During a launch, to get a feel for the pulse of how the campaign is going, I spend time reading the comments made to other blogs on the posts relevant to me, my products and the free resources I release.

This is always an interesting process, but it can be very misleading. Most forms of feedback you get online, including comments made to your blog, other blogs, emails you receive and any other discussion points like forums and social media, should be considered very warily.

The problem with this sort of feedback is that it comes from people who rarely represent the majority, yet because they are vocal, what they say does have an impact on the silent majority, those who read the posts and comments but never write a comment of their own.

As the creator of a product feedback is a great thing, but it’s so easy to read a negative comment made about you or what you do on another person’s blog and read into it as indicative of what everybody thinks, which it rarely is. The same goes for positive commentary too, but most people don’t stress about good comments - it’s only the bad ones.

Reputation management is important, but being careful not to involve yourself on an emotional level is important too.

Setting Expectations

The selection of blogs I listed above are very different. The personas behind each blog are different, thus the voice and writing style is different and hence the type of audience they attract is different too.

This is an important consideration, because you have to realize that what is being said on one blog relates to the environment established at that blog from prior blog posts and interactions with that particular blogger. Darren Rowse is different from John Chow, who is different from Brian Clark and Daniel Scocco.

These guys all have followings of people who have come to expect certain actions, types of posts and standards. It’s safe to say that the audience of a blogger generally likes the person behind the blog and shares some, not all, but some of the opinions and viewpoints of that blogger. In other words, they resonate with the person behind the words, hence they read their blog.

This is why, when you head out there and conduct a launch, which is presented in your voice and style, there’s a friction between how you “speak” and how the blogger who writes about you as an affiliate speaks too. The best affiliate is able to use their understanding of their market, and take what you give during a launch and promote your offer so it lines up well with the desires of the audience they have the attention of, using the right language.

Of course there are times when the alignment isn’t there and certain things you do as a marketer are frowned upon by some audiences and not others. This is why you have to be careful when reading comments on other blogs. If your style contradicts the expectations of the vocal minority at that blog, you’re going to hear about it.

State Based Opinions

Another interesting observation I’ve noticed when looking at feedback I receive is how state-based each situation is. This applies to comments made on your blog, or any other blog or any feedback anywhere you get.

What I mean by that is the person leaving the comment has established some kind of mental perception of what you are, what you represent and of course, how they feel about you and your work based on their unique experience with you. That’s how they feel about you in their present state.

It might be the first time they’ve ever heard of you so they have nothing to go by, or maybe they only hear about you when you promote something so they see you as a pure marketer, or maybe they’ve been a fan of your work for years and love what you do.

Of course your own experience with yourself is vast, so it can be frustrating when someone makes a judgment about you without really having any knowledge or experience with you, because you know it’s not true. There really is no truth of course, just your own opinion of yourself and other people’s perception of you, but still, you would like those two things to line up closely if possible, although they rarely do.

This doesn’t always equate to a negative reaction, but in most cases it does result in a poorly informed judgment, which is an opportunity for you to make a good impression, or for your fans (your tribe) or affiliates to clarify what you are about (it is especially good when your tribe defend you since they are viewed as impartial observers, rather than people with a bias towards you, like yourself or your affiliate).

Acknowledging that you have to accept that person’s perception of you and your product, but understand that it’s just an opinion given at a point in time is important, because it means you don’t have to worry about it. In most cases, at least when you know what you have and do is good, you can let your work do the talking for you. Let your “results” be your voice and do all the talking “on the court” as they say in sport.

The Variability of Opinion

Many times I’ve had a laugh when reading comments about my products at other blogs, in particular when it comes to discussion of price and value.

Surprisingly often, you will read a comment on a blog stating that your product is too expensive (and it doesn’t matter if it is $50 or $500, it’s expensive to someone out there), immediately followed by someone saying the product is good value or even too cheap.

I’ve had similar experiences with email feedback, with one person complaining the pace of my course is too slow or the lessons too easy, and literally within a matter of hours receiving another email from someone else saying my course is too quick and too hard and they can’t keep up.

I’m grateful for experiences like this because it has made me less impacted by the comments made on other blogs or any feedback from one individual given over email or even face to face. People are important and you should never discount what they say completely, but make sure you don’t overreact either.

In most cases you’re just getting one person’s thoughts based solely on their personal situation, which doesn’t indicate everyone else is experiencing the same thing.

So When Can You Trust Feedback?

If you can’t take much stock in comments left to blogs, or social media or even emails sent to you, then what can you trust and base decisions on when coming up with products, websites or even entire businesses?

As a long term Internet marketer, and this is going to sound a little like a cop-out especially if you are new to Internet marketing, often I find a mix of intuition (a “blink” moment if you are a Malcolm Gladwell fan), combined with solid empirical evidence, works best.

