Why You Need Your Own Product – Membership Site Mastermind Open
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Rather than throw you head first into my very long sales page for the opening of Membership Site Mastermind, I’m going to show you just the video here on my blog, to help keep you on focus .

This video was taken directly from my sales page, however it’s full of great content – not just a pitch – including my story about why I decided to launch a membership site after spending the previous year writing an ebook (which I still haven’t released!), how I launched my membership site and why I think it’s so important you sell your own product online if you want to make serious money.

Here’s the video, just press play to begin:

I encourage you to watch this from start to finish whether you want to join my membership site training program or not and even if you have seen it before.

After watching this video if you’re keen to join the program, you can sign up here -

Join Membership Site Mastermind Here

Or if you want to read all the details about the program, you can view the full sales page right here –

Membershipsitemastermind.com/signup/

If you have any questions, please leave a comment to this blog post and I will reply as quickly as I can.

Yaro

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey

Do You Want A Copy Of My Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers?
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

It was early 2006. I had been blogging for over a year and felt I had achieved something.

My blog had recently surpassed 1,000 RSS subscribers (what is RSS), making it at the time the most popular website I had ever built. The income was solid – up to $2,000 a month at best – and it was growing. I loved what I was doing.

My plan, based on all the Internet marketing advice I studied from the experts to “create a product”, was to start by releasing an ebook to test the waters as my first product. I had already begun to grow my email list, focusing on the idea of teaching other bloggers how to build traffic, since I felt that was something I was becoming good at.

One of the keys to my success with traffic was how well I was doing in organic search results. I was literally famous in the Internet marketing space because all the top Internet marketers would find my blog when searching for their name or their products or terms related to our industry.

This is incredibly powerful leverage, if you want to meet important people in your industry, or as an affiliate marketing technique, because you can just write about something often enough if you want a top ranking for a certain term or name.

My blog’s solid search engine performance has continued as a trend today, with about half the traffic I attract to this blog still coming from Google search queries. Considering how much more competitive the environment is now, with so many blogs on the same topic as this one, I consider my consistency an achievement.

I don’t really talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) much on this blog anymore, mainly because I don’t believe much has really changed over the past few years. The fundamentals are still the fundamentals. You will find plenty of articles on SEO in my archives under the SEO category if you’re keen for study materials.

However, SEO was a huge part of my early studies of Internet marketing, primarily focused on attracting more traffic to the business I used to own, BetterEdit.com, a proofreading service. When I was running that business, 50% of new client acquisition came from Google search, which was important – it made the business much more hands off for me to run when you have a steady stream of customers coming in without advertising expense.

As a result of the focus I had back then and the results with my blog, I considered myself half-decent at SEO. By no means was I an expert, and I certainly didn’t pretend to be one, but I felt I knew enough that I had something to share.

As a result of this, my intended first product, was to be an ebook called “The Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers“, which as you can guess, was designed as a guide to help bloggers improve their search engine rankings and attract traffic from Google and the other search engines. The ebook was almost complete and I even went so far as to have a cover created for it, which you can see inset (including the big haired, old suit photo version of me).

The book was never sold publicly because I decided to release a course on traffic. I can’t really remember why I decided to switch gears so late in the development of this product. It could have been because I thought selling a course at a higher price would make more money, but it was more likely due to some kind of fear based decision making or distractions. I just didn’t have the follow-through at the time to do a launch.

I registered the domain name BlogTrafficSchool.com, which I still own, and focused on releasing that program instead.

Of course if you know my story, the product never saw the light of day either, so I ended up having a 75% complete course on Blog Traffic, and a near complete ebook on SEO for blogs. Thankfully the third time I finally got something out the door, and released Blog Mastermind as my first product. The rest is history.

Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers – Revamped And Ready For Release

I recently began reviewing my ebook on SEO for blogs and was quite impressed to see that it’s still full of fantastic advice. It only requires about 10% revision work and I believe it could become one of the most helpful, and true to my style – simple guides – to follow on how to get more traffic from Google to your blog.

The book is over 100 pages and includes insights into how search engines work, how to optimize the internal structure of your blog, some very solid advice on linking strategies – including 75 link building techniques, with some case studies of my own experience using them – a quick launch checklist, and more.

It’s all content of course, direct from my experience and research, into your hands.

So do you want a copy?

I will release the book for sale later in the year, however I have some good news for you if you want a copy now.

This is the primary bonus (there’s more below) I’m throwing in as an enticement and I can’t think of a more powerful companion ebook to go along with the membership site course.

To launch your membership site you’re going to need an audience, and using a well search engine optimized blog has to be the most affordable (almost free) and long-term viable technique available. You just need to do the work, and the Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers explains this in some detail.

As one final enticement to make this an irresistible offer (or bribe!) to get you into my membership site coaching program, I’m going to throw in my entire mega-bonus pack, which I’ve outlined below.

How To Claim The Bonuses

All these bonuses will be sent in an email to all members of Membership Site Mastermind (including any person who has already joined this week and all my previous members – see I look after you too!) on Wednesday the 17th, that’s next week.

To make sure you get that email with all the bonuses, you have to join the program by Tuesday at the latest, if you join after, you will miss the email.

Note you won’t get the bonuses immediately after joining, you get them on Wednesday, so busy yourself with the course itself until then.

Here’s the sign-up link when you’re ready to go –

The Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers Plus Mega Bonus Pack

Here is a break down of all the bonuses –

Bonus 1: The Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers (Revamped for 2010 and never before released)

You score the entire 100+ page ebook written by me (Yaro) as a complete guide on how to optimize your blog for search engines and attract waves of free traffic.

Inside the guide you will learn –

• My simple three step secret formula that is the foundation of my blogs search engine success
• An outline of how search engines work so you can give them what they want, rather than fight them (this is so simple when you think about it, yet incredibly important too)
• A guide on how to optimize the internal structure of your blog to give it the best chance of ranking well – and you only need to do these things once, it all happens on autopilot after that
• A link building guide, including 75 detailed link attracting strategies where I explain techniques I’ve used to attract authority links to this blog
• How SEO fits into the overall blogging formula, which if followed, can result in life-changing income, fame and real recognition for your work

Bonus 2: My Live Presentation On Buying and Selling Websites

I very rarely present on stage, and besides the people in the audience when I’m on stage, most people never see me talk in person.

This presentation is from an Andrew and Daryl Grant 4-day workshop held in Brisbane, Australia. My talk was about how you can buy and sell websites for profit, and includes -

• A breakdown of my formula for website flipping, which focuses on a certain type of website
• Three real life case studies where I show you what websites I purchased, how I made them more profitable, and then sold them
• How I automated the management and “renovation” process so I could flip sites as a passive income strategy
• Where you can go to find websites for sale and how to get the most money for your website when you are ready to sell

Bonus 3: My Live Presentation Of How To Build A Massively Profitable Blog

This presentation is also from a Grant’s workshop, but this time in Sydney and the topic is all about making money from blogs. This is a comprehensive presentation, talking about the foundation of a successful blog and includes -

• What structure you need in place to start blogging the right way
• How to create powerful blog content that attracts people like a magnet
• What methods are available to really ramp up your income from blogging, that goes way beyond just adsense
• How to use your blog as a lead generator for a proper online business, not just a hobby

Bonus 4: The Keys To A Powerful and Profitable Blog Training Videos

These are special recordings of some of the key concepts that go into building a successful blog. This content has only ever been viewed by the paying members of the Become A Blogger Premium program and features 100% content from me, Yaro Starak.

The focus of these videos is very practical training on how to build and then profit from your blog. If you are looking for the specific techniques I used to build my blog and still use today to profit from my writing, this series of 13 incredible videos will help you. Topic covered include –

• The critical pages your blog must have if it is to succeed
• How to find your focus when blogging
• An in-depth look at what Pillar Content is and how to create it
• 7 Quick and easy ways of getting Traffic to your Blog
• How to profit selling advertising and promoting other people’s products
• And loads more on Building Traffic and Making Money through blogging

This really is an incredible bonus, you don’t want to miss these videos.

You can join here -

Bonus 5: “How To Use The Power Of Video To Market On The World Wide Web” – Teleconference Recording With Gideon Shalwick

During this fantastic call with Gideon Shalwick I drilled him on how exactly he creates quality video using both PC and Mac. Gideon started off as a PC user and later switched over to Mac, so you’re going to learn why he did this, and what exact software and tools he uses to create video.

Here’s what you will learn in this audio download -

• Exactly what kind of equipment you’ll need to record perfect video
• The secret formula for creating powerful video scripts
• How to setup your shooting area to increase the quality of your videos
• How to capture and record your first video
• How to edit your video using a free and easy to use editing program
• How to get your new video onto your own blog or website

Bonus 6: “How To Boost Critical Conversion Points In Your Blog Business” – Teleconference Recording With Will Swayne on testing elements of your blog and email newsletter to improve conversion rates

Will Swayne and his company, Marketing-Results.com.au, helped manage all the conversion testing for my business in 2008. They tested my opt-in forms and sales pages to increase conversion at each point in my business process.

In this recorded teleconference with Will, we reviewed the critical conversion points of a blog business, including -

• What are the critical elements of a blog post to test to make more sales
• How to sell more affiliate products by improving upon what you already do
• Simple tweaks you can make to your email newsletter to improve open and click-through rates
• How to change your newsletter opt-in form to boost how many people join your email list
• And lots more simple tips to improve your conversion rates…

Mega Bonus Pack Available Until Tuesday Next Week

All the above bonuses are going to be sent via email to all the members of Membership Site Mastermind on Wednesday the 17th of March 2010. If you don’t join by Tuesday, then you will not receive these bonuses.

All the details about my membership site coaching program and the order form are here –

I can’t wait to see you on the inside of my program, and congratulations if you qualify for the bonuses.

Yaro Starak
Throwing In The Kitchen Sink

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey

Joanna Martin Explains How She Did A $60K Launch With A Tiny Email List
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 40 Minutes - 55 MB ]

Dr Joanna Martin used to be a practicing medical doctor in Tasmania, then left that role to become an aspiring actor. Today she is a professional speaker focusing specifically on how to sell from the stage.

Joanna makes incredible money, to the tune of a seven figure business, by speaking around the world, however that’s not what this interview is about.

