Like the value of the U.S. dollar, the Australian dollar has dropped dramatically. It was worth 95 cents US a few months ago, and now it’s worth about 68 cents US as of October 9.
Why this matters to you is that Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind, charges admission in Australian dollars. If you order now, you will save big money, even as the U.S. dollar drops in value. This is a really good deal that can help you bring in some extra money part-time during these difficult economic times.
I’ve already raved about this program before and if you don’t believe me, just do a search on Google for “Blog Mastermind Reviews” to see what other people are saying. Seriously, don’t take my word for it. Read reviews by some other people.
It’s the only program of it’s kind that teaches you how to make a full-time living from blogging only part time, and is led by one of the best blog teachers I know of.
Already over a 1,000 people have taken part in the program, with many satisfied graduates earning good money from their blogs. Last month (September 2008) I was offline because of Hurricane Gustav and my blogs still brought in a pretty decent completely passive income. The money came in from affiliate product sales and paid advertising. I just started selling advertising on a couple of my blogs in July and that income is increasing each month. It increased in September without me knowing it.
Part of what you will learn in the Blog Mastermind program is how to diversify your income streams so you have money coming in from a lot of sources. As each small source grows, your total income grows without you having all your eggs in one basket. If an income source dries up, there are plenty of others to rely on.
I was only able to get online sporadically from some hot spots around town until our internet service was restored on 9/27, and I didn’t write more than a few short posts. I was more involved with email and getting in touch with my family to let them know we were okay even though we were completely out of touch.
It was great having some money coming in from efforts I made in the past. I was offline and my tutoring income suffered greatly because of school closures due to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. But my blogging income actually grew during September, even though I spent no more than a few hours the entire month writing posts.
Adding blogging to your mix of income sources is a great way to recession-proof your life and make sure you still have income if this horrible economy trickles down and takes away your full-time job.
YOU CAN SAVE IF YOU ACT BEFORE MONDAY, OCTOBER 13
If you paid for entry into the program right now with a credit (or debit) card that is in US dollars, you would save roughly 32% off the entry fee, because the course fees are in Australian dollars.
If you ordered the $97/month for six months plan, your credit card statement would show about $66 as
long as the Aussie dollar remains where it is now.
For the $497 AUD prepaid package, where you get the entire program up front (already a 15% discount off the monthly price), the cost on your US card would show roughly $338.
Note of course these prices are subject to change based on the current exchange rates, but it doesn’t look like the Australian dollar will climb back up any time soon, at least not by Monday because the currency markets will be closed until then.
It really doesn’t matter though, because Yaro is changing his pricing as of Monday, October 13, and will be charging in American dollars then. So you only have until Monday to save.
You can join here -
Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program
When you go to the payment page you will see prices of $97 or $497 depending on which option you choose.
Those prices are in Australian dollars today, Saturday and Sunday; so the discount will show up if you pay with a US dollar bank card.
THE $97/MONTH PAYMENT PLAN IS GOING AWAY TOO
On Monday, Yaro is also eliminating the $97 a month pricing plan. He said he does have plans to bring it back, but because of his bank and online shopping cart system, he can’t charge in USD for recurring subscriptions.
Until he changes his system or they upgrade the features, there won’t be a $97 a month option, only a $497 prepaid course option.
To put it in simple terms - If you want to join Blog Mastermind, the cheaper price deadline is Monday, October 13, so you had better decide soon.
Here’s the order page -
Good luck with your blog and make sure you tell me what you think of Yaro’s course if you join.
Regards,
Sherri
PS. Don’t forget, Yaro has a 30 day money back policy, so you can sample it without worrying about
losing your money.
Even if you are not 100% sure, you should give his coaching program a try now so you can lock in the Australian dollar pricing and if you decide it’s not for you, just ask for your money back within 30 days.
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This post is to those of you who clicked on the Blog Mastermind - Blog Profits Blueprint graphic ad or text link I’ve put in some recent posts. There is also a graphic ad in the sidebar that some of you may have clicked.
If you clicked over and downloaded the Blog Profits Blueprint, have you taken the time to read it or listen to it via MP3? If not, and you’re serious about blogging for profits, it’s time to take action and listen to or read that free report.
The audio version is 1 hour 41 minutes long. You can download it to an MP3 player or load it to a few CDs and listen to it on your daily commute. Personally, I read it and then I listened to it while driving and then I decided it was valuable enough to sit down at my computer and read the text version along with listening to the audio version at the same time for maximum retention of the material.
