MatthewWolfe.com

Let’s change our theme.
You’ve got your blog in place, you’ve got some content written on it, and you’ve got all the good plugins that bring people to the site and keep them coming back. It’s time to tweak the look of your blog. Changing your theme can be extremely simple or it can be an insane pain in the butt if you are a perfectionist like me. I want every little detail to be exactly as I envisioned it. Because of this, I actually purchased expensive software to edit my blogs so I can get the layout and colors exactly how I want them. If you just want a blog that looks nice but you are not extremely picky about getting the exact color and the exact layout that you want, you are in for a real easy ride. If you are more of a perfectionist, the steps to create your own theme are beyond the scope of this article. Maybe another day. If you ask nicely, I may be willing to throw something together for you in my theme editor. But I’ll talk more about that at the end of all this.
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This is a guest post from a good contact that I’ve made in my internet marketing journey. He’s a great guy with a lot of knowledge on the subject. This post just seems very appropriate, seeing as I have just found myself a mentor. Enjoy and Happy 4th of July!

My name is Bill Romer, and you probably don’t know me. Matt and I bumped into each other when our blogs crossed paths somewhere in cyberspace, and he was kind enough to invite me to write a guest post on his blog, which I am more than happy to do. Why?

Because Matt has something real going here – there’s not a bunch of hype – it’s not $0 to $500,000 his first month and all that crap.

He’s working.

Hard.

And he’s having some success already – he’s made some money with AdSense and is very close to cracking the “PPC Code,” which is a tough nut to crack, I can assure you. I’ve been able to do it recently with my own product, and only a couple of times in the past, for short periods.

Anyway, when we discussed topics for this post, we settled on the idea of finding and working with a mentor.

A very small amount of coaching was responsible for a significant turning point in my online career – no, not “millions,” but definitely thousands of dollars since the spring of 2008, when I purchased 60 minutes of telephone coaching for about $300.

The very first suggestion my coach gave me was to turn a then-successful PPC campaign into a product to be offered as a Warrior Special Offer (WSO). The other simple, but significant help he gave me was to write my sales letter for that WSO from a position of complete confidence – so we cut out just a few sentences that I’m certain made a huge difference in the way my message was perceived. In fact, I still heed that advice today, when I’m writing sales letters or web copy.

When I acted on those suggestions, I made a little less than $2000 within 3-4 weeks.

How did I find out about this coaching?

I believe it was at the end of either a free or low-cost video program my coach was offering through the Warrior Forum, and I TOOK ACTION.

How can you find a mentor quickly?

If you keep your eyes open on the forums – without wasting too much time there, of course – you will see 30-day group coaching programs, individual coaching offers, and other types of programs designed to take you to the next level in your online career.

Find one – in the area where you want to grow – and take advantage of it!

What if you can’t find any offers right now?

Start sending private messages in the forums (especially the Warrior Forum) to people who appear to know what they’re talking about, seem to have more knowledge than you in the area where you want to grow, and who have a number of forum posts to their name.

Write sincerely. Tell them what you’ve done so far and exactly what you want to learn – don’t ramble on, be very specific. For example, “I want to learn how to profitably use Google AdWords to sell my own ebook on [topic].”

Use my favorite business letter formula:

- Compliment the reader – “Judging from your numerous helpful posts and Special Offers, several of which I’ve purchased [if you have], you appear to be a respected part of this forum, and you also appear to be somewhat of an expert with Google AdWords.”
- State what you’re looking for – “I have just finished writing an ebook on [topic] and would like to learn how to use AdWords profitably to generate sales of this book. Would you be able to help me with this – perhaps giving me a few suggestions and/or reviewing my campaigns occasionally? I would be happy to pay you for your time, either with cash or with services – I am a pretty good researcher and writer, and I also can produce screen capture PowerPoint presentations or promotional videos [or whatever].”
- Thank them for their time – “I would be most appreciative if you could point me in the right direction, either with your own suggestions, or if you could recommend another person I might be able to contact for help. Thanks so much for your time.”

ALWAYS get recommendations for other people to contact at the end of your communications – you never know where that trail will lead.

There are literally hundreds of people on the Warrior Forum you could contact this way, and I would be dumbfounded if you private messaged 50 of them and got no replies.

Now, if you really want to make the most of this relationship, once you find a mentor, then simply DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU TO DO!

Take action! Get results! Tell them how what they suggested helped you and your business!

They will LOVE to hear that, and they will also see that you are a person of action and will be more likely to answer your emails or take your phone calls – and maybe even hire you – in the future.

Well, if there are any “secrets” to the whole mentorship thing, I’ve just spilled the beans.

Just remember that anyone can be a mentor to you – someone you meet in a group coaching program, another blogger, someone who has a product similar to yours, an affiliate manager or Clickbank product owner – anyone.

Reach out.

Ask.

Take action.

Get better.

Pretty soon, people will be asking you for help!

