The question isn’t about timing in terms of day or night, or what day of the week, or time of the year you should launch, rather what conditions need to be in place to expect a successful opening campaign. Here’s what we’re talking about…

• How many subscribers do you need on your email list?
• How many RSS subscribers on your blog should you have?
• How many unique visitors to your websites do you need?
• How many affiliates do you need?
• How many sales should you expect given certain numbers?

All these questions and many more make up part of the answer to the overall question of when you can consider yourself ready to launch.

It is difficult for me to answer this question with anything concrete because every market is different. However I understand the need for ballpark figures and some sort of reassurance from someone who has launched before, especially if they are your coach and mentor.

What Are The Benchmarks?

Inside Membership Site Mastermind I alluded to the number of around 5,000 subscribers as a good target to aim for before launching, which ideally should be email subscribers if possible.

You can include RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends and fans too, but generally these contact points are less responsive and less targeted than email. Email subscribers, especially when they come through from a targeted incentive like a free report or email course, are more qualified, hence more likely to buy.

Another metric you can look at that is relevant is the open and click through rates of the emails you send. While it’s nice to have 10,000 email subscribers, in most cases you are lucky if 25% of them even open the emails you send. If you’re getting 10% or more of them clicking your links, you’re doing very well.

Given that opening an email is easier than clicking a link, which is easier than making a sale, you can see why it’s important you understand the reality behind the numbers you currently get.

If you don’t track the open and click through rates on your emails, you should start. Outside of this data you can look at unique visitors to your blog or website as another estimate of how much traffic you can expose to your offer, but understand knowing how many people read your blog content is difficult to correlate to how many people will buy from you.

What Metrics Should You Analyze?

Let’s start with some common caveats, although these won’t be obvious to you if you’re new to online marketing, so it’s worth reiterating them -

1. Your conversion rate (number of people who take action divided by the total number of people you make the offer to) matters most. Conversion is something you can test and improve forever.
2. Some markets are “worth” much more than others. A customer who is buying a house is worth a lot more than a person buying a new shirt because of the profit margin per sale. It’s possible to have very low conversion yet still make millions because the value of each customer is so high.
3. Conversion rates across industries vary considerably. In my niche, getting a 5% conversion rate for buyers is very good, while in other markets it might be terribly low. What’s “good enough” is dependent on how much you want to make.
4. Conversion is also a function of overall traffic. You can do really well with a low conversion rate if you have access to millions of people. If you have access to very few people, then you either need a fat profit margin and/or a high conversion rate.

In an ideal world, your business would sell high margin products, you have a very high conversion rate and you have access to millions of people. That’s the holy grail of business, but it’s not possible in every market.

Some businesses rely on significant turnover of low priced items (like dollar discount stores), where others rely on high priced items with a low conversion and high margin, like luxury jewelery and watches.

Now you might understand why it’s so difficult for me to answer the question as to when is the right time to launch. Every market is different, every product is different, and every marketer is in a different situation in terms of their relationship and exposure to their market. There are just too many variables to consider.

So Here’s My Answer

Given the caveats I’m now comfortable to explain what you can expect and how best to make the decision of when to launch your product online.

My very first launch was conducted when I had approximately 3,000 email subscribers and the same in RSS subscribers. This was just my own lists.

I also knew I had some affiliates with access to lots of people, although most of them were bloggers so would not be using email marketing (most of the top bloggers in my niche weren’t making extensive use of email marketing back then).

To be honest I had no idea what to expect during my first launch, so here’s what happened.

I did my launch campaign, releasing the Blog Profits Blueprint for the first time. Lots of affiliates promoted the blueprint and my email list grew from about 3,000 to 10,000 people once the launch was done. Most affiliates sent me ten to fifty new leads, where my top five affiliates contributed close to 1,000 each (affiliate results always skew to an aggressive 80/20 rule).

The good thing about doing a launch is you build very targeted email lists. Before my launch I had my general blog tips newsletter with the 3,000 people. I then added an “early notice” list (the most targeted list of people who really wanted to join my membership site) and the Blueprint list for people who opted in for my free report (another targeted list since they were interested in profiting from blogs, which is what my product is about).

Not only did I expand my list, I attracted very targeted subscribers.

When my program went live I ended up with just over 400 paying members. If you do the math based on 10,000 email subscribers that is just over 0.04 conversion rate (about 4.15% was the number).

Since then I’ve conducted another five opening launch campaigns for different products and monitored the results of some of my top performing student’s launches, so I have a feel for what to expect given the variables, however as I said earlier, it’s very GENERAL.

So, to answer the very first question posed about when you can begin your launch in terms of the metrics, here’s what I tell people -

• Aim for 5,000 targeted email subscribers as a good ballpark figure before doing a launch
• Do the math based on a 1% conversion rate and see if you would be happy with that. That means for every 1,000 people on your list, you will have ten paying customers.
• Make sure you do the conversion rate based on the number of opt-ins to a prospect list, not your daily blog readership. Blog readers haven’t opted in to something so they are not prospects, they are suspects.

  A suspect is someone who is engaging with your content, while a prospect has taken an action to commit further to you, like joining your email list or subscribing to your RSS feed. Conversion rates should be calculated based on comparing prospects to customers, not suspects to customers.

One percent is a low conversion rate, but it’s grounding. It makes you think realistically and if all goes accordingly to plan, you will do better and exceed your expectations.

Remember when doing calculations you should factor in affiliates if you have them. It’s tough to know how many leads (subscribers) an affiliate will send you, because they have their own conversion rate based on how responsive their audience is.

The very top affiliates in my market send between 1,000 and 2,000 leads. This is standard across the Internet marketing industry because I can usually send other marketers about this many leads when I do affiliate promotions. With that many leads I’m usually in the top 5 of lead producers in an affiliate competition (that’s not sales, that’s prospects/leads).

Some will send more and some will send less, but understand that just because an affiliate has 100,000 people on their list does not mean you will have even 10% of that audience join your list after the affiliate promotes for you. Again, err on the side of lower than expected when doing your estimations.

Bear in mind I’m quoting from my experience in the Internet marketing niche. This is not indicative of what to expect from any other niche. If you can get numbers for your particular industry that’s definitely helpful, but understand you can never be certain of what to expect.

What Else Do You Need Before Launch?

My free report, the Membership Site Masterplan goes into more depth about what you need to have in place in terms of content and traffic in your market before launching, so I encourage you read or listen to that if you want more details.

My coaching program Membership Site Mastermind covers all of this in greater detail, however it won’t be open again until 2010, so keep an eye on www.membershipsitemastermind.com/signup for the next student intake.

To put it simply, you will need the following before you launch -

1. A product or the first part of your product for a membership site or coaching program to deliver to your customers after the order
2. A method to take payment for your product
3. If you are going to have affiliates, a system to track the sales and credit affiliates with commissions
4. A means to reach people, in other words some form of distribution, usually an email list of your own, a blog or website, affiliates and any other traffic tools like twitter, facebook, social media, etc.
5. Marketing materials to convert the sale, like a sales page or video, prelaunch content like a lead free resource and content like emails and blog posts that specifically promote your launch

For most new marketers, if I was to say where they go wrong, it’s spending too much time thinking about their CONTENT and not enough time thinking and about their MARKETING. Creating content requires only your time and energy. Generating traffic requires you get the attention and commitment of other people, like affiliates and potential customers. This is challenging.