In late 2009 Joanna and her husband Greg were at an Internet marketing event I attended and we got talking about selling info products online. Joanna wanted to create a new income stream from the web, selling information products like continuity programs and home study courses, based on the materials they already had.

While Joanna loves what she does on stage, having a stable online income source to match her profits from speaking is an important goal, so she’s not dependent on being somewhere presenting live to make money.

I gave Joanna and Greg access to my Membership Site Masterplan report and the Membership Site Mastermind course and they went away and immediately took action.

The end result was a small trial launch of an info product to their existing list of just 1500 people, generating more than $60,000 in sales in a couple of weeks – not bad for such a tiny list and no affiliates.

In this interview I asked Joanna to break down exactly what she did to launch her product and get such a tremendous return on such a small starting point.

If you’re interested in learning more about Joanna and selling from the stage, make sure you visit
shiftspeakertraining.com/blueprint to download her free report, and also check out her personal blog, JoannaMartin.com.au

Here’s the download link again for the call –

Mp3 Download

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 40 Minutes - 55 MB ]

And here’s a reminder that Membership Site Mastermind is opening again soon too –

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey

How Stable Is Your Online Income
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

I’ve made some form of income from the Internet for the past ten years. That’s incredible for me to consider, as I look back over the years how for such a long time I felt very insecure about where my next paycheck was going to come from and whether there would be another one the following month.

For the first five years, roughly from 2000 to 2005, my income from the Internet varied, reflecting the choices I had made and my own variable focus. It went something like this…

• I made spare change money selling stuff from around my house on eBay
• I played a card game called Magic: The Gathering and began selling the cards I won at tournaments in online trading forums and newsgroups
• I built a website focused on the same card game, eventually earning a few hundred dollars a month from banner and newsletter sponsorship
• I started an e-commerce card shop from the website and continued to sell my winnings from tournaments, and began buying product at wholesale prices to sell online at retail (until credit card fraud forced me to shut it down)
• I started a proofreading business, which after a slow start, eventually earned enough income to pay me a full salary, equivalent to a first year university graduate

This is a list of the projects that I made money on during those five years. It doesn’t include the websites I built that shortly after I abandoned, my brief experiments at AdWords arbitrage and other various false-starts because I was so easily distracted by new methods to “make millions” online.

During this time I finished my university degree, held a couple of casual jobs and traveled too. I also watched, often resulting in plenty of self-doubt on my part, as my friends entered graduate jobs, which looked a whole lot more secure than what I was doing at the time and often paid them better as well.

Looking back over those five years the money I made proved surprisingly reliable, even though at the time my confidence in the income stream wasn’t there (good old hindsight). I had enough time to work on new projects because I focused on ideas that didn’t need too much personal time from me once set up, for example getting volunteer writers for my card site and using contract editors for the proofreading site, so I could easily manage them both at the same time.

The end result was a diversified online income stream that continued to grow as long as I did a few key activities (like put up posters to promote the proofreading business), plus I was creating assets that I would later sell.

The Era Of Rapid Income Growth

From 2005 until the present my business structure changed rapidly, and my income also grew considerably. I quit my casual job, the last time I would work for anyone having never entered the full time workforce, moved out of home into my own house and traveled around the world.

Here’s a brief recap of some of the highlights of how my online business changed in 2005 to 2010 -

• I started blogging, which after a year of learning started to generate a few hundred dollars a month from advertising
• My first affiliate income stream was generated also thanks to blogging
• I purchased a second blog, automating it and more than tripling the income
• I bought some other sites, focusing on forums, automating them and doubling the income they generated
• I sold the proofreading business, the first time I made six figures in one day (or really about five years if you consider how long it took to build the business)
• I started an email list on my original blog
• I launched my first product, an online course called Blog Mastermind, later adding a second course, Membership Site Mastermind and a video course in partnership with Gideon Shalwick called Become A Blogger Premium
• I sold all the websites I had previously purchased, keeping only my own blog site and courses

This is only a highlight reel of course, with lots more going on to make all this happen. There are a few key aspects of what I did during recent years, compared to earlier periods, which I consider noteworthy changes that resulted in two very important outcomes -

1. My income streams became very stable thanks to diversification, but despite the different projects, I focused on systems I was good at and understood, so gained more leverage from what was already working
2. The amount of money generated increased from “salary replacement” (a nice place to be of course), to six figures and beyond (a life-changing amount of money).

If you drill down and look at the most critical changes, the big improvements occurred because I learned a few important things about Internet marketing and actioned them, which are -

• The Email List: an incredible income producing asset, if cared for well
• Product Creation: selling your own product will make you the most money
• Asset Sales: websites can be sold, and for considerable amounts, if they produce stable income

I can’t stress these three points enough, they really have changed my life for the better in so many ways, allowing me to live without any financial restrictions.

Needless to say my income went from random and unpredictable to stable and very near passive. Most importantly though, I now believe in the reality of this sort of income stream and lifestyle because I’ve lived it for so long. There’s nothing like seeing proof month and after month in your bank account to make you feel very secure.

There’s no sure thing of course, and I would never be so naive to believe that everything will remain as it is (change is constant), but the sense of relaxed calm around my business is considerably different to the often jittery nervousness I used to have about my financial future.

Do You Want To Feel Content With Your Financial Future Too?

It’s nice for me to tell you how great my life is, and I hope you learn from my words and leave motivated, but that’s not enough.

I enjoy my lifestyle because I’ve been willing to share so much regarding how I’ve put things together.

In your case you need to start building the fundamentals. You need an industry to focus on, you need an email list and you need a product of your own.

Saying these things takes moments, creating them can take years or at least months, but I won’t leave you on your own.

One of the best guides I’ve ever produced, and I give it away for free, is the Membership Site Masterplan report.

It’s a very practical guide, explaining all the bits and pieces I put together to create my online course Blog Mastermind, the first product of my own creation that I sold online, taking me from making about $5,000 a month to $15,000 a month online (that was the first time I broke the six figures a year milestone, changing my life for the better in so many ways).

If you want to know how I built my list, how I created the content for the product, what technology I use to deliver it and how I launched it using powerful psychological marketing triggers that compel people to want to work with you and buy your products, you need to read this report.

If you’ve never studied the Masterplan before, download the text or audio version from here right now, it will only cost you your name and email address and then I’ll start emailing you lots of valuable spam messages designed to further inspire and help you launch your own product -

www.membershipsitemastermind.com

As you study the report you will come across a link to my coaching program on how to create online membership sites and information products, called Membership Site Mastermind.

This program has been closed, but I’m about to reopen it again for the first time in 2010, so you will have the chance to take the course if you want more help launching your own product.

As long as you are on the email list for the Masterplan or read this blog, you will know when it opens again.

Yaro Starak
Stabilizing Income

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey

5 Tips On How To Outsource Your Blogging
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Tyrone Shum has participated in both my Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind programs. He’s special because not only did he study the materials (which is rare enough!), he went on and has built himself a successful blog and last year launched a membership site too, so he’s a real action taker.

Part of the reason he’s one of the unusual people who actually gets stuff done is because Tyrone knows how to outsource, in fact that is his specialty. In this guest post from Tyrone he offers some advice on how to outsource your blogging effectively…

Get More Done

Recently, I saw a poll on a very popular blog asking if they outsourced any of their blogging. I thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you some tips from my experience of outsourcing blogging tasks to virtual staff in the Philippines.

Undeniably I love my work but that doesn’t mean I can manage all the things effectively from advertising to marketing, from article creation to posting, from directory submissions to email marketing, and so forth all by myself. Additionally, not all bloggers plan ahead of time, and get things completed as early as possible without missing deadlines. So we have to replicate ourselves to meet different demands. I’m not talking about cloning but it’s how we distribute tasks to virtual staff to finish more tasks at the same time.

I’ve summarized the most important points to outsource as part of your blogging below, here we go…

Tip 1: Outsource your blog design

Nowadays in the world of “blogging”, we have to compete amongst millions of blogs to gain readers attention. To have a unique and welcoming blog design is a wise decision. To have it designed and setup sounds easy enough, since there are thousands of blog designs to choose from across the Internet. However, is it worth doing this yourself?

In my opinion this is one area that everyone must outsource. No matter if you are a graphic designer or web developer, I would not recommend spending time designing and customizing your blog.

The reason is quite simple, your time needs to be focused on producing good content and marketing your blog to build a larger readership. The biggest challenge I faced when I begun my blog at Internet Business Path, was I took on the task to install and customize all plugins myself. This was just to save a couple hundred of dollars, and looking back the time spent was at least over 20 hours. In hindsight I would have preferred to spend that time wisely with family or learning how to play the guitar.

In addition, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get a unique blog design. Say you have a budget to spend $2,400 for a unique blog design, why not consider hiring a part-time graphic designer for $200 a month from the Philippines? You will certainly get great value and additional work completed for the equivalent of one blog design over 12 months.

To share with you my experience, I have a graphic designer who charges me two hundred dollars per month to design, implement and setup all my plugins for my websites. You can see the work his done for me at www.massoutsource.com, www.internetbusinesspath.com and www.asknreply.com.

Tip 2: Outsource uploading of blog posts

After you create a blog post you need to upload it onto your blog, otherwise no one will read it. Uploading a blog post takes time and if you spend 30 minutes a day to properly optimize and add pictures to your blog post, then it is an extra 2 and a half hours a week that you could be spending doing other fun things.

Since I am a believer of batch processing, I write my blog posts ahead of time which frees up my schedule to do other fun things. After I complete these posts I send them to my virtual assistant who sets posts to automatically be published at certain times of the week. She will search engine optimize my posts for me and begin the marketing process of driving traffic.

It may not seem to take up too much time to do all these, though to save an extra two hour and a half hours per week that costs me around $3.50, I would rather outsource uploading my blog posts any day. It’s not the fact that it costs so little, it’s the time that you gain back to do what you want.

Tip 3: Outsource your submission to directories to get back links

Imagine if you had only 2 hours a day to complete one critical task. What would you do in those two hours? I know I wouldn’t spend my time submitting content to directories and optimizing my website to get more back links. I would focus my time on dollar productive activities that generate revenue into my business.

Most newbie and experienced bloggers spend at least a quarter of their time online completing submission tasks. There are ways to automate this using both software and virtual staff.

Every time a new blog post gets published, my virtual staff has been trained to automatically submit the content to directories and social networks. With a click of a button and a few comments in the post, she creates links using software.

