Of course there were many other bloggers out there at the time who made money blogging – many who made more than I did – but most weren’t in the business of teaching how to do Internet marketing. They focused on creating content to feed their hungry audience in whatever niche they targeted, monetizing with methods like advertising and selling affiliate products.

Even those bloggers who where focused on teaching others how to make money online, hadn’t adopted the idea of creating a products or even building email lists. Everything was about earning more from AdSense, or how to increase your pageviews so you could charge more for advertising.

In my case I had spent the previous two years studying the work of Internet marketers, who didn’t blog, but instead used landing pages to build email lists and then drive that traffic to sales pages to sell products. Up to that point I was like every other blogger, making a solid almost-full time income thanks to sponsors and promoting affiliate products like ebooks, DVD courses and live workshops.

I won’t go into detail about what happened after I released my own product as that story is well accounted for in my free report – The Membership Site Masterplan – and in the video on my Membership Site Mastermind sales page, so check out those two resources if you want the details.

In short, creating Blog Mastermind and doing a full launch campaign for it, changed my life because it pushed my income above six figures for the first time.

The Lifecycle Of An Information Product

While I was creating Blog Mastermind, I was concerned about the shelf life of my product. I didn’t want to create something that would be out of date six months later. I wanted to create something that could help people for a long time and avoid creating a product that would require I keep working on it constantly just to keep it current.

Every niche is different, however I feel confident saying that the first time you launch your product, when it is brand new and you’ve never promoted it to your audience before, is when it sells the best. There may be other considerations – for example offering a discount price for your first launch to reward the “charter members” for their early support – which could inflate the first launch sales results, but in most cases it’s the “new” factor that gives the edge.

This is why you see marketers re-brand their existing products a “2.0″ version and talk about all the updates and new features when they do subsequent launches. If you keep selling the same thing, a law of diminishing returns sets in, unless you can tap into new audiences each time you market your product.

All that being said, it’s how you market your product, rather than the content in it, that is important. If you market a product with a new angle, it’s almost as good as launching something fresh, though you have to be careful not to mislead people. A different angle can be something as simple as targeting a different market, perhaps refining your niche to a more specific group of people.

Blog Mastermind did well during the first and second launches, but by the third I noticed it was not selling as well, comparatively speaking (it still did thousands in sales). This was to be expected as I had already “launched” the product to the same people, so besides the new audience I had attracted since the previous launch, I was trying to sell the same thing to the same subscribers, many of whom had already signed up.

Thankfully, besides some minor updates over the first year, Blog Mastermind has remained relevant and an effective system, even given changes to the blogging environment. My goal of creating “timeless” content has largely been met.

This was achievable because I focused on fundamental strategies and techniques that remain effective long term. For example, the concept of Pillar Content is not going to change, and making money with advertising, affiliate programs and selling your own products, have remained the most effective monetization strategies for years – and still are.

How Many Launches Is Too Many Launches

I’ve been involved with the creation and launch process of three products over the past three years, and seen countless other products in my industry launched and re-launched by other marketers.

Some products, like Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula and Brad Fallon’s Stompernet have launched, then six months to a year later come back as a 2.0 version and so on and on for several iterations. Other products are revived with $1 trial offers, or added as a forced or optional continuity bundled with a you-only-pay-shipping front end offers.

When considering how many times to open and close a product you need to think about many variables, including -

• Do you want to add new material or update the product to justify a “2.0″ tag to keep it fresh? This is an important question, because you could spend the time creating another product instead, and releasing something brand new usually does better than revamping something old, plus it increases how many products you have on the market, which generally means you make more money.
• Have you fixed any problems with the existing product you discovered when you launched it the first time? There’s no point doing a second or third launch if your product has fatal errors in it you haven’t addressed.
• Is there a means to tap into new audiences, for example attracting new affiliates, that could keep the product selling just as well on the second or third launches?
• Are you prepared for the emotional and financial considerations if your product doesn’t sell as well? Do you have a plan B for this year’s income if it flops?
• Have you had enough of running launch campaigns? These can be quite tiring and could have an impact on relationships with your subscribers (are they sick of the same old marketing story?) and your affiliates (are they willing to promote the same product again?)

