The Importance Of Blogging Should Go Beyond You.

I’ve wanted to write this post for a while now. It addresses the other side of why I’m blogging and taking the time to learn all of this stuff. What good is having a lot of money and be able to travel around if you can’t enjoy it with other people. This make money online thing has very low barriers to entry, anyone can go it. However, it doesn’t come easy and I’m realizing it more and more every day but I’m 25, I got 40 more years of work to go if I don’t make it. So is it such a ridiculous dream to think if I stay on the grind for 10 years I can’t be making 5K to 7K a month. I don’t think so.

Now the fun part. I’m moving down to Florida in October to live with my buddy and his girlfriend to chill and build my business on the beach. Also, the other member of the old crew is moving down from Oregon. Both of my buddies are interested in trying to learn how to make money online. All of us will be waiting tables and trying to build sites, traffic and income the rest of the time. (Plus there will be a lot of kiteboarding. If you don’t know about kiteboarding check this out, kiteboarding is the most fun thing I’ve every done).

When I first got interested in this stuff over Thanksgiving I registered a free wordpress blog. Then I heard I needed to register my own domain name, I quit because I was so angry and didn’t know how to do it. It is amazing how much I’ve learned so far and how much I still need to learn. (Remember when you didn’t know how to get a domain name.) I remember reading blog posts and having to Google like 3-4 different words just to understand what the heck they were talking about. Now, the gift I can share with them is my 7 months of knowledge all boiled down into about 3 weeks training and they will have the knowledge I have now and we can expand.

The way I hope it goes down is all three of us are working on different projects and getting ourselves free. However it ends up with me and my situation the reality is the same. Everything your learning right now you can share with your friends, the gift of freedom and travel if the work is put in.

Peace.

Friends for Success

Relationships play an integral role in success in almost any field, the world of blogging and internet marketing is no different.

Building a great team around you, who you can turn to for advice and help will contribute greatly to your success.These small groups are often referred to as ‘brains trusts’ or ‘mastermind groups’ and their potential benefits are enormous. You can do joint ventures together (team up to create a product to sell or a blog) and help create and promote each others products/blog.

They can help lesson the learning curve for you, chances are they have already gone through the same things as you are. Sharing resources is possible, why use separate hosting when you can pool your money together and get a better plan together and save money.

How do you find some like minded people? Industry forums, commenter’s on your blog and people who you comment on are all a good start. Send them a message, get to know them, what there goals are and if things seem to click then suggest working to help each other.

Try to find people who you are not in direct competition with, but perhaps in complimentary areas. For instance you might have a blog about weight loss, it would be wise to find someone who blogs about motivation or muscle building. Rather than competing, you can work together to offer more value. As well as teaching about weight loss, your friends can write guest posts about motivation and how to build muscle while losing weight. It’s a win-win.

You don’t have to talk everyday, but its probably a good idea to talk at least once a week. Organize a regular time perhaps when you can all have a chat online, use Skype or something similar for free conference calling. And of course email as required to finalize details.

Building a group like this also leads to social interaction. Working from home things can tend to get a bit lonely so the social aspect is great as well.

Make an effort to meet up, it depends on the distance between you how often. Attend a conference together, take a little holiday together. If your talking face to face those ideas will come a lot easier.

One prime example of a mastermind group is good friends Joe Vitale, Pat O’Bryan, Bill Hibbler and Craig Perrine.

In honor of a particular brand of cigar they like (and the number of people in the group) they call themselves ‘the Siglo 4′. However they also answer to the ‘Wimberley Mafia’ as they live in and around Wimberley, Texas.

The internet marketing quartet regularly discuss techniques and joint ventures online as well as meeting up to brainstorm and smoke a few cigars. The group all focus primarily on making making money online subjects, but all have different backgrounds, specializations and interests.

All four have been incredibly successful in their own right, but the relationships they have formed have spurred them on to greater success.

Together they are incredibly prolific, motivating and pushing each other to create new products at an alarming rate. Just take a look at the catalog of Joe Vitale work. It includes multiple best selling books (he has toppled Harry Potter from top spot at Amazon) and being featured in The Secret.

They typically all help promote each others products via there blogs and newsletter lists as well as often giving glowing testimonials on the products sales pages.