This article should have helped you get a rough feel for what position you need to be in before you go into launch mode, in terms of the reach you need in your market. What I don’t want to see is people working hard to reach 1,000 email subscribers, expecting at least 10% of them to pay money and thus do a launch and end up with a much lower than expected result.

There are no guarantees, so don’t expect anything. Put in your best effort and focus on the positives and you will do well, and remember that each experience is growth, no matter what the result.

Even if you don’t make as many sales as you expect, there’s a very good chance your profile will increase, as will your subscriber base, each time you do a launch. Launches are the best business growth tool I know of today online, so if you want to rapidly increase all the positive aspects of your business, plan to make an impact every time you release a product.

A Launch Is The Best Test

One last point before I wrap up.

Almost everything I’ve covered in this article sits in the realm of the unknown. You can only make smart estimates about your results. Every launch is different, every situation is new and you can never know what to expect.

My most recent launch as I write this was by far the most relaxed and confident launch I have ever done. I feel like a veteran now with launches, having done so many in the last three years. I had a ballpark figure of what to expect given the type of campaign I was going to run and the product I was selling, and by the end of the launch I was almost spot on with my estimates.

My estimation was accurate, which is good, but the real difference this time was how I didn’t go through a roller coaster ride during the launch in terms of my emotional state. If you’ve never done a launch before let me warn you – it’s an emotional ride – and part of the reason for this is all the unknowns (if you don’t believe me, take a look at this video of me from my first launch – Yaro’s Bad Hair Product Launch Day).

You just don’t know how many people will buy your product. You don’t know how your marketing materials will gain traction. You don’t know which affiliates will promote, how often they will promote or how many sales or leads they will generate. As a result of so many unknowns, you tend to rapidly shoot through highs and lows, spiking up when something good happens, and crashing down when your expectations aren’t meant. At the end of it all, hopefully, you will feel exhausted, but content, and definitely wiser for the experience.

And that my friend is the real power of the launch.

A launch is one of the best marketing tests you will ever do. All the unknowns you had before you launched become answered. You know what marketing materials work best. You know what your conversion rate is. You know how many of your prospects are buyers. You know which affiliates are your leaders and what affiliates can do for your marketing.

You may or may not meet your expectations, but you will have a result. That in many ways is more important. One launch is not the be all and end all of things you will do for your business. It’s really just the beginning. You will do many launches, release different products and hopefully go on to much greater things.

Your success depends on growth, and growth depends on experience. Conducting a launch is the best marketing and business experience you can go through online, in terms of speed of results.

Too many people sit on the fence in fear waiting for the ideal situation to emerge to get out there and do something. This is the worst possible outcome because you are inert. Doing nothing guarantees a result – nothing.

If you are asking yourself all the questions I presented at the start of this article and more, the single best piece of advice I can give you is to get out there and just do it. Nothing anyone can tell you will ever make you feel completely confident about what you are going to do.

Learn to live with that feeling of unknown and understand that the people who reach a level of mastery or there not because they know everything, but because they have accepted that they will never know everything – it’s impossible – and acting within the mystery is the key to success.

Good luck and have fun!

Yaro Starak
Riding The Mystery

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

Nowadays most published authors have blogs, and bloggers use Internet marketing techniques and write books too. Internet marketers also publish books and use blogs, so how can we determine the difference?

In this case rather than look at the person, who can easily encompass all three of the personas we are talking about, let’s look instead at the different mediums themselves and how effective they are as money making techniques.

In other words, can you make more money publishing a book, or writing a blog or selling things online as an Internet marketer?

Why Ask This Question?

I was thinking today while reading an article – a good article – on a blog how the ideas within the content where also present in two other mediums – inside a popular print book and a course I studied, which was a recording of a live event by an Internet marketer.

The blog article was given away for free. The print book probably costs about $10 now since it’s not new, while the live event cost $10,000 to attend and the recordings I studied were at least $2,000.

The blogger in this situation was basically summarizing and filtering some information he read in the book. The author is an expert on the subject who had no doubt spent years accumulating the knowledge and experience to produce the title. The Internet marketer who ran the event had read the book too, and included the most important points, again filtered for his audience, in the live event.

Three different people, all using the same information and getting paid vastly different amounts for it. This prompted me to wonder, which person would I rather be – the blogger, the author or the Internet marketer?

Let’s Focus On The Money

To make this discussion as clear as possible I want to eliminate all the other considerations as to why you undertake any of these activities.

Many people write a book just for the sake of being published or expressing themselves. Most bloggers don’t write their blog to profit from it, instead they use the medium as a form of creative expression or as a place to vent. Internet marketing is perhaps the only activity you can say is purely about profit, though if we looked at marketing as a field of study other considerations such as “influence” or “branding” might come into the discussion that don’t directly equate to dollar signs.

For the sake of this article we’re discarding other factors. I want to focus solely on the money. It’s all about how you can use these mediums to make cash – and quickly.

All the intrinsic considerations are of importance too whenever you consider these activities, but it’s pretty clear whether you can profit from what you are doing, as well as how quickly you can make money and how much can be generated, are right at the top of the list when it comes to deciding what you do with your content.

How To Leverage Your Content For Cash

Many moons ago I wrote an article that explained how most bloggers are leaving copious amounts of money on the table because of how poorly they translate their content production efforts into cash using Internet marketing techniques like email marketing. You can read the article here -

Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?

This situation hasn’t changed much since I wrote that article. I’d like to think that I’m partly responsible, along with many of my very successful and wealthy blogging peers (the exceptions – a minority for sure), for opening the eyes of bloggers to the potential their blog gives them, if they only learn how to do things like build email lists and sell their own information products.

Lots of bloggers give away amazing ideas on their blogs, and this is a good thing – moving the freeline is important if you want dominate your market – but understand this is only the first step.

The Same Content, Presented In Three Different Ways

Let’s break down the scenarios…

1. The Author

Print books usually contain lots of words. Lots and lots of words. As a result, unless you are leveraging some clever outsourcing strategies, sitting down and writing a book yourself is not something you get done in a week or three or even a month. We’re talking three months to even multiple years to finish writing a book, so if you are going to profit, it won’t be quickly.

Chances are once you publish your book you’re not going to make much money, if any at all. Except for best sellers, which make up a teeny tiny percentage of overall books published each year, most authors are not retiring on book sales.

As a result the typical strategy for an author is to leverage the credibility and exposure that a book brings you. Once you become published you get to wear a special badge that gives you instant street cred. Unfortunately unless you work out a back-end business model behind your book, you’re not making money as a published author.

Of the three mediums we are discussing, books generally speaking have the best information in them. Due to the length and the amount of research put into a good book, you’re going to find the most comprehensive and high quality level of information, compared to what you might find in a blog post or in Internet marketing products like recorded seminars, or video presentations, or even ebooks, which are usually shorter than physical books.

That’s not to say books are better, sometimes less is more and in most cases you only really need a tiny bit of information from what’s in a book, so you have to go trawling the pages to find what you want. However, some of the most successful people I know are that way because they know a lot about a lot, and usually get this way by reading lots of books.

Books offer specialized information from experts who put whole lifetimes of experience into their written creations, knowing very well that a book represents in many ways, a piece of themselves.

2. The Blogger

Authority bloggers write in-depth content in article-sized chunks, which they distribute on a weekly or even daily basis. In this case we’re going to focus more on the educational, Pillar Article style content as opposed to the short news updates style blog posts. This is about teaching people how to do things, build credibility as an expert and slowly establish an audience.

