlight that even pro-bloggers like me get negative comments such as this one about my last video.

Amusing Blog Comments

This person really doesn’t like me. I did think to myself could I be missing something and is this sincere feedback but considering they provided a false email and web address I must assume it is not.

The first part of their comment is somewhat valid – because British people pronounce NICHE differently to American people and in my videos I used the American pronunciation – mainly because most of my readers are outside the UK. So this commenter was really just showing their ignorance on this point.

However the remainder of their comment was a lot more personal. I have no issue with people taking a personal dislike to my mannerisms, I think that is a common enough thing – not everyone relates to everyone but I subscribe to my Irish Grandmothers view that if you cannot say something good about someone then say nothing at all.

I have a friend of mine who says:

If you are not getting up someones nose, you are not trying hard enough

Not sure I 100% agree, but you get the point. Some people (often so called well meaning people) will always try to steal your dreams – accept that, get over it and move on. I also think the more successful you become the more comments like this you receive.

By the way – note I said ‘negative email’ — this is quite different from a critical email that is genuinely sent from the heart in an effort to help / assist.

There is a lot of information in this video and the transcript includes even more. I have several more videos planned but you can help me by Contacting Me with suggestions for future video topics or commenting below.

Also because of the Title of this video “How I Made $5000 in The First Month With a Brand New Blog” I would just draw you attention to my Earnings Disclaimer. It is a bit sad that we have to do this but my Lawyer says it is best to always point out that just because a dyslexic college drop out like me did it – it doesn’t mean other people can do it! Duh!

Finally I encourage you to check out the IncomeDiary YouTube Channel. You can also Friend me and Subscribe to my channel there.

To All Our Successes

Michael Dunlop

PS: If you enjoyed the video you will also enjoy:

The True Story Of My Overnight Success
AND
My Personal Story, How I Created IncomeDiary.com

Video Transcript – with additional links and resources

Today I want to talk to you about something really cool – how I made $5,000 in my first month (March 2009) with IncomeDiary.com

Now the concept behind it is really simple, and something you can all do. I started with an idea. People wanted to know how I was doing what I was doing with RetireAt21.com. They wanted to know how I got it up, how I was making money, how I was getting traffic and everything.

I listened to them, I provided the solution, and pretty much monetized it, which is what I’m going to teach you here.

The first step is taking action.

You need to do something about it, you’ve got to get the site up. Everyone has these ideas, but many just don’t act. So the first thing I did was, once I got the blog up, I bought a WooTheme from Woothemes.com, and I uploaded it.

After that, I built momentum, which is hugely important. Because a lot of people don’t build momentum. By the way, I should stop for a second and tell you that I did everything I needed in pretty much three or four days, so don’t think I had this huge planned launch.

I was very busy with my Twitter accounts.

At that time I was adding up to a thousand people to each account per day. I had one for my Michael Dunlop, I had for Retire at 21, I had one for Income Diary.

I was just blitzing it. I was adding as many people from the accounts that I knew I wanted to follow. For example following people in my niche such as pro-blogger John Chow – anyone like that. I got their followers and followed them. If they followed me back – Wicked! If they didn’t, I un-followed them.

And then I start following more people again, regular Tweeting. People came to my profile to see my site, see that I had something coming, and they got excited. I’d Tweet that “I just interviewed this person” or “I just put up this top list” or “Watch out for this….” etc.

Once I did that, obviously I had to get the content. I was doing interviews and I was doing top lists.

TOP TIP: Interview people who have a significant following.

So for example, I interviewed John Chow. John has a great following. If you do a good interview, he’s likely to Tweet about it – bringing you more followers in return.

I also interviewed Joel Comm. He’s got a huge following and he Tweeted it out. That got me even more followers. That’s the huge benefit of social media such as Twitter and Facebook – you can get to a huge audience really quickly. It never has been easier to become an Online Celebrity or Authority in your Niche than it is right now.

So after that I did some top lists with TaskUs.com. I asked them to do a top list on the top 30 bloggers, the top 30 webmasters, the top 30 anything. Whatever came to my mind, they did for me. We got those up. And pretty much after that I started building my eCourse.

Here’s what I did different than everyone else.

A lot of people say: “Hey, check out my free report or Check out my free ebook.”

Great ideas, but I wanted to offer something different and better to get them to join my list. I also needed to make sure people really took action. I didn’t want to just get them on my list, I wanted them to take action.

So what I did is offer a seven day free eCourse . An eCourse that frankly was better than some products people were paying good money for.

I got myself an AWeber Email Marketing account and set up my eCourse to be delivered via an autoresponder.

Once people opted in / joined my eCourse the auto-responder would start sending them an email every day for a week. The course was very much step by step – “Day One, installing your blog” – “Day Two, adding a theme, doing some changes,” – Day Three: monetizing” etc

Every day subscribers would look forward to the next addition. I did this over a year ago, and even today I get emails from people saying, “Hey, Michael, is there any chance I can get Day Two now, rather than wait to tomorrow?” Subscribers took action straightaway. Because I was like, “Look, take action on this today, and then you’ll be ready to do tomorrow’s assignment tomorrow.”

