If the answer is no then why not?

I understand that you might think that you have nothing to say but by starting a blog you do start to track your online journey and leave a record there for the future. The more you blog the better you writing skills become and the easier you’ll find it.

It doesn’t matter if you only talk about how you only made $10 and spent $40, lay out your successes and your failures. Talk about the tools you use and what works and what doesn’t . Believe me people are interested and 2 or 3 years down the line when you have a few hundred posts and are making $500 a day before you get out of bed people will be reading your blog for insights and inspiration.

I regularly look back at my posts from the past and marvel at how much i’ve learned, when I made that first blog post on August 4th 2006 did I think i’d still be blogging 5 and a half years later .. NO!  But a blog is more than just a collection of posts It’s actually like having your own Psychiatrist, putting things on a public blog focus’s your mind and helps you realize what you want to do and what you want to achieve.

Internet Marketing is all about dropping seeds everywhere, some never sprout but others grow into fruit bearing trees, and a blog and your blog posts are just a few more seeds that you drop. I could bore you with long lists on people who make money online who wouldn’t be where they are today without their blogs.

A blog can also be a stepping stone to a much better place.  It can open doors for you that wouldn’t normally be opened.  Do you think that Pat Flynn thought to himself  ”If I start blogging I’ll be asked to speak at Blog World”  when he wrote his first blog post in 2008  http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/why-i-will-quit-my-job-for-a-passive-income/ ?  When he was writing that first blog post do you think he thought that he’d be earning $60,000 a month in January 2012.

I am equally sure that if you asked him he would say that updating his blog regularly has kept him on track and driven him forward, and it’s without a doubt the corner stone of his current business.

It’s the same for me, A personal blog helps to keep you focused and make you accountable to yourself and your readers, and future readers.

So get out there and start a blog,  at the end of the post you’ll see links to some of the members of WPG who have created blogs and who are documenting their progress…check them out you’ll be wiser for doing so!

Finally  huge congratulations to everyone who has completed month 1 of the 2012 challenge ($0 to $10,000 a month with a new business) The first target was $100 and a big lump of Kudos must go to Paul Nicholls who more than doubled this months target.  Next months target is $200 and I am sure we’ll have some great results to report as several income streams are starting to come online.

If you have a personal Blog then why not leave a comment below and make sure to click on the comment Luv button, that will then dispaly your last post for everyone to see…  Don’t bother if you are a spammer, I check each comment personally!

http://theseaworthymarketer.com

http://www.MikeFromMaine.com

http://PaulNichollsBlog.com

Broon Dog Internet Marketing

http://www.thenewbiehelper.com/

http://www.commissionclassroom.com

http://imDeanMartin.com

http://johnlenaghan.com

But with that comes it’s own set of frustrations.

You see the problem is that Internet marketing is basically very easy and anyone can do it. You need to set up a website, drive traffic to it and monetize it. It’s only 3 things what could possibly go wrong…. unfortunately lots.

Unfortunately people are amazingly weird and will find ways not to succeed, If I show my dog how to open a box of biscuits she’ll try it until she opens it, it might not be the exact way I showed her but it works for her, then every time I put a box in front of her she’ll open it (at which point the cat will come and steal some of the biscuits and then continue planning world domination)

So lets assume for this post that I am sat in a classroom and in front of me I have 100 desks and tables, 100 people have all paid me $20 to teach them a system that works. I know it works, I’ve proven it works, they know it works they just have to put it in place.

So lets get started with the roll call..

Ohh look 10 people haven’t even bothered to come into the class room despite paying $20… do you buy products and not even open them?

So lets get started, The first thing you need to do is do some basic keyword research… wait look 30 people are on the PC’s in the corner updating facebook and reading emails.. ahh well down to 60 students….   Do you get easily distracted?

Still we are almost finished the first session so after recess I’ll teach you how to create a wordpress blog….. wait you 10 don’t go it’s not that technical, anyone can do it if they try and you can ask questions people here will help you…bye … Do you shy away from having to do anything technical??

Right so we are now down to 50 students… my ego is taking a battering here!

Next I need you to write some original content for those great websites you built…..hey you 10 come back what do you mean you can’t write. Of course you can, you may not want to or think you can’t but I promise you you can… Does This sound familiar??

Hoo Hum 40 left.

Right the last bit and you’ll start to make money… I need you to work hard at promoting your site… hey where have half the class gone??? …
Do you skimp on the most important aspect…promotion?

