Automate Your Business

 
I met Mike Hill (of CPA Tsunami )briefly at an exclusive mastermind meeting in Chicago last year. So I can’t really claim that I know him, or that’s he’s a friend of mine.
But I do know that people I trust like Yanik Silver, Ryan Leff, Jeff Walker and others tell me Mike is the King [...]

When you find a new tactic that works for your business, something really, really good and effective, is your first impulse to:

1.  Create a course, membership site, video series or other product and sell the idea?

or

2.  Use it for yourself and just crank on it for all it’s worth?

And another question to keep in mind:  Which will make you more money?

I’d say that a good number of us have a hard time not choosing #1.  And for years I never thought of what I’d be LOSING by teaching the tactics I learn.  I only thought of the positives.  “This course will sell like gangbusters!”  “We’re gonna make bank on this one!”

But there is something you lose in that bargain.  Specifically, the time you’d spend perfecting your tactics and growing them into something even bigger, more effective, and more profitable for yourself.  It is a tangible loss to your business and no one can avoid it. 

When you have to turn around and teach the methods, systems, processes, and strategies you’ve discovered, you are on the hook for time.  Time is something none of us has figured out a way to manufacture.  It is the great equalizer, above all else.

Let’s think about choice #2

Here you decide to take what you’ve learned at conferences, from associates, mentors and coaches, (or on your own), and apply that intel 100% to your business.  No sharing.  No training.  No mass control launches, product creation, or members and customers demanding all your time.  Just you and some killer money-making, traffic-driving, cutting-edge stuff that enhances your business the more you apply it.

There is a downside to being the guru trapped in a business based upon never-ending cycles of launches.  A huge one.  It is something no one ever talks about publicly – ever.  But it is there like a dark cloud overhead or a large anchor around every single launch guru’s neck.

Every launch has to be bigger.  They are extremely hard to pull off and quite expensive, which is another thing they don’t talk about.  Having months of planning, a huge staff to support, and a big investment in materials ready to be shipped is one thing.  But the success of the program is also a bummer.  Now they have hundreds or thousands of customers to support, train, and do all the things with they promised in their offers.

Believe me, the stories I’ve heard over the years from insiders leads me to believe I might not even want a big launch now.  Choice #2, which many former high-profiles guru have chosen, like Jonathan Mizel and many others, is to DO and not TEACH.

I’ve seen so many wildly popular guys go off the radar.  One day they are there selling huge coaching programs and courses.  The next – poof!  They are gone.

Where did those gurus go?  Jail?  Retirement?

They found the real money online.  The very very serious money.  The stuff that makes million dollar launches look like someone just dropped a penny on a 4-lane highway.  They went from teaching to DOING.  They went from talking about it to doing it full-time.  They started building offices of assistants and outsourcers.  They found things they could do to make $2000 per month and created 100 or more of them.  In short, they stopped listening to themselves at conferences and started listening to each other’s great ideas. 

And then they tried them.  And then they realized that teaching and creating courses is vastly less money than doing things like opening PayDotCom.com.  Or site building on a grand scale.  Or niche marketing or all the other things we’ve all taught or been taught but never had the time to DO because of all the teaching.

By the Numbers

Let’s say you get a killer course together on something no one in a niche has heard of before and you know you’re going to do well with it.  You put it together (massive work, time, and expense) and you plan to sell it for $997, hoping for at least 1000 customers.

You get the product ready and the JVs lined up, all very intensive tasks leading up to launch day, and if everything goes as planned, you make 1000 sales.

1000 x $997 = $997,000

Minus merchant fees = $39,880 or so at 4%

Minus affiliate commissions = $450,000 or so

Minus expenses like staff, outsourcing, admin = Let’s say $50,000 minimum on this (some bootstrap this stuff but most do not – they get a lot of help these days)

So roughly speaking you’re looking at something around $450,000.00 profit.  Nice huh? 

It can be far less depending on deals you cut with big, heavy hitters who get overrides of 10% or more to bring their buddies in to mail for launch too. 

From the money alone, this looks and seems fantastic.  Like you’d do anything to make that kind of dough.  But hold on a second. 

