The Road Block

Aka ‘The Big Darn Online Secret’

Priceless content.

I have listed the main points from Alex’s presentation.

Why are some students succeeding and others not?

The students who are succeeding are the ones who had a plan, took action, asked for advice and got support.

There is plenty of time to make a fresh start.

Remember the four basic steps.

Content

Traffic

Build a list

Email Marketing

Concentrate, focus on productive tasks. Concentrate on the leverage points.

Don’t confuse the learning phase from the earning phase.

Alex asks the question;” have we kept an on line journal”? A journal should show you what actions have been taken and what results have come from those actions. If you have not kept a journal you will be lost.

If you do not keep a journal you will fail!

When you started on this course you thought you were on the road to success, you did not expect to fail. Along the way you have met things that you did not expect.

On the way you have met road blocks.

You cannot expect to take in a load of new information in a short time and expect expert results. Go back and go through the modules at your own pace. Pick up the golden nuggets of information. Build the business foundations.

You have to put a plan together.

You need to plan. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.

Get rid of your distractions. Know what distracts you. They slow you down.

Build a plan of attack and put a time line to it.

Keep testing and better it!

How can I better these results?

Back to Basics

The secret behind the secret to making online wealth is;”There is no secret”.

You need to learn the business. The profit pulling platforms only become profitable once you understand the business behind it.

Once you automate the business you can focus on another area.

Do not mix up the learning phase with the earning phase.

You may need more hands on experience. You have been given a lot of information in just a few weeks.

Email marketing is where the money is made, but you need to build your list first.

Speak to your list on your level; do not pretend to be a Guru.

Create your e-book. This is your first point of call. Get people to interact. Most people will not know the methods that you are using. You are will always be a few steps or miles ahead of them. These people will look to you for advice.

The perception is that all that is needed is traffic and they will be rich. Alex takes notes and compiles these into a blog post. Alex takes time to produce valuable content which makes good reading. Alex’s readers will then go and promote his blog post.

Planning Ahead

You can make progress planning by not having your computer switched on.

Write it all down and get clarity on it.

Make a 30-day or 90-day plan.

Write down all your distractions.

Make notes and watch your progress.

You can easily get distracted from planning let alone implementing the plan.

Write down your most urgent tasks and focus on those.

Be super-productive.

As you move forward there will always be new distractions, it is up to you not to avoid the distractions and keep focused. Concentrate on the important tasks first. Set yourself a time limit to get tasks done.

Stage-play

Imagine you have access to all the tools and all the resources you need to make money online. What would need to be done to have a profitable online business?

What would you need to get done? What could other people do for you? What can you do yourself?

On another piece of paper, write down what sucks! What needs fixing? Who can help you fix it?

Review your online business.

What do you daily? A journal will help you keep track of this.

Forward moving tasks and running of the business tasks.

Once you have clarity.

What areas do you want to expand on?

What is needed to expand on these areas?

What is needed to be outsourced to speed up the process?

Tip

Focus on one thing at a time. Don’t mix tasks.

If you have found this post useful please leave a comment.

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Andrew Fox
“The Affiliate Marketing Millionaire”

Andrew Fox has been doing affiliate marketing for around 8 years and is earning substantial incomes on a consistent basis that has funded his millionaire lifestyle to enable him to buy Ferraris, a home on the beach and his latest acquisition; a $1.5M yacht.

Here are some key points to come out of this webinar.
Alex began by asking Andrew this question;”if you had to lose one or the other would it be your list or your yacht?”
Ans: the yacht, because you can get it back. The list is what enables you to get the yacht back.

What are the secrets of making money from a small list?
Ans. Know your stats, know how much each click is worth in affiliate commission.
Choose high value products or products with recurring income. The more money you can earn per click will enable you to buy traffic later.
You can always buy subscribers through PPC. By knowing how to monetize your campaigns, the subscriber you bought will earn you more in the long-term than it cost you to buy.

Be an authority: Your list must see you as an authority and when you promote a product your list they must know the product can potentially change their lives. While you can interact and share a joke etc. you must not become too involved with your list.