I can often “read” a market simply because I’ve observed it for so long and I’ve had experience both selling my own products and seeing how my peers sell their products. While I don’t have a 100% track record, I’m pretty good at predicting how many sales are going to be made for the launches I do.

The first ingredient you need is simply experience. You need to build up a stock of interactions, observations and just good old trial and error experiments, to establish a familiarity with your market that helps you understand what they want. This can only happen over time.

However, and this is coming from someone who hates statistics, empirical evidence is darn important too.

Take for example a survey. Surveys are an important part of assessing your market’s needs and wants, and while I think they are definitely better than just looking at blog comments or forum threads, they still suffer from skewed results because you only get a proportion of your audience responding - a proportion that may not be a good sample of your entire audience.

The most important factor I have discovered about surveys, is that you actually get responses. Often the particulars of the responses are not as important as just getting enough engagement from an audience that they give you feedback.

I believe why this is important is because of what I talked about with state-based decision making. The fact that a person gives you attention means you have some form of influence over them. When they fill out a survey or leave a blog comment, they are giving you their opinion at that moment in time - their present state.

However, because you are talking to humans, with all those emotional vulnerabilities, their state can be changed. If you are in a position to influence people, then it’s the state you take them to during a launch, combined with their built up experience with you that matters. The launch can be so impactful, that what they said was true previously in surveys or blog comments or emails has changed completely because they have been emotionally impacted by what you have done since then.

This is why someone might say they’d never buy something from you at that price or whatever justification they have, but then there state changes because they’ve seen how good your pre-launch content is, or you just said the right thing at the right time. Thus you can make the sale when all previous indicators proved otherwise.

All this points to the fact that feedback online, in general is helpful, but far from absolute. You should look more for engagement rather than the specificity of the responses themselves. People can be swayed, but only if they are paying attention.

What If You Don’t Get Any Feedback?

The dilemma you likely face right now is that you don’t have many people paying attention to you. You’re not receiving comments to your blog, you don’t have people email you genuine questions or feedback, and you’re not likely to get responses if you sent out a survey.

First of all - don’t despair! - we all start there and it is possible to change your situation. Change is always possible if you take the steps to make that change a reality.

One first step you can take right now is to read this article - Engagement: The Magic Ingredient You Need For Success Online Today - It will give you a better understanding of what I mean when I say “engagement” (which has nothing to do with marriage!).

The keys to attract attention online are a few things -

1. A war of Attrition: keep jumping in front of people and showing them what you have until you build your own tribe
2. Value Delivery: constantly deliver things people want
3. Accept Rejection: not everyone wants what you have, so spend time on those who do
4. Distribution: leverage the wonderful tool we’ve been given to get in touch with millions of people world wide (the Internet) to distribute your value to as many people as you can until you have a large enough tribe to achieve your goals

To put this in more practical terms - get out there and give people your goods!

Write amazing blog posts, create incredible videos, do podcasts, network with bloggers, give your best content away as guest posts, study constantly and always be testing something so you have new life experiences to talk about.

The only way you can fail at this is if you stop living and stop giving. The more you do, the more you have to give because the more you know. It’s as simple as that.

What Really Matters

At the end of the day what you consider important is what matters to you.

I look at my blog, my products, my friends, my life in general, and if I see what I want, then all is good. When I see areas lacking, that is where I must work harder and put in more effort.

Trust real results, not opinions and judgments. Look for trends in the data as indicators for success, not someone telling you your article is no good. Look at how many sales you have, not someone saying your product is too expensive.

Every launch I have ever done has exceeded my expectations. They’ve been roller coasters for sure, going from highs to lows back to highs and then back lows and over and over again, but if I look at the trend, I’m much, much better off than I was as each year passes, so things are good.

The only way you can go wrong here is by holding yourself back because of fear of what people will say. Expect negative feedback. Expect people to complain, to curse, to be rude and to say your work is no good, but let it all pass through you. As long as you are focusing on output, experience and growth, you can’t help but succeed.

Yaro Starak
Feeding Back

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Some people consider making money by teaching how to make money essentially a scam. I mean if you know a system of how to make money, why not just use that system rather than sell it? That smells fishy right? Umm, no, I find that logic quite silly. Why not make money using your system AND teaching it.

So, why can a small minority of people earn big in the Internet marketing industry and the majority fail miserably? Is the make money online niche only full of scammers or those who just got lucky?

As someone who has been making money in this niche for years - and I’ve certainly climbed the ladder over time - I’m in a pretty good position to explain the subtle elements that people new to Internet marketing won’t see.

Where Most People Go Wrong

Let’s start with some common mistakes that people make when attempting to profit from teaching others how to make money…

1. You sell people products about and attempt to teach how to make money when you’ve never made money yourself.

This might seem obvious, but for those people who can only see the dollar signs and not reality, understand that credibility is a big part in converting a sale.

