The Spinning Donut

Yaro Starak just informed me that his Blog Mastermind coaching program charges in Australian dollars. Most online coaching programs charge in American dollars, and since the US dollar is anywhere from 5% to 10% stronger than the Aussie dollar as I write this, that’s a 5% to 10% price saving for you if you join Blog Mastermind.

Sign Up Now for Blog Mastermind!!

By now you probably know about Blog Mastermind.  Thanks to the Conversion Blogging video, the Blog Profits Blueprint and the interview with a million dollar blogger, Yaro’s blog coaching program opening built up a lot of buzz last week.

If you haven’t seen any of the videos, or read the Blueprint or listened to the million dollar blogger interview, you can start right now (it won’t cost anything) by watching the Conversion Blogging Video.

Already over 300 people have joined and are busy studying the materials, interacting in the community forums and using the Social Traffic Club to drive traffic to their blogs.

Yaro explained to me that he wanted to charge in $USD, but his Australian bank would not accept the currency, and since it was so close to the opening of his program, he decided to just go with $AUD.

In case you don’t know, Yaro is from Australia, though he sounds a lot like a Canadian sometimes because of his parents. He did say that his bank would change in the near future, and as soon as $USD is accepted he would switch back.

If you want to lock in the discount by paying in Australian dollars, you should join Blog Mastermind as soon as you can. Here’s the order page - Blog Mastermind Coaching Program Order Page.

Not a Course You Do By Yourself

Blog Mastermind is not just a course where you are left on your own to go through the training by yourself. It’s a real community, led by mentors who are successful bloggers, including Yaro himself.

If you are still not sure, but because of the cheaper price you are interested, you should head to Google and type in “Blog Mastermind Reviews” and see what other people are saying about the program.

500 people have participated in the course since it’s first run back in 2007 (it was closed since December 07), so there is plenty of feedback online coming from completely impartial people who have already taken the course.

It’s a smart idea to do research before joining any program, and I think in this case you will find the general consensus is that Blog Mastermind is well worth the cost of admission, especially when it is in Australian dollars.

Here’s the link for more information (and make sure you watch the behind the scenes tour video Yaro presents at the start of the page) -Blog Mastermind Coaching Program Order Page.

Good luck with your blog!

Bill

PS. The US Dollar, as you probably realize, is not doing so well lately. There’s a possibility that the Australian dollar will get stronger, so the discount if you are used to paying in US dollars, will not be a discount any more - instead it will be more expensive.

I suggest if you have any inclination to join Yaro’s coaching program that you do so soon so you can lock in the discounted price thanks to the currency difference.

Blog Mastermind Coaching Program Order Page

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Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind is a course I took last year (2007) on blogging.  I had just started a blog and was trying to help my wife start one as well.  There were so many questions I had from reading other blogs that I knew I needed some direction as we discovered this thing called blogging.

I had heard you could get more people to check out your blog than a static website and I witnessed that first hand with my wife’s static website.  When my wife first started her website it was getting about three visitors a day and when she first started a blog she was getting thirty visitors a day and we didn’t know anything about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  So I knew something was up with blogging and getting more eyes to your site.

Anyway, I don’t recall where I ran into Yaro’s website, probably through a Google search since I’m sure he ranks pretty high for blogging.  But I do remember running into his freely available pdf called Blog Profits Blueprint.  The pdf is a great foundation for blogging and I highly recommend it.  It is a blogging resource that you will refer to over and over.

Here are 3 resources to convince you to take Yaro’s course:

1. Conversion Blogging
2. Interview with Alborz Fallah - Million Dollar Blogger
3. How Yaro’s Blog Makes Money

The course costs $97.00/month for the 6 month course or $497.00 for the whole course and you save $85.00.  BAM!!

***   DOORS OPEN TOMORROW, TUESDAY, 7/29/08 ***

I’m giving away 3 iPod Shuffles to 3 Blog Mastermind students who sign up through this blog post at the $97/month level.  I’m giving away 1 iPod Nano to someone who signs up for the whole course at the $497.00 one-time payment level.  If you order by clicking this link or any other Blog Mastermind link in this post and you’ll be in the running to win one of these iPods, your choice of color, of course.

Note: If I get more than 3 people who sign up at the $497.00 level, I will start giving away more iPod Nanos to those people.  Probably one for every two that sign up.