How to squeeze your list without bursting it: Pick products that are related to your niche list. Do not over-promote. Andrew probably promotes between 2 to 5 products per month. He only offers bonuses every 4 to 12 weeks. Consider which products to promote, it is not always wise to promote the product that everyone else is promoting, better to promote a hot-selling product a week later after everyone else has squeezed their list, hence TIMING!

Why create a bonus?
1. Gain leverage
2. Reason to buy
3. Deliver value above the product being promoted
4. Must be relevant to the product promoted

Killer e-mail campaigns:
Alex has copied Andrew’s email campaigns to begin with and now follows the same system but adds his own personality and story.
Model other successful campaigns. See Andrew’s product ‘Affiliate X-Factor’. Follow a system that woks.

How would you maximize open rates?
Choose short snappy subject lines. Choose key words that work, but do not use the same word too often. E.g. the word “urgent” works well but do not use it every time or your list will switch off.

Web 2.0
Social media sites enable you to interact and become a helper to those that need help. A line has to be drawn between friendly and firm. You need to call people to action. Limit bonuses etc.

Andrew recommends promoting products that have a recurring affiliate income. This can produce a more consistent income.
If you do not have a product then create one, or pay for advertising another product or go to blogs and forums to attract traffic to your promotion. Use signature files to show the link to your promotion site.

Tip: Use a popular term/product name to e.g. ‘mass control’ to attract traffic to your blog/social networking site.

As always if you have found anything useful from this post or you disagree on any point; please leave a comment.

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Rich Schefren
“The Guru’s Guru”

Rich schefren is responsible for mentoring most of the top internet marketers. Alex has also been mentored by Rich and as a result has boosted his income by a phenomenal amount.

We were very privileged to have had Rich Schrefren give us so much of his time for free. I shall just give you the outline of what Rich spoke to us about.

Six Key Success Factors to Online Success:
1. A business by design
2. Your entrepreneurial ability
3. Your ability to learn and apply
4. Your ability to create killer products rapidly
5. Your ability to partner
6. Your ability to manage

I won’t go into everything Rich shared with us on this call, but you might want to think about the above headings and how they apply to your business. I shall no doubt come back to this later in my blog.

Rich also spoke of another opportunity to become a founder member and to become an affiliate of his new program that will give us the opportunity to have another income stream.

This gives us another opportunity to earn as we learn from Rich Schefren. Rich will be issuing a series of newsletters and reports. As these become available, I will have the opportunity to give you my review of them.

Alex has promised us some special webinars to come in conjunction with Todd Brown, Director of Marketing who will give us valuable information on marketing our new opportunity. This is a bonus for Alex’s students on this course.

I shall be able to tell you more, after the proposed webinar takes places.

In the meantime, before the marketing seminars take place, the only task for me to do is to sign up to the opportunity Rich Schefren is giving us (and others too, I expect).

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Module #6. This module Alex names ‘Triple Threat Affiliate’

Alex said that this module excites him the most and is potentially the most valuable to us.
The session can be divided in to two parts; a) List Building and b) Email Marketing.

List Building:
Once again Alex recaps on our progress to date and encourages us, especially if our progress is slow, to keep moving forward.
We should never lose sight of the fact that list-building is the core activity as this is where the money is to be made.
Although we have looked at ways to drive traffic to our blog and the profit pulling platform in order to get sign ups, the best way to create a list is to create your own e-book.

The e-book is created using the principles already taught and the process is:
1. Create and e-book
2. Create a squeeze page
3. Set it up on autopilot using an auto-responder (Aweber)
4. Market the e-book
5. Build a list
6. Nuture the list
7. Make money from the list

Once the e-book is created, Alex says the quicker our list will grow.

Email Marketing:
Alex uses the approach that he soft sells via emails to his list and when he wants to sell something eg an affiliated product he will send out a broadcast message to his list. The broadcast feature is good feature of Aweber.
Remember, you should not sell, sell, sell to your list; you should build a story, give value. You can build an auto responder sequence to build up a product launch.

Tip: Build up a swipe file of the best emails you receive. Do not look at what is being sold but look at the way it is being sold.