An Important Point

When I started my eCourse I did not have all 7 days ready – indeed any of you who were taking my Blogging eCourse a year or so ago will know that the ‘daily additions’ did not come Daily to start with. The point here and one I think that trips up a lot of well meaning people is that I did not wait for PERFECTION before getting started. So what, the course was not finished – but the most important thing was to get started. Someone told me recently that this is called the “Good enough is good enough principle‘ or the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim‘ principle. I somewhat embarrassingly have to admit this is usually the way I do things.

Of course if it is a physical product and people are paying money for it you have to deliver but in my case and in most start up bloggers cases the most important thing is to get started – TAKE ACTION (My first point in the video)

By the way – working with AWeber is probably one of my best business investments ever. AWeber makes life easy for anyone who wants to manage an email list.

When people opted in for the eCourse on of the first things they saw was this page:

http://www.incomediary.com/thankyou.html – which included links to Website Hosting Comparisons.

People immediately got a chance to take action on their Dream of being a Blogger.

If you visit my Thank You Page you will see I am promoting domain registration, website hosting and blog themes. But you can’t just assume people are going to take your word on these suggestions – which is why I include comparisons – to allow my subscribers a chance to ‘shop around’. Of course I make a clear recommendation but there are other options also.

Fortunately just about every supplier of domains, hosting and blog themes have an affiliate program – so even if the subscriber does not go with my recommendation there is a good chance I will earn a commission.

Now getting people on the list is one of the most important things. So what I did was I actually got a separate page. I made a page in WordPress and I called it “Creating a Profitable Blog” (A rather long Squeeze Page is what I would call it)

This was an Alternative Optin Page for the eCourse – but the difference here was that visitors got a chance to take action – buy domains, hosting themes etc – before they even signed up for the eCourse.

I also emailed all my other lists (eg RetireAt21 list) about this page. I would explain that “You may have to spend some money if you want to make some money” – not a lot of money just a little if you really wanted to be serious about blogging. (Less than $100). I included special offers on domain names and offers on hosting such as get your first months hosting for 1 cent and coupon codes. (People love coupon codes)

This worked amazingly well.

Pretty much one of the reasons it worked so well was because I showed my readers exactly what I’m doing. I was not asking them to do anything that I had not done myself.

Another huge benefit of having a squeeze page, or a separate page on WordPress, is people have a link they can share with friends if they wish to recommend your eCourse. It is great when people Tweet things like “Check Out Michael Dunlop’s Free Blooging eCourse” and link to this page.

I also mentioned this page in my blog posts – for example if I did a Top 30 Bloggers list I would finish it with a link says:

“Follow in their footsteps, check out my free course”

Then of course, once they’ve opted in, there’s a thank you page saying, “Thank you for joining. Make sure you check your email. Oh, by the way, check these products out.”

Then there is the all important NO LEAKAGE RULE.

A lot of bloggers have a blog roll – that links out to other blogs. We don’t have that on IncomeDiary.com

Or they have links to the Top Commenters in the sidebar – again not available on IncomeDiary.com

Links like this represent Leakage. If I compare my two biggest sites – Retireat21.com and IncomeDiary.com – Retireat21.com has much more leakage with advertisers etc but actually produces much less income for me despite having 3 times the traffic.

People get distracted – click on ‘competitors’ links and you lose an opportunity to earn commission. Yes, of course it is nice to have regular advertisers and it is a lazy way to make money but it is not really the best way to make money and as I have proved with IncomeDiary.com the less LEAKAGE the more you earn.

Income Diary outperforms hugely, and Retire at 21 has like three times the traffic.

The reason there is LEAKAGE with most blogs is because people get distracted. If you have advertisers – they will naturally check them out. That is Your ‘competition’ that they’re going to. They will also check out your blog roll. Yet again, mostly ‘competition’, you are directing them to. And then again top commenters are often your competition.

So you don’t really want to have all that stuff because they’re going to get distracted and start going in different directions. For the money that you get, it’s not worth it. So I got rid of that and I made sure that they either went to my opt-in page, or if they didn’t, then they left the site. That was all I wanted.

I have to admit, I wasn’t the best blogger when I started this, and for me to create all this with just a few days of work to start with is quite amazing.

I really think anyone could follow in my footsteps and do the exact same thing or better if they would just be prepared to take ACTION

Good luck to everyone – let me have you comments and in particular your suggestions for future videos.

Remember - The Gurus charge for this kind of info. You get if for free as a Subscriber to IncomeDiary.com

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The True Story Of My Overnight Success
AND
My Personal Story, How I Created IncomeDiary.com

Hi Everyone,

Today’s post is about that most important ingredient of Blogging Success – WEBSITE TRAFFIC.

