This afternoon, I was a guest on The Metropolis, a show on Blog Talk Radio hosted by Deborah Shane.

It was a lot of fun being on the show. We touched on a lot of different aspects of blogging successfully and we also talked about trends. The full show is an hour long, and I thought I would just embed it here so you can have a listen.

I hope you enjoy, and if you want to subscribe to Deborah’s show, you can do that right here. She does the show every week, live on Blog Talk Radio.

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This is a guest post by Andy Walton.

Many blogs accept guest posts for one very obvious reason – free, quality content is obviously appealing to their owners. And speaking as an author, it’s healthy for the ego to see your work on a high profile and well respected blog. But what are the quantifiable benefits and how can you measure them?

I will not offer any guidelines on how to write your guest post, as David has already written a full guest post checklist. Instead I’ll focus on how to monitor the results once published.

We’ll investigate the impact of a guest post I wrote on a medium size blog (an Alexa traffic rank of 30,000). The post for this experiment was related to our newly launched website, and aimed at increasing awareness. The results were measured one week after the post was published.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll focus on 3 key areas:

Exposure Across The Web

I used Google to assess this metric. A search for an exact match of my post’s first sentence (i.e. unique to me) returned 170+ results, spread across 100+ different sites.

A random audit of 10 of these sites showed that 90% had retained my bio, and hence links back to our site.

This demonstrates the impact of new, unique content on the web – people will jump at the chance to use it. RSS feeds allow new posts to spread like wildfire, and although some of these sites were low quality they all raise awareness of your name, site or brand. Especially as their automated nature usually maintains the original post including any valuable links.

Awareness On Social Networks

As I was promoting a brand new site, up until this point there had been a deafening silence on Twitter when searching for my site name. We hadn’t yet proactively used Twitter at this point, so any new tweets would have been as a result of the guest post. This is where things got interesting.

A Twitter search returned over 20 third party tweets which directly referenced my article – this didn’t seem too positive until I looked into the senders. Between them, they had a cumulative 20,000+ followers.

That’s a decent volume of messages sent out within a week, and demonstrates the potential of guest posting to multiply via the social networks.

Direct Traffic

Finally, the old fashioned measure of success – visitors arriving direct from the blog itself. For this I used Google Analytics data to measure both basic volumes and conversion numbers using Goals. Our site has a quick registration process, and so a completed sign-up was my measure of success.

The stats showed that over the 7 days just under 400 unique visitors had been referred by the blog. Not spectacular volumes, but the key was the quality. Of these visitors, 33% completed the goal. Now that is seriously motivated traffic, compared to our overall conversion rate of between 1% and 2%.

In Conclusion

These results need to be read in context. I wrote a very targeted post, on a very targeted blog. However, this meant that the direct traffic alone justified the time spent. The other awareness and exposure factors were the cherry on the top.

So if you’ve considered guest posting but never actually submitted anything, maybe these results will give you the motivation to get writing. Alternatively, if you are a regular guest writer perhaps it’s time you monitored the results of your work, to help focus your efforts on the blogs that really deliver.

Andy Walton has over 10 years experience working for some of the UK’s biggest ecommerce businesses. He’s co-founder of Wikinut, a new publishing platform that pays lifetime royalties to authors for their writing on a massive range of topics.

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My readers know that I am a big proponent of Aweber for mailing list management. Out of the many things that you can do with Aweber, one of them is an autoresponder.

If you’re not already familiar, an autoresponder is simply a pre-scheduled series of emails that get sent out to a new subscriber on automatic after they subscribe to your list.

For many months, I was using an autoresponder sequence. I still am a supporter of the idea, however I’m currently in the process of re-evaluating the idea. That said, there is certainly an issue with an autoresponder when you’re engaging in a structured marketing campaign.

When you do a product launch (which I just got done with), you are going to be emailing your list with pre-launch and launch emails. If you are running a pre-scheduled sequence at the same time, the messages conflict. From a subscriber’s viewpoint, your message during pre-launch is literally all over the place.

The solution is to turn off your autoresponder sequence, at least temporarily.

The problem is… Aweber has no way to place a sequence on pause. It seems like an easy enough thing to do, so perhaps I can talk them into adding that feature at some point.