If you have read the Blog Profits Blueprint, have you thought about taking the Blog Mastermind course? If not, please give it some thought. It’s really helped me improve my blogging skills and I’m making more money in a way Yaro didn’t discuss in the course. It came up from what I learned in the course because I spent the time learning about hosting, WordPress, plug-ins and the correct way to set up a blog and create an optimized internal structure.
I’ve started charging other people to set up blogs and static websites using WordPress software. I also work for people who already have a blog or blogs, want help improving and optimizing them and are willing to pay for that help. When I started Blog Mastermind I never would have thought people would be willing to pay me for what I learned how to do in the course. These folks want a blog but are not the least bit interested in taking the class and doing the work themselves. They have other income streams that have more value for their time. Most don’t even write there own blog posts. They hire ghost writers to do that for them. The other money-making strategies are beginning to bring in some income, but this is by far the most lucrative and completely unexpected.
If you would like to read a review of the course, I wrote an article entitled Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program Review and you can read it by clicking on that linked text.
So, if you haven’t read the blueprint, please make time for it. If you have, you might want to take the mentoring program. You never know what that knowledge might bring you.
Sherri
Surprised by what the mentoring program knowledge is bringing me
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Name: Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program
Creator: Yaro Starak
Link to Program: Blog Mastermind
Purpose: Learn how to earn a full-time living by blogging part-time
I’ve published several posts on this blog about the reopening of the Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program. I signed up in December 2007 and I recently graduated in June 2008. I enjoyed the lessons, I love Yaro’s laid-back teaching style and his ability to point you in the right direction while warning you of pitfalls that will lead you astray.
Yaro is a born teacher. He is passionate about sharing everything he knows with those who are willing to learn from him. He gives away material that others would charge hundreds or thousands of dollars to sell. He is very responsive on the course forums and will answer your questions directly if you aren’t getting the information you need from the lessons or forums. I have studied under few others who are as good as Yaro is. In my opinion, he defines under-promise and over-deliver, something very rare in the internet business world.
Yaro did not start off writing his blogs for the money. He started them because he loves the topics he writes about and he loves writing. Earning a living from his blogs was more of a happy accident than an intentional process. He had other jobs or other businesses online and offline, and he blogged for the enjoyment of it. He goes into detail about his background in the course.
The key question I get is does it really work? Am I now making a full-time income blogging part-time after the 6-month course? Honestly, I am making some money but not a full-time income yet, and not because the program didn’t teach me how to do it. Other students that started around when I did are making significant money with their blogs. Mert Erkel and Caroline Middlebrook are two I can name off the top of my head.
At this time in my blogging career I just haven’t finished learning and implementing everything Yaro has to teach. It’s one of those it’s not him, it’s me situations. Let me explain…
I’ve been a lazy blogger until this summer. I have a 3/4-time job as a high school math and science tutor and I’m pulled away from the computer during some of my most productive writing hours of the day, 3 p.m. - 8 p.m. My computer was in the shop 3 times for about a month each time since I signed up for Blog Mastermind. I only had my computer in working order for 3 of the 6 months of the course. I used the desktop we have in the den that I had to share with my son, and my productivity during those periods was far less than optimal to say the least.
Because of a lack of computer access during my lessons, I often did a lesson but then didn’t implement anything I learned for weeks. I had to go back and review lessons because by the time I had my computer back, I had forgotten what I was supposed to accomplish. As I got into the more advanced lessons, I had to go back and review previous lessons because I rushed through them and hadn’t completed everything correctly.
I would get some momentum going and get a lot done, and then my computer would break again and I would lose all that momentum. Momentum is very important when you want to accomplish anything. Without momentum, inertia sets in and you tend to backslide. It seems like a higher power is testing my commitment to blogging for any amount of steady income because of all the interruptions. I’m taking this as a test rather than as a signal to throw in the towel and do something else.
Since I’ve had my computer back for a reasonable period of time now, I’ve rebuilt my momentum, reviewed lessons and then spent the time I am supposed to implementing them. It’s fantastic that all the lessons and resources are still available to me even though I graduated from the program and I’m no longer paying for it. Being able to consistently blog 5 days a week is getting me much better results.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from this program is that consistency, momentum and diligence in writing great, authentic content for my blogs every week is the key to success.