You don’t go to a doctor who just decided one day to open a surgery having never studied or practiced medicine, so why do you think people will give you money to learn something from you that you’ve never done or have very limited success in?

There are a few people out there, especially affiliate marketers who’ve never done anything but promote how to make money products, who can enter the make money online niche and do well, but that’s because they have a skill (traffic generation and conversion), which can be applied across any market.

It’s very likely that anyone today who has made good money in the Internet marketing niche has earned money in other niches before or still do. If you’re currently running a blog that just promotes how to make money products and that’s your strategy for striking it rich, it’s time to face reality and try a different angle.

2. You’re planning on chronicling your journey to make money through blogging and thus profit from the audience you build.

I’m certainly partially to blame for people following this path, as are guys like John Chow, who rose to fame using the phrase “I make money online by telling people how I make money online“.

I’ve had numerous people go through my blog training programs and begin the with the idea of starting a blog on how to make money. The thought process usually goes something like this…

“I want to make money online, but I don’t know what niche to run with”.

“As a worst case scenario, I’ll be able make money from my blog”.

That theory looks good on paper but most people have a fatal flaw in their execution.

They key to making money by writing about your journey to make money is that you absolutely must take action and try different systems and methods to make money, and then report back real results to your audience.

For example, try Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) to sell affiliate products and hopefully make at least a few hundred dollars in sales, so then you have a great little case study to report back to your blog. People want to know how to make a couple of hundred dollars from PPC, so explaining how you do it is valuable content.

What usually happens is people realize how hard it is just to do the experiments. Reaching the point where you profit from the experiments is tough enough. Adding a commitment to write about the experience as well for little to no immediate return - that’s beyond most people.

The fact is, unless you already have experience actually profiting from a business it will be very hard to build an audience by talking about how to make money on a blog. That’s why my blog, and the few similar blogs to my own will likely remain at the top. Many contenders have come and gone, and most come to the realization they just don’t have the energy to run their business AND write about it too.

3. Believing that if you make enough blog posts promoting affiliate products eventually you have to strike it rich.

This really is a newbie mistake, but it’s so common I need to point out how futile it is so you don’t make the same mistake.

If your blog only features promotions for products you will never build an audience that trusts you. Why buy from someone who keeps asking for money and never gives anything.

This is actually a huge problem in our niche, which, for the smart marketers is a golden opportunity.

It’s fair to say that the average consumer who goes looking to purchase something that purports to teach them how to make money - a business opportunity - is pretty skeptical. Down right jaded is a better label. These people are petrified of being ripped off and because so many people sell junk online using copy from the hype-machine, as an Internet marketer you have to work extra hard to build credibility.

The opportunity is to stand out from the crowd and build a sustainable business simply by not attempting to steal every penny from an unsuspecting newbie, and instead actually help them with genuine support.

If someone gets burnt once, then comes to you and very cautiously makes a decision, buys your product or a product you recommend, and then has a positive experience, you have generated some very powerful goodwill. Being an honest person in a sea of sharks and hucksters is a HUGE advantage, assuming you can figure out a way to create that perception.

How You Can Profit Selling In Internet Marketing Niche

The key to profiting in the make money online niche is to focus on credibility, authenticity, trust, quality information based on practical experience and sheer consistency.

Most people fail on one or several of those criteria and thus struggle to stand out as anything more than yet another person attempting to steal an unsuspecting newbie’s money and then run away.

The next key criteria, assuming you can adhere to the criteria of credibility is to find your unique positioning in the market. It’s very hard to just teach “internet marketing” and unless you find something you can specialize in, it will be hard to build a sustainable business.

In a sea of also-rans, anyone with a clear point of differentiation, a unique market positioning and a specialized area of expertise, wins. Here’s how you can be a winner -

1. Find a Sub-Niche

Most marketers who make good money teaching how to make money, even at the very top level, have some key point of differentiation, which essentially is just a sub-niche of the overall “Internet marketing” category. Here are some examples of the people I learned from and consider peers and mentors and the sub-niches they focus on -

• Jeff Walker is know for product launches
• Alex Mandossian - Teleseminars
• John Reese - Traffic Generation
• Rich Schefren - Business Systemization
• Mike Filsaime - Viral Marketing
• Perry Marshall - Pay Per Click
• John Carlton - Copywriting

These guys are some of the celebs in our market. If you drill down and take a look at any smaller success stories, the less well known Internet marketers, who every day are making good money in the Internet marketing niche, they still have some form of specialty.

They might focus on email list building, or pay per click, or affiliate marketing, or copywriting or conversion or lead generation or any countless parts of the overall industry. Each person has a focus that distinguishes them in the mind of their customers as the best solution to a specific problem they suffer from.

You can even go deeper than this, with some marketers taking one specialty and applying it directly to a geographic location (Sydney copywriting) or specific type of customer (pay per click for mortgage brokers) or a combination of these elements.