In the meantime, here is a sneaky little work-around for putting an Aweber autoresponder sequence on pause:

1. Take a screenshot of the current ordering and timing of your AR sequence. You will use this later to put everything back, if you wish to do so.
2. Go into each message in your sequence and set the interval to 999. Note that the “0” message (the welcome message) needs to stay in place, so you might just need to re-word it to make it fit into your new campaign.
3. Do your launch.
4. If/when you decide to put everything back, then consult the screenshot you took in #1 above and reset all the intervals to what you had before. Delivery will resume from where it left off with all subscribers.

Hope that helps somebody.

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If you’re going to set up a real business online, you’re going to need a merchant account. You can sell things via Paypal, Clickbank or E-junkie, sure, but as far as I’m concerned, the BEST way to process sales is using your own merchant account.

In short, a merchant account allows you to process your own credit cards. So, you might ask, “Why bother? I can do that easily with those other services.” Yes, that is true. Here’s my view, however…

• Paypal. It is easy, sure. However, you are leaving your funds to their whim. Look around online and you will find horror stories of frozen accounts. I am happy to report that I’ve never had a problem with Paypal, but I’ve also had the same account for years. So, I have a history. If I had opened a Paypal account and then just began processing a lot of sales through it, Paypal is going to red flag your account. You’re using THEIR merchant account and they sometimes react quickly to protect it. Plus, running recurring billing through Paypal comes with some really annoying issues.
• Clickbank. You pay $50 to get your own product set up on Clickbank. Then, they take, on average, close to 8% of your gross. Then, you’re going to have the issues of Clickbank affiliates “buying” your product as their own affiliate and basically giving themselves a discount. Then you have the fact that Clickbank places automatic caps on your prices (until you have a longer history with them). Clickbank is convenient in many ways, but I like more control.
• E-Junkie. I’m going to be honest, I’ve not used E-Junkie. But, it is a third-party sales processor, so it is what it is.

When you have your own merchant account, you are in complete control. You set the terms. You set your own prices. You’re not going to have a frozen account as long as you abide by the rules (which are easy).

To get a merchant account, I’m going to recommend PowerPay.

I ran my Blog Masters Club launch through PowerPay and they have been awesome to work with. PowerPay understands the way product launches work. They understand marketing. They understand, with a launch, that an account can go from zero to processing a LOT of money, very quickly. And PowerPay won’t freak out about it.

The thing I like about PowerPay is that they’re human. During the whole launch, I could pick up the phone and get ahold of my account rep (Marvin) in less than a minute. When I left a voice mail for him, he always returned my calls promptly. He replied to me via email equally as fast.

That’s HUGE. Having a merchant account provider that I can talk to on the phone is SO much better than dealing with some bank where I have to go through a sea of prompts and robot voices to speak to somebody.

I also had one little issue arise regarding the use of upsells. I can talk more about this in a later post, but they got it worked out for me. The key thing to note, though, is that 1ShoppingCart and PowerPay jumped in and figured it out for me – and all from a single tweet that I put out on Twitter. This means – they listen. And that’s huge.

I’ve had a merchant account for years before Powerpay. PowerPay is my second merchant account, so I now have two of them. With my first one, the account has been sold off at least twice. It is now operating under a different company name. I have no idea who I would call if I needed to deal with them. With Powerpay, I’ve got Marvin on my speed-dial on my cell phone.

You can’t run a successful business if you don’t have a partner to work with when it comes to processing transactions. So, I wanted to make a point to single out Powerpay. I’m quite happy with them and I’m sure you will be, too, when you get your own merchant account.

So, let me ask you this… what has been YOUR experience with different payment systems? Any success stories? Horror stories?

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Integrity

A lot of people think about integrity in different ways. To me, it’s having the bravery to stand up for what you believe in and stick to it, no matter what the crowd is telling you to think.

I was a Physical Training Instructor in the military and I once failed the Commanding Officer of the camp in front of 1,500 soldiers on an annual fitness test. I failed other soldiers too, but the focus and heat was on me because I was the one who decided to take on the highest rank in the barracks by failing him.

Weeks went by where I was faced with jail and extra duties, even demoted because I had ‘embarrassed’ a Colonel. In those weeks, a different Physical Training Instructor re-tested him and he passed (which was a dubious pass). I stuck to my ground and in the end all the other officers, new and old, were training like mad to make sure I didn’t fail them, too. After the C.O realized I was the only one who would stand up to him and say ‘The rules are the rules, no matter who you are’, he was cool with me. He even gave me a bottle of champagne ‘for having the biggest balls in the regiment’.