Right the 20 of you that are left come up the front of the class…. You 20 have every thing you need to make a good income online all you need to do is go out there and put into practice all that you know we’ll meet up here in 6 months time and I guarantee you’ll be making money…

6 months later….. (insert shimmery Hollywood style special effect)

Hey hello my 15 star pupils good to see you are breaking that $100 a day barrier or selling loads of products where are the other 5?   ahhh they are still reading the handouts… JFDI… Take action

Ok so you might thing that this is a little light hearted fun, it’s not.!  I am deadly serious and the figures probably aren’t that far out.  Every month in WordPress Goldmine we have a group of people who post their stats for the past month.  It motivates them and it helps to motivate people reading it.  Every single member there can see what these successful members are doing . They all have one thing in common they work hard to succeed. Why? Because they know that taking action and hard work pays off and leads to increased income.

If they can do it so can anyone else…but still people put off taking action.

So If you are reading this and you aren’t taking as much action as you think you should let me know why, post a comment and tell me what’s holding you back.

There is no doubt that the videos are compelling but I must take issue with the claims of the videos being responsible for millions of dollars worth of sales…surely it is the guru’s who pushed the products that should claim that honor!

Anyway since the first video there has been a lot of interest about video and the impact it can have on your online business, there are really excellent reasons why you should consider creating Video, one of the most compelling is that they work and they get people to buy the products you are promoting. I am shortly due to interview a marketer who makes a $10,000 a month income from approximately 10 sites and her main weapon is video.

Another great reason for using video is that you can get your message across in under 1 minute where as it can take someone 4 or 5 minutes to read your articles.

One final reason is that they are cheap to make and once you play around a bit you can achieve some very professional results using free products.

This month I am running a Video creation step by step in the WordPress Goldmine forum, so if you would like to know how to create videos why not check out the special offer that currently running.

I thought the best way to show you Why you should use video was to show you. So if you would like to know how to plan and produce simple videos like the one below check out the Video step by step this month in WordPress Goldmine.

Finally to answer the question in the title..No video won’t kill article marketing but it will give you more competition.

*** no your speaker aren’t broken ..but please put them on or use headphones
*** and no i don’t own that url..it’s just for demo purposes

I’d like you to do the following, read this post, Download version 2 of the report from the link below, grab a coffee and read it.

If you can see the potential then consider the offer at the end of the post, please don’t make a rash decision to sign up I would much rather you considered it first.

Consider if you’ll have time to implement my suggestions, If you can’t make an hour a day or at least 5 hours a week then you probably won’t have time to succeed even if you outsource.

Next consider if you are happy to maybe spend some money on tools that will speed up the process , yes you can do everything manually and reinvest your profits but if you have some “play” money you’ll be profitable so much quicker.

Finally consider if you are happy paying a small monthly subscription. The main reason I switched from a one time payment to a monthly subscription was to allow me to spend time researching some of the things I am going to tell you about. I’ve actually had people join in the past few weeks and then email me saying they love the information but they refuse to pay a subscription on principle. If you feel like that then please read some of my other posts there is more than enough information to keep you busy for weeks.

Right on with the post..sorry for that long introduction but hopefully you will understand the reason for it as you read the rest.

Last week I released a report called the Article Leverage System, it was received favorably and I got lots of positive comments. During the week I thought I could improve it. The reason for this is that I have always taught people to target “low hanging fruit” and build sites that get 50-100 or so visitors a day with the right niche this is good for around a $1 a day.

Using the power of the leverage system is wasted on sites like this so I set about finding a better type of site. I managed this by paying around with Micro Niche Finder and coming up with some truly amazing niches. I am talking about 5 page sites that get over 20,000 searches a month and have low strength of competition. You can use other tools but MNF was made for stuff like this, if you already have it you are going to love what I show you.

I didn’t believe the results I got the firt time I tried it, but they were repeated 4 times in a row afterwards. Members of the Wordpess Goldmine Forum have also got similar results. As a result for the same amount of work you are now looking at much more income from your sites.

You can find details of what I did in version 2 of the report just right click the following link.  Article Leverage Report Version 2

Now it gets very interesting, There is going to be a version 3 of the report that I’ll release in the forum in the next couple of days. This adds one further layer to the system and turns it from a simple system into a full blown cash generating business. It gives you real cash flow and the opportunity to generate an ever increasing residual income. Above all it’s simple, it can be outsourced and still make you big profits. I’ve seen less viable systems sell for $147!!

Version 3 will only be available to the Forum members so here is a deal for you. I have never made this offer before and I doubt will never make it again.

Please remember what I said and consider if this is right for you.

Click on the Special offer link below and you can try WPG for $1 for the next 7 days. Now nothing is withheld from this offer, you get the books , videos etc. There is nothing stopping you taking the ebook , watching the videos and leaving. But I am confident that you will see the value of the forum.

I  believe that 90% of people are honest,

Well it seems I was wrong!!  Of the first 20 people that signed up 14 downloaded the book then cancelled their account with 12 hours. As a result I’ve modified the offer you can still view the forum and watch the videos but the book will remain protected until the end of the special offer. it was either that or cancel the offer and I really beleive that it’s the best offer available .