Now you have hundreds of clients to work with.  You might even have some upsells if you’re smart so you’re still making money off this product launch long after launch is over.  Let’s add $100k in consulting, coaching or other upsells to the figure above and make your take $550,000.00. 

Finally, let’s not forget continuity.  A good guru will have some monthy membership attached to their offer where a portion of sales will bring in people who pay them monthly.  Let’s say this is $100,000 per month which starts declining mere days and weeks after the launch due to web-wide average retention rates.

Here’s the stuff they don’t tell you in guru school…

Now let’s start taking away.  I’m being overly generous with the numbers above.  I know a lot of people have far lower profits than that from similar launches, but it doesn’t matter.  There really is a dark side here.

• Staff:  Fulfillment, administrative tasks, and all the other things you will have to do to keep clients happy with their purchases is a really big, expensive deal.
• Overhead:  Servers and everything it takes to run one of these launch operations is no small expenditure over time.
• Time lost:  During all this you haven’t been able to spend any time, not one iota, on learning and keeping up with your skills and staying ahead of the pack.  This is why almost every sophomore release from a new guru is far weaker in every way than the first.  They just haven’t been able to stay cutting-edge.  They’ve been creating a product and then fulfilling it for months and months.  And if they have a lot of that outsourced, they still have to manage their staff and make sure they are repesenting  them properly and protecting their reputation through proper fulfillment.
• Profits lost:  The entire time spent building a product, pulling off a monumental launch, coordinating the millions of things that go into this operation, you haven’t been able to DO any of the things you teach.  If what you teach is a way to make money or otherwise grow your business, you’ve thrown it all out in favor of this one cash-in.  At the end of the launch, you NEED the money you made to live off of until you can get back to the front lines and get ahead of all the people who passed you up while you were engaged in the prep, launch and fulfillment of your offer.

The money you were making with the system you’ve now sold is all but dried up if the business model requires your regular care and feeding to stay viable long-term.   Now comes a choice:  I have to come up with another product fast and have another launch, starting everything over again from scratch.  Or I have to get back to work on what it is that makes real money around here!

How much can be lost by being a teacher?

Let’s say you know how to build sites that make $1000-$2000 or so per month.  Once they are done with one site, they keep building.  Niche marketing or whatever you want to call it.  This is what you were doing before becoming the guru and being known as a teacher.

In the time you put together a product, a launch, and do the fulfillment of coaching, webinars, videos…whatever, you could have overseen the building of 100 of these sites.  That’s $100,000-$200,000 per MONTH in revenue you don’t have coming in now.

In one year that’s $1.2 million to $24 million in revenue, free and clear.  Because these sites don’t require manual fulfillment, tons of staff, and there are no affiliate payouts, you keep almost all the money and just pay your low overhead.

These are just examples…

Any guru out there can come up with ways to shoot holes in my examples above.  They can say they have everything outsourced and that they can take the time to do a product launch or even pay someone to do it for them too!  That’s fine for the guys and gals who are already big enough to do that.  I still have to question why they’d do all that work to earn the equivalent of a couple months income from the other thing:  the DOING thing.

You are not one of those gurus.  They aren’t reading this.  They are working like dogs on a launch coming up sometime this year.  They don’t read blogs.  So you aren’t going to have all these staff members and launch managers to do your launch.  It’s going to be you and maybe a partner or two you will have to split everything with.

Pot – Kettle – Black

Sound like I have some things on my mind?  I do!

I know some of you are going “Dude, you teach people how to blog.  You have courses and all the stuff you’re talking about!  How can you say all this and not feel hypocritical?”

Well for one, I truly do like to teach.  And not just for the sake of my clients and customers.  It is an ego thing.  It is for every teacher on the planet.  Bar none, being the one who knows that teaches those who don’t is an ego booster.  Anyone being honest about it would have to say the same thing.  Ego plays a part.  It’s not a bad thing.  Call it pride if it makes you feel better.  But it’s all the same.  People like me get a “buzz” from helping others and getting positive feedback for doing so.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy that on some level if they’ve had a chance to experience it.

