I am getting ready to drive to the airport and catch a plane for Alex Jeffreys workshop in Las Vegas. The event is for the students from his first coaching program that started in November of last year. Once I found out he was having the event, I started saving money and added it to my list of goals for 2009.
I created my list of goals as a direct result of Alex Jeffreys coaching. The first module of the course was all about planning and goal setting which in turn makes you more productive. I set goals in 4 different areas: personal, entrepreneurial, business, and income.
The first goal was to take the wife and kids on a vacation to Venezuela. My wife is from there and has not been home to see her family in 5 years. I am proud to say that the tickets are purchased and we will be departing on June 22nd for 6 weeks of South American fun. This was made possible becuase of the things that I learned from Alex Jeffreys.
One of my business goals is to build an email list of 7500 people. I am now at about 2700 but have not even hosted my JV Giveaway yet. I am hosting one with my fellow students Garry Parkes, Gary Simpson, and Carl Barton that will be taking place within the next week or two. I intend to follow with one of my own and probably several others after that. Once again, Alex Jeffreys is responsible for prompting me to use JV giveaways to build my list.
I set my income goal for the year at $100,000. I know that seems like a lot but I like to set my goals high. I don't think that I will be disappointed if I fall a little short. Even though I am almost halfway through the year and have not made even close to that. I am still optimistic.
You see, most of my plans will not come into fruition for a few months. I have made over $5000 this year, which paid for the plane tickets to Venezuela. This was from affiliate promotions that I sent to my newly built email list and from links in my ebook that I published and gave away for free.
I had the money for Vegas set aside a month or so ago but Murphy's law reared it's ugly head. Any one not familiar with Mr. Murphy? His law states: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
It wasn't just one thing, it was a bunch of things. I won't go into it all because a lot of it is personal and I don't want to bore you more than I already am. Suffice it to say that all of a sudden, I was not going to make it to Vegas. But it's funny how things can work out when you want something bad enough.
If you have never read Napolean Hill's "Think and Grow Rich", then you need to. He talks about the power of auto suggestion. Basically, if you want some thing and truly believe that you can acheive it, you will acheive it. What you think will come to pass, but only if you beleive it will with all your heart and desire.
When I read this part of the book, the first thing that came into my mind was prayer. When some one prays for something to what ever deity that you believe in, it is usually with very strong desire and emotion. If you want something bad enough, you will pray for it every night for a long period of time.
The act of wanting something with such deep emotion transmutes into action on a subconcious level. With out knowing, you will begin to take action that will eventually resolve itself into the very thing that you desired in the first place. That is the power of "prayer" or "auto suggestion" in scientific terms.
Well I guess I wanted it bad enough because
"I'M GOING TO VEGAS BABY"
One of my entrepreneurial goals was build joint venture partnerships. I have created a few so far but hope to "up the stakes" in Las Vegas. There are going to be several other large events taking place at the same time as Alex's. Hopefully I can make some profitable connections while I am there.
That goes without saying that Alex is going to show us step by step how he plans his business and I am sure he has alot more planned for us. All through our coaching program he always surprised and over delivered. I expect this to be more of the same.
Well, I am running out of time. I have a plane to catch at 4:45. I will make some posts from Vegas and let you know what's going on. I am also taking my video cam so I should get some choice footage to share as well.
Filed under Make Money Online, Social Marketing by 
Last week, when I attended module 3 of Alex Jeffreys coaching program, he announced that he was going to have a contest amongst the students and give away $1000 to the winner. He did not divulge the details until module 4 which took place this past Thursday evening.
I was seriously pumped up and couldn't wait to find out what the contest was all about. I ended up having to wait until late last night. I missed module 4 because I was at a Christmas party with my wife at PGA National resort, where she works. Boy was that a wing ding! (A story for another time)
Friday when I got home from my 8 to 5, the replay wasn't up on Alex's website yet so I checked in at some of my fellow students blogs to see if I could find out what the contest was all about. I gleaned that it was going to be who could drive the most traffic to their blogs over the next 2 weeks. Sounds like *productive fun*. I love the way that Alex motivates us to succeed by taking action.
I didn't want to start until I got all the details. I am taking the entire week of Christmas off so I will have more time then usual to take my shot at the $1000 prize. My wife gives cellulite reduction massages on the side and had several appointments so I took the kids to the park and the library for most of the day. After everyone settled into bed, I sat in my office and listened to the recording of module 4.
I call it my office. It's a large walk-in closet that a desk just barely fits in and I have put up shelves to store all my internet marketing products and ebooks that I have bought and printed out over the last few years. It's quite the collection.
Back to the contest. Like I mentioned before, it's about driving traffic to my blog. The conditions are that you must prove your results with Google analytics and you must post about how you are driving traffic to your blog. Once again, Alex is helping his students help themselves. By posting your methods on your blog, all of the other students will be able to go to the other student' s blogs to see what methods they are using.