Why Stop Selling Your Product?

You might ask why keep launching a product when you could just leave it available for sale without closing it down.

That’s a valid question, and the answer in pretty much all tests I’ve ever seen is simple – you make more money when you take a product off the market.

Why?

Scarcity.

People are motivated to buy something when they know they can’t get it tomorrow. If your product is available next week, then they can think about it and buy it later. If it’s pulled from the market, decision time is now, which usually results in a “maybe” turning into a “yes”.

I can unequivocally state that you will make more money if you take your product off the market, if you have not launched your product before. If you combine this scarcity with all the other elements that go into a good launch campaign, you have a formula to make a lot of money in a short space of time.

The only downside doing this is that there are people who will go through your marketing process after your launch is over and want to buy then, who won’t be able to. This is good because it creates pent-up demand, but it’s also bad because they may have only bought right then immediately after sampling your free resources, and the urge may have worn off by the time your next launch rolls around, when they are no longer interested in what you sell.

So What Is The Best Formula?

I don’t have an answer that is universally applicable for every product and the choice really rests on how much work you want to do and what type of work, but I can tell you what has proven successful for me.

The formula I’ve applied in roughly the same format for all of my products is to launch two or three times, with the final opening resulting in the product remaining on the market for sale at any time.

This format means you get the benefit of at least two opening launches with the scarcity of the product going off the market, and the opportunity for all your members to work with you together at the same time (this is actually pretty cool, especially as it enhances the community aspect as each group do the work together).

Once the final launch is done, which usually is the least effective because by around the third launch you’ve sold the same product already twice before, you then leave your product available for purchase at any time.

With your product permanently open the income isn’t as significant as doing an open and shut launch campaign, and it comes over a much longer period of time, however it’s definitely a more passive form of revenue because launches take work.

During all of 2009 Blog Mastermind was for sale and continued to bring in new members week after week, with no additional marketing required on my part beyond what I already do – write great blog posts and email newsletters. I wasn’t sure how long it would last, but I’ve been very pleased to see that week after week, people continue to join Blog Mastermind and the refund rate is very low – so people are still benefiting from the course. It’s become a real cash cow, a pleasing result for sure – and it’s still selling strong today.

From Hard Work To Passive Income

If you’ve been watching my work during the start of 2010, you should have noticed that I opened up Become A Blogger Premium (with co-creator Gideon Shalwick) and just last week, Membership Site Mastermind. This time we left the programs on the market. They are now available for anyone to join whenever they want to.

All of my products, which are all courses, have taken a minimum of six months worth of work to create. That’s some pretty full-on work for those six months, especially if you are running a blog and all the other bits that go into your online business like customer support, email newsletters and affiliate promotions, at the same time.

When Blog Mastermind first launched I only had some of the member resources and the very first lesson ready to go. For the next 26 weeks I created at least one lesson a week, staying just ahead of the members taking the program, held coaching calls, created videos and audios, responded to questions in the forum and maintained my blog and email newsletter. This took some serious discipline, but I was committed to creating a great product.

I later reopened Blog Mastermind two more times, but the work required was much less significant because the product was complete. After the final opening campaign I left the product on the market, and as I explained, it has been selling consistently ever since.

My hope is that all three of my programs will continue to sell well this year. They were all constructed with a focus on fundamentals, so should remain reasonably up to date, and certainly valuable no matter when you join, so I expect sales to be brisk.

The great thing about having all the programs on the market is I can now set my sights on optimizing my sales funnel. I can tweak my newsletter sequence to sell the products. Whenever I write relevant blog posts I can suggest people take my courses if they want more information. I can do joint ventures with affiliates at any time.