I’ve heard of gurus who were DOING the thing they did and made millions at it who all of the sudden wanted to break into selling courses about it.  For less money, as demonstrated above.   What other factor could possibly account for such a choice outside of ego?  They want to be known for the things they’ve acomplished and mastered.  Plain and simple.  I’m no different.  No one really is at the end of the day.

The people who fly under the radar, making millions online DOING the business of marketing, have the same impulses.  They are just more capable of supressing them and staying focused on building and doing rather than giving in to the temptation of teaching and becoming a 15 minute rockstar in their niche.

My goal for the rest of this year is to re-balance and split my teaching and doing right down the middle.  I’ve gotten off course.  This post is a note to the world that I want to change that as much as it is for anyone reading to get something out of it.

You can feed the ego-centric part of you and still stay on the front-lines of making money online.  It’s a matter of balance.  But I would still say the biggest money of all is generated by the pure-doers who don’t teach at all.  They learn.  They implement.  And they quadruple their efforts behind successful tests and methods they discover along the way.

A person like that is going to die with more money in the bank than the rest of us almost every time.  At that point it’s really a matter of dying with a feeling of accomlishment and with few regrets.  And that is an individual thing.

Disagree?  Agree?  That’s what comments are for…!

Blogging is, at the same time, all of these things:

• fun, work, profitable, tedious, engaging, addictive, rewarding, draining, exciting, and demanding

There are definitely more positives to blogging than negatives for the right people.  Some people cannot hack it after awhile.  Others totally thrive on it.  Among the latter group, many make great money doing it.

No matter where you are with your blog right now, beginner or advanced, we all get tired, burnt out, and have need for inspiration from time to time.  Sometimes the promise of more money, more traffic, and more success isn’t quite enough to get us through.  During these times it’s nice to know a couple things:

1. You are not alone.  All bloggers go through periods of ups and downs, like any business owner does, online or off.  It’s nice to know we all need pretty much the same things to keep us going.
2. Power in numbers.  We are part of an historic time in human history and technology.  In fact, bloggers are smack in the middle of the whole thing.  You aren’t just trying to provide yourself with a living or part-time income.  While that may be what you think about most of the time, you are also part of something vast, exciting, and cutting-edge.

Here are some tips to keep you pumped about your blogging, marketing, and everything that you do to expand your presence on the web.

1.  Remember why you started your blog in the first place.

What were your goals then? How many have you achieved thus far? How many to go? Update your goals for your blog and start pecking away at the fresh list. Might be time to re-think strategy in areas of marketing and content development to make sure you are a real threat to your competition and super relevant to your targeted readers.

2.  Most bloggers fail.  And that’s good!

That’s GOOD news!  It means that if you are dedicated to your success as a blogger, you won’t be among the failures. And a high failure rate means less competition.  It doesn’t mean you are destined to fail too.  Revel in the fact that you are different and you are in, or on your way to becoming part of a prestigious group that makes their living wholly or partially from blogging.

3.  When in doubt about blogging as a road to making money online, remember this: 

Blogs are one of the most common type of sites on the web today.  If blogging wasn’t a big deal, the stats would look a whole lot different!  If you find yourself disbelieving the power of blogs, turn your eyes to the hundreds of thousands of other real bloggers on the web.  Or ask yourself “If blogging wasn’t the way to go, why would so many people like Jack have a blog and not some other kind of site?”

4.  If it’s not fun, you’ll never be successful with blogging!

If you aren’t having fun with blogging, you can’t force success.  This doesn’t mean you should give up if you are wondering whether you’ll ever have fun doing this.  It means you need to find ways to make blogging fun for you.  If you’re tired of writing, start a podcast.  Make a video once in awhile.  Get a radio show.  Start a social site an attach it to your blog.  Do something to make what you do fun as well as lucrative.  I’ve never met a successful blogger who hated what they do for a living!

5.  Anything that is destined to make money month after month takes ongoing effort to achieve.

It seems obvious when you say it, but man are people overly impatient with their blogs!  In no other scenario on Earth that I know of are people more demanding and in a hurry than new bloggers who want traffic yesterday and money in the bank last week.  It doesn’t work that way.  You aren’t missing anything.  There are no secrets beyond what you already know:  great content that your target market desperately wants, needs, loves, and comes back again and again for.

