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.

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.

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.

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.

How did I get on with my homework after module #2?

Build My Profit Pulling Platform

Garry Parkes a student of Alex from a previous coaching group who has become very successful on the internet has been extremely helpful. Garry has prepared a set of video tutorial videos that take you through every stage of the set up. Follow Garry’s tutorials and you cannot fail to have the platform set up.

Before the website can be installed and fully functional certain things have to be in place. It certainly makes it a lot simpler just to follow a video for every step of the process and save a lot of time struggling to do it on your own.  The following is what has to be done:

1. Buy a domain name: mine is buildingalistmakemoneyeasy.com and I bought it from Godaddy.com
2. Set up a hosting account. I already have a hosting account with TopHostingUK.com
3. Change the nameserver settings where you bought the domain to point to the server where your domain is hosted. The hosting company gives you the IP address and nameserver settings.
4. You then need to install a file transfer program on your PC  to upload files to the server. I use a free version AceFTP3
5. You will need to set up an autoresponder account in order to gather email addresses and direct sign ups to your sales page. I bought the recommended service provided by Aweber.com
6. You will need to set up a PayPal account ready to take payment from orders placed. I already have an account with PayPal. This saved me yet a little more time though it does not take long to set up.
7. Once all the above was in place, following Garry’s tutorials to modify the files, upload to the server, set up the autoresponder and Paypal payment button  was all straighforward.

Set up Google Analytics

I was registered with Google already so just subscribing to their analytics section was simple

Set Your First List Building Target

This is more difficult to know what to set. Alex advised going for a target of 1500 in the next 6 months. I’ll be guided by Alex and go for this.

You set the Timeline!

Alex says this will depend on our individual resources so the timeline you set your for yourself will be different to mine. All I can say at this time is that in 6 months I must  reach the target of 1500 on my list. I should not expect this to happen in a linear fashion. I expect the sign ups to accelerate nearer to the end of the six months as the techniques Alex will reveal to us in this course take effect.

As Alex says; you can always re-evaluate as time passes.

Next to come is Module #3.

If you need any specific help, ask me and I will pass on my new-found knowledge.

Are you finding this helpful? Please comment.

In the second webinar given by Alex Jeffreys, Alex gave another long webinar presentation lasting 2 hours 15 minutes on what was called ‘Profit Pulling Platform’.
Included in this mentoring program Alex is giving away a website designed to offer great value to anyone wanting to build a list of people off the internet to market to.
It is said; “the money is in the list”. List building becomes the core of your business as once you have a list of qualified people. You can then market to these people over and over again, by continuing to give the valuable information and build up trust.
This profit pulling platform is designed not only to be a way of building a list, but from each sale of the product on offer at a low price the student gets to keep 100%. You can see why this course is potentially such good value as the profit pulling platform will ultimately pay for the course.

Here is a summary or what was covered:

Module #2: Profit Pulling Platform
CHECKLIST

1. Build Your Profit Pulling Platforms
2. Set up Google Analytics
3. Set Your First List Building Target
4. You set the Timeline!

In addition to the main presentation Alex fronted another 2 hours and 20 minutes of questions.
Alex started at 23:00 BST and finished around 04:00 the following morning. Once again, Alex showed his commitment to the program by delivering good content and not holding back.
After a very long day on the road, it was difficult to keep my eyes open during the Questions and Answer session. I still did not chip in with a question this week, but then the other members of the group were asking all of the right questions and asking many of the questions I had thought about asking.

I will keep you posted with this week’s homework.

How did I get on with my homework after module #1?

Well it has been little bit of a struggle to get everything done and quite frankly. I am somewhat behind, but I think I can catch up. I have just got to find more free time.
The problem with this driving job is that I just do not know from day to day where I will be and how many miles I will do. Being on call any time of day or night can really take its toll.  This makes planning my day somewhat difficult and this is going to be my biggest obstacle and challenge in getting through this coaching program.
If I get too far behind schedule I plan take some holiday and use the days to make up for lost time. Creating a pledge was not too difficult. The pledge is a start; it can be modified later.

My Personal Pledge
Read Pledge on waking up (keep a copy in the van)
I will do everything Alex instructs me to do.
I will do a minimum of one hour daily of productive tasks 5 days a week
I will use a count-down timer to ensure this
Do my daily did sheet
I pledge to tythe a portion of all my internet income to good causes.
Plan tomorrow today
Read Pledge when going to bed

Initial Hosting setup:

This was a gain saving as I already have a hosting account.
I bought the domain name for this blog and changed the domain name server setting straight away.
One problem not foreseen which delayed the setting up of this blog was my hosting service needed to swap over to a new and better server. I lost time setting WordPress up and could not understand why I could not get it installed properly. The problems encountered were the very ones that gave reason for my hosting service to decide to scrap the old server and install a new one. After several hours lost I contacted the support team and that is when I learnt of the server problems that was causing me so much grief.

Organising Myself:
Somethings were easily achieved such as setting up a folder on my laptop to store all the files for this coaching material.
I bought note books for my Do and Did sheets and I ordered a count-down timer off Ebay and I should have that in about one weeks time.
I registered for my free mind mapping tool at www.mindmeister.com but haven’t done anything with it.

Planning and Monitoring:
If there is one section of the homework that I have not done it is this. The short–term plans and actions is covered in part by the Dos and Dids sheets but the 90-day long term goals and monthy and weekly need to be done.

Take Action:
The fact that I have done the above and not completed all my tasks has started the ball rolling and action has been taken. Obviously taking action is going to be continuous process if this program is to be seen through to the end in approximately another 7 to 8 weeks.

At 11 O’clock on Monday evening the webinar for module #1 began on time. This first webinar in the series given by Alex Jeffreys was a two-hour presentation on what Alex called ‘Going Forward to Basics’. Alex has given access to the recording of the webinar which is very useful as there are lots of points I didn’t quite catch first time around.

Instead of getting “back to basics”, for the majority on the course, they were not off the starting blocks.  Alex is teaching us how to be organized for running a business for a business is ultimately what we shall have.

Writing a pledge and reading it at the start of every day is one way of reminding me of my commitment to this course to see it through. Setting goals and monitoring my progress is all part of the discipline that will lead to success. I don’t say it is going to be easy; at my age there are some lazy habits that I shall have to change.  Setting pledges and goals reminds me of New Years resolutions that you make but hardly ever keep. My background in sales taught me about goal setting and planning so there is nothing new here. It should be standard practice for sales people who have sales targets to meet that they plan how they are going to achieve their targets.

All the major points covered in the webinar are summarized in the Checklist below. There are many more points under each heading but this is sufficient to let you know what Alex covered.

Not only is this a summary of the points covered but there were many calls to action which is the homework that has been set between now and the next module.

I will be letting you know how I get on with the homework in the next post on the blog.

Module #1: Forward to Basics

CHECKLIST

1. Prepare a Pledge

2. Initial Hosting Setup for your Website Blog

3. Setup a Personal Blog

4. Organize Yourself

5. Planning and Monitoring

6. TAKE ACTION!

In addition to the main presentation Alex fronted a 3 hour question and answer session. I must admit that I struggled to stay awake to the end.

Alex started at 23:00 BST and finished around 04:00 the following morning. Alex certainly showed his commitment to this program and delivered excellent content.

Alex also over delivered in terms of answering everyone’s questions. This was a really long webinar; the longest I have ever experienced. After a long day on the road, it was difficult to keep my eyes open. Maybe next time on the webinar I will be more alert and chip in with a question of my own.

This was a very good start to the coaching program and if the content of the following modules is like this, then Alex is certainly going to be giving very good value.