Tip 4: Outsource technical issues with your blog

Even though I come from a technical background of Computer Science and I used to have a tendency to do it all myself, nowadays outsourcing these technical issues is the norm.

There are aspects of my blog which need to be updated and changed from time to time. The more complicated it is to change or fix, the more time it takes and more the reason why I am not the one doing it. Fixing problems like these don’t generate any income and is considered a task that is non-productive, though it must be fixed for the cogs to run smoothly within the business.

I also have a ticket support system in place where’s it sole purpose is to receive support questions, issues and inquiries from all aspects of my business, including my blog. If a customer or reader sees a technical issue and informs us about it, then a quick ticket submission to the technical department will forward an email to the web developers, who will take action to fix any of these bugs.

Whilst I was on holidays recently in Hong Kong and Bangkok, one of my websites went down and the mail server was not working correctly. Could you imagine what would have happened if the issue was sent to my email? No one would be able to check it and I was in the middle of a jungle on a flying fox with no Internet connection to access email.

Luckily for me, with the system mentioned above and having outsourced all my technical issues to a team of web developers, I don’t have to worry about any of these issues. I didn’t even know this happened until one of my members within my coaching program mentioned it to me in passing.

Tip 5: Outsource Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO has always been a big topic and the more you delve into it, the more time it takes to manage it.

From social bookmarking to article submissions, blog and forum comment submission, SEO can become a full time job in itself. It’s not a task I personally manage and I am not an expert in this field. I have a general understanding of how it works and how to implement most of the crucial aspects of SEO. Having this knowledge DOES NOT mean I personally go out and implement these strategies. I hire someone and train them on how to do it, passing onto them my knowledge. SEO is not something that a blogger wants to spend time working on and it’s crucial to find good virtual staff to implement this for you.

How To Face This Blogging Dilemma?

There are millions of blogs out there who struggle to make any income or achieve the level of success they desire. The core reason why I see a lot of blogs struggling is they lack leverage.

Leverage can only be achieved when certain non dollar-productive activities are outsourced, such as blog design, uploading of blog posts, submission of links, technical issues and managing SEO, just to name a few. When you focus only on producing excellent and valuable content for your readers creating a strong following, then you are able to monetizing your blogging efforts. This is when you are truly leveraging your blog.

Remember the key is to have a balance of blogging and lifestyle as well. Taking that leap of faith and transitioning to having others do the “behind the scenes” work will allow you to focus your time on blogging and give you time to enjoy your lifestyle to live that 10 hour work week, whilst making a six figure income.

Have fun and enjoy the journey. Remember to mass outsource for a great life!

Tyrone Shum
Internetbusinesspath.com

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“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

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I Cut My Hair And Bought A New Car
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

I’ve been debating for a while whether to publish this blog post because it’s a bit off topic and very self indulgent, however lots of people have been asking me questions about these two changes to my life, so I’ve decided why not tell you about them.

Consider yourself warned, this article will not likely improve your life or your business in any significant way, but if you’re curious about what’s going on in my life, read on.

(On a side note, it never ceases to surprise me how talking about your personal life on your blog, no matter how unrelated it is to your blog topic, can enhance relationships with your audience. Voyeurism is alive and well in the blogosphere and is a great traffic technique. So there you go, I did manage to sneak in an on-topic lesson.)

I Finally Got The Chop

You probably know me as that blogging guy with the long hair and the funny name who looks like this –

Late in 2009 I decided, after more than five years with long hair, it was time to go back to the short hair version of me.

The funny name stays, but today I look like this -

As a kid growing up my mum was in charge of my hair. She figured what’s the point of hair cuts so I just looked scruffy most of the time and was often confused for a girl when I was very little.

As a teenager I wanted hair like Nick Carter from the back street boys because I figured he got the girls, but that wasn’t going to happen with my fuzzy curly hair. I tried and went with long hair over an undercut (that’s shaved underneath and long on top – not a good look!) and wore my hat a lot to try and straighten my hair, but it never really worked.

In my early twenties when I went backpacking in Tasmania I cut my hair to the shortest it has ever been. The photo inset is me on top of Mt Wellington near Hobart from that trip.

Making the decision to go back to short hair, surprisingly, wasn’t just a personal image choice, it also forced me to consider my business image too.

Personal branding is important as a blogger, especially in my situation where a unique feature has distinguished me for so long. For the past five years my long hair, which appears in banners across the web promoting my free reports and programs, and on my blog, has identified me.

This may sound strange, but I seriously wondered if cutting of the curly locks would have an impact on my brand.

I’ve had short hair now for several months, and besides not being quite as easy to recognize at live events (sometimes a good thing!), it hasn’t really had that much of an impact on my business. Part of the reason I’m even writing this blog post is to point out the fact that I cut my hair as many people keep asking what happened to the hair when they see things like my Twitter profile pic.

Anyway, enough about hair.

I Bought A New Car

If you followed my tweets during late 2009 you would have seen me debating what new car to buy.

With my father returning from Spain with his girlfriend and my new baby brother, I had plans to give my car to him and get another one for myself. In the end my family did a car swap, with my dad getting the Toyota Yaris my mother had, mum taking my Suzuki Swift, leaving it up to me to find a new car.

The Australian government, to help combat the “GFC”, offered a 50% tax incentive on new cars purchased in 2009, so I had to December to decide what to buy.

After several months searching and lots of questions asked of my friend and car enthusiast, Alborz Fallah (founder of CarAdvice.com.au – you can listen to his blogging story here), I settled on a new car.

Back in 2007 I bought the Suzuki Swift new and moved into my suburban townhouse, and had long hair. This is what I looked like then -

Today I have a new BMW 135i twin turbo inline six, in black with red interior… and much less hair.

In case you are wondering, I’m not a family man, and this is definitely a bachelors car, so I don’t expect to have it forever.

Another somewhat surprising consideration when buying this car was the potential to upset some of my long time followers, who like the fact that despite my financial success, I still drive around a basic car.

I’ve crossed over to the dark side, driving a more expensive luxury car, which could damage my brand as a “down to earth marketer“.

On the flip side, pictures of expensive cars are fantastic social proof tools used by Internet marketers to demonstrate that they really are making as much money as they claim to. However some argue pictures of Ferraris and Lamborghinis etc are faked (rentals for example), and result in many becoming skeptical of the people who use them on sales pages.

No matter what your personal view, marketing psychology tells us that this kind of proof is helpful in conversion.

In the end in my case I wanted a car by December and opted for something in the middle of the pricing range I was looking at. It’s definitely more expensive than my last car (about three times as much), and with much joy I can tell you the BMW certainly zooms around a lot quicker too, which was an important criteria for me.

Despite the new car, I can’t fight the inner greeny in me. In an effort to decrease my environmental impact, I try not to drive too much and generally walk or catch public transport, so the BMW stays garaged for most of the time.

After learning that my new car spits out a hefty amount of pollution because of the powerful engine, I went out and bought this -

So you could say I’m in two minds about my current transportation. The BMW certainly is a beautiful car, there’s no doubt about that and I’m grateful to be in a position to buy one, even though I suspect I won’t be an owner for long.

How The Internet Can Change Your Life

I went from living at home with my mother, to buying my first house and first car in 2007, then in 2009 buying a half a million dollar inner city apartment and a new BMW.

(…and cutting my hair.)

It’s safe to say the Internet, and blogging in particular, has been good to me.

I hope you see my story as inspiration. If you go back and read this blog from start (about January 2005) to finish you can actually see the progress I made to go from where I was to where I am. There’s plenty to be learned in the archives of this blog if you are looking for the kind of success I have had so far.

If you want to follow in my footsteps and use blogging to make money, read my free Blog Profits Blueprint, now well and truly a run away success. You can get your copy in audio and text from BlogMastermind.com

Remember the secret is in the hair…

Yaro Starak
Hair Blogger

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My Notes From The Ed Dale Internet Marketing Seminar
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Over the weekend I attended Ed Dale’s 30DC Coming Home three day event in Melbourne.

Ed Dale, if you don’t know him, is one of Australia’s most well known and likable Internet marketers, who adds a uniquely Australian flavour to the industry. Currently he is most well known as one of the founders of the 30 Day Challenge, an introductory program that aims to take any person from absolute beginner to making their first few dollars online, and beyond, within 30 days.

Ed also has a rep for website flipping, having earlier in his career sold his website portfolio for $5 million dollars. He then moved on to teach how to build niche sites with Frank Kern using the “Underachiever Method”, which focused on creating small sites that each earned a few hundred dollars a month, and then pumping out as many of them as you could.

Ed is one of those types of people who likes to keep up to date with everything and anything going on online, with the eyes of a marketer and a geek. He’s constantly talking about the future before it gets here, and it’s clear this is a passion of his more so than a business interest – he just likes to geek out on technology, marketing, social media and the web, but always refers back to how it could be used to make money.

The seminar on the weekend was by far the most relaxed event I’ve been too, led by the TubbyNerd himself (Ed) wearing his sandals, shorts and geeked out shirts. This wasn’t a formal seminar with suits, or people attempting to keep up professional appearance or sell you anything. It was a bunch of experienced guys and girls coming together to teach a bunch of up and comers how to make money online, in the format of a casual conversation. Just how I like it

What Are We Talking About

Going into this event I wasn’t exactly sure what the topic was, since Ed and his team dabble in all kinds of subjects, from niche sites, to SEO and website flipping. It turns out what we got was all “of the above” – a broad range of presentations on keyword research, domain and website flipping/investing, offline and online lead generation and plenty of advice about search engine optimization (Leslie Rohde from the SEO Braintrust was a special guest).

At the end of each day hot seats were offered, where members of the audience could nominate their website for review by the speakers, which depending on how you look at it, was a brave thing to do. The experts really hammered some of the sites, but in all cases they deserved it! Most of the websites submitted needed some significant improvement.

I featured on a panel interview on the first day of the event, with Darren Rowse, Lynn Terry and James Schramko. Our subject was the “Third Tribe”, the idea that there is a spectrum online of people who are Internet marketers and do “evil things” to make lots of money, and then social media people (including bloggers) who sometimes on principle prefer to stay in the struggling artist category and not make any money.

The Third Tribe is supposedly somewhere in between on the spectrum, using money making ideas from Internet marketing, but not in quite so evil ways (this is very subjective of course) and leveraging social media as well.