Most significantly they create many products together, typically in pairs, whether they be ebooks, videos or audios, even seminars.

So skyrocket your success today, find some friends and get working. By working together you can magnify each others success.

Do You Have A Career In Blogging?

A lot of bloggers dream about quitting their full time jobs and earning a full-time earning from their writing. This is certainly possible if you have a popular blog as well as an extensive knowledge about money making opportunities from blogging. But the fact is, only a few percentage of bloggers actually earn a full-time earning from home. In order to achieve a pro blogger status, it is important to realize that the full potential of your blog cannot be achieved overnight; it takes perseverance and a long term vision before you can really make a decent living from blogging.

Think of Your Blog as a Business

Many bloggers love writing so they had probably been writing about their favorite topics since they were kids. Because of this, they gain the wrong perception that blogging is a hobby even while they expect financial success from it. However, to become successful in blogging, a change of perception is necessary. Bloggers should see their business more as a business than a hobby.

So if your blog is the business, you should schedule other activities around it. You might be wondering why you bothered to quit your job and blog in the first place if you will stick to a fixed schedule. Well, it is essential for a blogger to realize that blogging will bring its own set of challenges so it would be highly recommended to schedule your work and your pace ahead of time. Don’t just blog when you have some spare time because you will not get the desired financial results if you don’t take your business seriously.

Develop Multiple Sources of Income

A lot of bloggers think that the bulk of their revenue will come from advertisers. Because of this, they sign up for Google Adsense and actively promote their blog to any interested advertisers. But this perception should be changed as well because while advertising can bring in some income, it is not the end-all, be-all of blogging. Joining affiliate programs that complements your blog’s content can bring in some attractive revenue for you as well. In fact, some bloggers are making thousands of dollars from this endeavor. In addition to affiliate products, you can also sell your own products to your blog visitors. However, pure affiliate profits seems to be the best method.

Freelance Blogging

Well, if all else fails, you can look into the possibility of blogging for someone else and get paid for your efforts. There are many blogging program options you can consider. Some include revenue-share, per post payments, a combination of both, and a monthly salary.

Looking Good, Blogging Good

I previously wrote that you should think and act like a Top Dog of the blogging world in order to become one. I followed up with a post to help you get more story ideas and then how to create headlines and oppening paragraphs that will grab your readers attention.

Today I’m going to reveal another way to ensure your post gets read and you look more like a top blogger. It’s all about looking good. Turn your Ugly Duckling of a Blog into a Beautiful Swan and see your traffic soar.

Whether we like to admit it or not, looks matter. We are all attracted to things that look good visually. For instance, while ladies tend to be more impressed by well dressed and groomed man, gentlemen are typically drawn to a woman with a healthy figure. Differences aside its obvious visual cues are important to both sexes and the same principles apply when we are reading and looking for information and entertainment.

Your blogs theme, whether you like it or not says a lot about your blog and will play a part in your success or lack thereof. It can instantly communicate to a reader whether you are professional and determined or a bit lazy and get by on doing the bare minimum.

Put your best foot forward. Not only should your blog look great but you should have your best posts on your front page somewhere as well. Get a plugin or manually keep track of your most popular posts so new people to your blog can instantly see your best material.

By making your blog look better you will also feel better about it (subconsciously) and be prepared put in more time and effort. Its the same effect as putting on a great dress for girls or a nice suit for guys, it gives you a confidence boost.

Perhaps consider putting a photo of yourself on the front page. Not just any old photo, its got to look good, you should be smiling, look confident and successful. Recent scientific studies are suggesting there may be a link between successful big businesses and happy looking CEO’s. Also by adding a photo readers will identify more closely with your writing and develop greater trust in you.

So remember, the look of your blog does matter. You only get one chance to make a first impression so make it count.

To get started heres a few free resources:

51 Great Places To Find Wordpress Themes

83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen

31 Professional WordPress Themes

But if you really want to stand out in a good way, consider forking over some cash and investing in your succses by getting a custom made blog theme.

Prices typically start at a few hundred dollars, however deals can be found. Look for up and coming designers who are still studying. Offer to blog about their company and or display an ad for their service in return for a healthy discount. Try sites like Elance where competition drives prices down and you get to pick and choose or the SitePoint Marketplace.