I’ve had most of my blogs for a year or more, and since I started implementing my Blog Mastermind lessons, even during the very sporadic periods I had this spring, traffic to my blogs has grown steadily each month. I am steadily getting more subscribers and I began making enough money to cover my web hosting and autoresponder monthly service fees. Then I started making a little more than that, and I’m presently making at least $100 per month right now.
A hundred dollars doesn’t sound like much I know, but it’s the tip of the iceberg, or more accurately, the beginning of a snowball. As time progresses, I get more search engine traffic, and the more traffic, the more people come to one of my blogs looking for honest information about something and buy something I’m selling. More visitors = more sales = higher income. Lather, rinse and repeat for increased growth.
I have a small snowball right now, but each time it rolls over I can foresee considerable growth as I go back through the lessons and implement more of what I learn. I’ve become a far better blogger and writer since last December, but I still need practice and to implement more of what I learned in the program.
I’ve talked about the money I’m making, but blogging is not solely about getting traffic to sell products. Blogging is about your passion for writing regularly and copiously about a topic or topics you love. Not like, love.
Blogging can make you a millionaire, but not over night. It takes consistent work to build your blogging business and grow your online income. After a few years, Yaro is now making 6 figures consistently. But it didn’t start out that way. It took time and effort to make that kind of money. Yaro isn’t a millionaire yet, but one of his students is. You can listen to or read Alborz Fallah’s story here. As a teacher myself, I know how great it feels when one of your students takes what they learned from you and goes to much higher levels with it. No amount of money will ever give you that feeling.
If you are passionate about writing and willing to devote yourself to blogging, read on.
Blog Mastermind consists of 27 lessons. You learn and implement one lesson each week for 27 weeks. Here is a list of topics covered:
Included with the program is a private Yahoo group where you can interact readily with other students and graduates of the program. You will have access to the forum where you can interact with Yaro, graduates and other students. You get a great deal of extra material in the form of reports, podcasts, and videos that go into lesson material in greater detail than the lessons themselves. The lessons are very detailed, but if you want to know the deep meaning of why you should do certain things, this extra material answers those deeper questions. You will have access to several interviews Yaro did with “A-list” bloggers before he was an A-list blogger himself. They are loaded with valuable information.
In all things, there are positives and negatives. Here are some things you must be aware of:
This is the last big question and the answer is $97 per month for 6 months, or a one-time fee of $497 up front. That’s an $85 savings if you pay up front.
If you pay monthly, you have access to all lessons up through the weeks for which you have paid. If you pay the one-time fee, you get access to all the lessons at once. If you decide to pay the one-time fee, you should restrain yourself and complete the lessons in order anyway. Skipping around will be less productive for you in the long run.
Are you ready to be a blogger and make it a business? Sign up at the following link:
Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program
Sherri
Blog Mastermind graduate and still studying
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Watch the following new free videos and get a first-hand look over Yaro’s shoulder on exactly how he makes his living blogging. You can view the videos at the following link:
I hope you’ll watch. If you like what you see and are ready to start blogging, there are links on the video page that will take you to the Blog Mastermind enrollment page.
Thanks,
Sherri
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Whoever said blogging can’t make BIG money had not heard this story.
Yaro Starak interviewed his previous student, Alborz Fallah, who is the owner of caradvice.com.au - a car blog for Australians, which was valued at $5 million dollars and generates close to $50,000 a month.
You can listen or read (or both) the interview here -
Alborz started his blog like most people, sitting at home, writing content each day outside of the time he spent at his full time job. His blog grew, he started making money and he just kept working.
Eventually he was approached by people who wanted to buy his blog. He said no, until someone came along who only wanted to buy a share in the site and help it continue to grow. Alborz agreed and
his blog immediately went from part time hobby, to full time business.
Today Alborz’s blog has full time employees, he travels to Europe to test some of the most prestigious cars in the world and it’s fair to say he is living a dream - making big money writing about a topic he loves.
In this interview you can hear Alborz talk about how he grew his traffic, how he brought on investors to help grow his site and what’s it like being in charge of a multi-million dollar blog.
It’s worth listening to this interview because you can learn some key things to help with your own quest to make a profitable blog, for example -
- How Alborz chose the topic for his blog is a
great lesson for anyone else out there struggling
to come up with a blog topic
- The search engine advice Alborz offers is
powerful yet simple and will immediately help your
own blog get more traffic, if you follow it
- The story of how investors came on board to take
Car Advice to the next level is unique, but
definitely worth hearing because it shows how you
can grow a blog from just making a few hundred
dollars, to making six or seven figures a year.