I don’t expect sales to be anywhere near as much as they were when the products were new and I ran launch campaigns, but since my information touches new people every day, I should see a new stream of customers, and so far so good – people are still joining the programs even as I type this.

Once I’m done optimizing the sales process for these products I’ll have a fairly clean slate in terms of workload and a very steady stream of very close to passive income. The next time I do a launch, it will be for something new.

Using this model you can, at least I have so far, make at least several hundred thousand dollars a year just by writing quality content to a blog and email newsletter on a consistent basis.

It takes time to set up your products, to write free reports, create free videos and do audio interviews, to conduct launch campaigns, write emails and coordinate affiliates, but once everything is set up, you have a wonderful machine that makes a lot of money in a short period of time, and can then switch to a solid passive income stream. It really is the best of both worlds, leveraging the product lifecycle in a way that mirrors the natural momentum of a demand curve.

How Can You Do The Same?

I’ve touched on quite a few ideas in this article, and while it is clear in my head how the pieces fit together because I’ve lived my business for the past five years, you’re probably missing a few pieces of the puzzle.

Obviously if you’re serious about doing what I do I recommend you take one or all of my courses, starting with Become A Blogger Premium if you are new to blogging and like learning form video, or Blog Mastermind if you prefer my writing style and want text lessons, then take Membership Site Mastermind (or perhaps skip straight to this course if you know blogging well enough already or don’t want to use a blogging strategy to build audience, but still want to create and launch your own products).

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet, that I will end this article with, is how important it is you focus on establishing a strong brand and market position. My products would not sell if it wasn’t for the combined force of my content and my brand, which are very interrelated. When people are repeatedly exposed to, and benefit from my free work, whether that is blog posts, or podcast interviews, or free reports, the natural next step if they want more, is to buy my courses.

There’s a lot of “stuff” out there that can potentially touch people with the Yaro brand, and the more often this happens, the more likely they are to take their relationship with me to the next level, by purchasing what I sell.

It’s your job to build as many exceptional, powerful and just plain valuable contact points with your audience so they discover who you are, what you stand for, what you can teach them, and where they could end up, if they decide to study and action what you teach. The more of you out there, the better, so get busy!

Yaro Starak
Still Producing

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I just wanted to write to tell you that about one year ago, I started getting into Internet marketing and experimenting with all sorts of different methods of the various types of blogs and tools that all the different marketers recommend. It was an amazing journey.

The reason I’m writing is to say that you were the first “expert” to catch my attention. I read through your archives almost religiously before branching out to other marketers. After putting up a bunch of crappy websites (that did in fact make me some money), I have since completely abandoned reading anything by those other marketers and have remained a faithful reader of your blog.

I’ve since come to the conclusion that it’s all about creating quality content, as you instruct your readers to do, not “trick” your visitors into buying something you’re not at all an expert on, written by Filipinos who can’t even use proper English.

Obviously Craig is generalizing when he talks about Filipinos, as there are no doubt plenty who can use proper English and are subject matter experts. The point he’s making is that many marketers teach a business model that relies on using outsourcers, who often don’t have English as a first language, to create ebooks and other information products, which are then sold online using clever marketing.

The quality of these information products is sometime suspect, yet with the right marketing process, including some good copywriting, sales will come.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about this model. You find a need in the market, then use other people to create products to meet that need. Your job is to wear the marketer’s hat, do the research, find demand then put the pieces together to serve that demand, then rinse and repeat.

I call this a horizontal business model because instead of going deep in just one industry, the strategy is to move from market to market, creating websites and products to sell to unrelated industries until you have a small army of small income streams. If each website you set up can make $200 a month in profit, then you only need ten or twenty successful implementations of this system to reach “quit your job” money.

This model has proven very successful for many people and is taught in various forms as an entry strategy into the world of Internet marketing.