Blogs can make great money, but it does take a while to get going since most bloggers choose only to monetize what they do with advertising. Since advertising tends to pay out more based on increased page impressions, unless you have a huge amount of traffic, just leveraging advertising is not enough to become financially free. Once again, you need the back-end business selling products and/or services behind the blog to start really profiting.

3. Internet Marketers

Internet marketers, the good ones, are a clever bunch when it comes to making money. They look for the best profit models and go after the key variables straight away. They know profit comes from email lists with high conversion rates, followed up with back-end product funnels. They look for 80/20 methods of making money, they leverage their time and charge lots of money for what they provide.

Internet marketers can provide quality information because they -

A) Read all those books published by authors, and…

B) Take massive action focused on maximizing profits, hence have lots of experience and case studies of the kind of success most people only dream about.

And I’m not just talking about the Internet marketers who sell Internet marketing products. I’m talking about Internet marketers who sell weight loss products, real estate products, sports products, food and nutrition products, music products, education products, and the list goes…

These people know how to get the most out of what they provide. They sell information products like ebooks, video courses, DVDs, home study courses, live events, audio downloads and loads more. They charge a range of prices and target very specific markets with very specific products. If you looked at the value per word they publish and sell, this group is the richest.

So, You Should Focus On Internet Marketing Right?

I feel confident saying if you want to make money quickly, following an Internet marketing focused model is the answer.

What I mean by this, in a nutshell, is that you should focus on filling your email list full of targeted prospects as fast as you can, selling them a front end product you have someone else create for you, then sell higher priced back-end products until you get rich. Test everything along the way, focus only on conversion as your most important metric, and away you go.

This is a sound strategy, especially if you are entering a completely new market and you have no existing assets you can leverage besides some money ready to be spent on getting websites set up and to buy traffic.

That’s the simple answer, and it’s easy for me to say this when you exclude some important variables, like…

• Do you care about the market you are in?
• How long do you want to stay in the market?
• Is your personal brand important to you?
• Do you want to focus on one niche, or many?
• Do you want recognition for your work, or just money?
• Are you already established in an industry offline?
• How far do you want to take the business?

There are many other things to consider beyond this list. The reason I mention this is because the answer isn’t simple. I’m trying to make it simple because everyone new to Internet marketing wants money and they want it today.

People look for the quickest path to success because instant gratification and immediate relief from your current situation is a strong motivational driver. Unfortunately for these people, the realization will set in that there are no quick fixes, and while Internet marketing is the best profit-focused strategy, it’s really just a part of the puzzle.

The Real Answer

The real answer to this puzzle is “all of the above”.

The blogger needs to learn how to add Internet marketing to the mix so they can leverage more from what they already produce. It’s okay to sell some of your content and not give everything away for free. It’s smart to focus on more than just advertising as a monetization method and you should build an email list. Think about building a business and not just writing a blog as a job.

Internet marketers need to be business builders too, and using credibility enhancing tools like a book and a blog gives you significant points of leverage to position yourself ahead of the competition, sell more product and charge more for what you do.

Although Internet marketers have the best tools and science for making money, often they lack long term planning and focus too much on a quick buck and not on relationships with their audience and customers. The result from this is burn-out and only short term gain, as competition, natural market fluctuations and customer backlash erode your profit because you don’t have a solid platform under your business, which can sustain you long term.

Authors need to plan to make money beyond just book sales. Using a blog as a companion platform to a book is a great strategy to enhance your front-end marketing efforts and further establish your brand. Leveraging Internet marketing completes the puzzle, allowing you to profit extensively from your efforts publishing a book and maintaining a blog.

All of this takes time to develop and everyone begins from a different space. Your circumstances dictate where you start.

Having a book and a popular blog and a back-end money making machine based on sound Internet marketing principles is a great big picture goal to aim for, especially if you’re looking to build a business around your expertise. Creating all of these assets is not something you do overnight. Knowing what to do next is the first question to answer.

If you are starting from scratch, the best advice I can give you now is to fill in the knowledge gaps you are missing. Education and creating awareness of what you need to know that you don’t know is the first step. After that you can begin the practical implementation steps that take you towards your goals.

Yaro Starak
Internet Marketing Blogger (soon to be author)

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

The question in particular pertained to membership sites, and I was asked whether video, audio or written content was the best for keeping members in a program.

This is an interesting question. After three years of running three online courses, each with different types of content, not to mention blogging for five years using text, video and audio, I’m in a good position to at least have a perspective on the issue based on my experience.

So what exactly is best? Text, audio or written content, or is that even the right question to ask?

The Origin Of Web Content

When I began blogging video wasn’t something you could easily produce and distribute online. There was no screen recording software or YouTube to help you host and share your visual creations. Webcams were just becoming popular, but the quality was quite sketchy.

Podcasting was catching on when I started my blog, however this was pre-iTunes, when podcasting was simply figuring out a way to record an MP3, sticking it up on a server somewhere and giving people a link to download the file. That’s not really much different from today if you think about it, although people now are used to listening to audio from the Internet, hence there are more tools to help you create and share audio and much more content available to listen to.

I started my blog by writing articles. I still consider writing my best craft, and certainly the majority of my blog content is written text. I enjoyed experimenting with new technology, which is why I began blogging in the first place, and shortly after started a regular podcast.

I experimented with Podcasting within six months of starting this blog, using my iRiver MP3 player to record some spoken words, which I then uploaded as my very first podcast. You can listen to it recorded back in May 2005 here – Audio: Location, location, location…Offline marketing for online business. I called it an “audio” blog post because I wasn’t sure people knew what the term “podcast” meant yet.

Podcasting turned out to be an especially effective tool the day I started recording interviews with other people. Although I can create content solo talking off the top of my head, having a two way discussion with someone proved a lot more popular. Interviews also led to forming relationships with important people, people who owned blogs with traffic and influence, which really helped my blog gain new audience when they linked through to the interview I conducted with them.

Video came along much later and in my case instead of jumping on the bandwagon early as I did with blogging and podcasting, I decided to sit back and wait for the technology to become easier to use. In particular I saw video as a good tool to help teach inside my courses, so most of the video I’ve published isn’t on my blog or in YouTube, it’s inside my paid-for training programs, in particular Membership Site Mastermind, which is made up of six core modules all in video.

Video also became a tool I used for namesqueeze pages, sales pages and although I don’t personally focus on it, some of my best students and colleagues have made use of videos as their preferred content choice on their blogs.

Video is clearly a powerful medium and it’s definitely gaining in popularity on the current version of the Web, but is it the “best” choice for content today?

What Really Is Good Content?

The answer to this question isn’t actually any of the options – video, audio or text – they all make up part of the answer.

What we really want to know is what goes into good content, and if we only talk about the format the content takes, then we’re missing some of the most important aspects.

What I love about questions like this is how “fuzzy” the answer is because we are dealing with something intangible and undefinable. I can’t tell you what good content is because there is no general set of rules that defines it. What is good to someone is rubbish to someone else. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Our goal is to ensure that enough people have the perspective that sees our content of value, so we can meet our objectives.

What we can do is use guidelines and accepted practices to come to broad and at times general consensus on what usually results in producing valuable content. This is not a science, it’s an art.

I’m not going to dive into an in-depth discussion of what good content is in this article as I’ve covered at least part of this question before inside the Blog Profits Blueprint and in my article that defines Pillar Content. Have a read of those resources if you want a deeper look at what “good” content is.

For the sake of the discussion now, we’re going to assume that the core message you have to deliver is of value. What we want to know, as I was asked during the call, is what format is the best to distribute the value you have to give.