The interview is available for instant download in MP3 or text transcript. Here’s the link again -
Yaro released this audio to inspire people to believe what is possible with a blog.
If you want to follow in Alborz’s footsteps, consider taking on Yaro as your blog coach and join his Blog Mastermind coaching program and you might just become the next Alborz.
Speak soon,
Sherri
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In preparation for the launch of the new Blog Mastermind, here is the link to the new, free video, Conversion Blogging.
It’s absolutely free with no obligation. You just click on the link above and watch the video. It’s 33 minutes long and packed with great content on making money with your blog, so you might want to grab a coffee or something and get comfortable.
After the video, you have the opportunity to enter your name and email address to subscribe to the Blog Mastermind email list and get the link to the second video. The new Blog Mastermind will launch one week from today, so you will get a fair amount of email from Yaro over the week.
During normal periods, however, Yaro doesn’t abuse your time by sending you a bunch of senseless email. I was on his list long before I signed up to take the course and I’ve only stayed on two lists for the long haul. The other list is the Thirty Day Challenge. Yaro always provides great content worth reading. The emails are formatted for easy reading, unlike many of the emails you’ll get being on other’s lists.
Here is the link again: Conversion Blogging. Click on over and watch!
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For those of you eagerly awaiting the reopening of Blog Mastermind, your wait is over. Yaro Starak is launching the new and improved Blog Mastermind course on July 29, 2008. It was supposed to reopen in June, but there were some content issues that Yaro wanted to fix before launching the new program.
Later today, July 22, Yaro is launching a new free, two-part video series about blogging. Check back here for the link to the free video. Part I requires absolutely no commitment on your part. You don’t even have to give your name or email address to watch it.
To see part 2, you will have to opt-in to the email list by giving your name and email address. You can remove yourself from any of Yaro’s lists by scrolling to the bottom of any email and clicking on the unsubsribe link. Yaro uses AWEBER, as do I, and AWEBER has a very firm committment to the CAN-SPAM act, so unsubscribing is easy and you won’t be harrassed about it should you subscribe and then decide to unsubscribe later.
In the meantime, please download and read the Blog Profits Blueprint. It’s available free as a pdf file and as an audio at the following banner link:
There are always details involved whenever you embark on learning something new.
If you are brand new to blogging and don’t know how to get started, go to Become a Blogger.com to learn how to set up a blog for the first time.
Here’s to your blogging success,
Sherri Joubert
Still a student of quality blogging
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Most of us who blog seriously use WordPress software, own our URLs and pay for private hosting. It’s the most secure and flexible solution for a blog. WordPress has its limits, however, and lots of developers solve this problem by creating a plugin to perform a specific function, like allowing people to subscribe to comments.
In this article I review the following plugins I’ve recently found at MaxBlogPress.com:
These plugins require free registration and a password to download them. You will also see some one-time offers when you register your first plugin. Since blogging is a business for me, I find the offers, in the form of an upsell, very interesting. The marketing techniques that go along with the plugin registrations are a lesson to behold. Some may find the offers a bother, but as students of internet business and marketing, as well as business owners and operators, I think we should all study the process when we sign up to download one of these plugins.
You will only see the one-time offers once when you register your first plugin, no matter which one it is. If you don’t take advantage of the offer or offers then, you won’t see them again when you register any subsequent plugins. These are truly one-time offers!
There is a little different procedure for installing and implementing these plugins than the ones you get from WordPress.org. Here’s how to do it:
One thing I find cumbersome about WordPress is you can set the number of posts per page, but it’s static across all your pages, categories and archives. If you set 5 posts per page, you’ll have 5 posts on your main or home blog page, 5 listed per page for each category and 5 per archive page (usually archives are stored by month and year).
What if you want 3 posts on your home page but 10 listed on each category page and maybe 30 on each archive page? You can’t do it without a plugin. The plugin that does this easily and seamlessly is Different Posts per Page. You can download it at the following link:
This plugin lets you put different numbers of posts on each page, including each category page. It’s amazing to have total control over this function. It gives you the flexibility to easily display each part of your blog the way you want it displayed.
If you click around to the different pages on this blog you’ll see I have 3 posts on the home page, up to 20 on each category page, up to 20 on each archive page, and 5 posts will be displayed through my RSS feed.
You can set a different number of pages for each category. This is handy for grouping notes together or perhaps keeping all posts together that form a course of study. I plan to use that benefit on my Thirty Day Challenge blog.
