Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

I’ve never really told the full story of how I went from no job and very little online income to where I am today.

As of this month, my blog has now been online for one year. In fact, my first post ever was on July 1st, 2009. It wasn’t until August of 2009, however, that I really started to make some good money online. I had several blogs running all over the internet that were making me a few hundred dollars per month total but the real income didn’t start coming until August of last year.

There was actually one simple thing that I started doing that turned everything around for me. In fact, the recent changes that I’ve made to my business and my online philosophies have been because I have been looking back on how I got to where I am today. My new standards and ideals are less of a reinvention and more of me just getting back to my roots.

The thing that I really started to do in July of last year that really paid off is that I started helping people… And I don’t mean that I charged for every piece of advice that I gave. I mean that I actively went in to forums and hunted down people that were looking for help. When I found them, I wrote up long explanations and, sometimes, even recorded videos of how they can solve their problem.

My timeline looked something like this:

2006-2009 – I made lots of blogs and built them to where they were making a combined total of a couple hundred dollars per month. This was not enough to pay the bills and when I lost my job in May of ’09, this was not going to cut it.

May 2009 – I discovered The Warrior Forum. I began to jump from one “make money online” method to another. I also began actively searching out people that had questions related to WordPress and blogging. I wrote long replies and tried to do whatever I could to help them solve their problems. I figured that if there was anything that I felt like I was an authority in, it was WordPress and blogging.

July 2009 – This is where things started to get exciting! I joined Alex Jeffrey’s coaching program using a credit card because I did not have the money in the bank to pay up front. One of the first things that Alex taught right in the beginning is that everyone needs to build a blog. The coaching program was great but there wasn’t a lot of explanation on exactly how to set up a blog…

This worked out perfect for me! I joined the right program at the right time. I jumped right in to the forum on day one and started offering to help anyone who needed it. I was able to help a very large majority of his students get their blogs up and cranking. I was the most active person in that forum.

I continued to record more and more videos for people so that I wouldn’t have to explain things twice. Eventually, I registered TheWordpressClassroom.com. I now had a place to send them to watch my training videos and collect opt-ins at the same time.

July was also the month that I set up MatthewWolfe.com. I wanted another venue to teach people but I wanted it to be a place where I can expand my teachings beyond just WordPress. MatthewWolfe.com allowed me to share my goals, my progress, my personal stories, and the general internet marketing tips that I’ve been learning along the way.

Since I was constantly going out of my way to help others, they reciprocated by visiting my blog, reading my ramblings, and leaving comments and feedback. This made my blog appear to be a very popular place right from the start. My search engine rankings climbed and when random visitors popped in off the search engines, they saw all of the of action going on. They decided this was a happening blog and they kept coming back. This created a momentum that has caused my blog to just keep on growing…

August 2009 – I opened the doors to the WordPress Classroom. I had no concept of what a launch was at this point… I literally just put the buy-now button up and started announcing it in the forums, on my blog, and to the very small mailing list that I had at the time (something like 300 subscribers).

I opened the doors late at night on August 1st, 2009. When I woke up in the morning on August 2nd, I looked in my Paypal account and started jumping up and down and dancing like crazy. I had 20 people join The WordPress Classroom over night. That was the first time that I ever made more than $100 in a single day online. This wasn’t a million dollar launch and I still haven’t paid off my mortgage but this was the day that I realized that I was going to have a legitimate online business. I knew from that point, that this would turn in to something much bigger.

From that point on it’s been somewhat of a blur. I kept working on more and more ways to get people to visit the site. I was introduced to the concepts of things like adswaps and JV giveaways. I also learned that I could sell The WordPress Classroom on the Warrior Forum, where I had originally gotten my start, and get it in front of a very targeted audience. That was a huge revelation for me and it eventually led to my first $1,000 day.

