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Thanks to everyone who replied with such positive feedback about the Conversion Blogging video and the interview with Alborz, a million dollar blogger. It’s been truly overwhelming how many messages I’ve received plus there’s nearly 200 comments made to my blog in reply to the content, and it’s not even a week since I released it!

What I’m most happy about is how inspired you all sound and how you are ready to take your blogging seriously. If I can help a few more people realize the full time income from a blog dream, then I consider it job well done.

But we’re not finished yet!

How Does A Blog Make Money?

Next I have two videos, which are not quite as long as the previous videos, but definitely as compelling and full of great tips to help you make more from blogging.

Both videos are completely free and take you behind the scenes of this blog. The first shows you how I make money and the second shows how much I make. You can view the practical implementation and the financial outcome as a result.

These two videos should help demystify ambiguity you might be experiencing regarding how a blog like mine can make $10,000+ a month. Here are the videos…

Please reply with comments and let me know what you think of the videos.

Blog Mastermind Opens This Tuesday at 10 AM

By now you should well and truly realize that I’m not just giving away these videos because I can (well, I am in some ways… it is gratifying to see my work benefit people regardless of financial outcomes for me).

I’ve distributed all of this great content in part because I want to convince you to come work with me in my blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind.

I showed you some of the concepts I teach with Conversion Blogging and the Blog Profits Blueprint. I brought Alborz on stage to demonstrate that other, normal people just like you, can do this if you stick to it long enough to realize success. Today I’m showing you how I do it and giving you proof of what I earn.

All I want you to do in return is consider whether what I’ve shown you has been helpful and if so, whether more training of this quality, delivered in a structured format and all nicely packaged in a friendly community environment, is something you would like to take part in.

My coaching program opens on Tuesday July 29th - that’s this Tuesday. I’m aiming for a 10 AM EST USA time opening.

We should make that deadline, but of course I’ll let you know if there are delays. We have a couple of tests to run Monday and if they go okay, we will be good to go on Tuesday.

You might be wondering whether there will be a time limit or a limited number of spaces in the program. Let me put your mind at ease - I’m not closing the doors this time, nor will I be capping the number of people who can become members.

I will have some fast-action bonuses for the first 100 people who sign up, thus demonstrating their eagerness to participate (I like to reward the eager beavers with extra goodies). However, if you live on the other side of the world (Hi Australia - I miss you - I’ll be back soon!) or for whatever reason you can’t get to a computer when the doors open, don’t worry, you won’t miss out.

Get to a computer when you can and you will still be able to join my program.

How Much Will Blog Mastermind Cost?

The program is six months worth of training plus a members resources area and online community. You can participate in two ways -

Option 1: Pay $97 for the first month, try it and if you like it, continue to pay $97 a month for six months total. You will have immediate access to the member resources and online community and receive one lesson per week until you graduate in six months.

Option 2: Pay $497 upfront, save yourself $85 and get access to all the materials at once. You get instant downloads for all the lessons, the member resources and access to the online community.

There’s also a third “all you can eat” option, where you get all of the Blog Mastermind content (all of option 2 above) PLUS my second course, Membership Site Mastermind (currently not available to the public), which is my coaching program for people who want to start a membership site using a blog as a launch pad. You can get instant access to both these programs for the one time fee of $1497.

The sign-up page will break down every tiny detail about my coaching program, so bookmark the page below and on Tuesday you will be able to see all the details and join the program -

http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/

That’s it from me, enjoy the videos and get ready to begin your training with me from Tuesday onwards.

Yaro Starak
Demystifying Ambiguity

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It’s a sad fact, but most people do not make much money from their blogs even if they work very hard.

Tomorrow I have a video that I hope will change that and if you can spare some time to watch the video, I hope I can help you too.

The video is 32 minutes long and explains the system of blogging I’ve used for the past two years to make at least $10,000 per month from my blog - up to as much as $35,000 in my best months! It did however take me almost two years of not-so-successful blogging to figure the system out.

It’s not a complicated system and best of all, you don’t need to have a ridiculous amount of traffic going to your blog each day to make it work. You need some traffic of course, but this system can run profitably off as little as a few hundred daily visitors.

The system is about leveraging the traffic you do get for big results, rather than struggling to monetize the few page views you get each day when you are not an A-List blogger.

Thousands of people already use this style of Internet marketing to great success - unfortunately most bloggers do not.

I’ll have the link to the video for you tomorrow. For now, I need you to do some homework before watching the video.

Your Homework

If you are tired of making peanuts from your blog and sick of watching others have success while you struggle, it’s time to pay attention and make changes.