A website without visitors is a very lonely place

I am often asked: ‘If you had to start over online, from scratch – what would you do to build up your traffic again as quickly as possible’

A very good question and one I have been giving quite a bit of thought to recently, especially as I have started to coach others in my new Blog Mastermind program.

So assuming you are starting from scratch or your funds are limited here is my Kick Start Strategy For Bloggers – both in video and an expanded transcript below.

My Kick-Start strategy can be explained in 3 words:

Twitter, Facebook, Lists

This strategy allows you to leverage your time and talents for maximum results with out having to spend a lot of money and it is my Marketing Strategy of choice for all new bloggers and even established bloggers for that matter.

I say it on the video and I will say it here again — this strategy is SIMPLE but don’t let the fact that it is simple put you off. Simple WORKS!

Of course if you have money to invest or you already have an established blog then the ‘rules’ are slightly different – but for a start-up blogger this is the way to go.

Enjoy the video and make sure to read the transcript. I have included some extra info in the transcript.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

very best wishes

Michael

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Enhanced Video Transcript (Includes bonus tips not in Video)

Today I want to talk to you about something really cool. It’s about how to get 1,000 visitors in a day. One of the main reasons a lot of people fail is because they don’t have traffic, and they just give up, they get fed up. I was working with one of my students today and he wanted to know what my recommended ‘FREE TRAFFIC’ Formula for new bloggers in 2010 was?

That is what this video is about and the formula is simple:

Twitter, Facebook, Top Lists

I’ll explain Twitter first:

The first main thing you have to do with Twitter is set up a profile. It may sound a bit simple and you know, “Duh,” but it’s not. You’re going to have to have a profile picture. Don’t just set up your profile, just create an account, and just start tweeting, thinking people are going to follow you. To get rapport with your audience and a quality FOLLOW (rather than an automated Follow) you need a profile pic and quality interesting tweets.

Set up your profile so you show where you live, something interesting about you.

For me that could be I live in Sussex, England, I am dyslexic, I am a Young Entrepreneur and I make 6 Figures online aged 21

So once you’ve got your profile, you want to start adding people.

There are a number of ways to do this – including automated ways (which Twitter frowns on) and of course the manual way. I will admit I have used automated methods in the past – but these days I am more selective and while I still use tools, I use them to help me manage the twitter accounts easily. (Tools for example that allow me to forward plan tweets).

When I first started I found some of the biggest names in my niche (Blogging and making money online) and I followed whoever they where following.

Now, when people see “Michael Dunlop’s just added you,” they’re going to see this really a cool guy, offering some cool stuff, and will think, “Hey, I really want to follow him.” They’ll follow me back, and they’re going to check out my site, and check out what I have to offer, and, obviously, see my regular tweets. To help manage Twitter I use software out such as Twitter Adder and Market Me Tweet. (Highly recommended you check out)

The next thing is, of course, start tweeting. So many people have Twitter accounts but for some reason, they just don’t tweet. The more you tweet, the more traffic you’re going to get. If you tweet twice a day, say you get 100 visitors each time you tweet, that’s going to be 200 visitors. If you tweet 10 times a day, you’re going to get 1,000 visitors. (Simplified – but the more you tweet and the more interaction you have with your followers and the more respect they have for you – the more traffic you will get)

A lot of people only tweet while they’re awake – but with software like Market Me Tweet you can plan to tweet 24/7. If you’re tweeting while you’re asleep, that’s a whole audience that probably don’t get your regular tweets.

Using software to Follow, Un-Follow, Tweet and mange your Twitter account saves some much time and frankly if you are serious about Twitter then you will need to invest in these inexpensive tools. My personal favorite is Market Me Tweet, the only Twitter Application that allows you to Brand, Market, and Manage, all in one!

There is also Twitter Adder which I have had great success with in the past. Both Market Me Tweet and Twitter Adder allow you to add more people, but Market Me Tweet also gives you a bunch of extra branding options.

This is Important: Make your tweets interesting, newsworthy, fun, inspiring – and naturally include links to wherever it is you want your followers to visit. Personal Fun Tweets are also OK – but remember at this stage, your goal is to get traffic to your website.

Facebook and Facebook Fan-pages

This is something that’s really starting to take off as a method of Traffic Generation. You have a popular blog – create a Fan Page for it

You want to create a fan page, telling a bit about you, and your website, and why to become a fan. Invite all your friends. When your friends join, they’re going to see that you’ve joined this group, and then think, “Oh, my friend’s joined, I’m going to join that.” And then it just sort of goes viral and spreads.

There are other ways to grow your Fan Page quicker such as this tip I learned from Joshua March of http://theiplatform.com when he spoke at Yanik Silvers Young Mogul Day. He said to find someone high profile in your niche, a bunch of them, and ask them to become a fan, because all their followers will then see them becoming a fan and a good number are likely to follow your lead.