In April of this year, I launched The Autopilot Cash Formula which basically taught people the business model behind The WordPress Classroom. This time I followed the full launch process and had another huge success. It was a great product and it received a great reception but I always felt like The WordPress Classroom was my baby… If it wasn’t for me trying to teach people WordPress, I wouldn’t be anywhere today…

This leads me to where I am now. I have completely decided to go back to my roots. Hopefully, this has become evident by the fact that I’ve refocused my e-mail campaigns to almost nothing but cool free content. I’ve also shifted the majority of my focus on what got me to where I am today… The WordPress Classroom.

The WordPress Classroom has come a long way! It has just passed 750 members. To make things even better, I don’t think I’ve ever had one person tell me that they were unhappy with it.

Just this last week, I opened the WordPress Classroom 2.0 which features new videos, new themes, a new layout, and, best of all, a brand new forum where myself and the members can do the one main thing that got me to where I am today… Help people.

If you are interested in The WordPress Classroom, you can learn more by clicking this link. Check out the new design and the free videos that I’ve provided. If you feel like upgrading, there’s a special bonus offer in there too.

I am so grateful to be where I am today and if you intend to make a good living online, the best advice that I can give is to help as many people as possible. I give you my 100% guarantee that it will pay off!

“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

If you like this post, do me a huge favor and click the “like” button. Please leave your comments. I love reading your feedback!

I’m sure you’re pretty confused by the title. I really had no idea what to name this post…

I have so many things I wanted to talk about and, to be honest, I really couldn’t think of a more clever title. So that’s what you get…

Ireland
Many people may have noticed that I wasn’t very active during the month of May. I think I only had one blog post, I only mailed out to my list a couple of times total, and I haven’t really been promoting anything. I basically took about 3 weeks off, away from my computer.

My wife and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary on May 23rd and, coincidentally, May 21st was the one year anniversary of the day that I quit my day job. Neither my wife or I had ever left North America so we hopped on a plane to visit the number one place my wife most wanted to travel, Ireland. We had a wonderful time and it was an amazing way to spend our first anniversary. Had I still been in my previous job, I would have never been able to get that time away.

I won’t go in to too much detail about my trip. Since I’m a life-long computer nerd, I created a travel blog on the flight over there. Both my wife and I made posts pretty much everyday. So if you are interested in what we did and how are trip went, you can visit our Travel Blog Here.

Frank Kern
We were home from Ireland for about three days before my good buddy, Josh Bartlett, came to town from New Zealand. He flew all the way over to attend Frank Kern’s list control seminar with myself and good ole Joe Fier.

We spent the weekend networking with some really cool IMers and listening to some great seminars. I think the highlights of seminar were getting to hear Bill Glazer speak as well as an amazing presentation by Jordan Belfort (AKA The Wolf of Wall Street). Jordan ran an investment firm the got busted for doing some shady  stuff. If you’ve ever seen the movie Boiler Room… That movie was loosely based around his business. Anyway, there’s now a huge film in production with Leo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese all about his life and his business. This guy has gotten his life together and is now crazy passionate about helping businesses. His presentation was the best of the seminar.

Spending a week with Josh, hanging out at these seminars, and networking with all these people has really given me a lot to talk about. I have so many ideas and so many things that I would love to teach, I don’t even know where to start.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to get out to an IM seminar, you absolutely have to. The networking opportunities are usually worth the cost of the seminar alone. I’ve already picked out about 3 more that I’d like to get to this year.

Here’s some pictures of some of the people that I had the opportunity to meet and talk to…

This is me with Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Here’s me with the man himself, Frank Kern. Funny picture though (I was looking at the wrong camera)

This is me with Mike Koenigs, one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. You may know Mike as the creator of Traffic Geyser or even more recently from his Main Street Marketing launch. Awesome guy!

Josh Bartlett, Jeremy Schoemaker, Joe Fier, and myself.

Me hanging out with Jason Moffatt

Joe Fier, Josh Bartlett and Myself right before a Padre game at Petco park. The Padres smashed the New York Mets 18-6.

Public Speaking
So public speaking is one of those things that I’ve never been good at. After going to a few seminars and speaking to a lot of people, I’ve decided that it’s a skill that I should learn. So despite the fact that this blog was started as an Internet Marketing and Blogging site, I may veer off here and there and talk about my journey to become a better public speaker.