Bill Romer is a part-time online marketer, with products in the piano instruction and internet marketing niches. He writes a blog at http://askbillromer.com, and you can find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/billromer

Let’s Get Some Action On Our Blogs!
Yesterday I taught you how to set up a WordPress blog. Hopefully you did that and wrote a post or two. Now we are going to get that blog ready for action. Plugins are little add-ons that you can use with WordPress that help your blog accomplish beneficial things. All of the Plugins that I am going to list below can be installed from directly within your WordPress administration area. I have a total of 11 plugins that I constantly run on my blogs.

How to install plugins on your blog.
Well your first step is to log in to your admin area at http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/. Enter your username and password to get to your dashboard. Now you are going to click on the plugins menu on the left side of your dashboard screen. A drop-down will appear and you can click on “Add new”. Now I am going to give you the names of the plugins that I use. So all you have to do is enter the name of the plugin in to the search box, click the “install” link to the right of the plugin and then just follow the directions to install it. Once it is installed. Click the link that says “activate plugin”. Your plugin should be good to go.

My favorite plugins and what they do…

Akismet – This is the best spam blocker for your blog that there is. After your blog is online for a little bit, people will start commenting on your blogs with nonsense text or ads to irrelevant sites. This will prevent that and help moderate the comments that people post on your blog.

CommentLuv – This will promote commenting on your blog. When you have CommentLuv installed, people that comment will get a link back to their latest blog post. Other bloggers love backlinks and this is an incentive to comment.

Google Analyticator – You are going to want to keep track of the traffic going to your blog. To do this you can sign up with Google Analytics. They will track where people came to your site from, how long they stayed, what links they clicked on and more. With this plugin installed, you don’t need to get in to the HTML of your website to install Google’s tracking codes.

Google XML Sitemaps – This will help Google find your site. When you install this plugin, it will send Google a sitemap every time you update your blog. It basically tells Google, “hey, check it out, I updated my site”.

Platinum SEO Pack – This is another one that will help you with the search engines. You install this and you can edit how the search engines see each individual post. You can plug in keywords that you want Google to associate with your site and with each individual post. This is probably one of the most important plugins you can install because this will get the search engines to notice you fast.

Popular Posts – This puts a sidebar widget on your blog that lists your most popular posts. This is good for the search engines because the search engines like to see you linking around your site. It is also good to keep users on your site because they can see what most people are interested in and dig deeper in to your content.

Post-Plugin Library – This plugin does nothing on its own. It is required to be installed if you want the Popular Posts Plugin and the Related Posts plugins to work.

Sociable – This is a really cool tool that I just recently discovered. If you look at the bottom of my blog posts, you’ll see a bunch of little icons for things like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, etc. This plugin puts those links there so that people can promote your site on their favorite Web 2.0 site. If someone really likes your post and they are on Twitter, they can click the Twitter link and send out the post to their followers. This is great to get your name out there.

Top Commentators Widget – This is another plugin to promote people to comment on your blog. This puts a widget in your sidebar that ranks who comments the most. People like to see theirt name ranked high as a top commentor. I like to turn on the option to post people’s links when they comment as well. That gives them another incentive because it is publicity for their blog.

WP To Twitter -This links your blog to Twitter. Everytime you make a new post on your blog, this program will send out a Tweet telling everyone that you just made a post and it will give them the link. This helps get a nice little surge of traffic everytime a new post goes online.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This is another plugin that has multiple benefits. It puts a list of related posts at the bottom of each individual post. Google likes to see your site linking deeper in to itself but it also encourages viewers to dig around deeper in to your blog.

So then what?
Ok. So now you have all of these plugins installed. Just by doing that, you are well on your way to having a blog that the search engines love and that people want to comment on. The next step is going to be getting your WordPress blog looking prettier. I will get to that step in my next blog post. Just by installing the plugins above, you may start see traffic starting to roll in. If you have some content on your blog, Google and the other search engines will start to find your blog.

Are there any plugins that I left out? Please comment if you feel that there is something that is absolutely essential that I forgot in my list.

Full Disclosure
Before I begin this post on how to create a blog with WordPress, I want to fully disclose something. I do have affiliate links in this article. Some of the sites that I suggest you visit and some of the services that I suggest you use, I am an affiliate of. However, I do not promote any products that I do not use myself. If I suggest a server host or a domain name company, it is because it is the one I use and I have had good experiences with them. If you want to use one of the services that I am suggesting but you don’t want me to get the credit for it, go ahead and search the company on Google and sign up that way. I just want to be upfront and honest from the start.

Why Use A WordPress Blog?
The majority of the money that I have made online to date has been because I have set up several WordPress blogs. It is very quick and cheap to set up a WordPress blog and once you manage to get traffic to the blog, there are many ways to monetize the blog. The first WordPress blog that I ever set up was over at HowIWillBeRich.com. I probably made my initial investment back on that site within the first month of the site going online. Now I rarely update the site and it still brings in probably $30 every single month.