The Triple Threat Affiliate Technique:
After you send out an email to your list, you should think about investigating the results; i.e. who bought, who did not, and who did not even open the email.
You can then send a second email to specifically to target the groups above. Based on the response from the second email, you can repeat the process. Aweber allows you to do all this and track it.
If after several emails you get absolutely not response, you can always suggest to someone that they unsubscribe themselves from your list.
Using this technique, you can make much more money from your list. Hence using this technique, Alex produces a higher income from his list than many successful internet marketers that have much larger email lists.

Homework:
No homework has been specifically set here, but going back to the beginning, it would be a good idea to set the task of creating your own e-book. I do not expect to report back soon on this one, but when I have created my first e-book I will let you know.

Please let me know by way of a comment if my report on this module has helped you.

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This is a very overdue report due to the fact that many interruptions such as my day job have slowed me up in my progress. Not being in a truly desperate situation is more of a handicap when it comes to taking action. Perhaps I should take a leap of faith and jack the day job in altogether and concentrate on following this coaching program and implementing the steps full time. Surely, if I believe that I will succeed, then the final outcome will far outweigh whatever I stand to lose by quitting my job now. Has anyone taken this drastic step to propel yourself forward?

Anyway, back to reporting on the task set after Module #3a, Maria Andros, “The Video Marketing Queen”.
Well, at last, I have done it! I have put my first video up on YouTube.

Setting up a YouTube account was the easy bit, I did that weeks ago. I did have some trouble getting to grips with a pocket camera that I bought last November and had not used for the purpose it was originally bought for. Now, I have made my video I am more confident about using the camera again. Because the camera has a lot of features, I did think that I should have bought a more basic camera such as the flip camera that is widely promoted. Now that my video is on YouTube, from the techie point of view, I am pleased with the video quality of the camera.

Of course it is embarrassing to see myself in the video and there are plenty of improvements that I wish I could make, but in the end, I just had to get something out there. As it was said at the beginning of this mentorship program; “don’t wait to get things perfect, just get it started”
Well, that is what I had to do in the end. I suspect there was also an underlying fear and reluctance about having to put a video of myself on the internet. Irrespective of all the imperfections I had to publish something and actually once I sat down and did it, it all seemed relatively easy. I really mucked up my first attempt after about a minute and a half, so I started again. Second time around, despite an obvious error I made, I managed to get my message out.
It was the message I wanted to get out that was more important than any reason I could think of for not doing this. Now that the message has gone out, I just have to wait and see how many newbies there are like me who will respond to my offer.

I suppose the best way for you to see what I have done is to embed a link below and let you watch it. If you do not manage to watch all 6:52 minutes then let me just say that my offer to newbies like me is that I will host your website/blog for up to six months for free. A .info domain can be bought for as little as 80 cents, so for just that outlay, it is possible to set up a website/blog and get your first subscriber to a list and make your first dollar online. Once you prove you can do this, then there should be no reason why you cannot move forward to build on to this success and ultimately create for yourself the income and the lifestyle you desire.
As ever, your comments will be appreciated about this report and what you think of my first video broadcast.

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This module Alex names ‘Traffic Tornados’

This module is more of a screen-capture presentation, that presenting PowerPoint slides.

Recap: Before getting in the this module proper, Alex devoted a good while to go over what he has been teaching and to give us all a boost especially if we are not progressing as fast as we would all like and therefore Alex gives us encouragement.

I will relay Alex’s experience of learning to play poker and how it parallels with internet marketing. Alex is not a gambler after watching the game and not understanding it, one day Alex joined his friends in a game. He soon learnt the rules of how to play and now play regularly for fun. Alex says that poker taught him so many lessons about his life and internet marketing.

The game can change so quickly; everything can be against you, the chips are down and the cards are not looking good and you don’t know what is on the table and what cards have been dealt. Then, the flop turns out and suddenly you have been dealt the winning hand; the cards are so good you cannot lose; you have 100% chance of winning, so how do you play now?  The same happened for Alex in poker as it did in the internet marketing niche.