Highly customizable themes that come with support from the designer such as the WordPress Dream Theme can be great value for money and come loaded with great plug-ins so you’re ready to go.

To really set yourself up for success, follow in the footsteps of some very popular bloggers (including John Chow, Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney and super affiliate Zac Johnson) who have used Unique Blog Designs. John Chow even commented that the switch to a custom theme increased his earnings by 25%, proving a custom theme may be a solid investment rather than an unwanted expense.

Blog Like The Big Dogs

Recently I was chatting online with a fellow blogger who has been struggling for some time. He has been running his blog for almost six months but has not been able to really improve his number of readers in the last three months. His readership is not growing anymore.

He has dreams of turning it into ‘one of the top blogs’ and often talks to me about all of the changes he will make and tactics he will use once it is successful.

I asked why he does not do these things already, he replied that you only do those things once your blog is successful and believed they wouldn’t work at the moment.

He seemed not to realize that by using those very ideas his little blog could possibly become a lot bigger.

I told him to imagine that his blog was very successful, to visualize exactly what it would look like. He described how the new layout would look, what his posts were like, if there was any ads, etc.

Together we wrote down everything he described. It was a pretty impressive list.

Again I asked why he had not made any of these changes, even simple and effective changes like adding a RSS Subscriber. Yet again he believed that only ‘big blogs’ could use these techniques because he only saw the ‘big blogs’ using them.

I was truly dumbfounded.

I asked him to humor me and make at least one of those changes every week. Just the other day he made the first change by adding the RSS Subscriber. He already has four subscribers, thats four people who will see every post he makes after just two days.

If he keeps making these changes he may just become a big dog of the blogging world. There is no reason you cant do it either.

Imagine all the extra things you would do if your blog was a smash hit and make them now. Get some guest bloggers, use a unique wordpress theme, write that great post you have been saving for when you have more readers and most importantly THINK LIKE A BIG DOG, you might just become one!

-Bill Riddell

Stop Producing Excuses & Start Producing Results

If you aren’t moving towards being an authority, you are doomed to be a “small timer” forever. The truth is that the online marketing, blogging, and make money online crowds are brutal. If you aren’t at the top of your class, then you are just another “C” student. You can’t make THOUSANDS a month with a $2 attitude.

The secret to becoming wealthy online is to be an authority at something. Whether it be blogging, making money online, marketing, fishing, sports, celebrity gossip or even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches - You have to be an authority to be rich. Plain and simple. If you aren’t an authority, you are just another faceless person in the crowd that looks up to the authorities. This may sound harsh, but it’s the plain and simple truth.

It’s funny to me that I see so many bloggers online that are striving for “A” list status, with a “C” list mentality. Most have big dreams but they have even bigger excuses. I can’t find the time to post, I can’t seem to monetize my blog, no matter what I do I can’t drive more than a few hundred visitors to my site a day. That’s a load of crap.

I don’t produce excuses, I produce results.

That’s the truth of the matter. I barely knew what a blog was six months ago, and now look at me. I’ve made more in six months as a blogger (a NEW blogger I might add) than some people make in a year. And guess what? It’s not good enough. I’m not okay with settling for “good enough”. My goal was to make a sustainable living online, and I accomplished my goal six months early - I am now a full-time internet entrepreneur that makes more every month than I ever made working for someone else. It’s not an easy road to get here, and it’s going to be even harder to get to where I want to be, but I’m not making excuses… I’m producing results. For those of you that say that it takes money to make money… I should remind you that I started this journey with $6 in my bank account and no job.

The sooner you quit thinking like a follower and start thinking like an authority the sooner you will be rich. Do I need to repeat that? Too many blogs are stuck in the “middle”, and thus doomed for failure. Getting to the top of the hill is the hard part, and a true winner will gut it out and then stand on top of the peak and wave down to all of those that wonder how he got there. Is the winner that much stronger than you? Not at all. But the winner is smart. He knows that if he can gut it out and make it to the top of the hill, all he has to do is slide down. Those that are in the middle, on the other hand get stuck in the middle and then realize that it’s easier to slide down before they get to the top.