6.  Everything gets easier…

As hard as you are working now is as hard as you will ever work in blogging.  A little hard-won popularity now can be leveraged into exponentially more popularity later with far less effort.  This blog takes a lot less care and feeding today than it did when I started.  It’s the same for most bloggers.  The more you do now, the less you have to do later to get A LOT more traffic, rankings and income from blogging. 

7.  Many people quit the very moment before their blog is about to take off…

…or they change tactics mid-stream out of impatience and screw up what was about to work for them.  Either way, the core message about blogging for profits, popularity, and traffic is and always will be about sticking to it through the times you want to leave it behind the most.

8.  Dream big…

Don’t just read your favorite bloggers.  Picture your blog being counted among them someday on “top blogs to read” lists.  Much of the formula for success is right in front of us when it comes to blogging.  The bloggers we most admire show us every single day how to bring the goods to their markets and reap the rewards through their posts.

9.  One day, you will have help…

Mashable.com started out as one dude and a blog.  Now that dude, Pete Cashmore, has tons of people writing for his blog.  While having other bloggers share the content load might not be part of your long-term business plan, certainly having help with marketing, customer service, and many other things should be.  As you grow, things also get easier because you can and should hire help to give you more time to be the visionary and move your blog business forward.

10.  Thriving by giving…

Don’t hold back.  Give things and information away like candy.  Learn to make a good living by looking as though all you do is give and give.  It is a lucrative business model that is proven in many markets.  Learn to monetize the free stuff, and you won’t feel like a charity non-profit whose mission is to grind out content with no reward.

Bonus Tip:  Get buzzed often. 

There’s nothing that gives you the energy (or high) to move forward and accomplish big things with blogging like blowing people’s minds and getting the feedback that ensues.  When you do a good job, readers will let you, and the world, know.  And that feedback becomes highly addictive.  You want it more and more and it makes for a great blog because that’s the only way to get it!

Guest Post by Bill Wardell

In this day and age of total disclosure and exposure in the Web 2.0 world, why do you need publicity? Because if you’re going to stand out in a crowd you’ll need to have the right exposure to the right audience.

With the right things happening (BUZZ) and a few simple clicks of a mouse, a normal person can have their lives changed in a heartbeat… or become an overnight success after the hard work has been done.

You can have your “15 minutes of fame” when a tidal wave of excitement surrounds you from YouTube Videos, to Digg and maybe eventually being found by Oprah. Just ask “The Secret” creator about the fame and how quickly it can happen. Look to J.K. Rowling to see how you became an overnight sensation when someone digs up a manuscript. With the web you can plan your publicity and create your own BUZZ!

Top 10 Reasons You Need Publicity.

#1 You can control what is being said about YOU!

In order to sell something, people need to know about it. You have something that you are certain that people need to know about and there is no better way to spread the word about you or your product than with public relations. The amount of encouraging attention that a magazine interview or news article gets blows away a simple advertisement. There is an extra sense of authority when people hear about something from a TV show or radio show. It is notably influential. Although both ads and PR are effective and necessary to properly market you or your product, you really cannot do without public relations. PR efforts can expose you to all kinds of media.

#2 Customized Plan

Create your publicity plan, customized just for your business, not some template used for all other businesses. Each niche is different, each business within a niche is different, therefore, we all should have a plan customized to fit our needs and our budget.  With a custom plan, you can drive serious branding and plublicity for your business.

#3 – Media Savvy

You should learn everything there is to know about the various forms of media and how to get your business noticed by them. You don’t have to know everything, but pick up on those things that you can do by yourself. By doing so, or at least knowing enough, you can more easily weed out PR people who are not right for your specific business.  Being “in the know” gets you into places you’d never dream of.

#4 – Product or Service Leveraging

A good publicist will create the right (or desired) relationships that turn into clients and customers by leveraging your products or services. Do you know other players within your niche? Do they take you seriously? Do you know how to approach them? If not, your publicist can help you.

#5 – Media Publicity vs. Public Publicity vs. B2B Publicity

Today’s internet allows us to incorporate more than traditional media publicity. Small businesses need to be able to incorporate three forms of publicity: Media, Public, & Business to Business. A good publicity agent will never tell all their secrets, but they will make sure you are informed and that you are meeting the right people for your business, which in turn will help you to leverage your own form of publicity. Learn how to get the most of all 3 kinds of publicity!