Alex learnt as he applied and he applied as he learnt. The advantage of internet marketing is that you can create your own cards. Internet marketing is easier than poker; you have the advantage to deal your own cards. When Alex wrote his own e-book he dealt his own cards. With poker as a Newbie you have to be lucky, but with internet marketing (which we are learning), we learn to control the game. Remember, “The odds are always on your side”

We make money as we grow; we need to take time to plan. Once you understand it you, you have to implement it; you cannot afford to “slack”.

The focus should always be on list-building.  Why Blog? People will get to know you instantly. People link to you. Your blog will get indexed by Google.

So, Alex then gets in to his presentation.

Traffic:

Forums:

Alex takes us to forum sites; great places to tap into traffic streams and get Joint Venture Partners. Example: Warriorforum.com and

Articles:

  A great way to be noticed is to publish articles that include your links to your website/blog.  You can also use other peoples articles in your blog provided you retain their links  and abide by the rules.

Ezinearticles.com is one of the most highly ranked article sites

Blogs:

Find out the top ranking blogs. Find out the blogs that are similar to your niche. You can search on Google to find the top ranking sites.

Examples of site to go to for searching out the best are: Top100Blogs.com   BlogStorm.co.uk   Top100Bloggers.com

A summary and check list of actions to do is as follows:

• Good content is crucial
• Back-links
• Keyword research
• Competitive research – Alexa.com
• Other traffic generation strategies

Twitter – twitter.com

JV giveaway sites –new ones virtually every week – check forum

Ebay – ebay.com

Social media bookmarking – see dedicated section in Alex’s forum

YouTube videos – youtube.com

Traffic Geyser – trafficgeyser.com

Ustream – ustream.tv

I will be letting you know how I get on with these tasks later on. This is going to take some time. I will probably be reporting  on the next module before I report on these tasks.

Let me know if you find this post helps.

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In this module which Alex calls ‘Social Media Money’ Alex is giving us what he considers to be the most valuable lesson and we should not miss this out or decide to skip it. This module teaches us how and where to get traffic to our site in the quickest time and the reasons behind it.

Traffic is built using Web 2.0 i.e. social media websites and the use of audio and video. Alex uses his oilrig analogy in the way that a man-made object in the sea attracts algae.  Then the algae attract clams which in turn attracts small fish, then bigger fish and then sharks. Alex says that the best places to fish for tuna is around oilrigs.

Alex stresses the importance of having a blog from which you can develop trust with your readers and your list.

Alex suggested visiting the blogs of fellow students and leaving comments of value. In this way when people come to visit that blog they see you have valuable things to say and will hop over to your blog to see what you have to say there. This is what Alex terms oilrig hopping.

Alex assures us that this works and is not something that the internet marketing gurus know about or teach.

Alex is setting up a competition as to who can drive the most traffic to their blog in the next two weeks and is putting up a $1000 prize. I would love to say “I shall win it” but in reality I don’t stand a chance. I am only just keeping up and I have still my video to complete. There are many other students ahead of me, but as Alex says it the amount of traffic from now for the next two weeks. We are all looking to ramp up visits to our blogs.

Alex suggests going to visit the top 100 blogs and where possible leaving valuable comments such that you become noticed.

Also, Alex suggests finding he blogs with similar interests to your own and pick out the best ones to leave comments on. When others read see that you have something valuable to say, they will want to visit your blog to want to know more.

Alex then took us to live to look at Twitter and YouTube.  Again, you can leave valuable comments. Choose high-ranking videos to get your comments noticed.

Alex says; learn about what we are doing and recycle it. I suppose without a passion for any particular niche at the moment that seems like a good idea.

So, for the tasks resulting from this module they are:

Focus on driving traffic to your blog

Oilrig hopping:

• Visit blogs and forums outside of the Alex’s community
• Leave valuable comments
• Don’t pimp your stuff ( i.e. don’t start selling whatever you have to sell)
• Check out the resources link in the members area for a list of top blogs and forums

I will be letting you know in a while how I have been getting on with this exercise.

In the meantime I will be pleased to know what you think to my Module #4 post.