It was a fun panel to be a part of, which although perhaps not overly practical, helped to debunk some myths regarding attitudes people have about making money. If you attended the event, I’d love to hear what you thought of the panel discussion.

The Cutting Edge Of Internet Marketing

One thing Ed Dale and his team are known for is staying up to date with the various new trends online and actually testing them as viable techniques to build traffic and make money. For example, Ed was one of the first marketers to heavily test Facebook Flyers (Facebook PPC Advertising) and then report back his results.

As a result of this I was excited to hear what the speakers would talk about, expecting to learn what’s new in the Internet marketing space.

It’s worth mentioning that this event was targeted at beginners. While there were some good nuggets here and there during the presentations I sat in on (I didn’t make every presentation – sometimes I hung outside with other speakers or slept in ), the majority of the content covered subjects I was familiar with (the advantage of having ten years of online marketing behind you).

That being said, it was interesting to see how people apply techniques, even if I was already very familiar with what they are doing, because the secret is in the implementation.

So what did I learn? Here are some notes from what I took away from the event –

• Much of the conversation talked about search engine optimization and traffic related advice, which fundamentally hasn’t changed. We’re still talking about title tags and incoming links as the most important SEO variables to focus on. In fact you can go way back to my series on Top 8 SEO Techniques from 2005 and much of what was written there still applies.
• Video is definitely a key factor, with it heavily endorsed as an easy tool for landing and sales pages and very strong when it comes to user engagement. What’s not clear, is how exactly to rank video based pages well in search engines. Transcribing video content is an option, and the core SEO principles still apply, but it’s not as clear cut as text since the search engines can’t actually see what is in the video.
• Based on the website review hot seats, most people have a long way to go with their websites. Nearly every hot seat featured a brochure style website with no or a very micro content strategy, thus very little traffic coming in organically, and a user “unfriendly” design, making it difficult to even figure out what the purpose of the website is.
• People are still eager for “opportunities” to make money, for example, buying and selling websites and domain names both featured as presentations at the seminar. I’m all for those ideas of course, but there’s nothing new here that should force you to jump ship from what you are currently doing unless it’s time to try something new or you haven’t started something yet. Beware becoming a serial “ship jumper”.

Why Only The Few Succeed

Since I spent time talking to some of the experts in attendance, who all make significant money, and also people from the audience, some of whom are still finding their way, I was able to clearly see what separates the money makers from the dreamers who make no money.

The answer: focused repeat action

Take James Schramko for example. This guy has an idea and just gets it done. Anything he thinks could make money he tests by actually creating a website and driving traffic to it. The more he does this, the better he gets at figuring out what elements matter most.

Where I think most people go wrong is they become paralyzed with indecision, which results in little action to change what they are doing. This stems from fear of course, stories in your head which stop you from succeeding.

As I see it, people who don’t get results have a fundamental error in their thinking process. They believe they don’t have enough information or don’t know how to do something or fear failure, which in fact are all possibly real conditions. Instead of using those elements as motivators to go and do an experiment to learn and eliminate the fear of the unknown, they use that fear as an excuse NOT to do anything and instead, distract themselves with tasks and thoughts that don’t lead to success.

This is a pretty insidious thought pattern, but it’s very easy to fall into when you feel insecure about what you are doing. Doubt, disbelief, skepticism – fear – these are all very real feelings when you are building a new online business.

The act of studying more is commonly applied in situations, the idea being that education can shine a light on the unknown and other people can tell you what to do. This can be dangerous however, as often studying makes you feel like you are getting closer to your goals, especially when you hear the success story of other people because you “taste” the success, even though it belongs to other people.

In reality you only move closer through action, and while education is important, taking action is the only way to get a result, so sometimes you just have to jump in and start making mistakes until you succeed.

The Blogging Advantage

I’ll end this with one last insight I took away from the event that should make my members and fellow bloggers feel good.

Repeatedly throughout the weekend the advice given was that you need content to succeed online. Content is the catalyst for traffic and traffic is the catalyst for sales. As a reader of this blog you should definitely get this – it all begins with what you give people in exchange for them giving you attention.

As bloggers this is what we do best and throughout the weekend many of the experts kept saying “add a blog” or “start blogging” as a path forward to capture traffic from search engines.

In the context of the event, often the advice was to use a blog as the tool to execute a content strategy to improve an existing website, or as a means to start bring in the first visitors to a niche site.

There wasn’t much talk about going deep or building authority within a niche, which is largely because most of the focus of the event was about getting started online or entry level best practice techniques, which blogging certainly is – but it can go much further than that, it can be the center-point for your entire business, as is the case for myself and many other bloggers.

In other words, if you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on perhaps the most powerful online marketing tool we have available today, regardless of whether you are focused on dominating one particular niche, or entering multiple small niches, or helping clients with their online marketing, or all of these things.

This event once more reminded me, that if I do one day finally run my own event, the opportunity to sell to beginners is always there, if you have the patience to share what you know and answer even the most simple of questions.

Yaro Starak
Still Blogging

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Don’t Let Your Ignorance Stop You
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

This is the fourth article in a series on Positive Change. My goal with this series is to give you the tools necessary to manifest positive change in your reality, or simply put, to get what you want and eliminate what you don’t want in your life.

Before you read this article, make sure you read the first three in the series in this order –

1. Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
2. What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want
3. Why Creating The Change You Want Is All About You

I re-read the first three articles in the series before beginning this fourth chapter, which led me to a realization that I was potentially missing out one of the most important points. Based on observation of people who struggle in life, this sticking point is something critical to eliminate early on, otherwise you’re going to hit a brick wall every time you look to make changes.

My intention is to complete this series with an insight that is literally the key to not only having whatever you want in your life, but also making the entire planet a better place, but before I do that, we need to get one roadblock out of the way. Let’s do that now…

We’ve laid a framework that can lead you to realizing positive changes in your life, which is based on the following five core principles -

1. Those who truly excel in life do so by repeating processes over and over again, resulting in a compounding effect that can eventually take you to amazing places. A “success ladder” is available to achieve almost anything in life, so if you’re prepared to go through steps and repeat something often enough to get good at it, you can have or be almost anything you want.
2. Your awareness – how you interpret everything around you – is what governs your ability to get things done. How you see the world impacts how you think about the world, which impacts how you feel, and thus how you interact with the world. Your interpretation can help you or hinder you, and this is regardless of what is true – the choice is entirely up to you. You decide your truth, so choose to see the world in a way that is beneficial for making the changes you want in your life.
3. Some things are out of your control and you’re not always going to get what you expect. You must master the art of continuous improvement, regardless of conditions. You’re human, so you’re going to feel emotions that have the potential to derail your progress, but only if you let them. It’s necessary to keep taking steps towards change, even when you don’t feel like it.
4. There’s always a smart choice you can make, given a set of conditions, but unfortunately most people do what other people do, which often is NOT the smart choice. Don’t let social conditioning, peer pressure or accepted practice govern your choices, instead, assess what you personally have to work with, and make the best decisions from where you are coming from and where you want to go.
5. Follow the success patterns of other people – the smart decisions other people made who presently have what you are now seeking are there to be modeled any time you want. Don’t follow anything blindly, but don’t go in blind either. There is so much information available to learn almost anything, so use these resources to help you discern the smart choices for you.

Beware Your Own Ignorance

These five principles can take you far, but there’s an insidious force that has a nasty habit of derailing people before they adopt and practice these ideas, which I label “Ignorance“.

Ignorance can come in many shapes and forms and is pervasive in our current society. Almost everyone “suffers” from it in some way.

The problem with ignorance is that it creates a rigid belief structure that stops certain ideas even having a chance. If you’re stubborn, and you believe certain things must be a certain way, or you’ve learned a certain way of looking at the world that you refuse to change, then you’ve locked yourself into a box.

Some people, even if their own framework is flexible, suffer from the ignorance of people around them, which can include your immediate family and friends, or more wide reaching social structures, political and religious systems and cultural norms. These structures impact you if you choose to partake in them (you could always become a hermit and live in a cave).

You have a choice in how you interpret everything, so even if you are forced to adhere to a rule or system you don’t think is right, you can choose how you respond to it. This is why people locked into a life sentence in jail can still find happiness, yet those who have abundant freedom can still find a way to be miserable.

I’m sure you know what it is like when you’re talking to a friend in a bad relationship, or a job that’s not right for them, or they have a habit they refuse to quit like smoking, yet no matter how hard you try and make them realize what they are doing is not beneficial, it just doesn’t get through. This is frustrating because of course you want what is best for the people around you, but ultimately you can’t make decisions for other people.

The problem becomes especially pronounced when you don’t share a basic framework, ideology or world view that is compatible with the person you are communicating with. If you’re talking about something that is blue, but your friend is wearing red-tinted glasses, you have no possibility of “making” them see what you can see. They need to take off the glasses first – or try putting on another pair of glasses – which is something they have to decide to do for themselves.

It’s not your responsibility to change anyone, however you do have control over your own reality, and becoming aware of your ignorance is the first step to eliminate it. Some form of rigid thought process or belief system is holding you back right now, and you’re not even aware of it. This impacts how you make decisions and what actions you take, so until you deal with your own ignorance, you’re going to struggle to change.

Take Off Your Glasses

The first step you can take immediately is to start watching to see if you are wearing any “glasses” that are stopping you from making change.

Being open minded is great, but what I’m talking about here goes much deeper than that. You might consider yourself open minded already, but if you monitor your own reactions to what other people say, or what happens around you, you will see that even you have knee-jerk responses to situations, or behavior patterns that are entrenched in your lifestyle and impact your choices in ways you don’t currently see.

We’re all a product of our upbringing, cultural story, personality type and previous experiences. We interpret the world through our own lens that is constructed of all these things.

• If you believe that only bad people get rich, that will stop you from ever becoming rich yourself because you believe you have to be dishonest to get there.
• If you believe that people should treat you a certain way then you get upset when they don’t and immediately write them off as not worth knowing.
• If a good life is marriage, children and owning your home, but you’re single, broke and childless on your 35th birthday, then you must be a failure.

There are countless expectations like this that impact how we think and act in life, some of which we can see, some that we blindly follow every day without realizing.

Most people I know, myself included, make initial impression judgments based on things like how a person looks and what clothes they wear. Even though I’m open minded, I can’t help but make a judgment on some level, that’s what humans who are driven by egos do.