How long are you going to be stuck in the middle? Let’s make it our goal to gut it out and make it to the top before we slide down the other side. It’s all about momentum, and I promise you that when you slide down the top of the hill, you’ll produce more momentum than if you were to slide down the middle of it.

It’s 2008 - What Are Your Resolutions?

Every New Year is a new beginning, another chance to right your wrongs, another chance to dream big. Resolutions are the first part in your big changes in the new year. Knowing how to achieve your resolutions, is what separates the successful and the mediocre.

Everyone starts out the new year saying that they want to lose 10 pounds, or quit smoking, or make more money… but by most of us don’t see any results, and by February we’ve got a “wait till next year” mentality. That’s about to change. The ever-so-wonderful Jill Koenig from GoalBlog.Com has provided us with a roadmap to resolution success with her new e-book - The Resolution Roadmap. This free e-book is full of everything you need to know about achieving those pesky resolutions so that next year you can make new ones instead of trying to achieve the resolutions you failed to achieve the previous year.

It’s a free download, and it is definitely something that I recommend taking a look at. Make it a point to read it, and soon. It’s short, to the point, and it will help you get where you’d like to go. If time was of the essence, you wouldn’t drive around without asking for directions or consulting a map, would you? Well, time IS of the essence, and you’ve only got 361 days left to achieve your goals for 2008. Consult the map, achieve your dreams!

The Red Paperclip Principle: Trade Up Your Website

If you aren’t familiar with One Red Paperclip, it’s the story of a man trading a single red paperclip for a house. Now, he didn’t do it in one trade, the paperclip for the house. But he gradually traded his paperclip for something of more value, and then again, and again, and after fourteen trades, he had traded his way all the way up to a house.

What if you could apply the Red Paperclip Principle gameplan to making money online? What if you could begin with ‘Parakeets-Are-Really-Neat.biz’ and end up with a ‘Law.com’? (A friend’s Dad purchased and sold Law.com some years ago for a tidy profit. They now own and run Scrapbook.com).

You can. And this is how you AND I can earn $10,000 a month within the next year.

I’ve already tested the system. I’ve already traded my paperclip. Now it’s time for the snowmobile.

The problem with trading is that you’ve got to find someone that wants what you have, who also has what you want. That’s not a very efficient way to do business. I suppose that’s why we use money instead of bartering in today’s economy. You won’t actually be trading site A for site B. You will be selling site A, and paying the equivalent sales price for site B.

Here is what you do for each trade:

1. Find a non-monetized or under-monetized site with a #1 position on Google for a search term.
2. Send them an email asking if they are interested in discussing selling the site. Do not discuss price.
3. When a discussion is opened, you will offer 1/5 to 1/2 of what you feel you could get out of the site annually by fully monetizing it.
4. If they ask for too much, or they refuse with no counter offer, do not respond.
5. Rinse and repeat, 3X nightly. (Once each week, you are permitted to email the ones that really excite you or you feel MAY come down in price, and tell them that you wanted to give them another chance before you commit your money elsewhere.)

We will discuss each of these in detail later, but as you can tell it’s pretty straightforward. When you find a deal, you go for it. Gradually, as your funds and confidence grow, you trade up, and up, and up.

A #1 position on Google for a decent search term? Under-monetized or non-monetized? Am I crazy?

First, understand that Adsense hasn’t always been around. Back before affiliate programs, ebooks and adsense, some webmasters created website that got links (remember when people used to link to other sites?), and became authorities in their subject. They didn’t make much money showing banner ads, so they took them off. They left the site be, and have kept the site renewed each year simply because they put so much effort into it, and hey, what’s $9? They may not realize that their site is at the #1 SERP position. Or they do, and because it’s not monetized, they don’t think the site is worth that much.

So start!

Start with the site you’ve created now. Or some money from Prosper.com. Trade it up, and then trade it up again. Turn your Red-Paperclip-Website.info into a real #1 SERP SuperChamp.com. Start today, and put the Red Paperclip Principle to work to accomplish your online income ambitions.

Stumble it!

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Knowing Vs. Doing: Habits of Action/Inaction

A lot of people get confused on knowing vs. doing. Does knowing how to make money online have an exact correlation with actually making money online? Unfortunately, no. There are a lot of things that you and I know how to do, and even have reasons for doing, but often those things remain undone at the end of the day. Does the same ever happen to you?