Again – as I mentioned above this only works if what you are blogging and tweeting about is interesting, newsworthy, fun and inspiring. No big name is going to become your Fan unless they can see there is something worth being a Fan of.

Do this right and literally overnight, you’ll get hundreds and hundreds of people joining your fan page. Something really powerful you should consider doing.

The next thing is, obviously, posting messages. Like, again, with Twitter, so many people have Facebook and Twitter, they just don’t post. Constantly post. Not just your own stuff. Tweet other people’s things and Facebook other people’s things, and they’ll then do the same for you.

More Help with Fan Pages:

Facebook – Create a Page

How to Make a Facebook Fan Page

8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page

Michael’s Power House Of Traffic – Top Lists

Now the really powerful stuff starts. I shall pull my sleeves up for this one.

Top Lists, Top Lists, Top Lists!

If you have been following me you will already be familiar with some of my Top Lists (and I am including links below)

For me the list could be “Top 30 Bloggers.” or “Top 30 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs,” or “Top 30 Female Entrepreneurs.”

But lets say you are in the Food or Restaurant Niche – then the lists could be: “Top 30 Celebrity Chefs,” or “Top 30 Restaurants In London,” Or of in Golf Niche it could be “Top 30 Richest Golfers,” or if it is Celebrity Niche it could be “Top 30 Richest Latino Actors.”

The next thing you want to do is either create the list yourself or outsource it. I admit it – a lot of my lists are outsourced but when I started I of course could not afford that and did all the work myself. Lists can be quite Time Intensive (several days work some times) so I uses services such as TaskUs.com. Or you could use SitePoint.com or DigitalPoint.com to find somebody there who would go and do the work for you.

Beware – sometimes the first language of the person doing the work may not be English and you may have to do some editing – but you can be paying as little as $50 for this List Creation – so don’t expect complete perfection.

Make sure you’re clear with what you want. Give them an example. Like, “Here’s an example of who I like, they’re worth this much, I want a picture this size,” and just tell them how many of them you want. You may want 10, you may want 20. For some of my lists I ask for 500 [laughs] . You make it up, they’ll price you accordingly.

Also note that while I outsource the Research the Introduction, Title and Promotion of the list is all done by me.

Now, something I have to point out to you is the importance of using software such as Tweetmeme, which basically counts every time someone tweets it, and it also gives a button for people coming to the page to tweet it, as well. Now, this is really cool, because more people that tweet, the more people that will tweet. Because they’ll think, “Oh wow, everyone is tweeting, I should join as well.” By association, they’ll feel like they’re part of it more.

Imagine if overnight, there was were 1,000 retweets on your post and 1,000 people who retweeted had just 100 active followers then thats a potential audience of 100000 people. I have had some of the biggest stars on Twitter Re-Tweet my posts – and once I was even on Trending Topics for a few moments (which is the top ten things spoken about on Twitter at that moment) – so hopefully you see how powerful this can be.

I sometimes think it is amazing all the things I accomplished before Twitter came along, but these days with Twitter and Facebook so much more can be accomplished quicker – especially when combined with Top Lists.

Prior to Twitter my online promotion has got me interviewed by sites and newspapers around the world. I was in AOL News. I was in Yahoo! News. I was PC Mag and all these other ones, and even in some French sites and Brazilian newspapers. Looking back it was ridiculous that this teenage kid could do so much – but I did and mainly it was because of the power of Top Lists and the way I hustled traffic.

Now with Twitter and Facebook it has never been easier to become a Global Sensation.

It may seem these three strategies are really simple. That’s exactly right. It’s just the fact that so many people don’t implement it. And some of the best things in life are just that simple and great [laughs] .

So I hope you enjoyed this video and I will speak to you soon.

Below are Links to some of my Top Lists — hopefully they will inspire you to create your own Top Lists

Some of My Winning Top Lists:

50 most influential bloggers of 2009 1342 Tweets and 155 comments

20 websites that will make you a better blogger 524 Tweets and 67 comments

Top Earning Websites 557 Tweets and 160 comments

30 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs 464 Tweets and 95 comments

Top 30 Female Internet Entrepreneurs 463 Tweets and 111 comments

Top Earning Blogs 457 Tweets and 221 comments

Back In February while waiting for my flight home to the UK from Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar, I met James in Starbucks and we sat down to have a coffee. He shared with me how he was making a lot of money with email marketing and how I could be to. In March I started a new blog and earned over $4000 profit, this month I am on course to do $7000 and aim to do $10,000 next month. If you do not read every single word James has to say, then you are missing out big time! If you would like to learn how I earned over $4000 in profit from a one month old blog, check out my FREE eCourse!

I really like James suggestion about getting started with blogging:

“Turn off the television for an hour or two a day and start blogging or creating an Internet marketing business of some kind that helps people”

Note two things here:

1) Start of small — don’t give up the Day Job but rather use some of that time you may have ‘wasted’ to start creating a blog
and
2) It is about HELPING people. You help yourself by helping other people.