If you don’t earn a good living online today, yet you have been working towards that goal for months or years, you are probably doing something WRONG.

It’s time to stop repeating the things don’t work and stop thinking all those negative thoughts about how your projects fail, and make some changes to how you think and what actions you take each day.

It’s only through change that you can improve yourself and start getting the results you desire.

That’s enough motivational speak for now.

What I want you to do, if you have decided to come with me on this journey towards creating your own profitable blogging system, is read these two primer articles if you have not done so already -

Life Portability: Mixing Travel, Business and Pleasure In One Seamless Lifestyle

Pay special attention in this article to the part were I talk about blogging as a “Page View Slave”. If you don’t know what that is, you must read this article and understand the mistake you are probably making right now.

After reading that article, take a look at this one -

Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?

This article was only published last week, however you may not have read it. It’s critical you do read this article because it offers the perfect pre-training for the video presentation I have for you tomorrow.

It’s Time To Make Changes

I want to make a difference to how you think about building an Internet business using your blog.

I want to raise your awareness and make you see where the real potential is for significant success, if you can just make a few changes to how you go about blogging and marketing online presently.

Read those two articles, understand the background details, and tomorrow watch the video I release to complete the big picture.

This is not hard, but it does require you take a few minutes out of your day and absorb what I have to say and then, as always, begin the actions necessary to reap rewards from what you learn.

I’ll speak to you tomorrow.

Yaro

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I’m back in Toronto now, returned from Las Vegas and Chicago. By the end of my trip I was really itching to get back to full time work, so I’m happy that the rest of this month is all about the Blog Mastermind launch.

No doubt all of you who had even a tiny interest have watched John Reese’s Traffic Secrets video. Most people were impressed by it and based on some of the comments I’ve seen floating around, people feel that John has certainly had an impact on what we consider good product launch video.

What Content To Launch With?

A few months back I was thinking about what great resources I could come up with for the opening of Blog Mastermind.

The Blog Profits Blueprint has a been a huge success and the best launch resource for Blog Mastermind I could ever hope to come up with.

I was thinking of updating it for the reopening, but after looking at the document, besides a few minor updates, there’s not much I’d want to change about it. It’s still very current. If I added to it I might turn it into a long winded extension, and I like how succinct it is now.

My next thought was to use video. Video is definitely performing great, all successful launches are using it and since I’m eager to improve my video production skills, video seems the right choice.

It’s because of this that a few weeks ago I switched to Mac, which has much better video tools than Windows and now after more than a month with it, I can honestly say is a much superior operating system, especially better than Vista, which is an absolute monster and crashes constantly.

How To Make A Splash With Video

After watching John’s video my heart sank a little because there’s no way I can compete with his production quality given the time frame I have. However, I think powerful content even without the flashy sound and video effects can still make an impact, so I’m not too concerned. The most important thing is to really hit on some key concepts, which I think I can do.

I’ve become proficient at ScreenFlow for Mac, which is just a breeze to use. I’ve already recorded two behind the scenes videos and this week I’m going to put together the main presentation.

I’ve been thinking about the merging of the Blogging and Internet marketing worlds a lot since I straddle both with this blog. I think there’s things to be learned by groups on both sides of the fence and that is where I intend to focus the video presentation.

I can’t talk about it too much now since I’m just formulating the concepts, but you won’t have long to wait, I plan to have this out this month, July.

Bloggers Need To Become Better Business Builders

There is one point I will end with, which I think is a core issue. Most of the Internet marketers I know are much wealthier than bloggers, yet they don’t really work any harder.

The day to day activities a business owner completes result in much more financial success because of what model they choose for their business. Bloggers unfortunately choose a model that is much harder to become long term wealthy with.

I covered this topic in much depth in the series I wrote on whether professional blogging is a sustainable business model. This series is VERY relevant for what I am going to talk about in the video. I strongly recommend you go through these articles either for the first time or as a refresher if you have some time over the next few days.

Here are the links -

• Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?
• Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?
• The Advantages Top Bloggers Have That You Don’t
• The Key Resource For A Sustainable Blogging Business
• Is This The Only Sustainable Blogging Business Model?

If you like where these articles are heading and you are ready to build a real business through blogging, stay tuned, I have some killer stuff coming out.

Yaro Starak
Business Blogger

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Gobala Krishnan, one of my favorite Asian Internet marketers and one of my top selling affiliates for Blog Mastermind (I’ve sent him several hundred dollars worth of commissions every month for a year now) just released a brand new course Super Affiliate Blogger.