Believe in what you write. Sell and promote. If you don’t believe in it, no one else will.

Dedication

Dedication comes in two different strands. Dedication to what you do and to your readers or customers. Whether it means you writing consistently so people can rely on you for content or advice or making sure you engage with your visitors, make sure you do it.

Some people are dedicated gym users. They go to the same gym at 0630hrs every day before work without fail. I’m dedicated to publishing fresh daily content to the site and to replying and helping every visitor who takes the time to read my site. They are the very people who put me in this position. So they are the very people I’m dedicated to.

Tactics

I have a military approach to everything I do. It’s no surprise, since I joined as a boy and spent 10 years doing it. Tactics are vital, but don’t have to be complicated. I’ve employed a mission statement since I started my site 10 weeks ago: ‘The route to success is write and promote, write and promote’.

I’m over the moon about where the site is at the minute in terms of popularity, but I’ve still got a long way to go. Tactics keep you on the straight path and stop you from getting distracted. I employ the same tactic today as I did on my very first day:

1. Write new content for the site (every day at least once a day)
2. Comment on a lot of different sites, but only if I can add value to the post.
3. Help everyone I can and guest post a lot.

Simple plan’s are often the most effective. Military training or not, how do you approach it?

Guest post by TheInfoPreneur, James started his site TheInfoPreneur.net 10 weeks ago, since then it has had over 150 posts published, over 1,700 comments submitted and reached a top 1% Alexa ranking.

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Today has been a VERY long day. I was on UStream, on camera and answering questions, for over 12 hours. I had 878 people come by the live stream while I was at it, too. Was great connecting with everybody.

I’m beat. I’m wasted. And I’m ready to just chill the hell out!

As of this post going live, there are only about 2 hours left to join the Blog Masters Club. So, you’ve got a little bit of time. But, for all practical purposes, this launch is over.

It has been a great success and the second class for the Club is super-excited (as am I).

I’m also super-excited to get back to normal and start doing some regular blog posting again.

But, I just wanted to thank everybody for riding out this launch with me. You guys have seen these launches before. Things get loud. You get more emails from me than usual. I’m going all “marketer” on ya. I know that, after awhile, it starts to drag.

Trust me, it starts to drag on me, too.

But, I hope I’ve provided some valuable stuff as a part of this launch, even if you decided not to join the program.

So, thank you for putting up with me. Starting tomorrow, we’ll get back into the normal groove and I’ll have some new posts for you.

Have a great evening.

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Alright, my friends. Tomorrow brings the launch of the Blog Masters Club to a close. At the end of tomorrow (at midnight EST, to be exact), I am going to CLOSE the doors to the Blog Masters Club.

But, I’ve got a couple items of news to share with you today.

Announcement #1

I am going to be LIVE STREAMING almost all day tomorrow, right from my office. I’ll hop onto the camera at around 10AM EST and I’ll be there pretty much all day until around 10PM. I’ll break for meals, of course.

The live feed will be right on the offer page for the second class of the Blog Masters Club. The purpose will be for YOU to ask ME questions, in real-time, about the Blog Masters Club. Of course, if you have any general blog questions, I’ll probably entertain those, too.

So, this is where I will be –> Blog Masters Club.

Announcement #2

I know a lot of people like to wait until the last minute, so perhaps this will help with your decision.

I’m already planning ahead and I have plans for future projects beyond Blog Masters Club. Blog Masters Club will continue to be my “flagship course”, meaning probably the largest single course I ever will develop personally. But, I’ve got other things in mind, too.

One of them is going to be a membership component to this very blog. But, I’ve got something unique in mind for this program… something that will extend off the blog and into your mailbox. I’m not going to get into too much detail in this post or even in the comments, but here’s the long-and-short of it…

It is going to ROCK. And I’m going to GIVE you a complementary, 12-month subscription to it just for signing up to the Blog Masters Club’s second class before the doors close tomorrow evening. This will include both the online and offline portion of this new thing I’m planning.

So, this is where you can get this –> Blog Masters Club.

Wrapping Up

So, there you have it.

