Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

You really know you’ve made it once they ask you to be on MTV’s cribs.

Leave some comments about what you think

It has been a while since my last blog post. I have just been swamped with work. I am working through e-mails of people asking for help with their blogs or with their mailing list squeeze pages, while at the same time, I’m trying to get all of my videos recorded for The WordPress Classroom. It has been quite overwhelming. At the same time I am trying to continue to generate traffic to my blog and to my squeeze page by commenting on other blogs, taking part in forums, having conversations on Twitter, organizing e-mails to my list etc. etc. I’m not complaining though! I am, however, giving you an excuse to why I may not have returned your or e-mail or why I haven’t been to your blog to comment yet. I promise I will get to them all. It just takes me time to get to it all. I need to squeeze some personal time in somewhere.

Anyway, enough ranting and giving excuses. I want to tell you how to make money. So many people seem to way over complicate the whole process. I don’t quite understand. The more I study it and the more I work towards building my income, the concept just seems easier and easier to me. Once I finally grasped the real trick to the whole damn thing, I just kinda smacked my head and said “Aha!, it’s so simple!”

I’ve had a couple of people come to me and say that they would never make any money on the internet because they don’t have a product. They aren’t creative enough to make one or they don’t know how to do anything, so what could they sell? But that’s the problem! You don’t need to have your own product! Who said anything about creating a product? It’s not necessary in the beginning! It’s really not!

Here’s the trick… Build a damn list! Build your mailing list by offering something for free. It doesn’t even have to be something that you created. It can be a product that you purchased that gave you resell rights or you can offer ?a contest for people to join your list and give something away. My recommendation though, is to create a short ebook, maybe 10 or 12 pages, about who you are, why you are doing what you are doing, and what you have learned. The book is free! People will sign up for it.

Now send some e-mails out that are nice and conversational. Get people to like you and get them to want to hear what you have to say. Don’t start promoting anything right away. Just send out friendly tips or things that you’ve learned in your journey so far. After you’ve got them hooked, you can start sprinkling in affiliate links. Start recommending products that you have used or that you think will create great value to your readers. Boom! You are making money. If your list likes and trusts you, you will start making money when you promote things that you honestly think will give them value! That’s the big damn secret! Build a list, get them to trust you, promote products that add value…

After that whole cycle has created some income for you, guess what… You now have an idea for a product to create! Create an ebook or a video tutorial about how you built your mailing list and how you made money with your mailing list… Give some of the secret away for free to build your list even more and then upsell them for the rest. Then, once again, you’ve got another product idea… You now know how to make money creating and selling your own products. The cycle continues.

Internet marketing is really that simple. (Ok. I oversimplified a little but that’s the whole darn concept!) No. Internet marketing is not fast. It does take time. But I do believe it can be really easy!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Over that last three weeks I have built a blog to between 75 and 100 visitors per day, I have built a mailing list from 3 people to 65 people as of this post, I’ve made blog posts that have gotten over 50 comments, and I have created my own product (with two more in the works). I have also managed to average about $50 per day in affiliate commissions over the past 2 weeks or so. I am not writing this post to brag at all. In fact I want to explain to you exactly how I did it.

People ask me the question every day, “How have you done what you’ve managed to do?” They think that I had a huge head start or that I’m just some blogging genius or something. That’s not the case at all. I started this blog on July 1st. My Alex Jeffreys mentoring started on July 6th. That’s hardly much of a head start. I’m definitely no genius but I have made blogs in the past.

So what I will do is I will relist my acheivements here and then explain exactly what I did to get those results…

I have built a blog to between 75 and 100 visitors per day
The biggest thing that I have done here to gain the amount of traffic that I have gained is that I have helped as many people as I could in forums and I have commented on a lot of blogs. I have made it a goal of mine to assist anyone who asks for help in the forums and I either know the answer or know how to do what they are asking. I have also made it one of my daily tasks to comment on a minimum of ten other blogs per day. I usually end up posting on more like 15 per day. At least two of my comments every day must be on blogs from people that are not students of Alex Jeffreys.

I have built a mailing list from 3 people to 65 people as of this post
I have created a video series on how to set up and do tasks on blogs. I gave away the videos for free in exchange for opting in to my mailing list. I have consistently made a minimum of $100 per month in blogging and I intend to continue to create videos on how I have achieved this. The idea came to me after I began to receive the same e-mails over and over again from people asking the same questions about setting up or running thier blogs. I figured that if I created video tutorials, I could start sending them links to videos instead of explaining the same thing over and over again.

I’ve made blog posts that have gotten over 50 comments
This comes back to how I generated my traffic numbers. I have commented on a lot of blogs and a lot of people have returned the favor by commenting on mine. I have helped people in the forum or through e-mail who have come to my blog and commented as a thank you. I enabled the plugin CommentLuv on my blog so that people who comment get a backlink?to their latest article. I have also installed the top commentators widget, which puts a link to the people with the most comment’s blogs. I have also made it a rule of mine to reply to every comment that people make on my blog. This generates an almost community feel to the readers and commenters. This also drives up the comment count, giving social proof to visitors of my blog that I am someone that they should be reading.

I have created my own product (with two more in the works)
I have created my series of WordPress videos based on common questions that I was receiving. I would have never gotten this started if it wasn’t for my mentor, Alex Jeffreys’ first coaching session where he discussed organization and getting things done. I decided that I need to set goals and create a path to achieve these goals. I started making daily task lists and I posted a list of goals on my wall. This has made me so much more focused and driven to keep moving on my product creation. I also need to thank Josh Bartlett, once again, because he has helped so much with the brainstorming and creation of my current product and the products that are in the works.