James also goes on to explain how ‘addictive’ this making money online can be once you start making your first few dollars. I can certainly relate to that.

This is our first audio interview, we have plenty more to come, below is a transcript of the conversation. If you enjoyed James’s interview then definitly check his personal blog out, his FREE Report and his membership site out, which helps 1000′s of people make money from the internet.

Enjoy the Interview and as always I look forward to your comments.

Very Best Wishes

Michael

James Schramko Audio Interview and Transcript

Press play to begin streaming the audio.

So, what’s the biggest thing you think people don’t get with email marketing?

James:  With email marketing, I would say that they are, A, not doing it. That’s probably the most common one, because there’s a lot of focus on direct linking or driving affiliate traffic to offers, but they forget that that’s a sucker’s game. They really have to be building a list. Using affiliate marketing to build a list is the key to the whole thing. So, A, they’re not doing it. B, if they do it, they’re probably focusing on volume instead of quality or relevance or segmented lists.

Right. And do you think that a lot of people should be using email marketing for their blogs and their website, or is it only good for certain niches, or what?

James:  I think they should only do it if they want to make lots of money. [laughs]

^^ James Schramko ^^

And how do you suggest people build their lists to make all this money?

James:  You have to create something of value, so something that’s genuinely good, something that you could charge money for, and then give it away. That’s the easiest way I know.

When we were talking in Washington, I had been thinking about doing some type of ecourse. But, once we got to talking and you showed me just how much money you were making from one of the worst design blogs I’ve seen, and how well you’re doing, I straight away got home and I started implementing a couple of your ideas. And it’s worked for me. So I think the big idea is: should people be monetizing their websites with advertising banners and text links, or should they be just using it to build a list and then monetize the list instead?

James:  I think you can do both, because if you keep creating valuable stuff, then people will come back. You only need to get them on the list the first time they come. So that way, when you do have links, and if you steer people into the path that you’d like them to take, they’ll select the path that suits them. So I think you can do both. You can actually get paid to build your list. Some people call it selfliquidating offers. But the great thing is it allows you to actually send paid traffic to your blog as well, not just rely on searchengine optimization.

Yeah, that’s what I found. When I created my funnel, there was nowhere else for them to go. The only way they’re going to leave the site is if they either press the X or if they sign up for my list and start checking out the things I recommend. So, definitely an opportunity for me to start trying out other advertising programs. So I think the main question I want to ask you is, you’re making this money, but what is the Internet lifestyle? It’s what everyone’s always asking. It’s like, what do you do with your money? What do you spend every day doing? What makes you tick?

James:  Well, I would probably do the same sort of stuff that I do now, regardless of the money. For me, I like to sleep in and not worry about schedules too much, so I really don’t keep much of a diary. And I just do what I feel like, and spend time with the family. We’re about to go on a whole vacation. My four kids, my wife and I are all going over to Disneyland and Universal Studios, and then we’re going to go down to San Diego and go to SeaWorld and the zoo.

^^ James Schramko, Yanik Silver, Cameron Johnson and Chris Zavadowski at Zero G ^^

And for me, that’s satisfaction and that’s freedom, to be able to do that instead of having to work. It’s almost a year since I’ve quit working fulltime, and it has been like a holiday.

James:  If you could imagine just retiring. I know it’s hard for you because of your age. You haven’t spent a decade slugging away for someone else in grueling work conditions…

James:  And you’ll never have to, either, with the skills that you have. But in my case, I worked my butt off in my career. Every year of my work was like two or three years for some normal person who wasn’t busting their chops, because I was in a seniormanagement role. I had a lot of pressure to be the sole breadwinner for my family for the last 14 years, and I support a family of six.

So I worked so damn hard, for me, this is just like absolute relief, to get rid of, I call it a lead backpack. It’s just like getting out the scissors and just chopping the backpack straps and letting that lead fall of your back. And you don’t have to worry. There’s no stress. You may put on a few pounds in weight…

James:  But, actually, the lines in your face start to disappear, and you smile more and you can laugh, and you don’t get as angry as you might have gotten when things don’t go your way. You can just laugh it off. Because what’s the worst thing these days, if you can remove all the issues and worries that people have around money, and if you can remove all the stress factor involved around having employment?

I mean, I read some stupid magazine today that said the numberone asset in your life is your job right now, in economic hardship. What a crock. That’s like the numberone prison sentence, in my book.

^^ Barry Dunlop and James Schramko ^^

If you’re dependent on someone else to hand you a check every week, then you have to get yourself out of that situation ASAP, because they control your life. So, for me, it’s about control and freedom.

Brilliant. And how did you make this transition from working all these hours, and then going from that to Internet marketing?