All I ask is over the next few days you spend a couple of hours and look at some of the posts in the forum, the step by steps courses and if you don’t think that the forum is worth the $19 a month and that it won’t help you take your online business to the next level then you can keep the book and the bonuses with no hard feelings from me.

Version 3 of the guide is called WordPress Goldmine Advanced and it is available in the forum, other recent additions are our own in house writing team who are all well qualifies native English writers, the standard rate for members is 1 cent per word. We are also planning to build our own blog network that will be available to members only.

I don’t think I can say fairer that that.

Special Offer Link

First I suppose I had better let you know what my views on back linking were before I started.  I believed that all the talk about the power of back links was over rated and just something that SEO guys kept on promoting as they know normal people like us just can’t be bothered to do on a regular basis. I can pretty much generate all the traffic I want by choosing the right keywords , the right Domain,good on site SEO and writing the right sort of articles, so I have never really bothered with it.

So has my view changed in the last 6 weeks??  No not much.

I will admit that there is a place for “good quality” back links for long term results and I will admit that ” poor quality” back links will give you a boost in the short term.

So let’s look at types of back links and see if they have any long term value because long term is where you’ll make your money. It’s great having a site making $5 a day for a month because you got some back links to it but what you should want is a site that makes $5 every day for the next few years.

Back Link Packets.

I am sure most of you know what I am referring to here. Monthly lists of High PR sites that allow “do follow” links. They do work short term, every site I promoted with them had a big jump in rankings to start with. Often from the 200′s to the top 20 or 30. With these you could probably get a site into the top 10 of Google for most easy  difficulty search terms. But you can also probably do that with a few good articles.

Long term they don’t have much of a future and may even eventually damage your sites ranking. Google is not stupid they know what’s going on with these and they can instantly devalue the links. Many of the site owners aren’t stupid either and can quickly make your links worthless. Nor are the software developers stupid, want to bet the next version of the software they release uses “No follow”

The number of sites I look at that have posted links based on these packets but have no good on site seo is amazing I would say that 70%-80% aren’t optimized. By spending 10 miuntes optimizing the sites they would probably rank higer than they do with bad optimization and loads of back links.. Remember The O in SEO means OPTIMIZATION!!! If that’s not a clue nothing is!!

I do use these at the moment but am planning on cutting back and concentrating more permanent methods of getting back links.

Link Directories:

The less said the better about these. In the main low quality links and you have no control over what other sites are linking from the same site. Do you really want a link from a site with 80% porn and meds links? Avoid like the plague!

Social networking/Social book marking sites:

Generally good quality links and can give extra juice by using the link wheel method. They not only generate links but traffic as well and can be integrated into an article marketing strategy. Unfortunately getting Links is not easy and takes time and effort, not a bad thing because it keeps a lot of the spammers away.However there are ways of automating it and still getting good quality long lasting links. More of that another time after I’ve shared my methods with the WordPress Goldmine members.

BTW in case you are wondering if the methods I teach in WordPress Goldmine work, here is part of an email I received today.  The funny thing is , I’ve not done any SEO work on that site as of yet!!

For starters congratulations on some outstanding SEO work. That is actually the reason for my email. I am a hard working entrepreneur who is having the hardest time getting my website on the 1st page of Goggle.

I was sadly burned 3 times by SEO companies, and I just feel so close in giving up. But then I came across you and your site and if I am not mistaken, you are ranked so well on Google yet your site is new, and doesn’t seem to have an overload of back links and you are in a pretty competitive niche.

So to summarize do you need hundreds of back links? It depends on the competition, your keywords and the Domain name. There is no straight answer, but before you set out to get hundreds of low quality back links first ensure that all your on site SEO is set up properly on a page by page basis. Once you have that sorted , you’ll find where you rank, then you can plan your back linking strategy.

However up to now I’ve been an idiot!

I should have been using outsourcing for so much more, backlink building, Article submissions etc in fact everything I hate doing and avoid doing because it’s so mind numbingly boring. But because of some horror stories I’ve heard about I have avoided hiring people. This is about to change.

I am about to take on 3 or 4 staff maybe even more depending on how it goes.

I have looked at elance and Getafreelancer and also companies like Agentsofvalue who will hire you staff on a full time or part time basis but I rejected them all for different reasons. I have decided to use Odesk.com.

Odesk allows me to monitor exactly what work the provider has done for me and I only pay for an hours work if they have worked for an hour. It also has various tests which providers can take which gives an indication of their abilities.

Because this is my first foray into hiring multiple workers for multiple tasks I am creating videos and documenting my progress , the videos are available as part of Augusts step by step project in the WordPress Goldmine forum. (previous documentated steps by steps include, Article marketing, Niche reseach and site Building and site reviews. All this and much more is available for a one time payment at Wordpres Goldmine…end of advert!!)