This little announcement obviously wasn’t worth it’s own post so I thought I’d throw it in here.

I just did my first live webinar last month, however, I didn’t do most of the speaking and I was staring at a computer screen as opposed to staring at a crowed of people. It was a step closer but my goal is to eventually feel comfortable and at home in front of a large seminar crowed. I’ll get there. I have some ideas of how I’m going to go about doing this. So bare with me if I veer of course on the blog a little here and there.

What to expect….
I mentioned earlier that I have so many ideas of things to talk about now. I did a couple of surveys to customers of my WordPress Classroom and customers of my Autopilot Cash Formula. I asked them about their biggest sticking points and maybe areas where they felt my products may have been a little flat. I received some amazing feedback! I have a really good feel for what type of things everyone is looking for.

What I’m going to do now is I’m going to go back through both programs and create a ton of new videos for each system. I’m going to make sure any gaps are filled and that my programs are some of the best resources you can find on the internet for their respective topics. If you’re already a member, I’m not going to charge any more for any of the additional content. It’s just my way of saying thank you for being a customer.

With that being said, I’m also planning on addressing a ton of the stuff that people are looking for here on my blog. I’ve got loads of tips and techniques that I’m going to give away on this site that will just blow you away. I literally can’t wait to share them.

Here are some the topics I’ll be talking about over the next couple of weeks.

• Why subscribers aren’t as important as most people will have you believe.
• Everything that’s wrong with Internet Marketers these days. (This may be a controversial viewpoint)
• Secret traffic sources that few people talk about.
• What I would do if I started my business over. (The direction I will eventually head in)
• How I keep myself moving forward (My productivity secrets)

And so many more… I don’t want to list all of my post ideas yet and I have intentionally left those ideas vague. I can promise you though, that the stuff that I’m about to talk about is stuff you probably won’t find any other marketers talking about. So stick around, you will love this stuff.

Please leave some comments and feedback. I love hearing your thoughts…

Today is launch day! I am extremely excited and extremely nervous at the same time. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this way before. Honestly, I feel the way I used to feel when I had to get up in front of a crowd to speak back in high school. That’s the feeling that’s in my stomach right now…

Basically, if you haven’t heard, the Autopilot Cash Formula is the exact business model that I’ve used to build my business in to five figures per month. I’ve done it in such a short amount of time too… Honestly… Go back to the early posts on my blog and read what I was writing about. Read the early goals that I had set for myself. I was striving to reach 2,000 subscribers and $100 per day. Here I am, nine months later, and I’ve crushed every goal that I’ve set for myself and I’m launching a product that teaches people how to do it.

I am extremely overwhelmed and overjoyed with all of the support that I’ve received over the months. I have the most amazing readers/partners/friends!

Look back through my blog and look at the last screenshot I took from my mailing list… Here’s the latest screenshot:

I’ve gone quite a long way! Thanks so much for the continued support. I will always do my best to try to overdeliver. I don’t believe in hype and I don’t believe in the B.S. exaggerated claims. You will never ever find me doing that!

You guys are amazing. I hope this anxious, nervous, excited feeling in my stomach goes away soon so I can enjoy this launch day!

Here’s the link if you want to learn more…

The Autopilot Cash Formula

Feel free to leave your feedback and comments. Checking my blog’s comments is the favorite part of my day!

Thanks again. You are all amazing!

Matt Wolfe

I know… I know. I said I was going to do more videos on my blog and I am. It’s 1:30 am in San Diego right now as I write this and I don’t want to wake up Alana. Besides, I just felt like typing. My next post will be another video… (Maybe… If I feel like it)

I wanted to give an update about my launch.

As most of you already know, I’m doing my first major launch with my Autopilot Cash Formula. I did launch The WordPress Classroom last year. But that was on a very small scale compared to this.

What I’ve learned so far… Trying to do a major launch is not easy at all. It requires many sleepless nights, lots of conversations with lots of people I don’t know, and flat out working my butt off to make sure things are going to flow smoothly come launch day.