James:  Well, I’ve spent a lot of time learning Internet marketing in the three and a half short years that I’ve been doing it. I spent hours every single day. Instead of watching TV, I would come home from work, make dinner, spend a little bit of time with the kids, and then I’d go up to my office and I would work until I’d fall asleep. And I’d wake up with “QWERTY” stamped on my keyboard in the morning, after the alarm clock, and then haul myself off to work for the day.

James:  So, there’s no substitute for timing. With this one, there is a big learning curve, and you have to apply yourself in the beginning, and expect a lot of hurdles and roadblocks and technical issues to come up. And the other thing is, I just got my eyes around every single piece of information I could find related to this topic. I wanted to devour it and implement it and understand it and know how it works.

I think that’s what happened when we collided at Starbucks is, we pulled up our laptops and we had a very similar subscriber base. You had a very attractive blog, and I had a pretty ugly one. But my average customer value was stratospheric.

James:  And I can still see the shock on your face. [laughs] It was a good moment there, that realization that no matter what you’re doing and I always work to this philosophy  there’s always someone else out there doing a far superior job than you are. So you have to dedicate time to understand what that might be and seek it out. So that means reading a book or listening to a telecall or trying out new things. You’ve got to assume that there’s someone doing a better job than you are.

So, in my case, I realized that I could probably do a better job with the design. And while you’ve been implementing your monetization system, I’ve been running a design contest and coming up with themes, and I’m about to implement that.

So the thing is, we’ve both learned something from each other that will increase our profit, because we’ve been openminded to accept that there is someone else doing a better job out there.

And where would you recommend people look for better people doing better things, and so you can network with them, learn from them?

James:  I think if they know their market, there will always be leaders in any market that are obvious and prominent, or preeminent, as Jay Abraham would say. You want to go and find out who’s preeminent and observe them, see what they’re doing  not necessarily what they’re saying, but what they’re doing. And you can’t follow someone’s footsteps exactly, because everyone has a different personality and style. But I find people whose style that I like and whose business model that I think looks really cool, and I tend to follow them more than people that I don’t relate to or I think are doing the wrong thing.

I get a really strong gut feeling that a lot of marketers are taking completely the wrong direction, so I just abandoned all following of that. I don’t go down a path that looks like it’s a shady path. I look for people who I look up to and I think are doing a terrific job in their field, and then I’ll try and blend those skills into my stuff.

Brilliant. And another question for you is, when I started my Make Money Online blog, there was hundreds, maybe even thousands of other blogs just like me. And when I looked at all the top blogs, I found they were all just using the same advertising programs and the same monetization techniques. So would you say you shouldn’t always copy people; you should just maybe think out of the box or find other ways?

James:  Yeah, sometimes you have to take the blinkers off. I mean, that’s pretty much what happened between us, isn’t it?

James:  Because you’re in the blog scene, so you’re doing what bloggers do. And they put banners, and they have the same sort of layout and everything else. And I really reject the whole notion of taking sponsorship from other companies, because I know that if they’re prepared to pay me to put their thing on my site, they must have a profitable back end. So I look to do what’s called vertical integration. I go and figure out what it is they’re selling on the back end, and I try and join them directly as an affiliate, so that I can partner in that second and third sale, if they’re on a recurring situation, or I’ll create my own product.

In the case of my Internet Marketing Speed blog, I actually just created a report that was original, and it was exactly the system that I was using to break free from my job, and then I just published it for free, even though I could probably charge seven dollars or whatever. But it did differentiate me.

I was offering something different. And my monetization system is not as obvious to visitors. However, it’s highly, highly effective.

Yeah. I understand what you’re saying there. I mean, when people come into my sites and they see, “Hey, there’s no adverts,” it’s like, “How has he made a few thousand bucks from it in his first month?” I mean, people don’t always understand exactly how you’re making money. And that can be a good way… I mean, you don’t directly sell to them, and if they think you’re more of your friend, then I think you should play on that sometimes.

James:  Well, not even just play on it. I think you should be that. I really think you should set about just to create value and to help people, and the rest will take care of itself anyway. Now, if you’re picking big problems to solve, then the solutions cost more money, and your consumer will accept that.

And they’ll actually give you more credit for helping them with a bigger problem, even if they have to pay a higher price, because, as the price increases, the value that you’re offering to them increases as well, because you’re helping them take a bigger risk by advising them properly.

That’s gold right there. [laughs] That’s exactly what I think I should be doing. I mean, I’ve started doing it, and all my readers should be doing it. We shouldn’t be always just going after the small bucks. You should give everyone a solution. You should work with the end in mind, work with passion, and the money just comes most of the time. Especially, that’s what’s happened to me now. So I think that’s a good idea.

James:  There’s no doubt you’re passionate, and you’re helping people at that entry level. But what we did is that exercise where we look at what comes after whatever they’re buying from your site. What comes next? Can you help them get to the next stage and then the next stage after that? And that’s really where building a relationship comes into it with your list, because you can step them through the next situation.