#6 – What Can A Publicist Do That I Can’t Do Myself?

Often times we hear people say that they do all their own marketing. Why do they do it all themselves? Typically the cost of hiring another person or hiring someone without the knowledge of their business are the first two reasons given. Many times a business owner will know who the other players are in their industry. Relationships and control are two other reasons that people think they can do it all on their own.

What some business owners may not realize is that publicists are more than newspaper advertisers or glorified secretaries. A publicist can help raise the perceived importance others see in you and your business. A good publicist will save you time, which in essence, is money.

There are a million things to do before one can achieve true success. Public relations is very time consuming. There are many words to speak, sentences to write and ideas to generate. Very few people have the time to handle an effective PR campaign, market their product and conduct “business as usual.”

#7 – Raise Your Street Credibility

Having a publicist who can perform specific PR functions for your business is more essential than most small companies realize. You don’t have to have a full time $5,000 a month retainer to get key components of your PR functions accomplished.

More and more, you will find publicists who have struck out on their own, who have key knowledge in certain areas of publicity. Determine the type of publicity that will best suit the needs of your company, and then build on the services you need and want from there.

“Have your people contact my people.” Believe it or not, having a publicist on staff boosts your credibility. This is basically for two reasons. First, it shows that you are serious about your product. If you did not believe it could be a success, you would not hire someone to tell the world about it. Second, it makes you look and feel important, which in turn gives you the confidence you need to thrive.

#8 – Cost of Keeping a Publicist or PR Firm

This is actually the number one reason why most small businesses never hire a publicist. What most large firms will tell you is that they are all encompassing and a small firm will not be able to service all your needs. What most businesses don’t know, is that you don’t have to start out doing everything. You can start out slow or with only the most important pieces of the puzzle.

#9 What is a Media Kit? I Don’t Have a Clue!

Do you know how to pitch a producer? Very few people know what they need to do to successfully launch a powerful PR campaign. The time spent on learning every procedure, tactic and secret in addition to the probability of failing is not worth the money you save being your own publicist. Sure, anyone can write their own press release… but do they know all the rules? Do they understand the proper format? Do they know the tricks of the trade? Can they come up with an effective angle? Publicists can see things from a different point of view—and not just from the company’s perspective. It is vital to try and see everything from the public’s standpoint.

#10 GOOD or BAD either way it is Publicity!

Take as an example, me!  I am known as the “Online Security Authority” and I’ve only been doing the web 2.0 system called Blog Success since June 2006.  A total of 3 years of investment of time and money, inspiration and passion. Those have been the 4 components of the driving force behind my goal of landing on the first page of Google for “Online Security,” a search team and keywords that are now synonymous with OSA and Bill Wardell.  That was our goal and it was completed a year ago, and continues to stay at the top of all the major search engines, today.

So why do you need a publicity plan?

We decided in 2009 to contract with The Publicists Assistant to build a campaign (Media Kit) to help us take our online presence to the next level.  And the only way that was going to happen was to take what had already been accomplished and refine it, tweak it, correct it to make us a household name in households most important to our business.  For the results, check out what has been accomplished in 6 short months with ”CyberHood Watch Partners” and “Dave and Bill” in Google.  We are number #3 right under Dave Lettermen and Bill O`Riley, and right above Hewlett & Packard. That’s right!  Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard. Publicity works and it works in a big way when you do it correctly.

“Having a Publicist allows you to have them work for you in your voice to convey your message. You Can Control What is Being Said About You!” -Anissa Wardell

It has taken 3 years to become the Online Security Authority.  I’m often asked “what good is that, does it make you any money?”

(To see full story)

Blog Success

My mentor and coach Jack Humphrey taught all of us the way to be successful on the Internet. You need to build a network of people, sites, and blogs linking back to you. (Power Linking) backlinks for long and short term results, and now with Web 2.0. that includes Social backlinks. Links are the foundation, and with publicity as part of your marketing campaign, that includes all media and social buzz.