The key is to realize you are making judgments constantly, become aware of that, then drop them if they are hindering your progress or causing you to suffer. It takes work because you’re trying to unlearn patterns of behavior and thoughts you’ve likely continued for years, possibly your entire adult life.

Be careful not to fool yourself either. It’s easy to say something to the people around you based on what everyone expects because of social standards. No one expects you to be racist, so saying you’re not is expected behavior, but if the conversation in your head is actually racist, then you’re just lying to yourself.

This doesn’t have to be about something as severe as racism either. If you watch your thoughts you might be surprised at how often you tell yourself things you don’t really want to believe simply because of habit or conditioning. Changing what’s going on outside starts with reconstructing what’s going on inside you.

There Is No Such Thing As Truth

At this point in our discussion it’s important that I introduce an idea that might take you a little while to fully come to terms with. You might think you “get” this – I did at first – but then realized I really didn’t fully understand the implications of this concept.

It is something I have struggled to fully integrate into my life, but once you do, it can dramatically change how you perceive the world and all the people in it. Let’s take a look at this concept now, and in the next article in this series we will dig a little deeper. Here we go…

Truth, is only truth in your mind.

No one else on this planet shares what you consider true because no one else can be in your body at the same time as you, at least from the perspective of the individual (we will look at universal “oneness” later).

What you determine is true is based on what your senses interpret. The data from your body is sent to your mind, which determines how you perceive something. From there you use language to label what you have perceived, to make it possible to communicate with other people and categorize what is around you.

A red apple is a color that collectively we have agreed is red, however it’s only true because we’ve learned what the red label represents. Although I know what red looks like to me, I can never really know what red looks like to you. It’s safe to assume that most of us see it in a very similar way since we use our eyes – and we all have eyes that are constructed in a similar manner – but we can never be 100% certain what another person sees, it is impossible without becoming part of their consciousness.

Given the limitations of physical existence and our system of labels for language, it’s absolutely critical that you never attach yourself to an interpretation of truth. If you become attached to it, then you will start to emotionally identify it as your point of view and feel a need to impose it on other people, or defend it when others disagree. If your desire to make the world be something is so strong that you find yourself suffering as a result, you need to let go.

The awareness of just letting things go and pass through you, can be a wonderfully liberating realization. When you decide that what other people think about you, or how they see the world, or what they do, is not your responsibility, you enjoy an immense sense of relief. Deciding that it’s not your job to control the universe, but to flow with it, will make your life significantly easier.

Your only responsibility is to determine what you consider the truth – your truth – and act on that in each and every moment. If your truth is dynamic – not rigid – and you understand you are simply choosing to see things in a way that creates power in your life in that moment, then you’re doing the best you can.

Challenge Your Reality

Once you start monitoring and adjusting your own interpretation and you start to dissolve your judgments, something interesting will start to occur. You will get curious.

The great thing about opening your eyes to other colors is that suddenly the world doesn’t seem nearly as black and white as it used to. The more structures you have in your life, the more liberated you will feel as you break them down.

With this new sense of freedom you will desire more stimulus. Everything in the world will become more interesting because you won’t be focused so much on trying to make everything and everyone around you fit into “boxes”. The boxes of course, don’t exist, they are just mental constructs you’ve created to help you feel safe. When you drop the need to “feel safe”, let your ego go, the world and the people in it, don’t seem nearly as scary.

You will still have problems of course, but given your focus will be less on conformity and more about experience, you will gain an ability to solve problems with much less friction – in fact it will become a lot of fun.

• Instead of being so depressed because you can’t find a boyfriend or girlfriend, you will relish the challenge of meeting new people and breaking down your previous belief structures about your romantic life and what it means to be single.
• Instead of struggling with how hard it is to make money, you will look for more powerful ways to earn a living. Your eyes and mind will be open to doing things like starting a business and quitting the “secure” job you’ve previously stuck to because that’s just what everyone does and it feels safer.
• You will reassess what exactly it means to “be rich”. Money will have a completely new meaning to you.
• Instead of suffering the behavior of certain people in your life you will realize that you simply don’t need them and it’s okay to not be friends with everyone.

The fear of being lonely or “losing someone” will never impact who you decide to associate with. You will naturally gravitate to and draw in people when you need them. People who don’t empower your life will drop away. You will make the decision to not participate in the “drama” of interpersonal relationships, which so many people in the world today are addicted to.

Once you let go and expand your universe, suddenly the vastness and potential – including all the amazing people you could surround yourself with – will inspire you to make new friends and build a social structure that reinforces the changes you want to make in your life.

In short, you will stop acting in fear because of your narrow viewpoint and start acting with a sense of wonder and possibility because you can see the world is much more dynamic than it used to be. Instead of being trapped into a box, you will see that the world is too large for you to ever understand completely, so will seek to challenge your reality without being encumbered by what other people think or standards of behavior you used to adhere to.

Can Your Problems Magically Change Overnight?

One area where people suffer from ignorance is how you create problems when they don’t really exist. Or, using our new understanding of what is truth, you might choose to see a situation as a problem, where alternative interpretations could see the situation as an opportunity.

No matter how bad a situation is, you always have the choice to see it as something beneficial.

If we take what most people on this planet would consider a pretty bad situation – you’re stricken down with a disease that is going to kill you – even this can be interpreted as something positive. You’re going to die, that means you’re going to find out what it means to be no longer in your body and find out what happens next. This, for a curious person, could be the most exciting adventure ever experienced in life.

Here’s something you have to accept – death is an experience you’re going to go through, so you can suffer this fact, or frame it as something you face with courage, curiosity and a sense of fluidity – you will surrender to it, rather than fight it. The choice is up to you.

If we look at less finite “problems” in life, things like not having enough money, or not having a romantic partner, or wanting to lose weight, or move to a better city, or find a new social circle, or stop feeling depressed, or to quit smoking, or start waking up earlier, or buy a car, or stop being afraid to fly in airplanes, or fall pregnant, or leave your marriage, or become famous, or pretty much any change whatsoever you want to make in your life, the same rules apply.

Every situation above can be looked at as something you are “suffering” from, with the frame of what you stand to lose or what you will never have. Or these things can be completely re-framed as opportunities for new experiences, or as a challenge to find an alternative solution, or even as a point of self-reflection to figure out exactly why you want something so much, or why you fear losing something so much, etc.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is in constant flux and the only reason you choose to feel or do something in any given moment is because you choose to, nothing is making you do it. The situation you are in is not the reason you feel as you do, it’s merely a set of circumstances you are choosing to react to in a certain way. If you can’t see a good way to interpret something and a “way out”, then you’re simply addicted to being a certain way – you’re too ignorant of your own behavior and mindset to change. It’s entirely your fault.

Ouch.

That could hurt a little, but I hope you see it as more liberating than painful.

Accepting Change

When I face problems in my life I have benefited from reminding myself of one of life’s constants -

Change is permanent.

I love the dichotomy in that statement. I could have said that change is constant, which is is, but there’s something compelling when you realize the only thing that will never change is change itself.

The practical implication of this understanding further enhances the importance of how you interpret every single moment and thought in your life. Everything is going to change, the situation that you are suffering from right now will not last forever.

Death ensures this. You won’t be lonely forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be married forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be sick forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be young, beautiful, rich, poor, hungry, full, tired, bored, frustrated, angry, bitter, happy, sad, relaxed, excited, joyful, retired, employed, or anything forever, because you are going to die.

Yah, morbid I know. This realization could be about as depressing as it gets, but again – that’s a choice you’re most welcome to make if you like.

I recommend instead that you see death as the greatest reason to always interpret life in a powerful and positive manner, unless of course, you enjoy suffering.

Any problem you have right now doesn’t exist and will disappear, I promise you this with a 100% guarantee. It will change – and to relax a little after all that talk of death, many of the changes you want in life will occur while you are alive. You don’t have to die to rid yourself of your problems, you can do it right now.

Practical Problem Solving

Problem solving begins with first understanding what your problem is really about. I hope, by reading this article to this point, you understand that your problems aren’t really as severe as they are, or really aren’t problems at all.

If you have previously focused energy on what you don’t have and don’t like, it’s time to change that to focusing on what you are doing to make the change you want happen.

You now have the power to never again suffer from your own ignorance. Open your mind to possibility and opportunity and get excited about all the positive changes you could experience in your life in the very near future.

With this new found mindset, the next step is to take the appropriate actions that lead to your desired goals. To make this as practical as possible, here’s a process that can lead you to any change you want to make happen in your life. Remember to apply everything you learned in this article, and the previous in this series, as you go about creating positive change in your life.

1. Start “looking for doors” that will lead you to your goal
2. Once you find the doors, open them
3. Evaluate what you find inside and decide which path to follow further
4. Once you follow a path, focus on dynamic refinement of the process until you achieve your desired outcome (remember that everything can change, including your desired outcome).
5. Accept that you can’t know everything or be everything within the confines of your physical body and mind, so narrow your focus to objective problem solving based on what’s in front of you

While you go through this process, keep in mind your view of the world, including your insights and your ignorances, are helping and hindering your progress. The more you increase your awareness and decrease your ignorance, the easier your life will be and the less friction you will face as you make change.

Coming Up Next – Understanding Your Power As A Change Catalyst

In the next and final chapter in my series on positive change, I’m going to tie in everything you’ve learned so far and leave you with I believe is the single most important insight you can gain from this series.

While everything I’ve talked about so far has been about you helping yourself, you obviously don’t exist in isolation. There is an entire universe that is influencing you, but perhaps more importantly, you are influencing it.

You’re going to see that it’s not just for your own benefit that you need to adopt these positive change principles. It goes much deeper than that.

I’ll give you the final piece of the puzzle very soon…

Yaro Starak
Dissecting Truth

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& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
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Industry Shift: What The Armada Music Label Can Teach Us About New Media Marketing
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

You may not know this about me (unless you follow me on Twitter where I tweet music video clips from time to time), but I’m a huge fan of the progressive and vocal trance scene. That’s dance music for the uninitiated, although the genre of dance is massive in terms of all the categories and sub-categories, which includes genres like techno and rave music, which you might be familiar with.

In the case of trance music, the leading DJ, at least in terms of a popular vote run by DJ Mag, is Armin Van Buuren. Armin has been number one for three years running and as DJs and trance producers go, he’s about as prolific and talented as they come. I’m a fan, that’s for sure.