So, what you’ll find is that the solutions you’re offering increase in price, but they also increase in reward, but the relationship gets stronger and stronger.

And as your clients pay a little bit more each time, their loyalty to you will increase, and you’ll actually be able to offer them even higherpriced solutions because they trust you more, because you haven’t let them down.

We touched on the recession and business. Do you think people, if they’re working a deadend ninetofive or something like that, should they be looking for doing some parttime blogging or some Internet marketing?

James:  Well, I can’t tell people what to do, because everyone will have their own idea. And somebody has to drive buses and serve food at McDonald’s because, otherwise, when we go there, there’d be no one there.

James:  For some people, that’s what makes them happy and comfortable and secure. But I would suspect, the majority of the population, if you surveyed them at any point, are unhappy with their job or they don’t feel secure. So, I would suggest, if they were looking to break out of that, one of the very best things they could do is start doing Internet marketing on the side. They can do it as a parttime thing, instead of watching television.

Just turn off the television for an hour or two a day and start blogging or creating an Internetmarketing business of some kind that helps people. And they’ll actually start making money. And then I think they’ll get the bug, like I did and you have, where it gets a little bit addictive.

Well, I don’t actually face the payments anymore. I’m more interested in other things at the moment, which is catching up on the buzz of the community that I’ve created, or finding out what people are up to on Twitter and that sort of stuff’s pretty exciting, when you move past just the money side of it.

Do you think everyone should be on Twitter? Should people be using it for business and Internet marketing themselves?

James:  Only if they want to make money.

Yeah? Actually, speaking about Twitter, most of Income Diary’s traffic comes from Twitter. And I find that it is, by far, the best type of traffic you can get. I get twice the amount of time spent on my website than Google, and about 20 times more time spent than social networking and bookmarking sites. So, definitely, the best place to be right now.

James:  It’s good of you to actually measure your traffic sources, because that will help you identify where to continue pushing the traffic as well.

Twitter is dominating. And I don’t remember who said it, but you’ve got to think about it like opensource mailing lists, everyone’s followers. You can tell, when you notice someone you like, for example, if you went to your follower list, that’s thousands of people who are interested in Internet marketing and what you’re doing.

And so, if I went and added them now, I’d have now a list of people who love you. Well, they may come and see me and love me as well, and buy from me as well.

James:  I’d say they probably would. You’re far more handsome than I am.

James:  You’ve got more hair.

Thanks. And for not very long, I have a betterlooking site. [laughs] I love your new site design. I hope you pick the one with the pictures at the top.

James:  Well, the readers are picking the design for me, thankfully. I’m actually in the process of collating nearly 200 responses. So I’ve created a little bit of work for myself and the designer, but I think it’ll be worthwhile. And that’s really part of where I want to take this. I’m handing this blog to the community that I’m building, and I think they enjoy it, too. It makes me want to give them more stuff.

^^ James Schramko and Perry Belcher ^^

Yeah. You’re always mentioning how you ask your community, like if you want to promote something, you ask them, “What do you want me to promote to you?” and “What do you want the site to look like? What do you want me to mention on the site?” So, should everyone be asking their readers what they should be doing on the site?

James:  I mean, I did some research with guys who are very strong in communitytype sites. They have a real tribe. People like Tim Schmidt and Craig Ballantyne both have very strong, loyal subscriber bases, and they’re both highly successful Internet marketers. So I’m taking their cue there. I think it is a good idea to have buyin from your audience. It would be too arrogant, I think, just to keep posting what you want and ignoring your customer base. So I think it’s good. It’s nice to have that.

Ultimately, if a decision has to be made, it’s up to me. [laughs] But I’m never closed to the fact that sometimes my readers might want something that I haven’t thought of. So, usually, the best suggestions come from them. You don’t have to be highly original to be able to create value, you just have to be able to ask questions.

You’ve been hanging out with some real big names. I know you go to Yanik Silvers underground, and that you network with all these great people. One question I ask all my interviewees is, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

James:  I would say that, to look for breakthroughs, rather than to worry about trying to optimize what you’ve already got. And to look for the constraint. What ever is constraining you, find out what it is. There’s usually one point of weakness that is holding you back. If you can identify it, and then really put efforts into leveraging it up, then usually, you’ll get massive returns of huge breakthroughs.

Like 1, 000 percent increases are quite possible if you eliminate the constraint that is holding you back. Because every system has a constraint, and usually, if you think about it terms of a factory or something, there will always be some machine that slows down the production line, or some supply issue that limits how much the factory can produce.

If you go and find out that weak point, and then just eliminate it, absolutely annihilate it, destroy it, then you can see massive, massive changes in results. So that’s probably the biggest idea that I’ve had this year.

If you had to start all over again, you get in a time machine and go back a few years, what would you do differently?