I’ve promoted many courses that teach a version of this system, with the most successful from my point of view being Nice Profit Classroom. If you want a much more detailed breakdown of this strategy, check out my interview with Adam Short, the creator of Niche Profit Classroom.

Why I Chose To Go Vertical

The system I teach to people, which Craig touched on when he mentioned creating consistent quality content, is to go vertical in your market (or “go deep” as I have previously written about).

However going vertical is about more than just creating quality content, it’s about market domination through consistency and long term asset building.

Only briefly early on in my online career did I chase the horizontal strategy. For a very short few weeks I thought I might strike it rich with Pay Per Click marketing in AdWords, to send traffic to landing pages and then offer affiliate products or send that traffic to pay per lead offers.

If I could “crack the code” that so many other AdWords experts had supposedly done, I could set up campaign after campaign and spend $1 to make $1.10 back. I would essentially go horizontal across different markets using a PPC traffic generation strategy, which today is still taught and used by many marketers to make millions of dollars online.

I quickly realized that I much preferred to develop a meaningful connection with a small group of people – my tribe or community – who I would foster and help, often for nothing in return other than the recognition that I was helping people. Emails like that from Craig certainly help motivate me, so thanks Craig.

Obviously I wanted to make a living too, but thankfully I had the patience to do one thing online for a period of time without much financial reward, because I could see where I was going, and enjoyed what I was doing. That, and I had already built a successful online business that was paying the bills, so the pressure was off when it came to blogging and carving out my place as an expert.

Therein lies the challenge of “selling” what I currently teach. Pitching hard work using concepts that are essentially a foreign language, is not going to convert well. Yet when I talk about my system of going vertical into just one industry, long term asset building, establishing authority and then leveraging it to create multiple stable income streams around the one identity, that’s what I’m selling – hard work.

The horizontal strategy is easier for beginners to come to grips with and has a much higher likelihood of returning some income in a shorter time frame…and let’s face it, selling hype works when you are dealing with an uneducated, insecure and susceptible crowd, looking for a way out of their current life. It’s easier to offer a taste of the dream, rather than explain the reality of what’s ahead of them.

The Best Of Both Worlds

In my case, I prefer the vertical path because I’m more creative writer than I am scientific number cruncher. Hence when I talk to a guy like Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney), who loves the numbers, I feel a sense of envy at the relative ease that he can turn a profit just tweaking conversion rates.

Of course it’s possible to have the best of both worlds and Jeremy is a great example of someone who has both leveraged his love of pure marketing and profit creation, as well as create a brand and community around himself. However you will understand after a conversation with Jeremy that writing to his blog is not his first love, he much prefers the testing and tweaking of what makes him money.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of these models or motivations, what’s important is that you understand what you are getting yourself into and what motivates you.

Transitioning To A Vertical Model

Here’s why I don’t like the horizontal model -

• You need to enjoy the research process, and if you’re not into keyword research, PPC analysis and looking at numbers in general, you’re going to struggle to find profitable niches (finding just one is hard enough, let alone several).
• You don’t create significant barriers to entry and often your success is based purely on your ability to enter markets undiscovered by other people, for the time being. You can set something up and then move on, but understand that eventually your profit will erode because you haven’t created a true platform to stand on, you’re just taking advantage of latency in a market due to lack of competition. Eventually more work is required to compete, which doesn’t fit the horizontal strategy.
• Distraction is the norm because horizontal is all about finding new markets. Entrepreneurs who enjoy the start-up phase of a business can find the constantly changing focus exciting, but if you can’t make something work, the lack of reward will result in floundering around without making much money. Sometimes the only way to make solid profit is to go deep because you need the leverage that only comes from scale.
• Personally, only a few subjects in my life are interesting. This is probably the main reason why I have to go vertical in one market rather than spread myself across multiple niches – I simply don’t care about enough subjects to spread my energy that way. As a result of living a very flexible lifestyle, it takes a lot to get me to do work – I have to really LOVE what I’m doing to stick to it for long enough, which is why I treasure the combination of intrinsic and financial rewards gained from becoming someone valued in a community.