I have averaged about $50 per day in affiliate commissions
I have posted links to products that I use and endorse. I only endorse products that I can personally vouch for. If I haven’t used it, I haven’t promoted it. My mentor once said that you need to find the way cash flows and then jump in front of it. I believe I finally understand what he was talking about. One way that I have implemented this philosophy is to promote products that I use and I am affiliated with to people who are going to need them anyway. People come to my blog to learn how to blog. They are going to need a host and an e-mail list. I simply promote who I use for these services. I have offered up my link to people who are going to purchase the services anyway. That is simply all I have done and it has worked so far…

Anyway, this post was a little bit longer than I had intended. I wanted to be 100% honest and outright with every method that I have used to gain the traffic that I have gained. I feel like there are still so many more traffic generation methods that I haven’t even taken advantage of yet. I have not really leveraged social media outlets such as Twitter or Youtube, I have not attempted to promote through article marketing, I have not hunted out more forums in my niche to help out in, and I have not experimented with paid traffic for this site. There are still so many avenues that I intend to venture down to continue to build on the success of this site.

Please leave me some comments. I would love to hear if this was helpful to you or if there are more avenues that you would recommend that I venture down. I also intend to comment on any blog of the people who comment on my blog. Leave me some comments and let’s continue to build our network of blogs in to one of the best resources for internet marketers on the internet!

So I just wanted to report some small victories of mine. I created this blog on July 1st. It has been online for exactly 21 days now. In that 21 days, I have managed to grab traffic reaching almost 100 visitors per day, I have built a mailing list of 21 people, and I have made almost $300 in affiliate commissions. $300 may not sound like a huge amount of money but considering that I am used to making between $100 and $150 per month, $300 in a 3 week period is a huge improvement!

I believe I have the Alex Jeffreys coaching class to thank for these triumphs. I have offered to help any student that needed it within the class, I have been very active in the forum, and I have posted on most of the people’s blogs who have given their link within the forum. I think that these three things have generated a ton of traffic for me. I have also began to post comments in blogs outside of the coaching, and I have started to become more and more active in the Warrior Forum again.

I have also noticed that my site has been getting ranked in Google for some pretty good keywords. The other day, I landed on page 1 of Google for the search term Hide Affiliate Links. That’s a pretty well searched keyword!

I feel like I’m really moving up in this online world! I have made some huge connections with some great people. We have already started to plan joint ventures for the future and I am really starting to feel like things are going to work out in my online business.

I think one of my biggest accomplishments, however, is managing to launch my own product that I created myself. I launched the first version of The WordPress Classroom and it has gotten some amazing reviews and attention. I am so excited to see how that develops and grows. It is a really exciting time for me!

I think all of these small triumphs are what keep on pushing me forward. People need to set big goals and small goals alike. Accomplishing the small goals continues to give them the drive and motivation to keep pushing towards the big goals!

Here are some people that have really helped me out so far that I just really want to thank. Please check out their blogs, they are great people and everyone can learn a lot from them!

• Josh Bartlett – He helped me come up with the idea for the WordPress Classroom. He is also helping me design the layout for the new version that will be released shortly! Me and Josh bounce ideas off each other for hours at a time sometimes! This is one smart dude!
• Joe Fier – Joe was my business partner before I started the coaching. Me and him support each other 100% and we are constantly doing what we can to help the other. He is usually the first person to comment on any blog post that I make and the guy has got some mad graphic design skills!
• Marcus Passey – Marcus has got so much passion and drive to be a success online. I think that is why we relate so well! He is just a motivational guy with a great attitude and outlook. This guy is going to go far!
• David Chamberlain – This is another guy that I spend hours at a time just bouncing ideas around with him. He is a smart guy and he always offers me help and advice. We promote each other’s blogs via the social bookmarking sites and I just think he’s going to be a great friend and contact going in to the future.
• Rob Willis – Rob helps me with ideas all of the time too. He always has some good ideas and he always sends me cool tools and resources to check out.
• Alex Jeffreys – My coach and mentor. This guy is one cool, down to earth dude. He is basically a marketing genius that has helped get me organized and on track. If it wasn’t for Alex, I would still be out there buying up every ebook that promised quick riches. He knows his stuff, he stays up until ungodly hours of the night to help people, and he’s just an all around nice guy

There are so many other people that have helped me here and there. I realized half way through making that list that there’s no way I’m going to be able to list them all in one post. I will make sure that everyone who has helped me along the way will get their due thanks. Anyone I haven’t mention, Thanks So Much!

This experience has been amazing and it’s just getting started!

I don’t have a big long tutorial for you today. I am smack dab in the middle of a really cool project. When I finally release what I am working on now, it will be one of my proudest moments. I am putting so much effort in to this and I think people are really going to love what I’m setting up for them. I will have more details soon but I have sworn to some other people that I wouldn’t spill the beans quite yet. It’s going to be tough though. This is huge for me.

I created a goals / journal section up at the top of the page there. If anyone is interested in some of the my personal and financial goals or if you want a little more insight in to what goes on behind the scenes of my online business, you may really enjoy reading my journal.

That’s all I have for today. I can’t believe all of the amazing people that I have met this week and all of the amazing ideas that have been tossed around. This is going to be the best year of my life.

Comment if you are excited too.