One of the most successful formulas I’ve seen applied well is to become the local specialist for a type of small business in your community and help them market online. Your angle might be to focus on retail stores of a certain type (say antique shops) and help them set up an eBay marketing campaign to sell their goods.

This formula of taking offline businesses online can be done in so many markets and in many ways, and is a fantastic entry strategy for any person who knows at least the basics of Internet marketing. Or, if you can become very good at one thing, for example SEO, you can make as much money practicing your craft as you do teaching it, or more.

2. Ride the Wave of a New Evolution

Specializing is vital for success, but sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t find your spot in the Internet marketing landscape. If that is a frustration you have experienced, you might consider leveraging the emergence of a new form of online marketing and become proficient enough in it to be one of the first experts.

My own story becoming a blog trainer is one such example of riding the wave of a new evolution. While I’m not the first blogger, nor the most prolific or the most popular, I was one of the very first to sell an information product that teaches how to make money blogging.

It helped of course that I spent time to build a blog that made money, which leveraged my earlier life experiences in business. I had the sense to realize there was an opportunity there that I could take and become one of the first to establish positioning as a blogging expert.

I also happened to be one of the only bloggers who focused on Internet marketing, so again I leveraged what had worked for thousands of other marketers and applied it to my area - blogging - which was something that few bloggers did, or even do still today.

In more recent time the example of Maria Andros springs to mind as a person who was able to ride the wave of another evolution, this time video and social media marketing, establish herself as one of the most credible experts and - here’s the key part - released a product to cement her position.

Maria had the sense to know she was in the right place at the right time and there was a market she could dominate. She took action, branded herself appropriately and then went after a market. Maria now has very little quality competition, at least in the perception of the marketplace.

3. Stay One Step Ahead of your Target Market

One key concept that I’ve had to remind my students of time and time again, especially if they are attempting to brand themselves as an expert, is to realize that you only need to be one step ahead of your target market.

You can teach how to make money if you know how to do something that a large enough group of people don’t know and would benefit knowing. As long as you are good at one thing there will always be a stream of people new to your topic who need to learn what you know.

If you combine the previous points about building trust, finding a sub-niche or riding a new wave of opportunity, and stay one step ahead of the people you sell to, you are set, even in the highly competitive and highly lucrative how to make money online marketplace.

Making Sense Vs. Making Dollars

Everything I’ve outlined in this article makes sense. It’s clear and you should be able to get your head around the concepts I’m teaching. Unfortunately most people fail to execute and thus fail to profit.

Although this article is about how to make money teaching others how to make money, the rules apply just as well to other markets.

Every market is at a different stage of its development cycle and some will have more competition than others. The current relationship between supply (the number of quality competitors in the market you are in) vs demand (the amount of money you can potentially make from customers) will dictate how much effort you need to put in place in order to make money (I promise you, there will be effort required!).

My advice to you is to get out there and experiment until you find your place in the industry. There is enough room for everyone who provides value. It doesn’t matter if you think you face too much competition, it’s not the competition that will stop you from succeeding, it’s your ability to leverage the advice I’ve outline in this article and carve out your position in the market by delivering value to a specific segment of people, that will dictate your success.

Good luck, and remember the golden rule to making money in any marketplace: The more people you help, the more money you make.

Yaro Starak
Blogging Expert

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Download the MP3 [ 139 Minutes - 54 MB]

We just wrapped up a mammoth, 2-hour 19 minute call with over 140 people live. The questions kept coming and Gideon and I didn’t want to stop until everyone’s question was responded to, so we kept at it.

This is a great call covering all kinds of topics such as -

• What is important when choosing a theme for your blog
• Using Ustream and video on your blog
• Why you need a strategy behind your blog
• How we host teleconference calls
• What systems we use to store and distribute video
• What the four successful components are to become a professional blogger
• How many blogs should you start when you begin blogging
• How to use blogging as a lead generation tool
• and loads more…

We even had one caller ask where Gideon and I get our accents from!

This is a full-on content call and if you’re new to blogging or looking to learn more about what it takes to succeed as a professional blogger, then make sure you download the MP3 now.

Become A Blogger Premium Almost Closed

If you enjoy this recording and want more opportunities to listen in or ask questions during a live coaching call, we’re doing plenty more of them for our members.

You have until midnight, Friday the 3rd of July to join here -

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

Gideon and I are looking forward to properly starting the course with the new group of students from next week onwards, starting with a special session focused on topic selection for bloggers.

I hope to see you on the inside too. Even if you can’t join, have a listen to the call recording, you will be glad you did.

Get your bonus copy of my book
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The live chat is a little innovation Gideon and I came up with to help any person who is reviewing our sales page by making ourselves available to answer any questions live.

At any given point in time around 30 to 50 people are viewing our sales page during this week, while the program is open. Being available to answer questions live is a great way to help these people decide whether our program is right for them, but it also gives us valuable feedback on where people are “stuck” in their decision process.