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Maria Andros

“The Video Marketing Queen”

Before I start to tell you what this module is about, I should let you know that at this stage I am lagging behind. I did not realize that the program would move as quickly as it is doing and I do not have the luxury of having a lot of hours at home to devote to this. That said, I am making progress albeit slower than I would like.

The modules are coming so quickly, one after the other, that I completely missed an email from Alex’s team letting me know that this module, by way of a bonus, was scheduled. Just as well, Alex records everything and makes the recordings available to his students; as listening a day or two afterwards is just the same as listening to it live. You can still listen to the question and answer sessions and you only miss out if you want to participate. Up to now, I am usually struggling to stay awake due to the lateness of the hour and after a long days work.

About this module:

This is a webinar that Alex had ran earlier in the year for his students. It did not matter that it was not live now; it was just as good as if it were live.

Formerly a make-up artist now turned Internet Marketer; Maria has gone from zero to a six-figure income in her first 12 months.

An essential lesson to come out of this is;”forget old-school marketing”. Use the power of video, use YouTube, and similar sites. Also use social media sites such as Twitter.

Now-a-days, people do not want to be sold to. They will buy from people they know, like and trust.

You can earn a lot more from a small well pre-qualified list than a very large non pre-qualified list.

Continue to use Adword campaigns and pay-per-click, if they are working for you already. If you are on a low budget, start off with the likes of YouTube and Twitter.

The principles taught by Maria which are already known in the PPC field, Maria applies to her video campaigns. Use keywords in the Title of your video and associated tags. These will be picked up by Google (who own YouTube).

Maria gave a 7-step formula:

1. Establish your credibility as an Expert or Leader

2. Create a hook.

3. Share your personal background and story.

4. People do business with people they like.

5. Paint the problem.

6. Provide the solution.

7. Call to Action

Content is ‘King’ and keywords are ‘Queen’.

Choose long-tail keywords.

Action Steps:

Sign up for your YouTube Channel.

Get yourname.com

Create your first video and build on top of that.

Be You.

Have fun (it is who you are being, not what you are saying).

Search for long-tail keywords in your niche.

Upload your videos that have a lot of views in your market (piggy back off traffic).

Ask people to leave a comment and what they think.

Be interactive (make it a conversation).

Be inspiring and don’t forget to smile.

I will be letting you know how I get on with the tasks above as my homework.

For now, here is an example of a Youtube video from Maria.

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Using the same headings as in the list of tasks to be done which were set out in module #3 , here is what I accomplished.

Use the Forum to get Familiar with Blogging

One of the very useful additions to this course is the forum that Alex has set up for his Students. Alex has invited some of his former students to help out. There is a good community spirit and anyone who wants to help   those who need help, can do so.

I have spent some time on the forum. It is a place I will want to keep coming back. It is good to see the progress of the other students and their blogs taking shape.

I am making steady progress visiting the other blogs but there are a lot more to go and even now a lot have students have not got their blogs listed in the forum.

It is interesting to see how others have compiled their blogs and I took a while deciding on what WordPress theme to choose.

Setup Hosting and Install a Blog

My hosting account is already chosen and I easily can add a new domain, all I had to do was choose a domain name for my blog. I decided to go with DavidLouisMonk.com. I found by searching Google, that if I used both my forenames,  I could not find another name the same, whereas there are many men named David Monk; also, I found a David L Monk. At least for the moment I have a unique name and I do not have to hyphenate the name to get the domain I am happy with.  Not everyone can get their ownname.com as the name is already taken.

Installing the blog is straightforward, especially following the video tutorials provided free by Matthew Wolfe for the other students. Matthew has set up the website: http://www.thewordpressclassroom.com/  . The most time was taken looking at various themes and making up my mind what theme to go for. I knew I wanted a theme in which I could vary the width of the page and the columns so eventually decided to go with the Flexibility2 theme that you see named at the very bottom of this page.

Prepare a Plan of Attack for your Blog

One of the first tasks to do once my domain was up and the WordPress theme installed was to add content and write  my first post. Of course I also wanted to decide on my layout of my pages. You will see by looking at this page and my home page, the layout I decided. By the time you are reading this, I expect to have made changes to the way the site looks.