Here’s the deal…. the Blog Masters Club is probably not for everybody. But, I can tell you this… I mean BUSINESS with this thing. I always plan to over-deliver, and this course is no different. It is designed for serious people who really intend to ramp it up and make things happen. And for people who make that leap of faith… who suspend disbelief and decide to join the class and work with me for the next 6 months, I intend to make it worth your time.

Click here to take advantage of this before I shut it down for the next several months.

And With That…

After tomorrow, we will return back to the normal publishing schedule here on DavidRisley.com.

I hope everybody has found value in my pre-launch materials, even if you decide not to join my course. And I certainly look forward to getting back to normal here with the blog. I’ve got a lot of guest posts from some fine bloggers waiting to be published here. And I have plenty to share from some of my experiences over the last few weeks.

So, see you tomorrow on the live stream!

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The Blog Masters Club is about 72 hours away from closing down again. I’m stoked to have so many awesome people getting involved. This launch has already blown last year’s launch away, and I’m really happy to be able to finally share the last six months of my work with another group of people. If you want to learn more about it, check out my uber-long sales page.

This evening, I thought I would post the webinar on the blog. Now, this webinar I did on Monday (Jan 25th). I posted the recording in a semi-private location only for members of my email list. But, today, I thought I would just toss it on the blog. Why not, right? It is a bit long (1 hour, 39 minutes), it cuts off a bit prematurely, and the recording quality sounds a bit like a phone. But, most everything is there, raw and unedited. So, here you go:

NOTE: The price for the Blog Masters Club quoted in this recording is no longer valid. It was an opening special. However, the price for the Club is still way less than what it is worth. Doors close on February 2nd, at midnight EST. Just a bit over 72 hours from this blog post. Learn More.

Here are a few random comments I’ve been getting from students of the Club, both new and old, spread around the blog, the Club forums, and email:

Your doing a great job. If I hadn’t already graduated from the BMC, I’d pay for the course again!

Just my two cents, I thought the course was awesome! I was a little skeptical the first month, simply because you’ve got so many people out there trying to sell you ways to make money online. But it really gave me the insight I needed to get my business off the ground. And boy is it ever.

The Webinar was awesome, and your current students that already participate in Blog Master Club made us all feel very welcome.

I just have to say that I was super excited to find this course and get signed up for it…and then I came here and read everyone’s introductions and got more excited with each one! WOW, this is going to be so great!! So much diversity, I love it.

We’ve also got a great variety of people inside the Club. This launch, so far, has seen people who are into copywriting, weight loss, sales, fitness training, personal development, book authorship, even church vestments. I’ve got a record label owner who wants to learn how to promote his business. A gym owner looking to take the business online and also help other gym owners and personal trainers.

On a more personal note, I even had one student quickly sign up for the Club then run off to the hospital to have a baby! She even replied to an email of mine (from her Iphone, of course) with a picture of her and her new baby in the hospital. I was humbled – really. As a guy about to have his second child in about 2 weeks, it meant a lot.

So, this is shaping up to be an awesome class. In 72 hours, the Club closes. Then, my attention goes to them. I hope you will join us.

Go check out the Blog Masters Club and get all the details…

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Well, I did my last project update two weeks ago. It was supposed to be a weekly affair, but the last couple weeks haven’t exactly been normal.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve no doubt seen that I have been in full-out “marketing mode” for the last couple weeks. All of it to pull off the second relaunch of the Blog Masters Club.

The prelaunch began back on the 15th with the re-release of the Blueprint report. The prelaunch progressed up to the culmination, which was the webinar I did on the 25th. I had 403 people attend the webinar, with probably 100 sitting on Ustream as well. We’re getting ready to end off on Day 3 of the launch itself.

So far, things are going very well. The ranks of the Blog Masters Club have swelled immensely, and this launch has already FAR outpaced the last time I launched it.

The Other Side of A Product Launch

Everything is going extremely well, but anybody who has ever done a product launch can attest to this fact: It is STRESSFUL.

As I said on Twitter earlier today:

Running a product launch is like hanging onto the side of a moving car, with one hand, and with your "package" dangling in the wind.