I knew that starting an online business was not an overnight money making scheme.  I also knew that if I was going to build my business the right way, I had to use the step by step process that had been laid out for me. I took the step by step process, did it while working a full time job, and made the best of what time and money I had available to me. Because of determination and follow through, I was able to leave my full-time day job and work from home.

I won’t tell you I did everything the right way, nor that I did it without being creative. If you have the money to do it big right away, you should. But there is something that he learned through this whole process, and that was perseverance. Never give up!

Those who quit before they succeed do themselves a disservice. I didn’t want to be one of those people. I wanted to prove not only to others but, also to myself that it could be done!

Do you have everything you want in life?

If you’re like most people the answer is a resounding NO. Sure, you’ve worked hard and achieved some of your goals…but ask yourself, is there more? Could you do better?

Most successful people have a common trait. They are notorious goal setters. They realize that a dream without a goal is only commentary. And hope is not a business plan.

Are these folks smarter than you? Do they come from wealthy families? Not at all. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that most successful people started with nothing, nada, zilch.

Many were in a worse position than you might ever be in. And yet they had a dream. They set goals. Goals they knew were achievable simply because others had done it before.

Setting goals can be a real challenge; especially if you’ve tried and failed before. But don’t worry; it’s not your fault. It’s just that people make goal setting seem difficult or even impossible.

So, Why The Hard Work on Publicity For Me?

Because last week I was contacted to do my own national radio show by a researcher was looking for new ideas and new personalities.  She took my information to her executive producer and said Bill Wardell, the Online Security Authority might be someone he would be interested in.

I wish you all success you deserve, Never quit and Always finish what you start

-Bill Wardell
Your Online Security Authority

After a break last week while I was in London, Jim and me are back in the saddle!  Today’s show:

• Advertising on the moon
• TwitCam
• Qik
• Suicide and iPhones

Listen to what we had to say about the above sites and services…click PLAY!

In this Webside Chat I interview Rex Gradeless of SocialMediaLawStudent.com which focuses on keeping legal professionals and law students up on social media best practices and news. 

Learn about…

• What courts are allowing in terms of social media in the court room?
• How Rex is using social media to grow his blog readership in a very specific niche.
• How to go into a niche based on a common topic set, but with a specific profession, such as social media and the legal profession.
• Rex’s best tips for using social media to get traffic to your blog.

I had a great time at Frank Garon’s List and Traffic workshop in London this past week.  Met some really great people, several BlogSuccess members from the UK I hadn’t met in person yet.  Got to meet Dean Hunt in person.  That was cool.  He’s hard to keep up with at the bar!

Me and Dean Hunt

Frank Garon, Dean Hunt, Robert Puddy

Westminster Abbey

Changing the Guard

Sample Picture Of Me In A Bar

I am about to fly to London, England where I will be taking a truth serum that guarantees that I spill all the juicy details, hold nothing back, and answer honestly to ANY questions you have for me… no matter what.
 
Oh, and the best part of all, it will be recorded in full, so you can laugh along.
 
What is this truth serum?
 
Beer, and lot´s of it!
 
You see, I will be meeting up with good friend and genius buzz marketer Dean Hunt in London, and together we will be answering your questions on video, at the hotel bar. It could be really embarrassing, but is guaranteed to be revealing.
 
To submit your questions, you need to post them in the members forum over at Dean´s Buzz Profits members forum. 
 
The site is a members only site, the members pay $47 per month, but I told Dean he has to do something extra special for you.
 
So, he has created a 14 day, $1 package for you.
 
Simply signup with this link to activate it.

Then, go to the BuzzProfits forum, and put your question on the forum (in the Truth Serum thread).
 
We will aim to answer as many of them as possible, and we may have some special guests with us as well, so you simply HAVE to be a part of this, if only to see a possible train wreck.
 
So go signup right this minute, I am getting on a plane shortly, so time is very much against us. Please hurry.
 
Wish me luck.
 
-Jack
 
PS: As well as getting FULL access to the 100+ techniques and exploits on BuzzProfits, and a free copy of Dean´s social media book, and access to Dean via the forum, you get to submit your truth serum questions to us… this is a no brainer guys. Ask the questions you have always wanted the REAL answers to.
 