One of the things Alex encouraged us to do was to visit other student blogs and leave a comment, thereby linking our sites with other students’ sites. This all helps get the site established so that when visitors from outside the Alex mentorship community come to our blogs they will have been seen to have had visitors and a site worth bookmarking and reading. I have made a start but is is going to take a time to look at everyone’s blog and leave a comment.

Install the “Traffic Network Builder”

One of the members has provided the code to be installed as a widget. Once installed it presents a list of links to other students’ websites. You will see a list to the right of this page. Once WordPress is set up on the server, it becomes quite an easy job to install widgets like Traffic Network Builder.

Add Google Analytics

I had not used Google Analytics before, but once the account was set up which was not difficult, it was easy to set up and add this website. The advantage of using WordPress for my blog is that it is Google friendly. It is best to follow the video tutorials that show you how to install WordPress on the server and install a theme. Once the theme is installed, the theme can be customized.

In the side bars can be placed widgets and text and adds etc such as you will now see on the side of this page on my blog.

There are plenty of widgets available for installation in to the theme.

Besides widgets there are also additional plug-ins for WordPress. One such plug-in is Google Analytics. You can search for plug-ins from within the theme and having selected a plug-in you can easily activate it.

I slipped up by trying to install a Google Analytics plug-in and was told an error occurred. I later found out after asking Matthew that my theme already had the Google Analytics installed.

I can say more about Google Analytics in a later post but for now Google Analytics gives you a report as to how many times your blog has been visited and where the traffic came from. This is a valuable tool as it tells you whether your site is getting the hits.

Adding a Sitemap

This was not part of the homework but adding a sitemap was something I wanted to do. As my blog consists of more than just the homepage I wanted to have a sitemap that would Google help Google index my site. I made the mistake of following the videos so closely that when I installed the sitemap plug-in an error was reported. I emailed Matt with my problem. He replied to say that it might already be installed as some themes automatically give you the sitemap installed.

When I checked this is the case. That will teach me to look more closely at what facilities this Flexibilty2 theme has to offer. The good news is that within a couple of days I can see the traffic or the number of visits my site has had; thought no sign ups so far.

I will be reporting on the next module soon.

If you have found anything I have had to say useful in this post, please leave a comment.

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In this module #3 which Alex calls ‘Social Media Money’, Alex explains why it is important to set up a blog (an online diary) in the process of building traffic. It might not be comfortable for everyone to start writing a blog especially if it involves themselves. What Alex is telling us to do is use this coaching program and in particular write about the progress we are making toward becoming a successful Internet Marketer.

We should be relaxed and write openly about our journey how we start off as a newbie to internet marketer and the progress we make.  We need to come across as genuine person who people will come to like and trust.  Alex encourages us to make our blog posts conversational as if speaking to our best friend. In our blog we need to align ourselves with Alex so that gives us instant credibility.

Writing a blog about our activity actually makes us accountable and you also get instant feedback from the market.

What we need to do is add great value to our blog so that people will want to come back for more. They recognize that we have something to offer and they want to find out more.

The blog needs to have traffic i.e. people need to come to our blog. Once we have people coming to our blog we want to bring them in to our funnel, which first collects their names, so we can market to them later.

CHECKLIST

1. Use the Forum to get Familiar with Blogging

2. Setup Hosting and Install a Blog

3. Prepare a Plan of Attack for your Blog

4. Install the “Traffic Network Builder”

5. Add Google Analytics

The homework here does not look to much and I should be able to do this in time before the next module.

In all this session lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. After a 10 minute break we went in to the question and answer session which lasted another 90 minutes. What with long days driving and these late sessions I find it difficult to stay awake during the question sessions. At least I will be able to replay the recording and go over things again. I know that what I write here is a fraction of what Alex is telling us and I just have time to scribble down the main points, but what I might decide to do at the end of this course is to expand these notes by going over the recordings again and compiling my own e-book to make available to anyone following my progress.

If you consider this informative and would like to have an e-book that goes into more detail, please let me know in your comment.

I will be reporting next on the homework from this module.

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