We don’t man the chat 24/7, but whenever we are online and particularly just after we send an email about the program, we are there. When we’re not there, we just remove the chat interface.

I strongly recommend you consider some kind of live support during a launch campaign or even in general on any sales page. Demonstrating your commitment to your customers and showing your availability at the point of purchase, is a powerful persuasion tool.

What If You Don’t Know What To Blog About?

During the time I spent on the chat yesterday morning there was a common theme of questions.

The biggest “sticking point” people are facing when considering becoming a blogger is what topic to cover. The language used to describe the issue varied and included the following -

1. I don’t know what topic to write about
2. I’m not an expert at anything
3. I don’t know whether my topic can be profitable

I really feel there is a strong insecurity and a general lack of understanding around what makes a profitable topic. This is a unique challenge for bloggers, because we don’t necessarily have a product to sell, especially when you first begin. In essence, your content is your product, and if you choose a product no one wants, then obviously you’re not going to make money.

The Subtle Elements Behind Choosing The Right Subject

I’ve long been a student of niche marketing and the initial choice of topic for a blog is the same as choosing a niche for any business. You’re choosing what market to enter with the hope of success, whatever that success is for you.

In most cases success includes some kind of monetary reward, but with blogging it’s a bit different, because for many bloggers, it’s just as much about creative expression, recognition and reputation as it is about raw dollars. You have to consider your potential to make money and whether you want to immerse yourself in that industry to potentially become an expert.

People don’t always look at blogging as the path to preeminence. Some just create a blog, stick some adsense on it, get some content created through outsourcers, then move on to the next blog. I’ve never been about this method because it lacks a soul. It’s purely about money and not about passion, and I don’t see that as something that will last long term.

It’s worth studying this method however because the people who use it are very good at figuring out where the money is, which unfortunately for those of us who focus on passion, often struggle the most with. There are plenty of struggling bloggers with a lot of passion and no dollars, so you owe it to yourself to use whatever resources you have available to make sure you’re not one of them.

The holy grail of blogging is a mix of what you love and what you can get paid for - and paid really well. Most book authors never make money from their work, yet with a blog you can put in as much effort as you would to write a book, and end up with a very cash positive asset. Best of all you can do this independently, from your home, without the need of distribution from a publishing company, who would take a large chunk of your profits.

I’m Going To Help You Find A Topic

Since I see the issue of topic selection such a major problem for people, especially those entering the blogging game for the first time, Gideon and I have decided to do something special for the new members of Become A Blogger Premium 2.0.

If you join before we close on Friday at midnight EST US time, you will qualify for a special live coaching session we’re going to do with this group if students to specifically address the challenge of topic selection.

The coaching will be live and we will do it next week once the program begins in earnest after we shut the doors to new members. This is ONLY for members, the public will not be invited and it will be focused 100% on the issue of topic selection. I hope we can also help some people live on the call by having a dialogue with anyone struggling to find a good topic.

There’s already resources in the program to help with topic selection, but I see this issue as something where you need as much help as you can get, including a chance to ask me and Gideon directly for help, so we’ve decided to put in the extra effort.

Once you have your topic, the rest of the blogging process can be quite straight forward. It takes work of course, but you will be comfortable because you will know what you stand for and who you are trying to talk to. That’s the magic of clearly understanding your audience and what you want to be to them.

If that sounds good to you, sign-up today so you qualify for the coaching session…

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

I’ll speak to you soon,

Yaro Starak
Blog Mentor

PS. If you want to read more from me on the subject of niche selection, check out of my previous article - How To Simplify The Niche Selection Process

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Gideon Shalwick and I are running one live free public teleconference where we will be answering any questions you have about blogging.

This is a one time thing as our coaching calls are normally only for our paying members. The capacity of our conference line is 150 people only so make sure you are there early if you want to listen in or ask a question.

If you’d like to speak to us, or just eaves-drop as other people ask questions and you want to experience what it is like to get live support from experts, then make sure you write these details down in your diary…

Live Call Details

Date: Thursday, July 2, 2009
Time: 7 PM Eastern US Time

Check your local time here.

******

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You can read about what is in the program and join at this page. Make sure you watch the welcome video if you want to visually see what is inside the members area -

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

If you enjoyed the Roadmap report, the 10 videos on how to set up an optimized WordPress blog, my video on how to rapidly grow your blog traffic and Gideon’s presentation of 7 YouTube marketing tips that we released all for free during the last week, then I know you will love the Become A Blogger Premium 2.0 course.

Enrollments start today and our first coaching call is next week. We’re not opening this program again any time soon, so you have just a few days to decide. This happens to be the most affordable blog training program I have on the market, so if you’re ready to commit yourself to following professional online training and you’ve got under $50 a month budget, you’re in!

www.becomeablogger.com/signup/

I’ll see you on the inside.