So what have I learned so far.

Well the first thing I learned is to break the job offers down into small tasks. I initially posted a job offer for a Virtual assistant, backlink builder and Article submitter. This got me 24 applicants in 24 hours, but many were over qualified.

I created a new ad for someone just to post backlinks and mentioned that people with previous experience would be preferred. The advert made it perfectly clear to them what would be involved and anyone who had done this particular type of backlinking before would immediately know the process. I’ve had 50 applicants in the past 5 hours. Most have done this before and know exactly what I want.

The difference In hourly rates are also noticeably lower.

It’s very possible that I’ll hire 2 people to do the work, I’ve had bids from people with good rankings for similar tasks charging less than $2 an hour. At prices like that I am happy to give them a days work just to test them out. I am more than happy to give a pay rise or a bonus to keep a good reliable worker once they have proved themselves.

By outsourcing all the stuff I try to avoid doing for very little cost I can concentrate on what I do best.

I’ll keep you informed as to how my outsourcing experiment is going. So check back or better still subscribe to the RSS feed email notification at the top of the site…(a retweet using the Tweet button at the start of the article wouldn’t go amiss either!!)

Outsourcing experiment Costs/Progress/income

August 6th:
Costs so Far $0
Backlinks submitted 0
Ranking Improvement N/a
Page Rank Improvement N/a
Additional Traffic over July.. N/a
Additional Income Over July N/a

The secret to writing these articles is to start with the main body and afterwards write the first and last paragraphs. You’ll see what i mean in the Video below. Another keypoint is to keep your articles at around 300 words.

Any more than 300 words and most peple start to lose attention and switch off. Don’t believe it? next time you are talking to someone record what you are saying then stop when they start to lose attention then go back and count the words you spoke.

Anyway on with the video…

Since creating this post I have written book on article marketing called Article Dominance you can grab a copy for free at http://articledominance.com/freereport.html

or you can pay for it at http://articledominance.com

Google 711

Yahoo 69

MSN 67

and for those of you interested..EzineArticles 691

All search engines like sites to have a keyword related domain name so if you are building a site about “Solar powered widgets” then by getting a site containing the keyword you will stand a much better chance of ranking at #1 in all the search engines. 

You also need to ask yourself if you target MSN and use various methods to get to #1 will those methods that you use have a negative impact on your Google Ranking? For example 3 years ago I used a service called link vault that posted my links to random sites and in return my sites displayed related links on them.  of the 9 sites i tried this on 7 of them were de-indexed from google. Sure I had #1 in yahoo and msn but the traffic didn’t make up for 50% of the traffic I lost. 

It’s a fact of life for interent marketers that Google brings you a vast majority of your traffic if you rank well in google. As you can see from my stats  above over 10 times as much. Now I don’t know about you but i’d rather spend a few extra hours a week getting higher rankings in google than getting easy rankings in any other search engine.

It’s also no secret that one of the keys to my success over the past year is Micro Niche Finder. It has allowed me to target niches with very little competition and lots of searches. Adsense income alone from sites I’ve biult around niches and keywords I’ve found in the past 6 months was $500 last month and affiliate commission was similar.  Not bad for a $67 product.  However that price is about to change.

Version 4 of micro niche finder was released this week and it’s had major improvements. Gone are the wordtracker stats and they have been replaced with Stats from Google.  The immediate impact from this was that by rerunning some old searches double the number of results were returned .

Other changes Include the Strength of competition indicator being moved and replacing it on the main dashboard is a Commercial intent indicator, basically an indication of the likely hood of someone buying who uses that search phrase.

Within 2 minutes of the upgrade i had found a search term for a Nintendo Wii that had almost 1000 searches a month and only 47 competing pages with a comercial intent indicator of 89% not bad for a first attempt.

Unfortunatly with the improvements the price is due to go up so if you have been thinking of buying Micro Niche Finder now is the time to buy it. James Jones the creator has added more videos that show you just how powerful MNF can be.

http://income-academy.com/recommends/mnf

How much do you think your blogs are worth?  The other day a 22 year old sold his wordpress blog for $15,000,000  yep 15 million. I’ll leave the link at the bottom of the page.

When I looked at it I was shocked that it was worth so much, it’s a PR 5 and I decided to look at the alexa stats for it.

His alexa rank is 41810  you’ll be interested to know that this blog has a ranking of 72565 when you look at the average page view on alexa I get more page views then he does.. So if anyone has a spare $5,000,000 I’ll sell you the income academy , thats got to be bargain of the century!    (I’ll even throw in all my other sites and products as a bonus.)

Any thats the first 100 posts out of the way now lets see if i can make the next 100 better.

Thanks for reading..

want to see what a $15 million dollar blog looks like…

http://www.bankaholic.com/