Meeting The Needs Of Diversity

It’s safe to say as a definite conclusion that we are all different. What we like, and in the case of blogging and creating valuable online content, what people learn best from and enjoy the most, varies from person to person.

To improve our chances of meeting the needs of a diverse population, when it comes to format choice, the answer to what is the best is, all of the options available.

This is limited to our means of consuming information – we have to use the senses our bodies are gifted with – so in the case of interaction with the world wide web, we presently have the options of reading text, listening to audio, watching visual content, or mixtures of these mediums.

You can potentially figure out the “best” of these formats as it relates to your audience, if you have a means of contacting and stimulating a response from enough of them to get something statistically meaningful. As Frank Kern revealed in his Mass Control course, the target customer for his dog training business wanted video on a DVD format as their top choice. He found this out through surveys.

I’ve done surveys to find information about my audience, although I prefer conducting more passive observations by interacting with my audience and watching how they react to what I provide them. Forum discussions, comments left in reply to your blog posts, emails you receive, traffic response rates to the content you distribute, email open and click-through rates, and all kinds of other data are helpful to gain a greater understanding of what your people respond best to and want more of.

However as a rule you can’t really argue against the idea of offering everything in all formats. If you cast a wider net, you catch more fish.

There are strategic reasons to sometimes limit what mediums you publish your content, but in general if you offer content in text, in audio AND video, then you capture the attention and deliver value to more people.

The Rich Schefren School of Product Creation

Rich Schefren teaches a great lesson in content creation, which you can learn simply by taking his courses and watching how he teaches.

Rich creates a slide presentation, which he will then use as prompts to give a live presentation, which is watched as a webinar and distributed after the fact as a recording. All webinar recordings are also provided in audio-only MP3 format, and transcribed into PDF text. You can also download the slides from the presentation in PDF format.

This is the exact format I used for Membership Site Mastermind. In my first course, Blog Mastermind I typed out lessons, and then spoke out the lessons to record an audio version. Become A Blogger Premium is a video course presented by Gideon Shalwick and myself. The core materials are all videos, which you can stream or download to your computer, and each video is also available as a PDF text transcript. The audio interviews I release inside my programs, as well as my free reports are available as text and MP3.

How Do You Learn Best?

Lately I don’t read books except fiction for entertainment. In terms of educational content, I prefer audio. I listen to audio books, or podcasts or the audio from video presentations, usually while exercising or traveling. I like to combine education when I’m doing something else. With reading I have to focus 100% on the words in front of me, I can’t be driving a car, or lifting weights at the same time.

But that’s just me. Everyone is different.

I’ve had many people complain about podcasts that don’t have text transcripts because they don’t have the patience to sit through an audio file. They want to scan to the best bits and they can only do this with text.

Some people are easily bored and need flashing lights, dynamic movement, or a personal connection with a real human in front of them in visual glory in order to keep their attention. Video in this case is the best choice, and is the only choice when you need to show someone how to do something that can only be taught visually.

What’s important is that you don’t make any assumptions. I’ve received feedback that endorses all formats, hence I know by providing as many different mediums as I can, I’ll satisfy more people.

My advice, especially if you are going to create an information product, is consider using the slide presentation model. Use Camtasia on PC or Screenflow on Mac, together with a slide presentation and sit down and record your talk as you move through the slides.

Take the recording and release it as a video, an MP3 audio file, a text transcript of what you said and a copy of the slides. This means you effectively create four different content resources using all three mediums and you only have to present it once. That’s pretty efficient. Instant product creation – it doesn’t get much easier than that!

I still consider text the most powerful medium online because it’s the easiest to create, can be downloaded in seconds and people are used to reading content online (and I’m bias because I enjoy writing the most). Others will argue that video is the future, and we all know that television killed the radio star.

There is no right answer here, and in truth if you have something powerful to say, then whatever content format you use will communicate well enough. The power of the message is always the driving force behind distribution, not the format it arrives in, but why not give yourself the best chance to spread your message as far as it can go by using all formats and as many distribution points as possible.

Yaro Starak
Content Creator

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

With what I hear you ask?

With cars.

I’ve officially become one of those men I never previously understood. Why devote so much of your brain space to knowing the ins and outs of every car ever made? Surely there are better ways to spend your time and more important things to study than those little boxes that go around on four wheels?

While I can’t place the blame for my new infatuation squarely on just one thing, there was definitely a catalyst for how this addiction began. His name is Alborz Fallah, or as I call him, Al.

Al and I have been friends for a long time and you may know him already as the founder of CarAdvice.com.au, the most popular independent car blog in Australia. If you haven’t heard of him and his blog, stop reading this article and go and listen to the hugely popular podcast interview I published with Al here –

Interview With Alborz Fallah – A Million Dollar Blogger

Al is a basically a car encyclopedia you can access directly through voice command. You ask him a question and he dispenses a vast amount of wisdom about cars.

I’m often baffled by how he can know the intricate details about so many different cars. He knows the features, advantages, faults, price, target demographics, history, latest news, and all kinds of nearly-useless information about cars. Of course what he knows isn’t useless, because the market for cars in Australia is huge (Australians buy one million new cars a year, with a population just over 22 million, that’s pretty significant), hence Al has been able to translate what he knows into a very lucrative online publishing business.

I Don’t Buy Much Stuff

Generally speaking I’m not a great consumer. I’ve never been “into” clothes, or shoes, or accessories like watches and jewelery, or hi-fi equipment, or expensive sports like golf, or into any collectibles or exotic hobbies. I used to buy video games as a kid, but I gave up that hobby as I entered my teenage years.

Truth of the matter, I don’t really have that many hobbies outside of writing, running my business and my own self development. I’m most passionate about trance music, which I get for free thanks to all the wonderful DJ’s who release fantastic podcasts every month (Armin Van Buuren, Tydi, Lange, Above and Beyond, Sonnydeejay, Tritonal, and Andy Moor – you can find all these guys on iTunes in the podcast section) and tennis, which I play a little and follow online, which doesn’t require much financial investment.

Most of the money I’ve made to this point has been funneled into property, an eight month trip around the world in 2008 and supporting my loved ones.

That is of course, until now, since I decided to get a new car, which to be honest I don’t need. My car is fine right now. It fulfills my practical transportation requirements perfectly.

My desire to purchase an upgrade is purely materialistic, which for me, is not something I’ve done much during my life, especially in the price range I’m looking at right now in the car market.

It’s made for an interesting experience, one that has taught me a lesson in marketing, since any time you go looking to buy something you begin an education process to find out what products are available.

What Car Should I Buy?

My first car was a Mitsubishi Cordia that I bought when I was 21. I had her for a few years before she suddenly died in a freak car accident with a Volvo driver.

For several years after that I didn’t have a car as I didn’t need one living in an inner city suburb. Everything was within walking distance or accessible via public transport.

In 2007 after selling BetterEdit.com and launching Blog Mastermind I decided to purchase my first house and a new car, as I was moving a little further out of town. My car purchase was more practical, looking for an affordable entry level car. You can read more about this here –

How I Made Six Figures In One Day – 2007 Year In Review Part 1

It was around this point that I first started to take interest in cars and began asking Al questions. Little did he know, my questions would not stop, and even now, two years later, I’m still asking him for car advice (he really chose a great domain name).

My next car was a Suzuki Swift, which as I type this I still drive.

When I bought the Swift I took my first step into car education and began filling my brain with all kinds of information, often absorbing the wisdom dished out from Al (though he didn’t recommend the Swift – that was my choice in the end), and searching the web for reviews of cars I was considering.