One of the things I enjoy often late at night when I’m in the mood for music is to trawl around YouTube watching video clips of the latest and classic trance tracks. There’s an absolute library of great music in YouTube, and of course it’s all free.

Armin Van Buuren is not only the number one DJ, he is also co-founder of a music label called Armada Music. One of the very smart things I’ve noticed Armada is doing is making heavy use of YouTube as a marketing channel.

At least 50% of the tracks I listen to on YouTube come from Armada, especially if I follow a music trail going from one track to the next following the “similar video” recommendations provided by the YouTube algorithm.

Watching Armada use YouTube is interesting, because the music is free, but obviously the company makes money. I believe Armada, and labels like them, are pioneers in adopting new media, rather than fighting it. There’s a lesson in this case study for any of us who want to leverage the web for exposure of creative output, even if their is a profit motivation behind it.

The Profit Model For Music Has Changed

It’s been a wild last ten years for the music industry. The old big record labels clearly messed up, and instead of embracing change, tried to hold on to their old ways of doing things.

You can’t blame them of course, why wouldn’t you want to keep using the system that had poured billions of dollars in profits to them ever since the days of vinyl and the 8-track. Clearly stubborn greed won out over smart leadership during times of revolution.

Unfortunately as a result of a rigid thinking process, rather than being innovative and leading the industry through a period of change, which couldn’t be stopped – it was a revolution of how music is distributed – the big labels decided to fight it.

Taking actions like attacking customers, using the courts to sue certain unlucky members of the public, hoping it would act as a statement to discourage others from “stealing music”, is like biting the hand that feeds you. Sure you don’t want to encourage people to steal music, but if your deterrent is a slap on the wrist, that’s not good enough, you’re not addressing the core change occurring.

You need alternatives that offer innovative methods to consume music where everyone wins, that are as easy or even easier than the options available to download illegally.

Nothing really good surfaced until iTunes came along, which has gained some traction as a viable and legal method to distribute music with profit, thanks in no small part to the incredible adoption rate of the iPod.

It’s fair to say that in many ways Apple’s ingenuity has led them to become market leaders because no one else stepped up with a good enough alternative, plus they managed to convince the major players to support it.

If you look at how Apple has married their hardware and software, making one so dependent on the other, with a heavy dosage of cool factor marketing to convince the masses to take part, you begin to see how truly genius they really are.

Not everyone uses iTunes and fewer still make a purchase from the service. I feel confident saying that the majority of music listeners on this planet now purchase less music than they used to, largely in part to the relative ease of access to any genre you could possible enjoy thanks to websites like YouTube or niche specific music websites and podcasts.

So if so many people are enjoying music for free, on demand, whenever they want, how are musicians going to make a living from what they do? And what about the music labels? The Internet allows direct access to artists without the need for middle-man marketing and distribution services, so where exactly is going to happen to the music industry?

The Web Is Not The New Radio

Although I wasn’t alive at the introduction of the radio, I can only imagine that the idea of broadcasting music for free could have been upsetting to some business people.

Eventually everyone realized that the radio meant exposure, and because you can’t decide what tracks the radio plays, you still head out and buy that tape or CD of your favorite song or artist album, so you can decide when and what you listen to.

The radio turned into a marketing channel that led to an increase in sales. Landing air time on enough radio stations could make or break a band.

Television had a similar impact, and thanks to MTV, the music industry had yet another means of marketing their product. Once again, the music-listener could not dictate what was played and when it was played. Music videos on TV, like radio creating awareness and excitement about certain artists lucky enough to get air time, was more like a sample sized helping for the music fan. To enjoy a full music meal, you have to go out and spend some money to buy a record.

The Internet, though comparable to the television and radio as a new form of music distribution lacks one key ingredient, or should I say, restriction.

Content on the web can be time-shifted, stored, shared and consumed at will. There are no restrictions, you can press play over and over again on your favorite track or watch your favorite music video again and again.

Making things potentially even worse for the record labels, but way better for music fans, thanks to the infinite scale of the Web, ease of use of the technology and low start-up costs, music artists have flooded the medium with content. No longer are we forced to listen to only the top ten, twenty or one hundred tracks based on a mainstream popular vote. Now we can have what we want when we want it and there’s more variety to explore than we could ever hope to in a lifetime.

The music industry now lives in the Long Tail.

Music online is an all-you-can-eat buffet that only costs the price of a device to access the Web and the fees you pay to your Internet provider.

So what’s a record label or music artist to do if no one buys physical music anymore and so much digital music is free?

Exposure Still Counts

Although we’ve gained in the breadth and depth of content – we have more music than we could ever hope for – for a time it became hard to find the good stuff.

We went from having a few options based on what the mainstream or record label execs thought was good, to having so many options that even the most obscure tastes could be met, if you could figure out exactly what the good stuff is.

Then Google came along with its clever algorithms that show us what the majority think is best, even within tiny niches.

Next came social media, with the social-vote acting as the criteria to decide what is good and what isn’t.

Though not completely foolproof, if people vote with their attention and actions, what links they click and how long they spend consuming media, you can use technology to decipher what’s popular, even when presented with near-limitless options.

The end result we have today, is a conglomeration of new media companies, evolving old-media companies, e-commerce, social voting tools, search engines, file sharing and good old word of mouth all driving how music is distributed. It’s complicated, but we’re getting closer to a model that works, and from the point of view of the music fan, there has never been a better time to be alive.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that exposure still counts. If there is one commodity that has become scarce as a result of the technological shift, it is people’s attention spans. As options increase, attention decreases.

The Internet has brought down barriers to distribution, so your every day musician can capture attention for their work, even sitting at home strumming a guitar on their bed. With ideas like “1,000 true fans” demonstrating that you can at least make a living if you can get a loyal following from a small group of people, it could be said that it’s also one of the best times to be a music producer as well.

The music labels still have power because old media still has attention, and there are some things you can only do with the scope of a company behind you. People still watch TV and listen to the radio. Marketing is a multi-faceted function of a music label, with claiming air time on old media as important as building a solid following on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

If you want to be a big star, you still need big attention, however as Armada and smart labels like it are realizing, the key to success rests in giving away a lot. Instead of buying exposure in the form of advertising, today you give value for free, and just like us information marketers, record companies and musicians are coming to grips with the idea that selling their music is not necessarily how they are going to profit. Instead they have to give it away.

The Performing Artist

If the music itself is a marketing tool which you give away, how do you profit?

Before I go on, it’s worth stating that I don’t work for a record label and never have, and my musical inclinations are very much on the consuming side of the fence, so what I’m about to write is merely speculation from my business brain.

I like thinking about this especially when I can see a revolution going on in an industry that has contributed some of the most joyful moments to my life – music is transcendent to me. However I’m not privy to the accounting books of any record labels so I don’t know what the real profit centers are, what revenue streams are on the increase and which are in decline.

My gut feeling is that musicians and record labels, like us bloggers, are relying more and more on multiple streams of income, and the highest value product they have, is the face-to-face time they offer. In the case of music, that’s live-gig time, and especially at the very top end of most popular artists, the big cash is made from ticket sales to concerts.

The MP3 may have replaced the CD, but it’s not become nearly as profitable as the small disc, even though the manufacturing cost is so much less. Instead, the MP3, and videos on YouTube are the currency that captures attention, but they are mostly free. They help build the fan base, communicate creativity and are certainly valued highly by the listeners, but since so much of the music is free, it’s not a significant revenue stream.

ITunes is no doubt making millions, but it’s not the profit center that CD sales used to be for the record labels. Plenty of recording artists will never profit from direct sales of their music, which isn’t necessarily new – many a struggling artist has had to keep the day job (or night job) while attempting to “break into” the music industry – the difference now is the profit model has shifted, taking the power away from the labels and into the hands of the people, or at least anyone who can access the Internet to publish music.

Today because it has become so easy to reach people all over the world without the help of a label, and manufacturing paraphernalia to sell is an option to anyone online, smaller musicians can realistically survive.

If a proportion of their 1,000 true fans in each city they visit on tour attend live gigs at bars and clubs, buy a record or two and perhaps some related product like shirts, caps and posters, and combine this with some online sales, maybe some sponsorship income and other promotional opportunities, the artist can make a fairly good living.

At the top end of the scale, today’s leading DJ, or band or singer will leverage all media, both old and new, organized by the music label, though some media, such as twitter, will work best when the artist themselves is in charge of content, rather than an employee. The labels who will thrive in the new environment, are those who innovate by finding new profit channels and understand that online media is not about them losing profits to people stealing music, it’s about cutting marketing costs and finding new audiences around the world using the Web as the most affordable exposure tool ever invented.

Armada Gets It

Bringing this back to Armada Music, if you watch their tracks on YouTube you will notice they include plenty of branding and calls to action to bring a listener into the world of the label.

If you like this track, subscribe to our channel, or check out our website or podcast, or buy tickets to the upcoming gig for this artist, or share this video with your friends. They don’t even mind if you take the track and mix it in to your own podcast or video on YouTube that you give away.

Everything is free, which fosters a frictionless distribution of the music, the artist and the associated brand – Armada. The end result is massive exposure, with a huge global following, leading to sold out gigs all around the world (which are not free).

In my favorite industry, DJs release regular podcasts full of great tunes. Each MP3 podcast is an hour or two hour long mix, full of the latest music, all for free and designed to spread exposure for the DJs featured in the podcast, and the host DJ too of course. Armin Van Buuren runs a live radio show and podcast called A State Of Trance, which apparently has 30 million listeners world wide, which if that is true, makes it one of the most popular shows on the entire planet.

Unfortunately not all labels share the free distribution and sharing of music attitude and will send cease and desist notices if they find you infringing on their copyrighted materials. Is this old thinking or just protecting your assets?

It’s tough to say, but I certainly know what feels right – giving the goods away and asking for nothing but attention of your work.

Leo Babauta of ZenHabits has a very liberal uncopyrighted content policy, where he states –

I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.

If you read his full policy you will see he gives full rights to do whatever you like with his content.

The Free Economy

The web has ushered in an era where free has become the accepted norm. However the Dot Com boom and subsequent bust demonstrated that while giving away things for free is great for audience building, you still need a profitable model behind what you do, if what you are in the business of building a business.

As information publishers, we follow the model of give away so much that people never need to buy from you, but have the option to buy something from you anyway, of which a small proportion will.