The training category on that blog needs to be split up into years (2007 & 2008), and all notes from training for each year need to stay together in ascending chronological order. Yes, you read that right. You can set the order on each page to ascending or descending. Blogs default to descending order only, which makes sense on the home page, but not on pages where a topic starts at the bottom and ends at the top of the page. When you want to organize a category from day 1 to day 30, you want the page to start at day 1, and this plugin allows you to sort posts in ascending order!
I absolutely love this plugin and all the flexibility it gives me.
If your blog is an ecommerce blog, you can join the affiliate program and display the DealDotCom deal of the day using this widget.
What is DealDotCom? I’m glad you asked. DealDotCom is a sales website that sells only one, single product each day for a very low price, a real steal of a deal. A product is available for one day and the price is usually insanely low compared to its regular price. There is a limited amount of the product for sale each day, and it’s available until midnight or until it sells out. Once it sells out there won’t be any more available.
The DealDotCom commission structure is generous. Affiliates earn 35% on direct sales from their widgets and 15% on the second tier. That means if someone goes to the DealDotCom site and joins the affiliate program through your widget, you earn 15% on the sales through their widget. You also earn a commission if a buyer buys anything again in the future from DealDotCom, no matter how they return to the site.
Here’s the link to the MaxBlogPress DealDotCom Widget:
MaxBlogPress DealDotCom Widget
I have this widget installed on this blog in the sidebar and on a couple of my other blogs as well. The thing I like about the MaxBlogPress widget over the DealDotCom widget is you can adjust the width it displays in pixels. The other widget isn’t adjustable, hung over the edges of my sidebars and was kind of tacky-looking compared to my blog themes.
If you want to offer useful software, ebooks and training courses for insanely low prices to your readers, this widget is the one to have.
If you’re a member of BlogRush you know that sometimes the post titles that show up in the widget are way off-topic to the category your widget is supposed to contain. As bloggers we also maintain the right to publish an off-topic post we want our regular readers to see. We may not want that post syndicated all over the blogosphere, however.
To make sure only your best posts are syndicated through BlogRush, BlogRush Click Maximizer is the tool to use. When you write a post you have the option of including that post in your BlogRush feed and you can change the post title to something short and catchy so it will fit in the widget. Here is the download link:
The widget is located on the write page in the WordPress administration panel and you set it when you compose or edit a post. If you don’t tick the “include this post in BlogRush feed” box, it won’t be syndicated. Since you have to turn it on, you control which posts are syndicated. The rest aren’t syndicated.
BlogRush has an automatic filter you can set on your account page, but the filter has to be specific enough to not filter out too many of your posts. You run the risk of syndicating something you don’t want on the widget or filtering out something you do want on the widget. I don’t like hit-and-miss when it comes to building traffic to my blogs and this plugin lets me make sure I only put highly targeted posts out on the blogosphere.
If you’re a member of BlogRush, this plugin is necessary to increase traffic through the widget to your blog.
Ordinarily I hate popups, all popups. But there are a few places where they are beneficial to the reader. They can be used to remind a visitor to register for an event, direct them to special offers, highlight an update, subscribe to your RSS feed or a newsletter or join an email list. Popups are also useful when they are specific to a particular page or post, so you’re not seeing random ads popping up all over the place.
This widget allows you to customize popups for your site. The annoyance factor is easily eliminated by only allowing the popup to appear to any visitor on a single visit and then they will never see that popup again. If they’re interested in what was offered in the popup and you want it available, they will be more willing to look around your site to find the update or subscribe button or email signup box. But they don’t have to see a popup ever time they visit your site.
Honestly, if I saw a popup every time I visited a site, I would hit the unsubscribe button so fast it would make your head spin. This plugin allows you to use popups without the annoyance of popups.
I’m not currently using this plugin, but I have some ideas and future plans where it might be useful to something specific. If used wisely, I believe this plugin can be used to the benefit of your readers and you. You can download it here:
MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup
I’ll be writing about some more useful plugins in future posts. I hope you’ll give these a try. I find the first three very handy. When I try the unblockable popup plugin I’ll post an update about it.
Here are the plugin links again:
When you get to the download page, you can go ahead and download all the plugins at once or you can download them as you need them. You will see the one-time offers when you register your first plugin only. After that you will never see those one-time offers again. The marketing strategy is really interesting and I hope you’ll study it closely and go through the whole process to see how it’s done. It may be something you want to use in the future when you launch a product of your own.
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