Now I’m researching my next car purchase as I move up to something quicker and, err, more manly (apparently my swift is a girls car…).

I don’t think I will ever be a hardcore car enthusiast or even come close to knowing what Al knows, but I’ve definitely become a little obsessed in my latest car quest. I find myself looking at cars on the road now so intensely it’s like my reticular activating system is on fire (ask Rich Schefren if you aren’t sure what I mean by that).

I’m even picking up car magazines off the rack out of genuine interest and watching Top Gear episodes because I’m interested in the cars, not just the banter between the hosts. It’s bizarre.

During my present search for a car I’ve been less than consistent with my criteria. To put it bluntly, I keep changing my mind, much to Al’s frustration (he now insists I’m going to get a Prius just to make fun of me – no offense to you Prius drivers).

At one stage I wanted a convertible, so I began taking the VW Eos quite seriously. Then I changed my mind because the wind factor on a convertible was an issue with my hair (wind makes it even bigger – yes I know that’s a silly reason, but hey, it matters to me).

I started looking at coupes. Al insisted the BMW M3 was a very “manly” choice (he knows the sexuality rating of cars too), and I also started looking at the Audi TT and BMW Z4. Then I briefly had a change of focus, deciding that environmental factors are the most important, making the Prius a legitimate option, although in my heart I really wanted the Tesla Roadster, which unfortunately isn’t available in Australia yet.

Al informed me that manufacturing hybrids and electric cars hits the environment hard, and the fact that Australia still burns coal for electricity, means that these options weren’t necessarily the most environmentally friendly options after all. Making the car would have as much impact if not more impact on the environment as the potential “saving” the cars could offer due to less fuel use.

I recently fell in love with the Audi R8 supercar, simply for the looks more than anything else. Sure I like to go quick too, but graduating from a Swift to an R8 is quite the jump. I’m not sure I could put to use even half of the power in the R8, plus coming in at around a quarter of a million dollars for a second hand R8 in Australia, that’s quite a leap in cost too. I can’t quite justify that yet, though it’s a nice thing to consider for the future (it’s good to have motivation rewards).

As I type this article I just finished a test drive of a BMW 135i coupe, which I like a lot. I’m not convinced yet and there are more questions to ask Al, so the search will continue.

Use Your Buying Experience To Find Profitable Niches

So, with that back story out of the way, you might be wondering what all this has to do with finding profitable niches?

As I’ve researched various cars I’ve done plenty of Google searches, looking to see what sites rank well and where the best source of reliable information about each car comes from.

It has been an eye-opening experience, especially with my Internet marketing brain switched on.

Each car, especially the more luxuries or sporty models, have dedicated fan forums.

For example, I found out information about possible reliability issues of the M3 SMG in the M3 forums. I spent some time enjoying the beauty of the Audi R8 and the raw manliness of the Nissan 370z in their respective forums. Just today I researched stereo upgrades for the BMW 135i and then after watching some videos comparing cars, started looking at the VW Golf R32. I also briefly looked at the Volvo C30 thanks to the review Alborz wrote praising the car from a company he used to hate.

Then of course there are the news sites releasing information about each car, including press releases and newspaper style articles on the big media sites, independent reviews in blogs like Al’s own CarAdvice.com.au, and video content you can find in YouTube (like an R8 vs a Porsche 911 Carrera).

This research experience has been tremendously insightful. I’ve learned so much about just a select group of cars, only barely scraping the surface of a huge industry, and yet I’ve been able to truly experience a small taste of what it’s like to become obsessed when making a purchase.

So Many Niches, So Little Time

My recent experience focused on cars, but I’m sure you can see that any time someone is interested in buying anything, and assuming enough people buy these things that large companies compete for customers by delivering lots of different product options, then you have the potential to launch a successful online business, simply by becoming obsessed.

While I’m not quite an expert in cars, in the last few weeks I’ve learned enough about them that I feel I could start a blog on my quest for a new sports car and just talk about what I’ve been through. Given my obsession has led to massive amounts of information consumption, as long as I’m willing to summarize what I’ve learned, filtering it through my own real world experience, I’m already on the way to creating a web presence of value.

This is how some of the most successful blogs got started, including my own and Alborz’s car blog.

You might be shopping for a new digital camera, or a wedding dress, or a new watch, or a golf club, or a stereo system, blue-ray player, video game console, laptop computer, mp3 player, dining table, etc etc – this list is as long as there is demand for products and services.

You can take this further, drilling down sub-niches within niches. For example just within the BMW 135i forums was a section devoted to audio upgrades, which was quite heavily populated with posts and replies. Why not start a blog on after market car audio options? If that’s something you bought for your car, which you researched extensively, then chances are what you know can help others (I know this for a fact because I’m one of those people who wants that information right now!).

Each car company is a niche. Each car from each company is a niche. Each category (sports, luxury, sedan, hatchback, convertible, etc) is a niche…and this is just one industry!

The potential is tremendous, so whenever you are in the market for something and you find yourself spending a lot of time figuring out what to buy, this may represent a very lucrative opportunity for you start an online business. If you are obsessed with a product or service and you know much more than the average person, you have the potential to share what you know, become a perceived expert, and of course profit too, through advertising, affiliate programs, paid reviews, and all the usual monetization options available.

Study Your Own Behaviors

If you’re new to being an entrepreneur, one important skill you can develop is a meta-analysis of what you do. You don’t want to become too involved in this as it might impact the natural flow of what you are doing, but if you do find yourself emotionally driven, having questions that need answers, are frustrated by something that could be solved with knowledge, become aware of what you are feeling and what you are doing, it’s some of the best market research you can ever do.

You’re only a new to doing something once, so when that happens, it pays to record what the key issues are, since one day you might be teaching others how to deal with those issues. The better you know your target audience, the better your business, so when you are your target audience, pay attention to yourself.

For now I’m heading back to look at more cars.

Yaro Starak
Car Shopping

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

Download the MP3 [ 49 Minutes - 22 MB ]

Pat Flynn has an inspiring story that you must listen to if you are like many people around the world who recently lost their job and want to transition to making an income online from your own business.

Pat lost his job as an architect and decided to start an Internet business. His blog was originally set up as a website to store his notes while studying a special type of architecture qualification called the LEED exam. The blog started receiving lots of traffic because of his LEED notes. Some of Pat’s readers emailed him and suggested he create a book on how to pass the exam, which he did simply by compiling his blog posts together in a sequence.

Pat published his ebook and made $8,000 in his first month. After just one year of running his online business he has made $203,219.04, as reported in his Annual Passive Income Report.

In this interview with Pat you will hear him break down his entire story, including how he set up his blog, how he created his ebook and sells it online. If you don’t think your life can change in just a few short months thanks to the Internet, this interview will change your mind. Enjoy!

Show Notes

• How Pat lost his job as an architecture during the economic downturn and started a blog
• What topic Pat wrote about on his blog that skyrocketed his traffic and led to making his first product
• How Pat was able to make $8,000 in his first month selling his ebook
• Pat explains how he managed his business from his iphone while in Hawaii, making $9,000 a week
• A step-by-step breakdown of how Pat started his blog, wrote his ebook by combining his blog posts, and then started selling it from his blog
• How Pat created a simple sales page and what shopping cart service he uses to sell his ebook
• Why Pat believes he is successful selling his first ebook online and others fail
• How Pat gets targeted traffic to his blog, mostly for free from Google
• Pat explains what elements of his sales page he tests using Google Optimizer

Resources

• Free PDF Converters
• E-Junkie Shopping Cart
• GreenExamAcademy.com
• SmartPassiveIncome.com

Mp3 Download

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 49 Minutes - 22 MB ]

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

The challenge is how to sell something without using all that horrible “hype” that Internet marketers use.