Wordpress is very simple once it’s set up. Once you’ve got it installed and running on your server, it’s incredibilly easy to keep your blog updated. No advanced html or programming language knowledge necessary. Just log in, type up your blog post, hit publish, and you are updated. It’s so simple.

First you need a domain name and a host.
I am a big fan of a hosting company called PowWeb. With these guys you only pay $3.88 per month and you’ll get both your hosting and your domain name all in one place. By doing this, you will eliminate several steps of getting your domain and your host linked together. I recommend paying for a whole year in advance. You will pay $46.56 and you won’t have to think about it again for a year. You will get a domain name, unlimited webspace, and unlimited bandwidth (the amount of files that can be transferred from you to your viewers). On top of that, they give you $50 free in adwords. That’s $50 in free advertising. Sorry if it sounds like I’m really pitching their product. I really am just a big fan of their service. They’ve been great to me so far. So that’s your first step to creating a WordPress blog. Get your domain and server lined up over at PowWeb. (I had to cut this here because there are images and I want to keep a good load time. Just click below to keep reading)
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Why is this blog here?
Well this is my first post here at my new domain MatthewWolfe.com. I have been blogging for several years now and I tend to jump around a lot. Some of my previous blogs are How I Will Be Rich (A site about personal finance) and MBT Media (A site about affiliate marketing). You might be asking why I am creating this site if I already have a site about affiliate marketing. MBT Media (Millionaires By Thirty) was the name given to the company that I started with my buddy Joe Fier. Joe is another internet marketer that Lives in San Diego with me. We created that site and that company to partner up and document our journey to making a full time living online.

Recently Joe and I found a mentor. We paid a bunch of money to have him coach us and we decided to split up our efforts. We are going to seperately build our own places and create our own unique voices in the internet marketing world. We are still a team in the sense that we are going to do everything we can to help the other one out, but for the time being, we are going to focus on our unique individual voices.

A little about myself.
My name is Matthew Wolfe, I am 26 years old and I live in San Diego, California. I recently got married to my beautiful wife, Alana, and we own our own home. It is my goal to become a full time internet marketer. I don’t want to work a day job. I want the freedom of working from home and I want my income to be limited only to what I can make it. I actually quit my last job to focus on my internet marketing career. I may be crazy because I was making good money. I have just never felt so strongly that I could succeed at something as much as I feel about internet marketing. This stems from some small successes that I’ve had over the years.

I’m not going to lie. I’m not a complete newbie to the internet marketing world. In fact, I have made thousands of dollars online. The problem is that those thousands have been spread over several years and it really only figures out to $100 per month or so. Don’t get me wrong. That is great money in the internet marketing world. Most people never see anything close to that kind of success in this game. It’s just not enough for me. It’s not enough to live off of. I need full time income kind of money.

It’s time to kick it in to high gear.
That’s why I’m blogging. I am taking a huge risk. I am not working a day job at the moment, I am investing a large sum of money in to a new coach, and I am praying to the internet gods that I am finally on the right path to internet success.

I don’t want to be stingy though. I want to teach everyone I can about what I’ve learned along the way. I completely intend to share my journey of how I got where I am today and the steps that I take to get where I am going. I want my blog to be a reference to people who are in my position now or for people who have no idea that internet marketing exists. I am not afraid to teach my secrets because I am not afraid of competition. I want to build a following of people who want to read what I have to say. I want people to thank me one day and call me the “guru” that made them rich.

I will get there. It’s July 1st right now. It’s a new month. My goals, my mentallity, my work ethic, and my general outlook on the business that I have chosen all change today. I am starting fresh.

My Goals
This time next month – I want to be making $100 per day.
This time next year – I want my wife to be able to quit her job.

Those are my two main goals. They are both very difficult goals but I do believe that they are realistic. I am already making something like $5 per day online. I will be setting daily, weekly, monthly goals, etc. as I go. These are just the biggies. These are my big picture for the month and for the year.

What you can learn from me
I have made thousands of dollars by blogging. I will teach you how I did it.

I have made a couple hundred with CPA companies. I can teach you exactly how to get accepted to the CPA networks and how I made what money I have made.

I have spent a lot of money experimenting with PPC like Google Adwords. I can share what I’ve learned.

I have made some money with clickbank. I will teach you what I did.

You will learn what I learn from my new coach. I am paying the money and my readers will learn from what I learn.

Anyway, this big long post probably should have been spread in to several blog posts. I just wanted to dump out everything that was in my brain right now about what I’m doing, where I’m going, and why I’m doing it. I think everyone can learn a lot from what I’ve done and what I will do. Stick around, subscribe to my feed, and please comment. I need encouragement. If there’s anything that I mentioned that you want me to discuss in further detail, please comment. I will go in to as much depth as you want.

Thanks for dropping by and I can’t wait for what the future holds.