Yaro (and on behalf of Gideon too!)

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"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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If you’ve ever wondered how people get traffic back to their blog using YouTube videos, this presentation will be pretty eye-opening for you.

I won’t say more, go watch it here -

X-Factor Video: 7 Killer Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos

While you are there don’t forget to pick up your copy of Roadmap Report and prepare for Monday when we open the program for five days only.

Enjoy your weekend and look for more from Gideon and me starting Monday!

Get your bonus copy of my book
"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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(Yaro’s Presentation On Impact Marketing Techniques.)

• 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 2.0 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 2.0 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 our internal 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 2.0 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.

We’re not likely to open it again to the public during 2009, so you have five days to get in, get busy and be part of the class of 09.

From Monday June 29th you will be able to sign-up for the program from here

www.BecomeABlogger.com/SignUp/

In the meantime please enjoy this video and let me know what you think of the presentation.

Yaro Starak
Videoing

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Over the next two years the idea of blogging for money, possibly even as a career, became a reality. Blog networks started up paying bloggers a salary, thanks to programs like Google Adsense generating income became easier for the average Internet user, and eventually blogging went mainstream.

Today thousands of bloggers make money and while the number of those who do it as their main job is small in comparison to the number of blogs in existence, for those who realize the lifestyle of a professional blogger, life is good.

I never intended to make money as a blogger when I started. It was an experiment aimed solely at gaining more traffic from search engines. Little did I know that my blog would eventually become my business and just a few short years later I’d sell off all my other businesses just to pursue blogging.

Today my blog has helped pay for my house, my car, an 8 month trip around the world and I’ve just purchased a plush two bedroom apartment in my favorite suburb, where I will be moving to next month just before my 30th birthday (pictures coming soon!).

Needless to say, I am extremely blessed by what blogging has done for my life, and part of my mission as a blogger is to help other people realize similar benefits and freedoms thanks to blogging. Here are some of the resources I offer that can help you follow in my footsteps…

Would You Like To Become A Blogger?

If you’re interested in starting your own blog, the first thing I recommend you do is go to the free video training site Gideon Shalwick and myself provide for absolute newbie bloggers called “Become A Blogger” -

www.BecomeABlogger.com

This site offers ten free videos that take you from zero, to setting up an optimized WordPress blog (and if you go to the blog portion of the site, you will find some additional free videos that give away even more powerful secrets to successful blogging).

While you are at the Become A Blogger site, make sure you download the free report - The Roadmap to Become A Blogger - which is a solid introduction to what it takes to build a successful blog.

Pay particular attention to the second half of the report where Gideon, who is an expert at leveraging social media, especially video, takes you through a series of techniques we call the “X-Factor”.

X-Factor techniques are particularly powerful leverage tools that combine multi-media with social media to bring traffic to your blog. In today’s online marketing world, if you don’t leverage new media when building your blog, you’re going to struggle to stand out from the crowd, which is exactly why we offer the “X-Factor” techniques to teach you how to be better than “average” blogger.

You can download the Roadmap report in both text and audio here -

www.BecomeABlogger.com/roadmap/

I strongly recommend you watch the free videos, get your blog set up and then devour the Roadmap report in one sitting (or listen to the audio version). You will then be a in a great starting position, better than most people who begin blogging, to really profit from your efforts.

Follow a roadmap and you are much more likely to succeed, especially if you are very new to the blogging game and want your hand held along the way.

Become A Blogger Premium 2.0 Opens Next Week

Next Monday, June 29th, for five days only, Gideon and I are opening up Become A Blogger Premium 2.0, the latest updated version of our introductory video training program for bloggers.

This course had over 1,000 students complete the training over the past six months (the best retention rate of any of my programs).

Now that the program is finished, the entire course is there laid out, including over 60 videos with discussion on each video, a private forum for members only, plus all the additional resources we offer like live group coaching calls twice a month with me and Gideon, master the mindset audio series and more.

The videos are split into two types -

1. Strategy presentations from me where I lay out my system for successful blogging to you
2. Practical how-to videos presented by Gideon, who teaches you the step-by-step to set-up and optimize your blog, and how to implement the techniques we teach

We’re now ready to begin training the next group of eager bloggers and I’m inviting you to work with me and Gideon over the next six months (if you haven’t already!). This time we’re opening the doors only for five days and then shutting down. If you want in, you have to decide next week.

This program really is for beginners who want to learn the how-to of successful blogging. If you’re confused by technology and blogs and websites, etc, and want your hand held throughout the process and prefer to be shown visually through video, there is no better blog trainer than Gideon and the resources inside Become A Blogger Premium 2.0.

If you don’t believe me, go watch the first ten free videos we give away -

www.BecomeABlogger.com

If you like the style of presentation in those videos, are eager to learn more (and DO more) and want to work closely with someone who is currently living out the professional blogger lifestyle, then stay tuned for next week to claim your spot in Become A Blogger Premium 2.0, the last public run through of the program for 2009.