But wait a second. Hype actually works, or at least good “sales copy” works if you call convincing people to buy what you sell your desired outcome.

The challenge is figuring out what level of “sales talk” to use when trying to sell. You don’t want to be accused of over-hyping something, nor do you want to put in such a weak effort that no one buys.

The problem unfortunately cannot be solved 100% because what is hype to one person is not to another. We all have our own internal “bullshit meter” as it might be labeled, based on all kinds of things like our personality, experience with marketing, emotional state at the time of reference, etc etc.

You can’t account for everything, but you can work with what you should hopefully know quite well – you and your potential customers- and attempt to meet the needs of both.

Membership Site Mastermind Reopens Tuesday November 3rd For 24 Hours Only

Did you read that sub-heading? I hope you did.

It might seem a little out of place, but I put it there because one of the messages I want you to take away from reading this blog post is that I’m reopening Membership Site Mastermind for one last day for all the stragglers and latecomers who didn’t join during the opening last week.

I know there are stragglers because they keep emailing me asking if they can squeeze in, so I’m giving you one last chance to take the program with me during this final run for 2009.

This will definitely be the last time it’s open this year. No more one day openings, no exceptions, if you email and ask no matter how good your excuse, you won’t be allowed in. That wouldn’t be fair to the hundreds of people who took initiative and joined when the doors were open.

You can sign up here from 11 AM EST US time on Tuesday for 24 hours only -

So, back to my original thought train…

The challenge I face when writing about the products I sell is the threshold my audience has for me “pitching” my products.

While most people are interested in hearing about the products I create and when I offer the chance to buy in want to know about, the truth is only a teeny-tiny percentage of my overall readership joins.

If I keep bombarding you with blog post and email after blog post after email about the program, I start to lose your attention. It might get so bad that you stop subscribing altogether.

I know this is true because every single launch I do I lose a few hundred subscribers and I even get some fairly insulting emails from people complaining that all I do is send them newsletters asking them to buy something. Thankfully only one or two people usually feel the need to do this.

I know where they are coming from, because during the one-to-two weeks that I run a launch campaign I focus all my emails and blog posts on the product I’m selling, so it can be bit much for some people, especially if they just joined my email newsletter the week the launch began.

When I’m not doing launches my emails and blog posts are less focused on one thing and are content only without any pitch. Besides the affiliate promotions I do, which are never as comprehensive as when I sell my own product, I usually just give people great free stuff and ask for nothing in return but your attention.

Great Free Stuff

Great free stuff is the foundation of a great blog and email list, but from time to time you are going to ask people to buy something, if you intend to be an affiliate marketer or a creator of your own products and services and make money.

There’s nothing wrong with this. This is what business is about. However, when you do it, you want to meet two objectives -

1. Convince as many people as you can that what you offer is worth buying
2. Maintain or even enhance the relationship you have with your subscribers, even the 99% who will not buy the products you are promoting

It’s actually quite a challenging balance to get right.

Bloggers inherently are terrible marketers and as a result under-sell what they have.

Internet marketers on the other hand tend to act in the reverse and can be seen to “oversell” or over-hype their offers, relying on sales copy to trigger an emotional response, which converts the sale, but often leads to damaged relationships because of excessive pitching.

This can especially be true if the product is inferior, or the customer support is bad. Unfortunately as is the case sometimes, the marketer doesn’t care about the customer – they just want to make the sale knowing most customers won’t even use the product.

What’s clearly apparent to me is that Internet marketers, in general, do a lot better at making money. Bloggers, bless them, care more about nurturing their audience and would rather avoid a backlash in their comment stream than potentially make more money from “hyping” what they are selling.

There are of course exceptions to these rules on both sides of the fence, and I’m generalizing to a degree, but you can see where I’m coming from. Some people don’t sell enough, while others sell to hard. You need to find the right balance for your audience and marketplace.

What Is The Answer?

In my experience as a blogger who uses Internet marketing to sell, or perhaps an Internet marketer who uses blogging to build relationships, I need to balance what I do carefully using my own style and knowledge of my audience.

My blog and emails are written in my “voice”, which is what people are used to hearing from me. I also know what my audience reacts well to and what it doesn’t, although this is constantly changing and all I can do is make assumptions about the future based on the past, my intuition and knowledge of my “tribe”.

The great thing about sticking to something long enough is you will get a really good feel for what works. You will start to inherently understand what language style is effective, what elements you should emphasize, how you should talk to people and so on.

You’re always evolving what you do because your market is always evolving, however it’s safe to say the longer you do something and the more you repeat it, the better your intuition is about it. You start to know more than you guess and the success ratio will skew in your favor.

In other words, you will know what to say to your audience and how to say it so you maximize sales and minimize how many people you upset while selling.

It’s not a perfect science of course, but it’s definitely something you have to learn as an Internet marketer or professional blogger.

Content Sells

One thing that’s become clearly apparent to me is that it’s much better to sell with content.

Bloggers get this because they come from a world were content is their currency. They are content producing machines who usually have to inject selling as a secondary concern when it comes time to make money.

Marketers, especially those moving from the offline world who are used to relying purely on “advertising” as their preferred method of marketing, have only recently discovered the need to use content. Previously getting a direct sales message into the hands of a target customer would yield a desired response, but that’s not enough now.

Today online business is about knowledge marketing. It’s about teaching and entertaining, writing reviews, having influence in social networks and using multi-media, or more simply put – it’s about giving value before asking people to buy something.

It’s not a tough idea to grasp. Give value, build trust, make the sale, but as marketers are figuring out, this can be at times a fairly labor intensive task.

Ask any blogger who is attempting to build authority in a niche – it’s not an overnight success story scenario. We’re talking long term commitment, with daily effort required, but the rewards make it worthwhile.

Once trust is there, selling becomes a lot less painful because you just need to give people what they want and they will buy from you.

How To Deliver Your Sales Message

Last week and for most of the week before that, the blog posts I published were pretty much related to Membership Site Mastermind in some shape or form.

You may have noticed that I used content to sell in almost all the blog posts I published as part of the opening launch campaign.

I gave away the 72-page comprehensive free guide to profiting from membership sites called the Membership Site Masterplan. I linked to two previous videos I published earlier in the year about how to figure out what your audience will buy from you and case studies of people launching membership sites NOT in the how to make money niche. I also wrote an article on 3 significant lies people tell themselves which stop them from succeeding online.

All of this content indirectly or directly promoted my product, however each piece offers value regardless of whether someone buys the product. I was teaching, giving away some of my best ideas and helping people move past mindset barriers. This is what good blog marketing is all about, using content to sell without overtly pitching to people.

Of course this isn’t a completely foolproof marketing formula. No doubt some people “switched off” as soon as they even had a hint of me trying to sell them something. They may have even gone so far as to not read this blog anymore because of that.

Unfortunately I can’t please everyone, though you might argue why do I want people so sensitive to a sales message reading my blog, which is about Internet marketing after all, since they so clearly don’t like do be marketed to and will not buy.