For example, we may KNOW that eating less and exercising more will make us healthier (and/or look better), but how easy is eating right and working out regularly? Wouldn’t living a longer, healthier life, or feeling better when we saw ourselves in the mirror be a good enough motivator to eat less and workout? Apparently not always.

The same thing goes for your neighbor who knows he’s supposed to give up this habit or that, and I mean KNOWS it, but hasn’t done it. We can know the right things and not be doing the right things.

I have shared with many people the simple steps I’ve taken to earn money online. And…. ZERO have done ANYTHING about it. And I mean even buying a domain name. I had a guy that was THIS close (=), and he even had a great name, and it was available. Guess what? It’s still available. He “didn’t have the $9″ to register it.

I was listening to the conference call that Jill Koenig and Bryan Clark did for OneMansGoal.com readers back in the day, and she talked about why she charges full price for her services - and to paraphrase, she said: “I want people that are committed. If someone is committed, they’ll see the value and they’ll be the ones that follow through and make something happen. The people that are only committed at XX.00 dollar point aren’t committed, and I can’t help them.” You know, I ended up thinking about that a bit. I even talked to my wife about it. She was absolutely right on the money. Not only would she be making less money, but her students’ failure rate would go up. Simply because they weren’t committed.

Just having the information or know-how doesn’t mean anything is going to be done with it.

Although there are many well off business professors who are in it for the “giving back” of it all, there are also a lot of poor business professors. Another case of the knowing vs. doing. We can know what we have to do, but never do it. It’s the doing that makes all the difference.

Let me go all Biblical on you. James 1:22 (KJV) “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”

Do you know anyone that is a “hearer only” and is deceiving or kidding themselves? Unless we act with resolve towards achieving our goals, that description fits each of us more than we think.

Let’s commit to each other to take action each day towards our goals, even if it’s just 5 minutes worth. If we do that for 5 minutes, taking at least some type of real step towards our goals, every day for 21 days, we’ll begin to form the habit of being doers.

One free service to help you build good habits (work towards your e-book, working out, etc.) is Joe’s Goals. It’s a free online habit tracker.

As a very wise man once said. Do it. Do it right. Do it right now. Let’s be doers and not hearers only, and let’s make sure each of us sees results.

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Selling Dreams

How would you like to have a product that everyone wanted?…A product that many would give anything for. Something people would think about during much of their waking day. During the commute, or while they should be working. Heck, something that they had to keep from thinking about at church. Such a product exists. And you’re in the target demographic for those marketing it.

Wallets seldom open easier than for money making opportunities.

You see it on the infomercials: Carlton Sheets, Forex Trading, Buying/Selling Contracts, Ebay Powerseller Tips. You see it in the classified section of the Thrifty Nickel or the back of your newspaper. It’s what the MLM industry has been selling for years. Get rich by paying $49.95.

At best, it’s selling shovels to those looking for gold. At worst, it’s selling empty promises to those who don’t know any better way. Is it right to sell “dreams”?

Can you see the similarity between bloggers displaying their earnings on their site and the Amway “Diamond” Distributor showing a photocopy of his check at the “drink the koolaid” convention? Did you know that in the end, Amway made as much from its training tapes and books as it did selling actual product? That’s because what it all boiled down to was selling the dream.

Were some better off because of the sales and “life” training provided by Amway? Were some business and people skills developed that helped Amway distributors achieve things they otherwise couldn’t have? And on the other hand, were some Amway distributors disallusioned, spending lots of time and money chasing something that wasn’t a good fit for them? Would it be fair for a company executive to take credit for the one without taking responsability for the other?

A good blogger or webmaster (and fortunately they’re in the majority), will show the responsability to vet all products for sale on their site. This means they spend $67 to buy an ebook off Clickbank (if they couldn’t get a review copy from the owner), they do so if that’s what they have to in order to review it before offering it as an affiliate. This means responsible advertising - telling the truth about a product rather than pushing it just because it’s the highest potential payout. For bloggers and webmasters, decide now, if you haven’t already, what you’ll do to make sure the “success tools” you sell are what they claim to be, and that they are something you’re willing to put your name behind.

Some things are best decided while the dollars are still small.