I’ll have more information for you later in the week. For the time being, go watch the videos and read the Roadmap, it’s a brilliant report.

www.BecomeABlogger.com/roadmap/

Yaro Starak
Professional Blogger

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

1. You make a margin per product sale that is often as good or better than the person or company that produces the product
2. You don’t have to do any product fulfillment, handle cancellations or any customer service whatsoever
3. You have a huge range of products to choose from in most mainstream product categories
4. You can enter new niches any time you like with zero switching cost, simply by finding a new product to promote as an affiliate (this is for those of you who like variety)
5. If you have a product of your own, one of the best ways to get affiliates to promote your product is to make sales of their product as an affiliate first (this is a big one!)

I could go on, but let’s state the obvious and most important aspect: Affiliate marketing is great because you can make very good money for very little effort.

Don’t get me wrong, it requires effort to get to a situation where you can make money as an affiliate, but once you are there the actual process for making money is very, very simple. It’s as easy as writing a blog post or sending an email.

It’s Like Printing Money

I remember about four years ago reading all those hyped-up sales pages from Internet marketers, and I come across the phrase “it’s like printing money”.

I’ve never been a hater of sales copy, although obvious hype agitates me just like anyone else. I certainly believed that some people were enjoying a situation where they could just send emails and make big money, but I was personally very far away from that. Jealousy mixed with depression about my own results, were the dominant emotions I felt at the time when I read what other people were achieving apparently so easily.

My first attempt at “printing money” as an affiliate was with my blog when it was about six months old. I put in a couple of hours to write a blog post about Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide To Google AdWords and managed to print about $20 in commissions - one sale.

I was disappointed given it had taken me six months of consistent work on my blog to make that $20, however I was also encouraged. I could see given enough time and energy, that $20 could be $200 and then $2,000 and even $20,000. Today I have the audacity to believe it could be $200,000 one day too.

Fast forward to the year 2009 and the first six month’s of affiliate promotions have gone like this…

• Almost $10,000 promoting premium blog themes
• $800 in commissions for sending one email recommending a $20 book
• $700+ for sending leads to an online course promo
• $25,000+ promoting a big product released in March
• $10,000 for a home study course launched in May
• $4,000 for promoting another home study course in June

…And this doesn’t include the ongoing commissions I’m still earning from previous promotions and recursive products.

All bragging aside, it’s clear for me affiliate income has gone on to become a huge source of income and yes, I now understand what it is like to “print money”.

In most of the examples above all I did was write one blog post and/or possibly one or two emails, and that is it. Some were just one email of a couple of hundred words. Really, that is how hard it is, at least from a physical labor point of view.

So how can you get into a position like this and make big money as an affiliate blogger? Here are my tips…

The Key To Making Top-Dollar Affiliate Income

I don’t have a magic button for you, and no one does, but what I can do is break down some facts regarding my own success.

Let’s start with a really, really important point that on the surface you might not realize is there. This intangible factor is “trust“.

The reason I can make any sales at all is I have built up enough trust with a group of people that they look to me for information about a certain subject and trust any product recommendations I make. That very likely includes you, since you are reading this article.

That trust was created in many ways. If you want to see the very first piece of trust I ever built publicly, go read the very first blog post I made to this blog (well maybe not the very first, but from about January 2005 onwards when I started writing about entrepreneurship).

Each blog post from that point forward has acted as a small tool to build trust. Each podcast I have published does the same, as does every video I make. The free reports I release are huge trust building tools, and when I’m speaking on stage, or during a teleconference or even just networking at an event, I’m building trust.

Not every person is exposed to the same trust building mechanisms, but at some point, every affiliate sale I make happened because I first got the attention of that person, and they trusted me enough to order something through my affiliate link.

So, with that subtle requirement out of the way, let’s take a look at some more practical advanced techniques you use to make more money as an affiliate.

4 Advanced Affiliate Marketing Tips

Here are what I consider the key techniques that really ramped up my success as an affiliate marketer -

1. I operate in the make money online niche.

I’m not going to suggest that you should go out and start promoting in the make money niche, and there’s reasons why I can enjoy success in this market and most people cannot (that’s an entire article in itself), but let’s state another obvious point - “how to make money” is a very profitable market to be in.

Why? - Because a lot of people want to make more money, pretty much everybody on this planet, and it’s a very painful problem that is highly motivating.

The Internet marketing niche also has a constant stream of new products coming out, with powerful marketing behind them. Marketers who market how to market products are very good at marketing (lol!). They wouldn’t be making money in that niche if they weren’t, so as an affiliate for them, it’s easier to make sales since they have a solid process for selling what they sell.

It also helps that there are some very high priced products in this niche with some big commissions - as high as several thousand dollars per sale. This means you can make a lot of money with just a few sales.