You Need Reminding

Today I have a goal. I need to inform you, via my blog, that Membership Site Mastermind is reopening on Tuesday at 11 AM for 24 hours only here -

When I started thinking about how I could tell you this I was concerned about writing a blog post that simply states this information, perhaps with a little sales copy to convince you to join, laying out all the benefits of taking my coaching program. That style of blog post would be okay, and would likely convert into a few orders, but I risk turning away a lot of people since there really isn’t any content in that format.

Considering there has been so much talk about Membership Site Mastermind on this blog in the last few weeks, not to mention all my affiliates also blogging and writing email newsletters about it, the “noise” is quite substantial. I need to be careful to balance what I give of universal value to all my readers while at the same time, convincing you to take my coaching program if you haven’t already.

So instead of writing a short and simple “sales pitch” I decided to teach a lesson, which as a blogger who has had to deal with this challenge countless times, I can tell you is a very critical lesson to learn if you ever really want to make good money with your blog.

Will this convert more people into my coaching program? Perhaps. Did I avoid turning off people who are sick of hearing about the coaching program? Perhaps. I won’t know until this blog post is published and my program opens for the last 24 hours.

What I do know, based on previous experience, is that my audience likes my content when it’s focused on helping them. You want to learn something from me that you can take away and benefit from immediately.

My job is to educate and motivate, so if I achieve these goals, you come to look to me as a reliable source of training and support. This in turn, results in more trust, and more people deciding to pay for my products too.

If you found this article helpful in any way, then I know you will also benefit from my coaching program Membership Site Mastermind, especially if you plan to launch a membership site or online course in the near future.

You have one final window of 24 hours to join from Tuesday the 3rd of November at 11 AM EST, the last opening for this year before the class starts properly next week with the first live coaching call.

You can sign up here at 11 AM -

Yaro Starak
Pitching Content

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

Although I spent several hours reading over 500 comments and writing about 50 of my own, it’s worth the time invested. I learn so much about my audience this way, which helps me better serve you because I understand where you are coming from. Any chance you get to do research like this, you should take it.

One of the things you have to come to terms with when you run a teaching business is that you will receive the same questions over and over and over again.

Each new person who becomes exposed to your work is new and usually has the same common questions and challenges as everyone else. Their experience is unique to them as an individual student trying to learn how to do something, while for you as a teacher, you repeat yourself with each new student. The more people you help, the more you repeat.

I bring this up because it’s clear many people are struggling to deal with the same issues and tell themselves the same false truths when it comes to starting an Internet business. This is the fundamental reason why only a tiny percentage of people actually make the kind of money they want to from their business, while most people do not. It’s the people who choose not to believe these things and who do it anyway, who get a result.

If you believe something that stops you from getting what you want, then you have a built-in failure mechanism. Why guarantee your own failure? If you want something so badly, who do you make a choice to see the world in a way that automatically prohibits you from ever having what you want? That’s just silly.

Three Lies You Need To Stop Believing

The following three beliefs are repeated to me by students again and again, especially when you are stepping into the entrepreneurship game for the first time. You need to understand these are beliefs only, not truths, however if you hold on to a belief they become true for you, so you need to be careful.

If as you read the following points you find yourself on some level agreeing with them, then you need to stop and start taking steps to change the belief. If you don’t, it will always hold you back. Most problems can be solved with smart persistence, as every successful entrepreneur knows, so why not apply that belief to these situations instead?

1. You can only make money teaching/writing/blogging/selling how to make money

This one really bugs me. It’s such a short sighted view of the world to see only what’s directly in front of you.

This problem I believe stems from the natural process a new entrant into the world of Internet marketing goes through. First they look for methods to make money online and find a ton of resources, some which are good and some which are not. They notice that although lots of great free content is released, most of the people who give away this information seem to only make money by also selling products that teach how to make money, or by talking about the subject on a blog. It’s easy to get jaded by this.

This is how I make a lot of money online now, so I’m a perpetrator and certainly have had to face my fair share of people attempting to call me out as a fraud, only profiting by teaching how to make money. Although the fact that you make money teaching how to make money isn’t exactly fraudulent, it does cause people to be suspect of the quality of your information.

The truth is that the make money online niche, while good, is far from the best. If you really want to make big money enter the dating, weight loss, health, investing or real estate niches.

There are so many possible niches to make money in, but why you don’t hear about them as much is because of two reasons -

1. Those making money in other niches are not teaching how to make money, so there’s no incentive for them to talk about how they do it, that’s just not the business they are in.
2. You have your focus so squarely on how to make money you spend all your time studying within this niche only, which naturally means you are exposed predominately to how to make money products and blogs. If you want to see other realities, pretend for a moment that you want to lose weight, or cure your panic attacks, or learn how to improve your golf game, and go search for products in these areas. You will realize how many niches there really are where people make money using the exact same systems as those who sell how to make money online products.

If you want proof, just head to the Clickbank Marketplace and browse around for a while at the top selling products. There are so many niches within niches within niches that are hugely profitable you can only begin to imagine the possibilities if you look outside the make money online niche.

And if you don’t believe me, then you must believe to make money online you have to sell make money online products, so just start doing that and see how you go (read this for help if you are serious – How To Make Money Teaching People How To Make Money).

2. Technology is too hard so I will never succeed

This has to be the catch-cry for every baby boomer out there who’s taken their recent retirement money and looked online to start an Internet business. If simply reading and sending email is challenging, how on earth can you expect to “have a blog” or “sell a product online” or “launch a membership site” if the technology will stop you from even getting off the ground?

Here’s the truth – technology is a bitch. It’s the biggest pain in the butt for most Internet marketers and we all struggle with it from time to time, but that shouldn’t stop you from leveraging it to make millions.

The problem is that you believe you need to learn how to do it yourself and you want courses that show you how to do every little step, so if you just follow the steps you make money. That might work, but why on earth would you spend so much time learning something you’re not good at and don’t enjoy?

Technology is not your problem, choosing to handle it yourself is.

All you need to do is hire someone, show them what you want and tell them to build it for you. This can be as easy as finding a website like what you want created and then telling your tech person to build it like that, or have them go through a course for you and tell them to handle the tech parts of the project.

3. Thinking that you have to be the best expert

This problem really is about two things -

1. Your lack of direction
2. Your lack of confidence

If you want to base a business on expertise, and you want to frame yourself as the expert, the path is easy – pick a topic, study it and practice it and then teach it. Stay one step ahead of your students and you’re providing value.

If you don’t want to be the expert, then you need to either focus your business on a product that doesn’t require an expert, or hire an expert to create your products for you. If you go to Guru.com you can find experts in pretty much every niche you could think of, who would gladly create ebooks or write courses for you for as little as a few hundred dollars.

The insidious part of this situation is that until you commit to something you tend to take on most projects half-assed, resulting in not so amazing outcomes, thus reinforcing your belief that you’re just not good enough. What you need to do is get focused, pick something and do it long enough to get a positive result (even just making one sale is good) and then build up from there.

I was making $5,000 a month from blogging but I still didn’t believe I was good enough to teach how to blog because people like Darren Rowse were around. Who needed me if Problogger.net had all the answers for free already?

You know when I finally believed that I was good enough to be a blog teacher? The day someone emailed me and told me that my advice was helpful. I realized then that the world is huge and the Internet is vast, you can always find your tribe if you’re willing to give back. Expertise is simply a perception created when one person helps another.

Are You Ready Now?

I hope that I’ve helped swot away some of the limiting beliefs you might have about your potential to make money online. There are a lot of “traps” you can fall into when starting a business, and most of them originate in your mind. The tools are everywhere, but most people just don’t know how to use them or self-sabotage themselves.