PPS: If all you want to do is watch the car crashesque videos of Dean and I at the bar, it is well worth the $1 just for that!

7 Infrequently Asked Questions About Having A Successful Blog

Did you know that most lists of “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) are made up by the person who wrote them?  I guess we all know that deep down, but no one really talks about it.  Weird.

Anyway, here is a list of Infrequently Asked Questions (IAQ) that many people might want to ask themselves about building a successful blog. 

Blogging IAQ

Q:  Am I really serious enough about being a successful blogger to go through all the work it takes, or am I just dreaming?

A:  97.2% of people who never ask themselves this question would answer that they aren’t nearly serious enough beyond buying a couple courses and telling everyone in a forum how they failed to make them rich.

Q:  Will I do whatever it takes to create a blog that is wildly exciting and useful to my target readers?

A:  See answer #1

Q:  If autoblogging and shortcuts are all so damned effective, why isn’t there a single A-List blog that uses completely automated and scraped content?

A:  Because “phoning it in” is the antithesis of what blogging is about.  If people want to read crap, there are thousands of leading crap content producers than you couldn’t possibly compete with.

Q:  If I am on disability, a fixed income, have no fingers, don’t own a computer, and have to shave my back twice a month, can I still be a million dollar blogger?

A:  Yes.  Yes you can!  Please send your money to me so I can show you how to be a success at blogging, even if you are the dumbest kid raised in a family of monkeys with no hope of doing anything remotely significant in your life.  I’d be happy to show you how for just $13.47, one time fee!

Q:  If blogging is such a good way to make money, why are most blogs abandoned, stagnant, and broke?

A:  Because fantasy and reality don’t get along with each other very well.  The fantasy goes:  “I’m starting a blog and I’m going to make money blogging!” 

Reality, usually in the next day or two, brings “Holy crap!  I’m a much better customer and surfer than I am a worker.  Think I’ll just stick to buying stuff and watching kitten videos on YouTube.” 

Most web users are here to buy stuff, find information, and be entertained.  Therefore most people will never have a profitable presence of any kind on the web no matter how exciting it seems to them on the surface.  When it comes to work, most would rather play and keep their day jobs as much as they say they hate them.

Ironcially, the same people who say they can’t work on a blog every day after their real job, that it would be too hard, have no problem surfing the web till all hours and going to work half dead the next morning.

Q:  I want to be financially independent but I don’t like the thought of writing and marketing much because I have a full time job.  Can I still be a good blogger?

A:  No.  No one cares if you have to work nights and weekends when starting out.  EVERYONE had to work long, hard hours when they started.  That’s the way it is.  Deal with it.

Q:  Aren’t there easier ways to make money online than blogging?

A:  Yes.  You can sell all your stuff in the attic and garage on Ebay.  You can become a virtual assistant for $8 / hour.  You can sell your body on Craigslist.  There are tons of ways to “make money” online.  It’s just about what kind of money you want to make.

You can really do a lot of link building in an hour if you are focused and have a plan.  Here you will find that link building workout plan.  All you need is just a dash of focus for one hour and you’ll come out of the session with more links with a more solid relationship with your current followers to boot.

Low Hanging Links

This is your 20 minute warm up.  It will get your fingers ready to roll and put you in the “zone” for the rest of the hour.  It is best to stretch before every workout, so crack those knuckles, down an energy drink, saddle up and let’s get going!

Blog Comments:  These are special simply for their traffic.  Direct clicks.  You need to visit your favorite blogs for the next 15 minutes and do some meaningful, engaging commenting.  The more funny, thoughtful, and pithy (to the point) the better.  There’s no telling what any blog’s comment links are really worth to the engines unless you slow down to check, so get that out of your head.  These links are made for clickin’!

Twitter:  Make a couple really helpful Tweets for your followers.  From some of the stuff you discovered at the blogs above, you should have some neat things to point to in Twitter.  You can do this in 5 minutes tops.  You should be working up to your target heart rate now!

20 Minute Mark

Internal Linking:  Internal links are very important.  They are links from your site’s pages to other pages on your site.  They are very much the same as links from other websites in the way engines use them to decide on the strength of your internal pages.  Do a quick post (I mean VERY quick) on your favorite posts from the last 2 months. 