This shouldn’t discourage you if you are in another market. I’ve made just as much money selling someone else’s $47 a month membership site product as a $2,000 home study course as an affiliate, so you don’t have to promote high priced items to succeed. What matters is that there are quality products with quality marketing processes available to promote. Many, many other markets also have quality products you can promote (just take a look at the Clickbank marketplace for examples).

I want to be clear one of the main reasons why I make so much money as an affiliate is because I am in the industry I am in. I didn’t plan it that way, but in hindsight it makes a big difference. If you can get into the how to make money/business opportunity/Internet marketing niche, it’s a great one to be in. One day I really should put out a product on how to succeed in this niche (what do you think?).

2. You must leverage an email list

Once again at the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me emphasize how important email marketing is.

I make at least three times as many sales as an affiliate because of email. If I just used my blog I honestly believe I’d be making maybe a quarter of the money I currently make. Email is just that powerful.

Take for example Darren Rowse’s recent release of his “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” book. I was privileged enough to be one of his first affiliate partners and my business partner Gideon Shalwick was too. Gideon sent one email to his list and I sent one email to my list and I’m pretty sure Gideon was the top affiliate and I was second (Gideon offered a bonus, that’s why he did better - see the next point).

Darren noticed the impact of email too and wrote about the results saying that email promos where converting better than blog posts and blog posts were converting better than Twitter tweets (that to me is a representation of the best online marketing mechanisms we have online today and the order of effectiveness too: 1. Email 2. Blog 3. Twitter).

I could go and on about how to effectively use email and a blog together to make affiliate sales, but this article is long enough, I’ll save that for another day.

The lesson: Go register for an Aweber account and start building your list.

3. Offer bonuses as incentives

You may have noticed that I’ve been consistently offering different bonuses if people order products through my affiliate link. This is nothing new in the Internet marketing world, yet so few people do it.

The problem most people have is they just don’t have good bonuses to offer. If you don’t have your own high perceived value products to include and you’re not prepared to make some kind of quality bonus, then this technique won’t work.

Sure you can buy PLR articles or ebooks and throw them in, but if they are not quality products, they have low perceived value or they are not congruent with the affiliate offer you are making, it’s not going to help you make more sales.

Bonuses that are congruent with the affiliate offer being made are fantastic incentives for people to buy from you. That makes sense, however there is another benefit of offering bonuses you may not know about.

Including a bonus means you can “track” your affiliate orders. Let’s me state an unfortunate truth - affiliate tracking systems, even the best ones, will not track every sale you make. Cookies can be cleared or blocked, scripts may not track accurately or another affiliate might nab your referral just as the product goes on sale. This sucks, but you have to accept it because that’s just the way it is right now.

Offering a bonus means that when a person comes to claim it from you, you can correlate their order and ensure you get credit. I’ve gained several thousands of dollars just in the last six months when orders were not correctly counted as mine, so when a person comes claiming a bonus, they can then ensure you get credit. This is a very important, if rarely talked about, benefit of offering bonuses.

If you can find a way to come up with a valuable and relevant bonus when doing an affiliate promotion, go for it, it’s a great way to increase your sales.

4. Access to more people (More Traffic)

Most affiliate marketing trainers emphasize improving conversion and I’d be an idiot not to agree with that. However, and this is simply a result of my own dislike of conversion testing, I’ve tended to focus more on attracting more people than conversion, which has resulted in more sales.

That first $20 affiliate sale all those years ago became a $200 sale because I went from 500 visitors a day to 5000. I’ve had $20,000 affiliate commission pay days because I can reach 50,000 plus people via email and another 20,000 via my blog. My conversion rate hasn’t changed much, but my access to an audience has.

It may seem obvious, but the more traffic you have the more you can make as an affiliate. Profit is a function of traffic, especially as an affiliate marketer. Improving conversion is obviously a good idea, but don’t forget that having influence over a steadily increasing audience size - especially if your traffic grows organically - is a sure-fire way to increase sales.

As an encouragement, consider how much money you make now as an affiliate and then consider what it might be like if you can double, triple or even multiply your traffic by ten times. Do the numbers look a lot better than? Yeah, I bet they do.

It’s tough at the beginning, but if you have faith and the trends show that you are growing, it’s only a matter of time before you will make more money because you will have more traffic, as long as you keep doing what you are doing.

Simple In Principle

I’ve laid out some of the big “secrets” to making the big dollars as an affiliate product selling blogger. These are of course the elements that have impacted me the most, and no situation is the same across the board.

Some crazy fools like Shoemoney love to improve conversion - it’s a passion for them - so getting extreme leverage is possible and thus huge affiliate income is a daily result.

Understand that the potential exists for everyone, if you’re prepared to put in the work to get good at something and lay the foundation for the day when you can “print money” - even print four and five figure pay days on a regular basis.

Yaro Starak
Affiliate Marketer

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