It’s my job as a coach to help as many people as I can start successful Internet businesses. I get more enjoyment from seeing someone make a full time income from something they create and enjoy doing than anything else that I do, which is why I love blogging and teaching my courses.

When I created Membership Site Mastermind my goal was to teach a formula for creating and launching a membership site based on simplicity. The reason for this is because when I created my own membership sites I faced the same challenges as you.

Here are some things I dealt with –

• Technology has been a roadblock for me too, so instead of struggling, I went with simple solutions, with fewer moving parts, less things to configure and fewer things that can go wrong. That’s the same system I teach inside Membership Site Mastermind, which pretty much just uses WordPress (no special membership plug-ins required!) and AWeber.
• Another issue I have had to deal with, and I know you do too, is creating content. I’m a prolific content creator, but I can’t write materials for a blog, an email newsletter, free reports and membership sites all at once. It would kill me. Nor am I prepared to create an entire membership site’s worth of content BEFORE launching. Instead, I follow a process that means you only need to produce about 10% of your product before launching and selling it, and once you finish creating it all, you can keep selling it, doing relaunches whenever you want to. This is exactly what I teach inside Membership Site Mastermind.
• I also like to do things by myself. Yes I know if you really want to grow a huge business you need help, and I don’t want to contradict my own advice, you should have other people do things you are not good at – like technology – but still, if possible the fewer humans involved in the projects, I find the smoother things go. In the case of how I run my business today, which could easily scale to a seven figure enterprise, and is already half way there now, I don’t need that many people. Once you’ve built your empire, it can run reasonably automated, which once again, is the principle behind the system I teach inside Membership Site Mastermind.

In case you can’t tell, I really believe you should join my Membership Site Mastermind coaching program before it closes this Friday, the 30th of October 2009. This is the final class for 2009, so your last chance to work with me this year.

The course lays out how you can set up membership sites, or any information product like an online course, and launch with only 10% of the content finished, how you can keep your technology requirements very simple and do it all without the need to hire any full time staff, which most “normal” businesses require.

This is a truly beautiful system to make a living from the world wide web, if you’re willing to build it. Before you can build it, you need the roadmap, which is exactly what my coaching course is.

If you want more information or you are ready to join, go to this web page -

Remember, I offer a money back guarantee. You’re protected by Clickbank (my payment processor) for a full 60 days, so if you don’t like the course, you can quit and get your money back.

And if you can’t study it now, as long as you complete your payments you have lifetime access to all the materials, so you can do it next month or next year, I won’t take away your access.

You have until Friday midnight to decide.

I look forward to working with you!

Yaro Starak
Coaching

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

This information is especially valuable if you’re just starting out as a beginner asking questions like this -

• How can I figure out what people will spend money on?
• What language do my customers use to describe their problems?
• I don’t have a list or an audience yet, how can I build one?

The first video I recorded to show you a technique I used before creating my first information product that helped me understand exactly what my customers wanted and what language they used to describe the problems they faced. You can listen to me explain the technique in this video here -

Video: How To Find Out What Your Members Want Before You Launch

The second video is half a slide show where I show you some of the places I visited in 2008 during a trip around the world. The second half of this video talks about building lists and shows you a couple of examples of people who are using blogs and videos to foster relationships with an audience in preparation to launch a membership site or coaching program.

You can watch the second video here -

Slide Show: How I Made $211,969 While Traveling The World & Two Unique Case Studies

You may have seen these videos when I first published them, but don’t let that stop you watching them again, the lessons never grow old.

I’m highlighting this content now because next week is the final opening of Membership Site Mastermind for 2009.

I’m really looking forward to working with the next group of students who will actually implement the techniques talked about in the videos. Watching videos and understanding the process is great, but taking steps to actually do it is the only path to success. If you want help in that direction, my course is available from next week, or you can do it alone – as long as you do something!

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

Back when I first released the Masterplan I couldn’t keep up with the waves of comments coming through as I was busy preparing to open the Membership Site Mastermind coaching program.

Today as I prepared for the final 2009 opening of the coaching program next week (October 27th) I had some time to address some of the comments.

If you have any interest in launching a membership site, or creating and selling your own information product online or you just want to see what problems people face when striving to do these things (it’s very interesting market research), then have a read of the comments and my replies at this blog post -

The Membership Site Masterplan Is Now Available

A word of warning – with 300+ comments it takes a while to load the page and it has been known to crash some people’s browsers (it works for me in the latest Firefox), so give it a chance to finish loading before scrolling down to read the comments.

I’m still going through and responding to the comments now, so new replies from me are going to pop up over the next few days. You can leave your question as a comment too, and I’ll do my best to reply this week, just make sure you stay on the topic of membership ship sites and information product launches.

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

I expect you have some pretty lofty ambitions for next year. You probably have a lot you want to get done in the rest of 2009 too!

If you’ve done your research then you know to really ramp up how much money you make from your online business, you need your own product.

If you’ve made the decision to create an information product like a membership site, ebook, coaching course, or some form of expert based service as your path forward, now’s the time to get help and get educated.

Back in April 2009 I did the first public release of the Membership Site Mastermind coaching program and it was a huge success, and a lot of fun to teach.

I’m now ready to invite the next group of students to participate, and this will definitely be the last time this program is open for 2009, so if you want to take part, you have to join next week.

The doors open Tuesday October 27th.

Have You Decided To Make Changes?

I’ve published a very popular series on creating positive changes in your life in the articles on my blog that came before this one.

I love talking about personal development and mindset, as I believe they are keys to creating financial success in your life – they certainly are in my life.

I’ve been through many periods where I didn’t know if I would ever reach the financial goals I set for myself and at times it has taken a monumental effort to stay on course. This is why your mind is so important to your success as an entrepreneur, but you don’t have to go it alone all the time.

If you’ve been reading my series on change then you know one of the keys to getting what you want is to make smart choices. One of the other techniques I talk about is getting help and following success patterns from people who have done what you want to do.

Making the decision to take my coaching course could be a smart choice for you. If you have an intention to create and launch an information product, you want to make at least $100,000 next year and you want to follow by far the simplest system taught today, then you are a good fit for what I teach.

This is not training that you will find anywhere else online, nor is it taught in any university or college around the world. This is practical advice based on what’s actually working online today, with a focus on the simplest implementation process available so as to avoid as many technical challenges as possible.

Of course you don’t have to make a decision now, you can decide after you do some homework on what I offer. What I do and teach is not for everyone, so I’d like you to first make sure what I have will take you in the direction you want to go.

Your Homework Today: Study The Masterplan

If you have not already downloaded your copy of my free report, the Membership Site Masterplan, you need to do so today and study it before next week.

The Masterplan is the most comprehensive free report on the Internet for launching your own membership site. If you have any intentions of ever releasing your own information product or online service, you should read this report.

I have a reputation for producing free reports that people tell me have more value in them than most paid-for ebooks on the same subject. I do believe the Masterplan is a really solid report and is enough of a starting point to get you going towards earning your first $100,000 online selling your own products, and then a whole lot more.

The Masterplan is also a great introduction to my system and teaching style, so if you like what you find in the report – and it won’t cost you a single cent to download it – then you will be in a much better position to decide whether taking my full coaching course is what you want to do when it opens again next week.

So right now you only have one action to take: go and download the Masterplan free report.

You can get both a text copy in PDF and an audio version in MP3 (I’m the narrator) for free from here -

Download The Masterplan Free Report

Make sure you mark down October 27th (that’s Tuesday next week!) as the day I’m taking enrollments for the final time this year.

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