As I get deeper and deeper in to this, I realize that there are a lot of little aspects that I never even thought about coming in to this. There’s so many little tiny details that can so easily be overlooked that could be the difference between a successful launch and a flop. I’m still hoping that I’m not missing any of these points. I don’t know if I can even know until launch day is here.

If you saw my whiteboard right now, I have a massive list of things that I still need to get done between now and this Thursday (The start of prelaunch for my product). Once I clear that list, a new list goes up of all the things that must be completed before launch date on the 15th.

It’s definitely very hectic. I’m running on very little sleep these days because I’m testing and tweaking every little aspect of this launch. I’m responding to every e-mail from every potential affiliate to make sure this launch will be just as successful for them as I hope it’s going to be for me. I’m pulling my hair out staring at html and php code, trying to fix minor bugs and issues.

To be 100% honest… I would not have it any other way!

It’s funny because internet marketers (at least the circle that I run in) are some of the only people I know that will work 80 hours per week to get their business set up so that they can “quit their day job”. Sure, I know methods where I can spend 20 minutes per day and make enough money to not have to work another job. But I love this stuff so much and I am so driven and passionate about growing my business that I obsess over this and spend 75% percent of the time that I’m awake at my computer trying to build upon what I’ve already created.

Yes, The Autopilot Cash Formula will teach you how I’ve made thousands per month with 20 minutes per day. I’m not exaggerating there. But I believe that the people that are truly going to make it far in this business, and that will really rise above the rest, are the people that are happy with the money they can make in 20 minutes per day but are not satisfied stopping there.

I honestly do have days where I spend 20 minutes working and then head out to go snowboarding. I have had days where I’ve gone to the beach with a laptop, finished my work quickly, and spent the rest of the day playing. I want everyone to be able to enjoy that lifestyle.

True internet marketers… The ones that really succeed, however, are the ones that spend 10 hours per day working on their business. Not because they have to, but because they want to.  I absolutely love what I do and sometimes wish there were more hours in the day that I could spend working on building my business.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent there… (It IS almost 2 in the morning here)

My launch looks to be destined for success. I’m not one to count my chickens before they hatch (I think that’s the term) but I am definitely optimistic.

I’m approaching 500 affiliates on board to help me promote this, including a lot of BIG names. I’ve got some of the “gurus” on board to really back me on this.

I hired one of the best copywriters in the business to make sure my sales copy gets people as excited about the product as I am.

I have some of the best prelaunch content I could possibly come up with. Products that I have sold in the past, I’m just giving away to get people excited about the product. I’m basically giving people the first few steps in the process for free just to get them excited about what’s in store.

I’ve been interviewed by several people so that my name is out there and my credibility is growing. (I still have room for a couple more interviews if anyone is interested)

Now I’m in a mode where I’m just doing whatever I can to help affiliates out. I’m taking suggestions for tools, banners, e-mails, etc. so that affiliates have the absolute most potential to succeed. I’ve even given out a bunch of free articles that people can use to submit to article directories to help promote their affiliate link.

I think I’m pretty much leaving no stone unturned with this one.

Anyways, if you have any questions about launching a product, my launch, or tools to help promote as an affiliate, please leave a comment below. I am really loving all of the support that I’ve been getting and I think everyone who is involved with this has the potential to be really successful!

If you haven’t signed up as an affiliate yet, do so here.

I have been working on so much lately. I feel like I’m still neglecting my blog a little bit, despite the fact that blogging is what got me started in this business in the first place. Anyway, here’s a little recap of what I’ve been up to and what I’ve accomplished…

By the way, thanks so much to everyone who answered my survey. I’ve realized that anyone of those topics are good to discuss on here. I’ve got literally hundreds of ideas for new posts.

Vegas Baby!
In mid-January, I took a trek with Joe Fier and Josh Bartlett up to Vegas. It was Mike Filsaime’s affiliate appreciation weekend and Alex Jeffreys was putting on a seminar. It was an amazing time and we had the opportunity to do some real face to face networking. We were hanging out with the likes of Mike Filsaime, John Reese, ShoeMoney, Joe Jablonski, Russell Brunson, Jason Moffatt, Keith Wellman, Sam Knoll and many more of the biggest names in internet marketing.