Alex has really put a lot of thought and planning into this coaching program. I have been immensely impressed since the beginning and it just keeps getting better. His recommendation for driving traffic is about visiting the other students blogs and leaving comments without *pimping* your blog. If you provide value, the traffic will come.
That is what blogging is all about. Be yourself and be helpful to others. People will respond in kind. Alex is a student of the guru's guru, Rich Schefren. One of his favorite quotes from Rich is "marketing makes selling superfluous". Don't sell, provide value and the money will follow.
I already have Google Analytics installed. That is how I know that since I started this coaching program, the traffic to my blog has increased by 643.55%. I have achieved this simply by taking action on everything that Alex has instructed us to do. Mostly, it has come from me going to my fellow students blogs and offering my help and making constructive comments.
In turn, they come to my blog and leave comments. Alex calls this technique "Oil Rig Hopping". The analogy is that your blog is an oil platform. It is a known fact that offshore oil platforms attract huge amounts of fish and sea life. The reason for this is that algae grows on the structure which attracts clams which attract small fish which attract bigger fish which attract even bigger fish which attract sharks.
Your blog is the oil rig. Your content becomes the algae and the clams which start to attract visitors. The more visitors leave comments and create a "buzz" about your blog, the more fish come to your oil rig. Eventually, your content will attract the notice of bigger fish, ie. successful internet marketers and eventually some of the gurus.
This is the technique that Alex used and enabled him to build some very powerful JV partners over time. With that said. I am going to concentrate on this technique to try and win the traffic contest. I am also going to branch out from our group of students and start commenting on other internet marketing blogs.
I am using a free tool called Comment Kahuna. This software goes out and finds high page rank blogs that have the no-follow feature disabled for their comments. This is very important for SEO when you are building backlinks. Google page rank is heavily weighted on backlinks. You want lots of backlinks from blogs with high page rank. That way some of that page rank is transferred to your blog. Using Comment Kahuna will serve a dual purpose: traffic and back links.
Another techinique that I am using is to submit my RSS feed to all the directories I can find. I am also submitting my blog to every blog directory I can find. I will continue to create more videos and to submit the videos to all of the video sites like YouTube and Viddler. This will get my blog's URL a lot of exposure which will lead to more visitors.
I use a lot of free traffic generating programs. I am going to pause all of my other ads and direct every scrap of traffic that I generate to this blog. There are too many to list here on this already to big blog post but I have a Hub page dedicated to all the ways that I get traffic for free. Take a minute to check it out. Some of the programs require very little effort and will gain you exposure simply by going about your normal business online.
I also have over 50 Hub pages and Squidoo lenses that I am going to put links on that redirect back to my blog. This is part of my Web 2.0 traffic strategy that I am going to reveal more of in the next couple posts. I am putting together something that is going to enable all of my fellow students, and any one else that wants to participate, leverage the power of social marketing. I am going to call it the "Web 2.0 Whammy".
Alex has mentioned this several times but I don't think the majority of my fellow students realize the power that is within our grasp if we work together. I hope to finish Web 2.0 Whammy before Christmas. If everyone implements it, we are going to see the hit counters on our blogs spin out of control and we are going to dominate the search engine results.
That's enough for now. Stay tuned for some videos on how I'm driving traffic and how to get more exposure for your blogs.
Filed under Building A Business, Make Money Online by
Last night was module 2 of Alex Jeffreys coaching program although I started working on it at lunch time. I went to the members area when I was on my lunch break and saw that the links to our "profit pulling platform" were live. I immediately downloaded everything and got started.
Alex has provided us with an ebook that we can give away for free to help us build a list. (you can get a copy for yourself by clicking on the picture in the right hand column) He also gave us a ready made squeeze page, a download page, and an awesome product to use as an upsell.
There were step by step video instructions on how to set up every aspect of this system starting with getting a domain name, and including things like setting up your auto responder, setting up your paypal buttons, and uploading your files to the server.
If I was a complete newbie, I am sure that I could have gone through the whole process with out a hitch. My hats off to you Alex for a job well done. Seeing as how I have done this on quite a few occasions with PLR products, I breezed right through it and had my list building system in place within an hour.More on Let The List Building Begin
Filed under Building A Business, List Building, Make Money Online by
I have been attempting to make money online for 4 years now. While I am not like some that have tried and tried and still haven't made my first dollar online, my results have not been what I expected or have desired.
I went to my first offline event at the end of last year and have been to several since. I have met some of the big name gurus face to face and had a few opportunities to talk with them a little. The one common theme that people like Keith Wellman and Bob "the teacher" Jenkins, among others, told me was that I needed to get a mentor.
This sounded like great advice until I found out how much money that was going to cost me. Most coaching programs where you actually have one on one interaction with a guru will run you about $5000 or so.
Needless to say, I didn't see this happening anytime soon.More on Starting Fresh, Gonna Build An Online Business.
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