And it is true. You never feel totally on top of things. You constantly feel as if you’re just BARELY keeping up. The sheer volume of email I’ve been getting has been overwhelming. I’ve had a couple people say I should have my VA handle that, but I guess I’m old-school in thinking that people would rather have ME reply. After all, anybody who is going to buy a course which is 30 hours of my instruction probably wants a personal touch from the dude who designed the course, right? So, I’ve been doing all the email myself.

The Blog Masters forums have also been heating up like crazy (obviously) so I’m trying to help all the new students.

Plus, you can’t do any kind of product launch without naysayers. I’ve had a few people try to bust my bubble. I’ve been called a scammer by a few emailers. Another guy is trying to raise his traffic by name-dropping me and saying how disappointing my webinar was. I swear, I even had an email LITERALLY telling me I was going to go to hell because I’m making money online.

When you do a large-scale product launch, you open yourself up. You’re getting a lot of attention you don’t normally get, and that opens you up to a lot of great stuff, but also a little tiny bit of negativity.

At the end of the day, I let it roll off the back. You have to. It is an unfortunate fact of this business that when you stick your head above the crowd, somebody will try to shoot it off. And, when it comes to anything in the “make money” market, the moment you try to sell something, a few will demonize.

To top it off, today we had a massive boo-boo with the affiliate tracking and we’re literally having to contact every single person who has signed up for the Club to find out who referred them so we can make sure it is accurate. That is NOT fun.

Product Launches Are Awesome

Nothing worth doing in life is easy.

If you find yourself too comfortable, you’re probably not doing something right.

So, I must say, I’m just a hair outside my comfort level these days. And that’s a good thing. I don’t care WHO you are, product launches are full of drama, ups and downs, and stress. But, the payoff is huge and it is one HELL of a way to conduct business.

Any blogger who wants to build presence should consider a product launch. Obviously, it’ll look different in other markets, but the principles behind a launch could work in other markets just the same. I’ve done internal launches to my PCMech crowd before and it worked, too.

Blog Masters Club

Since I’m still in launch mode, here is the update:

The doors are closing on Tuesday, Feb 2nd. The monthly price will remain as it is now. The up-front price is going to be increased tonight by $10.00. I’m going to increase it slowly until the doors close. The price is, quite frankly, too low right now for what this course is worth, and I’m going to increase it until I’m charging what it is worth.

As soon as those doors close, I’m going to be in touch with all new students and we’ll have our first group coaching call very soon as a sort of orientation.

If you want to be in the second class, you need to act very soon.

Click here to enjoy my super-duper sales page. Don’t break your scroll wheel. But, you’ll learn a lot about me and, of course, the Club. Plus, I’ve got a video there if you don’t like scrolling.

Soon, we’ll get back to the normal schedule here. Thanks for being there, guys. You rock.

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Finally, it is that time. Today, at noon, I have officially opened the doors to the Blog Masters Club.

So, here’s the low-down on this:

• Everything is on the sales page about the program. I hope I have answered every question on there, and I won’t bother to regurgitate here on the blog. No point.
• I would encourage you to take quick action on this. I’m launching it with the same up-front price that I did last night on the webinar. But, it won’t stay that way.
• Doors will be open for one week. Even if the price goes up during launch week, either way the doors close on Tuesday, February 2nd at midnight EST.
• If you have any questions about the course, feel free to ask them here in comments. I will also be doing a few live broadcasts on Ustream during the next week so you can ask me in person.

Last night was WILD. I had 403 people on the webinar last night. I’m REALLY honored by that. It is the first time I had done a public webinar like that and it was a blast (although extremely tiring). But, a huge THANKS to everybody who came in real-time. I hope you guys all found some value and got some ideas from the webinar before I started talking about the Club itself.

For anybody who missed it, I will be sending out the webinar recording today. So, make sure you’re on my list. It is a 2 hour recording. Maybe I’ll post it to the blog later in the week. We’ll see.

So, once again, we’re LIVE. Click here to learn more about the Blog Masters Club. And I look forward to working with you guys.

UPDATE: 10:35PM – The launch is off to a huge start. Already out-pacing the first class in terms of size, and we’re only on Day 1. Thanks, guys. FYI, I will likely be doing a LIVE Ustream chat for an hour or so tomorrow afternoon let’s say around 4PM. And I’ll be doing it right on the Blog Masters signup page. The purpose will be to answer any questions live and in person. See ya then.

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