We first arrived on Thursday, January 21st and almost immediately met up with Alex Jeffreys for some drinks. We played some poker and then got in touch with David Chamberlain, David Walker, Dean Holland, and Dan Briffa for some more drinks. The next day was the networking event at club Tabu. This is where we met and hung out with some of the biggest names in the game.

Saturday night was the big party. Every internet marketer that I could think of met up at club Lavo in the Pallazzo hotel. This was a huge bash in the VIP section with an open bar of top shelf drinks. I’ll tell you right now that I slept in quite a bit the next morning…

We relaxed a bit on Sunday and then attended day one of Alex Jeffrey’s seminar. There were some good discussions but my favorite presenter had to be Jit Uppal. I really like his presentation because his business model is very similar to mine. It really validated that I was on the right path. Later that evening, we had the opportunity to meet up with all of our pals from the Marketing With Alex class. I’ll list some names but I’m almost sure to miss a few… Marcus Passey, Dean Holland, Adam Spiel, Gary Simpson, Garry Parks, Paul Wilson, David Walker, David Chamberlain, Jean Shaw, Dan Briffa, Marc Milburn, Anthony Smits, and so many more…

Unfortunately, business obligations kept us from attending the second day of Alex’s seminar but we did get the opportunity to network some more with a lot of the people mentioned above later that evening.

All in all, Vegas was an amazing experience… Maybe it was a little long for us but we had a good time, nonetheless. I made a little montage video that I think really shows the “vibe” of the whole Vegas trip. Enjoy.

What else has been going on?

That’s a huge question because I’ve been up to a lot! I promoted Josh Bartlett’s Easy Video Player and ended up as number eight on his leader board. I was holding strong at 4th place for a while but got knocked down when the big guns started promoting. I guess it’s not too bad when the people that are above you on the leaderboard are people like Mike Filsaime, Ewen Chia, and Jason Moffatt. Nonetheless, I managed to finish a competition in the top 10 and walk away with a new HD video camera (I shot the video above with it) and an iPod touch. I’m happy about that because it was one of my goals for this year.

I also did a test launch on my latest product called The Autopilot Cash Formula. It’s an eBook and about 25 videos all about my entire business model. I explain pretty much everything that I’ve been doing over the last several months. It goes in to list building, product creation, and exactly how I manage to generate so many leads to an affiliate offer. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot on my test launch but it actually went crazy. The testimonials started rolling in and people started asking how they could promote it as well. Due to this, I decided that I’m going to roll out a full scale launch of this product. It’s going to be complete with lead contest prizes and sales contest prizes. The official launch date will now be April 15th, 2010. So put it on your calendar because it should be a good opportunity to make some money selling a product that converts like crazy. If you want to sign up as an affiliate, here’s the affiliate sign up page. It’s not quite all there yet but you can sign up as an affiliate. More tools will be added as the launch date comes closer.

An unexpected result of the success of The Autopilot Cash Formula test launch is that The WordPress Classroom has gained momentum as well. I haven’t been promoting it but people started buying it again because they wanted to see what else I had to offer. It’s been really amazing. I have now decided that after my full launch of The Autopilot Cash Formula, I’m going to revamp and update all of the videos within the WordPress Classroom. I’ll probably add about 10 more videos based on common questions and boost the price once again. I’ll continue to sell it at the current price for now but I think I could relaunch it at somewhere around $97… We’ll see. I’d love to hear some opinions on this.

Due to the success I’ve been seeing, I went out and upgraded my tools. I bought myself a brand new iMac and a brand new Netbook. The iMac is amazing for editing videos. I have no idea how I ever did video without my Mac now. My Netbook is just perfect for when I’m on the road. I can still respond to e-mails and chat over Skype from anywhere in the world. I feel like I’m really in the modern age now.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on. I really do have a good sized list of blog posts that will be coming up. I’m going to start getting deeper and deeper in to list building techniques as well as blogging.

Please leave some comments. What would you like to read? Did you go to Vegas? Etc… I want to hear from you!