Everyone Needs Recognition

One thing I’ve noticed lately is marketers who are successful at making money, eventually realize that they want more than just the money – they want recognition too.

A primary motivation every human being has is the desire to have meaning to other people, and just selling ebooks created by other people quietly from your home is not going to feed this desire.

Once you start making money, you may find yourself with motivation to share your knowledge and experience with other people – to actually participate in your community and perhaps even establish yourself as an expert.

Sure, you still want to get paid to teach and talk about what you do, you wouldn’t be an entrepreneur if that wasn’t true, but an equally important desire is to have people benefit from what you create and for you to experience the return from this – to see the outcomes other people experience and feel warm and fuzzy on the inside as a result.

This is a wonderful thing, it forces us to care about other people beyond ourselves, even though ultimately we are doing it because it makes us feel good. As long as we all benefit, you can’t complain right?

So Which Model Is Right For You?

I’m not going to advocate you choose one business model over another because your personality and current life situation dictates what is best, right now, for you.

What I do want you to take away from this is an understanding of the advantages of going deep and following a vertical focus into one industry.

The financial and personal gains from doing this can be quite significant. You will feel that you are building something you care about, which can motivate you to do extraordinary things, like write new blog posts to your blog each and every week for five years. That might seem incredible right now – yet most people manage to go to a job they hate five days a week, 9 to 5, for years, which to me, is much more incredible, but not in a good way.

If you’re going to put effort into something in your life, make it something worthwhile.

Yaro Starak
Vertically Integrated

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"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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My blog had recently surpassed 1,000 RSS subscribers (what is RSS), making it at the time the most popular website I had ever built. The income was solid – up to $2,000 a month at best – and it was growing. I loved what I was doing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So do you want a copy?

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

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

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

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

How To Claim The Bonuses

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

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

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

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

The Definitive Guide To SEO For Bloggers Plus Mega Bonus Pack

Here is a break down of all the bonuses –

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

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

Inside the guide you will learn –

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

Bonus 2: My Live Presentation On Buying and Selling Websites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can join here -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mega Bonus Pack Available Until Tuesday Next Week

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

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

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

Yaro Starak
Throwing In The Kitchen Sink

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

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

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

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

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

Join Membership Site Mastermind Here

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

Membershipsitemastermind.com/signup/

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

Yaro

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

Download the MP3 [ 40 Minutes - 55 MB ]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the download link again for the call –

Mp3 Download

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

And here’s a reminder that Membership Site Mastermind is open too –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Era Of Rapid Income Growth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.membershipsitemastermind.com

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

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

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

Yaro Starak
Stabilizing Income

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

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

Get More Done

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

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

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

Tip 1: Outsource your blog design

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

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

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

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

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

Tip 2: Outsource uploading of blog posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tip 4: Outsource technical issues with your blog

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

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

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

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

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

Tip 5: Outsource Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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

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

How To Face This Blogging Dilemma?

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

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

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

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

Tyrone Shum
Internetbusinesspath.com

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

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

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

I Finally Got The Chop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, enough about hair.

I Bought A New Car

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How The Internet Can Change Your Life

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

(…and cutting my hair.)

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

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

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

Remember the secret is in the hair…

Yaro Starak
Hair Blogger

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

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

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

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

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

What Are We Talking About

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

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

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

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

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

The Cutting Edge Of Internet Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Only The Few Succeed

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

The answer: focused repeat action

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Blogging Advantage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yaro Starak
Still Blogging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beware Your Own Ignorance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take Off Your Glasses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Is No Such Thing As Truth

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

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

Truth, is only truth in your mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Challenge Your Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can Your Problems Magically Change Overnight?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ouch.

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

Accepting Change

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

Change is permanent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Practical Problem Solving

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Up Next – Understanding Your Power As A Change Catalyst

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

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

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

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

Yaro Starak
Dissecting Truth

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