I have to admit I’m a bit ticked off that he’s done this because I have it on the cards to release my own training course for people wanting to use blogs for affiliate marketing, however since my program is probably at least six months away I’m okay with Gobala getting the jump on me. He uses a different system to what I do anyway, so it’s worth checking out his methods.

Here’s what Gobala’s new program is about -

Super Affiliate Blogger is more than just an e-book; it’s a complete system for affiliate marketing with blogs. It comes with a special link tracking system, special list building system and most importantly the customized Super Affiliate Pro WordPress themes. The theme is the most important factor here, as without this theme you will not be able to follow the instructions in the guide.

Click here for more details…

Gobala uses Pay Per Click (PPC) to drive traffic to his strategically crafted WordPress blog themes that focus on pre-selling an affiliate product. This is something I do not do - I’m not using PPC at all - I rely only on organic traffic and direct repeat visitors when I sell affiliate products from my blog.

Gobala’s system works with other forms of traffic too, however the great thing about PPC is that the traffic is instant - you switch it on and it flows and you can be making money in a matter of hours. Of course you have to pay money with PPC, so this is not something you want to get wrong for too long or you will lose money, you need to tweak things until you get a positive return on investment, which is what Gobala teaches.

The idea with Gobala’s system is to use a WordPress blog as a “landing page” that is themed and has content designed to pre-sell the visitor on an affiliate product. Obviously the plan is for as many visitors as possible to click the affiliate link on that blog post and then purchase the product, which is how the revenue is generated.

Gobala also makes use of targeted email lists he builds using his affiliate blogs, which is something I can wholeheartedly agree with (I’m all about email list building). His package actually comes with a plug-in called “opt-in forms manager system” that makes the technical part of adding an email list opt-in form to your blog easy. This is something I have to check out myself because I’ve wanted to get a service like this to my students too. If you purchase Super Affiliate Blogger from Gobala you get the plug-in.

Gobala provides a workbook that teaches the system, camtasia videos, a quickstart guide and a bunch of other stuff you can check out on the sales page. One of the best inclusions I think is custom designed WordPress themes you can put to use immediately to implement his system. They are crafted to sell certain types of affiliate products and are set up to use the tracking methods that Gobala teaches.

Testing and tracking is not something most bloggers do when it comes to affiliate marketing and it’s great to see a product that includes this topic and even provides blog themes to make the process easier. Props to Gobala for coming out with such a great feature.

Does This System Work?

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One of the great selling points of many online programs - I use this myself as part of the marketing approach for Blog Mastermind - is the appeal of following the steps of someone else who has done what you want to do. A system that has worked for someone else should work for you if you do exactly the same as them, right?

Well not exactly…

Let’s state the obvious. We are all different. It’s not possible to do something in EXACTLY the same manner as someone else, but you can certainly come close, yet that doesn’t mean the end result will be close to the person you attempt to replicate. If only it was as simple as that!

There are so many variables at play, for example - the external environment, luck, timing, skill, talent, resources - that it is almost ridiculous that anyone can claim if you follow their system you should expect the same results.

Let’s take my blog and my blog training program for example.

I grew a blog over several years and now make six figures a year from it. In 2007 I sat down and over six months documented, in a teaching format, the steps to replicate what I did to build my blog.

I couldn’t completely cover everything I did, but I’m confident I comprehensively covered the key points. It’s probably better for someone to go through the lessons in Blog Mastermind as a study resource rather than follow exactly in my footsteps since I made so many mistakes. You get the benefit of my hindsight to help you avoid my mistakes, you get the benefit of my insight so you don’t have to work it out for yourself and it’s all nicely packaged in an easy to consume program (and all of that’s part of the marketing spiel too!).

Yet, even with the road map laid out, no one will reach the same destination.

How many students who take Blog Mastermind will build a profitable blog? Not many. Of course I’ll do my best to highlight the success stories to lend credibility (and hope) that it’s possible, but I think it’s important to be realistic too. I’d love it if every student who studied my program experienced big time success and met all the objectives I state are possible. Most won’t even come close, a few will make it and maybe one or two will excel beyond my achievements (the grasshopper surpasses the master ).

I’m comfortable posting this to my blog because I know it’s not a reflection of my training that people don’t succeed. I know what I teach works, given the right conditions, which sadly are rarely met. I don’t publish this to discourage people from aspiring to become a professional blogger or take any online program - that’s definitely not my intention - but I do want you to understand why it is that so few people make it in the end so you can avoid the same fate.

Why Do People Fail?

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