The music industry is evolving to a place where the product that used to make them millions is either free, or in the case of a site like BeatPort for DJs, and of course iTunes, you can buy individual tracks for a couple of bucks.

As more and more companies learn to Move The Freeline, the most challenging aspect of what we do online will be about translating your hard work into money. Social media services have huge valuations as companies, but as yet, many of them don’t profit, though they are expected to eventually.

One thing is clear, as consumers we’re enjoying an unprecedented amount of free-ness in our lives, so much so that the challenge is finding the best content to fit into our busy lives. The future, as in the past, will belong to those companies and artists who find a way to bring meaning to our lives, and make enough to survive and thrive financially while doing it.

Yaro Starak
Musically Un-Gifted

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Valentines Special: How To Find Your Business Love Balance
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Chris Crowe is a friend in Brisbane who specializes in coaching people to create loving relationships, with a focus on the importance on polarity between partners.

We were talking recently about relationships and business. Chris noted the importance of your relationship with your partner and how much it impacts your business success. He often deals with people who act as though a relationship and a business are two elements of your life that can not be developed at the same time, yet in reality can be so powerful when in harmony.

I know plenty of entrepreneurs who if I asked why the run their business, the answer they would give me is for their partner and family. If that’s the case, it’s pretty clear that keeping your relationship full of love and passion is actually good business advice too.

In this guest article Chris is going to explain briefly how he attended an Anthony Robbins event, resulting in a “dissection” of his relationship with his girlfriend Kahlia in front of 3,000 people in the crowd, which led to them first breaking up, then reuniting and finding a new, deeper connection and sense of love. He will then relate some tools you can use to help foster a holistic approach to your relationships and your business.

Just in time for Valentines day, I now hand you over to Chris…

The Anthony Robbins Intervention

Anthony Robbins called for me to stand; we were at a Date With Destiny event in front of 3000 other participants. My partner Kahlia had already stood and asked Anthony Robbins for help with our relationship as we were tired from struggling to connect and had considered walking away even though we loved each other deeply. We needed to reignite the excitement and passion between us, to meet each others needs and connect from our hearts. We did not want to feel the hurt and emptiness inside anymore. We just wanted to be “us” again.

We thought we had exhausted all our options so we stood hoping Anthony Robbins could guide us to find the solution to reconnect our relationship.

At this stage in my life I had worked successfully as a Business Coach and was qualified within Neuro Linguistic Programming, Time Line Therapy, Life Coaching & Hypnosis, so I was no intellectual dummy! Mentally we understood what was happening, but emotionally we were confused and hurt.

Within our relationship and regardless of our qualifications and experience, there was something missing for me to fix my relationship “problems”.

At this point in the story any woman would say I was thinking like a true guy -”trying to ‘fix’ the relationship problem“. And yes I admit back then I was making one of the standard male mistakes of trying to “fix” instead of connecting and creating an environment to allow Kahlia to trust me and go deeper into her soul.

But at this stage as with many I had not learned and applied the foundational keys of a loving passionate relationship.

What unfolded at this event was one of the biggest learning curves of my life, instead of walking out arm in arm passionately looking into each others eyes. We BROKE UP!

Yes that’s right after 3 hours in front of 3000 people with Anthony Robbins we broke up…???

But luckily I had finally found my limit, and I was guided there thanks to Anthony Robbins and the 3000+ awesome people at that event that day.

This was just the beginning of our journey. From that moment I knew that I had to find out the answer, I needed to understand how to create a passionate relationship. I had to understand how to meet her needs and my own and do it from a centered, masculine healthy place.

Just as I learned to educate myself within business to increase my success I also had to understand relationships to live the exciting passionate loving relationship I desired.

From here we submersed ourselves in the study and understanding of creating a real relationship that would last the distance and is sustained with the feeling of true Love & Passion.

Let’s be honest, relationships are one of the most emotional areas in our life and can truly make us feel we are floating on heavenly clouds or bring us to our knees in pain.

Kahlia and I broke up at Date With Destiny, and from our journey we now share an intimate, open, sensual and passionate connection in our relationship, that grows deeper and stronger every day. We are expecting our child in May this Year.

We are so grateful to share that we have a passionate polarity and energy that we had never experienced prior to this journey. Only through the discovery of some key relationship tools, never giving up and not being afraid to put our hand up and ask for help have we made it this far.

Every area of our life has increased from this deeper connection. Our life is juiced from the passion we share together.

If you can relate to not living your relationship at the level you and your partner deserve, there is a solution and we would like to share some of our journey and the tools we learned to create a Passionate Loving Relationship.

Passion In Your Business

Have you ever felt the passion that you get when you are winning in business or starting a new (ad)venture?

The deep stirring and excitement that comes from the endless possibilities…

We’ll now that you can measure passion in your life I want to ask you, have you ever felt this passion within your relationship? Have you felt this passion lately?

Many entrepreneurs think they can only have one focus while achieving their success; it’s either the relationship or business.

But what would you say if I told you it’s possible to have even more inspirational juice to build a business when balanced with a healthy passionate relationship.

If you already have a relationship and perhaps even work with your partner within your business, how would you like to renew and retain the passion while still achieving success in business?

Imagine that… You achieve all your financial goals and also share it with your partner in a deep and fulfilling relationship.

Now I know what you may be thinking, because many years ago I thought the same thing…

“I can sort my relationship when we are successful and have made the money we want”

OR

“It’s ok we are nearly at our goal. Than we’ll go on a romantic holiday and sort that out, I can still fix it later”.

Unfortunately the reality is that someday may never come, and regardless if you achieve the business success you will sadly find at the end of that journey you are often either no longer in a relationship, or the passion is so dull that once the distraction of the business is removed, the relationship end is only a matter of time.

You have heard the cliché that money is not everything and love is the most important thing, so I am not going to bore you with what you already know.

The simple fact is you may be focused on financial/business success right now and you feel this is required in order to be in a mindset to focus the time to realize success.

I am not going to speak further about the success time frame of business because this is not what this article is about. We are here to talk about your Relationship success while still achieving your business goals – We want Holistic Success.

This is for you if you are in a relationship or if you would like to attract one while still putting in the required time and focus to reach your business goals.

Business Love Balance

We are going to term this the “Business Love Balance” which also happens to be the name of the program we designed to achieve the passionate connection in your relationship, filling your life with depth and love giving you a life of holistic success… The Ultimate Success!

Just as there is a structure to follow to achieve in business more efficiently there is also a structure and tools that can be applied to create the passionate polarity in your relationship, whether you are already in a relationship or would like to attract one; And no matter what stage your relationship is at. It’s never too late to reignite with the right fuel.

Within the Business Love Balance program I teach, I provide members with step-by-step tools to help create the structure to allow you to ignite and retain the passion between you and your partner. One of the tools is “Love Communication” – This one resource alone if applied will make a massive difference to your relationship.

‘Love Communication’ is understanding how your partner receives love best for THEM and communicating to them in this way.

Whether it is to deepen a moment, create understanding and rapport when resolving an argument, or if you are in business together, you can make your partner feel love and connection while working.

In this article I want to briefly share some of the basics of ‘Love Communication’ to help you get started in connecting and deepening your relationship.

There are four main ways a person likes to receive love, these are called sub modalities and they are:

1. Kinaesthetic
2. Auditory
3. Visual
4. Auditory Digital

These are the basics of ‘Love Communication’ – and these love strategies are an important place to start if you want to connect with your partner.

We all like differing variation of these to receive love, but one will often be a primary.

The other important note is we ALL use these preferred communications methods in many areas of our lives e.g communicating with work colleagues, connecting to our children or taking in new information.

The key is to know first what your own Love Strategy is and secondary how your partner likes to receive love.

To understand these and recognize them we need to know how they might appear in some basic examples; some one who is primarily Kinaesthetic would like affection and often be touching, hugging and kissing their partner or wanting to express their feelings. They are the “touchy feely” ones and can bring a lot of connection to the relationship. They feel and express love when touched and being close.

A person who is Auditory will like to receive love through words, they like to hear you say it and express to them by speaking. You may find this also generally leads into the bedroom if while making love you tell them how you are feeling and what you are going to do to them Perhaps read up on some naughty romantic literature if you are out of practice.

Visual people receive love through what they see, it can be the effort you put into your appearance, the incredible looking roses you present to them or even cleaning the home so they can SEE the effort you have put in for them. So as you can imagine they love what they can see.

Finally Auditory Digital, these people receive love often by processing their feeling, which as you can imagine can be contradictory to the general definition of love.

People who are primarily Auditory Digital can struggle to express themselves and open up to depth within their relationship. These people benefit from practicing the other strategies where congruent in order to truly deepen the connection.

Remember we all use differing variation of these strategies within our life and with our love communication and we can practice deepening and connecting using other strategies at times.

Now the key to ‘Love Communication’ and connecting with your partner is to understand not only what your own strategy is, but also importantly what your partner’s is. You will often find one of the main reasons couples lose connection is that they try giving love to their partner using the strategies they prefer receiving themselves.

Now an example of how this can create a problem; imagine a partner is Visual and the other primarily Kinaesthetic.

The Kinaesthetic partner always wants to connect with their partner affectionately through touching, kissing, and sharing regularly to feel & express love.

Now the visual partner prefers primarily to see the love, sure they like to touch and hug but generally different amounts makes them comfortable and creates connection specifically at certain moments. So when they are trying to communicate something they feel is important they will naturally use a lot of visual stimulation and require you to look and focus into their eyes compared to what they feel would be distracting, such as excessive touching at this time. They want to see you acknowledge what they are saying to you or showing you.

The key to this example and all other love communication is to understand what your partner prefers for communication and build rapport connecting with them with their love strategy.

Often simply understanding and applying this strategy alone will allow you to resolve arguments quickly, turning them into exciting moments. As well as connecting more with your partner and deepening during sex.

The Importance of Communication

A lack of communication or misunderstanding through your communication is the major reason a relationship fails.

Relationships do not end from a lack of Love but a lack of Passion.

Passion is created through polarity and deepening connection from the quality of the communication.

Can you imagine for a moment how this could help your relationship or if you are looking for one, allows you to connect with someone early on in the dating stages?

Now within the working environment, when a couple is in business together, communication is a very powerful tool to be productive in business, yet still make your partner feel appreciated and feel loved…

And of course it is a definite requirement to re-connect passion after a day of business together, changing the mood and at times the roles to realign your love and romance, creating a balanced life.