James:  I would immediately start creating my mafia plan. Which is like a 10layer stepbystep business. It’s an entire business revolving around completely owning a market and having it, at several levels, feeding itself with different profit systems. And I’m up to about level eight now, but I could very quickly reproduce it in a new market, or do it from scratch if I had to.

When I go to look for affiliate products, probably every one, we always want to find a better product.

James:  Right.

We want better conversions; we want better pay and etc. But, where can we go to get these affiliate products you’re promoting, and in different niches, how do you find affiliate products to promote?

James:  That’s a great question. Well, firstly, there’s no excuse for promoting crappy products, because there’s so many good products. Don’t waste your time on weak products. Secondly, you want to be able to find something, and you’re talking about affiliate promotions here?

Yes…

James:  You want to be able to find something that you can easily build a list off. Something that has a second or third market to it. So, find things that go really deep. That way, if you get a little feeder product, you can focus on that, but you can acquire the customer’s name. And then, you can sell him the second or third product yourself, rather than letting them, whoever you’re selling the product for, sell it.

James:  So you could aim for the selfimprovement type market, you could pick a product in there. If you could sell one selfimprovement product, like a book or a course, then there are more things you could go into mind programming, or appearance, fitness, relationships. You can dig quite deep into a market like that. Same as sport, if you can get in, sell one product in a golfing market, like a pair of shoes or a holiday, or whatever, you still got equipment or lessons, or clothing, or vacations, the whole bit. Satellite TV’s, so they can watch their sport, magazine subscriptions.

So you can really dig a niche like that out, if you pick something in there that has room for you to move. The worst thing you could do, is pick something that has no runway.

My last question here for you is, when we were sitting in Starbuck’s, and you shared how much you were making through your blog, and how much I was making, and we compared traffic. And you were getting half the amount of traffic I was, and you’re making so much more money. And so many people don’t realize, you look at all the top bloggers and how much they’re making, and some of the smaller bloggers, but they’re doing it right. What would you suggest to people, to convert people more, and to make sure you’re building a list of buyers and only send people to your blog that really want to spend money and make you money.

James:  Well, I think you’ve touched on one of the most important things, right? It’s all about conversions. So traffic is only a part of the equation. There are really two sides to this. There’s getting the traffic, and then there’s converting the traffic. So, what you saw with my blog, is that my traffic is incredibly targeted. And I have a very strong relationship with them. In fact, a lot of the people who come to my blog have already bought one of my products. Because I back end my blog from my paid products.

So there’s a big secret. If you have a, I call it like a broad niche, broad type scenario. So my whole business model is laid into broad, then niche, then broad. So they go from a niche product, through to a broad product that captures them all again. And then they niche out again into niche products. And then they go back to a broad product.

So you can actually have a customer navigate through your whole system, but always feel like it’s highly relevant and highly specific, because you’ve identified what they want and you’re delivering options for them.

So, in my case, I’ve got an Internet marketing related blog, but I have niche products in specific regions, like PaperClick, or website building, or search engine optimization, or affiliate marketing.

So they come from these specific products, back to the main general product. And then, they go into more specific products again like traffic secrets, et cetera, where they’re able to use those.

And then, they go back into a broad thing again, like the super fast results forum, where I have coaching for all Internet marketing related topics. So, broad, specific, broad, is a really good formula. And that way, you’re going to maximize your customer value. Because you’ve got something for them at every level.

Brilliant. So keeping it, sort of personalizing it for your readers to make sure everything is perfect for them. You’re not like, say it’s a sports site, and they’ve only come for the blog, for a football, and you’re not promoting them into the basketball niche.

James:  Well, let’s say you did pick something in the basketball niche. But you could have your main basketball blog, and then off that blog, you could have a product that trains basketball coaches. Like parents, who want to be a coach, but have no idea what to do. You could have products that teach kids how to be the next NBA super star. You could have products that show skills and drills, or whatever they’re called. I’m not a basketball, you can probably tell.

James:  Then, you could have specific ones on how to do an alley oop, or whatever. And then, you could have a little product line of retro Nike’s and Reebok’s. So, you could have little, specific rivers that run away from that blog, but then they may come back again, to a membership for basketball, which is a general one again. So you could appeal to a broad range, but you’ve got specific products for each person that falls within that market.

Brilliant. That’s some great advice, right there. I just want to thank you, James, for coming along and doing this interview. Is there anything else you want to share with us? Business or personal, about your future plans, goals or lifetime goals?

James:  No, I’d just say do it. Just get out there and have a go, that’s the thing. You’ve got great opportunities out there right now, where there are a lot of people with problems who need someone to help them solve it. And I think what you’re doing is great. You’re very inspiring, because you’re just getting out there and rolling the sleeves up. And I think if people could follow your lead, then they could do far worse.

Remember To Check Out:

James personal blog, Internet Marketing Speed

His FREE Report and…

His membership site out, Super Fast Results!