Start the post with something like…

“I’d like to welcome all my new readers!  Thanks so much for being here.  Since you’ve just joined us, I wanted to give you what I consider my best __________ posts in the last 2 months.”

Make the posts you choose themed.  Pick a topic you’ve written the most about in the last couple months and choose 3-4 posts to link to after the lines above.  Use the best keywords for each post (what you’d want those posts to rank for) as the actual links.  Then do a short description for each.

Example:

Link Building on a Budget Part 1:  This is the first in a series of posts I did on cheap or free link building tactics.

So do 3-4+ of those and you’re done.  Tag with overall best 3-4 keywords, post, and go to the next step.

Buzz dat post:  Tell your friends on the social networks you belong to that you’ve just posted and ask for some link love.  This is just a resource-style post, so don’t go overboard like you’ve just created the greatest post ever, but work for the next 10 minutes on getting your social networks updated so people can re-tweet and otherwise link to it for you.

Tip:  Be funny.  “Here are my best posts on __________ of all time!  (all-time in the last 2 months that is)  “

You have 20 minutes to do all of the above.  If you are out of shape and need to pace yourself, you might go over an hour today.  But keep working at it and don’t get down on yourself if you aren’t fast enough yet to get the above done in 20 minutes.  And yes, this can be done in the amount of time alloted when you’ve worked up to it!

20 Minute Cool Down

Deep breath.  That was intense, but you’re feeling the burn and it feels awesome.  You’re getting some real work done.  Sense of accomplishment is releasing endorphins to ease the pain.  You’re out of breath, but feeling a bit giddy.  Now we tackle some fairly intense stuff and wind down from there…

Put Out Some Feelers:  Many bloggers accept guest posts.  This sounds like a great way to get some of the best linkage you can get for search engines AND direct traffic, but everyone fails to plan ahead and actually do this guest posting thing properly, most of the time.  You tell yourself you have to get some guest post gigs on a couple of the bigger blogs in your niche, but you never do anything about it.  This is where you put in the sweat and get the show on the road.

QUICK!  Go back to the blogs you commented on above and check out a couple.  Skim through their last 5 or so posts.  You’ve already been in their comments so you know the “mood” their readers are in lately.  Isolate a couple of ideas, on the fly, for posts you could put together for each blog.

Go to the blogger’s contact form and pitch your idea.  Use something similar to the following:

Hey Darren,

I was reading your _________ post and really got a lot out of it.  I also noticed your readers really seemed to be interested by the number of comments you got.  I have an idea for a post about ________ which I think ties right into what you’re talking about here.  If I put together a great post on ____________ would you consider it for an exclusive guest post? 

I can have it done in _________ so that it makes for a great followup and more conversation on the ___________ topic.  Would love to have the chance to show you what I can do! 

Sincerely,

Done.  Do it again on another big blog and you’re done with this exercise!

That should have taken no more than 20 minutes, and that completes your 1 hour link building workout for the day!

Recap

In the last hour you have built something like the following:

1.  5-6 links in comments on other popular blogs in your niche.  Pithy, strong, engaging comments designed for people to click your link and check you out because you’re so darned helpful!

2.  Care and nurturing of your Twitter following.  Content development on your microblog!  You linked to other sites, but you reminded your followers why they follow you, and you should even see some traffic in your stats to indicate people came to your site through your Twitter profile just because you posted.  If you got re-tweeted, all the better!  (Place “Please RT! at the end of the Tweets you want lots of retweets for.  If you end up sending some good traffic to the bloggers you’re pointing to, and they happen to be the bloggers you are trying to get guest post gigs with, well, you can fill in the blanks there!)

3.  Internal linking:  You sent link love to your inner pages.  3-6 or so links there which are almost as important as incoming links from other sites!

4.  Guest posting:  You set the stage for a couple of major links via guest posts.  Your 1 hour link building workout tomorrow will include follow up with those bloggers and, if one or both accept your proposal, you can spend some of your workout planning your guest posts.  It’s important to work different muscle groups and alternate each day’s workout anyway!

Perform this workout an hour per day and you will really start seeing some changes in your rankings and traffic starting the first day.