Just like all resources for success, a strategy is only useful if actually applied. This is one of the main reasons for the creation of ‘Business Love Balance’ – it provides accountability and continued growth to commit you to deepen your relationship, creating a deeply fulfilling life. Something we all deserve.

Chris Crowe

Learn more about how the Business Love Balance program guides you to meet your partner’s needs and stay accountable to create romance and passion, which leads to the truly magic moments of your life.

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10 Tactics To Make Your Blog Stand Out
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

One of the things I enjoy the most about blogs, especially blogs that are run by one individual, is analyzing why the blog is successful.

What is the magic ingredient that makes this blog succeed, when so many others fail?

Based on my observations, here are some of the elements you can apply to make your blog something special. Note you don’t have to apply all these ingredients, one could be enough, though of course if you apply more than one you increase your chance of success.

1. Enter a market early: Many of the top blogs are that way simply because they were one of the first, or the first, to enter the market and devote serious time and energy to produce valuable content on a consistent basis.
2. Be prolific: Never give up is a great attitude, and some blogs, while not necessarily always having the best content, always have something new and interesting. If you publish multiple articles every day for years, the force of your consistency can take you far.
3. Personality power: Some of the most popular blogs focus on the quirky, loud, controversial, attractive, cute, sexy, unusual, outspoken, intelligent, or any typically interesting human characteristics that make people want to pay attention to you.
4. You’re established: If you’re already a player in your market, as in you’ve done something not many people have done, even just one major accomplishment, that can be enough of a leverage point to highlight your blog above the rest.
5. You’re famous: If you’re famous then people automatically pay attention to you and that includes reading your blog.
6. You experiment: Some of the best blogs are hinged on the back of a “scientist” in their industry. A scientist is anyone who conducts experiments that have results other people want to know about.
7. The journeyman: Some blogs begin with little focus other than being what blogs were first created for, as daily journals of what’s going on in your life. Do this for long enough and if you live an interesting life, people will read simply because they’ve come along the journey with you so far and they want to know what’s next.
8. Writing style: While it’s not a mandatory requirement, some blogs succeed because of the quality of the writing.
9. Connections: If you know people who know people, the sheer power of your network can result in a popular blog because you learn insider secrets, or are the first to report interesting news, or have interviews with famous people.
10. Technology: Some bloggers use cutting edge tools, like high production value video, or beautiful graphics, or music to enhance what they do, leveraging online technology and multimedia to deliver a user experience that is difficult to find anywhere else.

Many of the above techniques cannot be taught, while others you can learn but take an above average level of effort to succeed with. Of course, this is why these techniques work. If everyone could do these things easily, they wouldn’t be effective, so as in all things in life, that which comes with greatest effort offers greatest reward.

Bear in mind that these ingredients must be inserted into a solid framework for a successful blog to begin with. Without a base understanding of what it takes to build a great blog in terms of technology and the web in general, you might have one of the above “magical” ingredients but lack an understanding of how the blogging tool works to distribute your magic to the world.

Thankfully it is easy to learn the process of how to build a great blog. Processes can be replicated.

Don’t act too surprised when I tell you this – I happen to have one of the best courses available today to learn this process. It’s called Become A Blogger Premium and it’s a video training program to learn the process of how to build a successful blog.

Right now I’m offering a $1 trial, but it expires on Tuesday at midnight February 9th 2010, after that you will have to pay full price upfront to join, the trial offer will be gone.

You can find out more about the program and sign up for your trial right here -

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

Good luck finding your magic.

Yaro Starak
Magician

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“How To Start An Internet Business
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X-Factor Video: Gideon Reveals The $13,000 Webinar Formula
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

The “X-Factor” is a term Gideon and I applied to blogging, where you use multimedia and/or social media to enhance your blog’s growth.

The idea is that “standard” blogging practices may not be enough to make your blog stand out, and since it’s so easy today to make use of multimedia and social media, why not leverage these technologies to increase your traffic and blog performance.

The latest X-Factor training video was just released for free on the Become A Blogger blog, which you can go and watch right now here -

X-Factor Video: How To Make Money With Online Webinars

This video shows how Gideon recently used Webinar software to create an entire product and generate over $13,000 from literally just a few hours work. Webinars are great teaching tools, which can be recorded and distributed on your blog.

If you don’t know what a Webinar is, have no idea what software you can use to make one and how they can be turned into a product creation tool to generate a nice income as Gideon did, go watch the two videos on the Become A Blogger blog and Gideon will reveal everything to you.

Make sure you leave a comment there too, as Gideon loves to get your feedback.

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Video: How To Rapidly Grow Your Blog Traffic
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Update: We just switched on the $1 Trial for Become A Blogger Premium, so you can create your account right at this page -

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

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• Click here to download the text transcript [ PDF ]

Press play to begin watching the video (this video is taken from directly inside the Become A Blogger Premium course).

I’m giving you access to a special preview of one of the strategy video presentations I did for the Become A Blogger Premium course. Note this video I’m sharing with you today is hosted on Viddler, however the premium videos inside the members area are all hosted on Amazon S3 high speed servers.

This video is a particularly powerful one as it covers my concept of “Impact Marketing”.

Many bloggers struggle to build significant traffic and that’s usually because they lack any truly effective marketing techniques. There are many simple blog traffic building techniques that work, but they work slowly and don’t have a big impact. Impact Marketing is all about making a splash and attracting greater than average traffic back to your blog.

This video reveals some of the impact techniques I’ve used and seen others use to great effect online. Remember these techniques are more than just linkbait (although they make great linkbait too), this is about building long term traffic attracting assets that keep a stream of people come to your blog over time and a rush of people coming in the short term.

Do You Like To Know Why And Then See How?

This video is an example of the strategy focused videos in the Become A Blogger Premium program. About 25% of the videos are like these, with me presenting to you my strategies and techniques from a conceptual point of view.

The rest of the videos show you how to implement the ideas live, by taking you through each step to make the technique a reality. Gideon Shalwick teaches you all the how-to videos and does a darn good job at it too!

If you’re ready to take your blogging seriously, want a clear path to success, have some time over the coming months to focus on your blog and enjoy the teaching style Gideon and I use, then please don’t miss out on this run of our program.

The $1 Trial is now available, so you can get full access to our program for a full week trial before deciding whether the program is right for you. You can claim your $1 Trial here -

www.BecomeABlogger.com/SignUp/

(Trial offer expires on Tuesday February 9th at Midnight.)

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey

How To Profit Helping People Become Famous – Interview With Laura Roeder
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

This interview is a great story, which for many online entrepreneurs will seem very familiar – as it was for me.

Laura is young, but she’s not young in terms of how long she’s been running an online business. Like many people who got started online, her first “business” was freelance web design, however today she’s doing something a little more unique.

Laura has various products, but one area she specializes in is helping other people become famous in their niche using social media.

During this interview you will hear a great example of a podiatrist (foot doctor) who followed Laura’s advice and basically become that famous online foot doctor guy, leading to all kinds of cool things happening to him.

I recommend you listen to this story if you’re thinking of leaving your job so you can get a feel of how a person can progress from one business model to the next, all the while making money. You may not have your ideal business in mind yet, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start one. Like Laura, who just decided she couldn’t do the full time work thing, sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith and make a change.

How Exactly Does Laura Make People Famous?

During the second half of this interview Laura explains how exactly she became good at making people famous, including how she uses tools like Twitter to accomplish this. She believes in the power of personality, which is something she runs her business by, with most of her clients choosing to work with her because they like her. That might seem obvious, but there’s a powerful marketing lesson in there too, which Laura subtly explains.

On an interesting side note – one of Laura’s best friends was a star for a full season of the show “Heroes” and Laura ended up helping her develop an online presence. You can hear that story along with lots of other interesting insights, inside this great interview. Just click play above to begin listening.

Laura is about to open her Backstage Pass To Twitter program, and you can download her 7-page report –

Why Being an “Expert” is Making You Useless on Twitter
(Avoid These Five Well-Meaning Twitter Mistakes)

If you want to learn more about Laura check out LauraRoeder.com.

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey

Become A Blogger Premium Opening This Week
Category: Business>Entrepreneurs Journey

Gideon Shalwick and I are opening our very popular Become A Blogger Premium video training program this week.

We’ve had over 2,000 people take this course during the past year, so it is by far the most successful program I run in terms of raw number of people who have joined.

If you’ve not participated before, then as a special incentive for you to give it a go when we open it for the first time in 2010, we’re going to offer a $1 trial, but only if you join within the first six days.

The doors will open for the $1 trial this Thursday at 10AM Eastern US time and the offer will expire on Tuesday, February 9th at midnight.

If you’ve never heard of Become A Blogger Premium before I recommend you do two things first, which are completely free -

1. Check out the ten videos Gideon put together to teach you how to set up a blog. You can find these at www.becomeablogger.com
2. While you are there, opt-in to get your free copy of the Roadmap To Become A Blogger report.

The Roadmap Report is a very thorough document that takes you through two core areas -

1. It lays out my system for building a successful blog, which has now been tested, implemented and proven successful on blogs in all kinds of niches.
2. A full explanation and case study examples of Gideon’s X-Factor marketing techniques. The X-Factor techniques use a combination of social media and multimedia (things like video, audio, twitter, facebook, youtube, webinars, ustream, etc) to give your blog an extra boost.

We’re very proud of this report because it focuses on both the fundamentals of good blogging, but also teaches you how to leverage the current exciting online trends in social and multimedia, which can give your blog a real edge.

You can read Roadmap Report, or listen to it (we provide a free MP3 version too), by downloading your copy after opting in here -

www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

If you enjoy the report and like the style of teaching in the ten free videos, then you are a perfect candidate for the Premium version of our program. The training is all done in very clear and easy to follow video demonstrations, so you just have to repeat what we recommend you do.

If you don’t want the stress of figuring out how to build a successful blog, like your hand held throughout the process as we lay out a clear path to follow, and video is your preferred learning method, this is the course for you. There’s nothing else like it.

In the next couple of days I’ll publish some great videos from inside the premium program so you can sample our training, and then on Thursday the program opens.

In the meantime, make sure you study the Roadmap Report today or tomorrow.

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Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

Blog contents are provided by Entrepreneurs Journey