So sign up for Yaro’s blogging course NOW and WIN an iPod!!

Also, whether you take the course or not, please subscribe to my blog via email or RSS Reader so you’ll be notified of other contests in the future where you’ll be able to win good stuff.

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Here are four videos by Ira Glass on YouTube about Storytelling.

Ira Glass on Storytelling #1

• Building a story
• Making listeners/readers want to keep listening/reading for some reason
• Speak naturally

Ira Glass on Storytelling #2

• Know when to abandon crap
• Get rid of the boring parts
• Failure is a big part of success
• More failure brings a situation where you’ll be super lucky

Ira Glass on Storytelling #3

• Going through the phase of making crap - keep going, don’t give up
• Do a lot of work
• Put yourself on deadlines
• Be accountable to someone who you have to be accountable to for completing work

Ira Glass on Storytelling #4

• In storytelling, be the teller and a listener

Recently for the 4th of July I visited my sister in Minnesota, USA, where, for a few nights, four families gathered around a campfire on a portion of 3 acres of land sprawled out over a hilly and tree-lined backyard.  Neighbors separated by 2-3 acres of the same.  Deer running through the yards once a day that stopped conversations and demanded everyone’s attention.  Idyllic.

Kids under 10 years old, teenagers, boyfriends, girlfriends, adults.  All circled around telling tales of present and past, embellishing every step of the way.  Favorite stories repeated from uncles and aunts requested by the older kids, wanting to remember and hear it again from years past.  Stories that brought new understanding because of time.

There was food and drink non-stop, making it difficult to stick to any kind of a low-fat diet.  We played volleyball in the pool and imagined all those bad calories we consumed were going to fall off.  Yea right.

The celebration ended with an extra night of fireworks and s’mores around the campfire.  Great fun.

photo credit: iBjorn

Dosh Dosh has written an article on How to Say Nothing in 500 Words (A Lesson on Writing) which is an excellent read on Paul McHenry Roberts’s article HOW TO SAY NOTHING IN FIVE HUNDRED WORDS which provides guidance on how to and how not to write college compositions.

photo credit: mAt0s

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Click image to purchase at Amazon.com

Chapter 5 - Blog Income and Earning Strategies

Chapter 5 is all about making money with your blog.

“There is no single right way or wrong way to earn money from blogging.”

“Cast your net wider,and you will be hard-pressed to fine two bloggers who make money identically.”

The assumption here is that you want to make money with your blog and Chapter 5 starts out with two questions and discussion on those questions.  Do you start off with ads on your blog from day one or do you build an audience and then advertise?

Six types of advertising in general are outlined and discussed followed by ad payment type which include CPC - cost per click, CPM - cost per thousand, and CPA - cost per acquisition.

1. Banner advertising
2. Textual advertising
3. Product -based advertising
4. Text-link ads
5. RSS ads
6. Sonpsorships

Finding Advertisers

Chapter 5 continues with how to prepare your blog for finding advertisers who might want to advertise directly on your blog.  A lengthy discussion explains not only how to find advertisers but also how to approach them, taking payments, how much to charge, ad formats, how many ads to display and optimizing your advertising.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are another way to make money with your blog.  You take a commission for selling or referring other products provided by others on your blog.  Amazon Associates is probably one of the most familiar programs.

Chapter 5 continues with 5 tips for using affiliates on your blog, 4 other ways to make money on your blog and 8 indirect ways to make money with your blog.

So you can see by “casting your net wide”, there are many way to make money on your blog and with your blog.  Chapter 5 does a thorough job of these topics by providing you with a feel for what monetizing methods you might want to take or consider.

Purchase at Amazon.com:

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

Make sure you subscribe by RSS reader or by email to receive chapter by chapter reviews of this book.

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Click image to purchase at Amazon.com

Chapter 4 - Blog Writing

Chapter four is all about writing blog content.  One of the hardest things to do in my opinion.  Even when you’re passionate about a topic, it takes time to write, edit, edit again and again, and then publish.  Only to want to edit and edit, again and again, the article you just published.

After defining good content, chapter four describes creating blog content that is useful and unique, researching your readers, following other blogs in your niche, and ways to distinguish yourself from all the other blogs out there in your niche.

Chapter four is excellent for beginning bloggers because it lists the different types of blog posts you might consider writing to attract readers to your blog.  This includes making your content scannable by effectively using lists, space, pictures, formatting, and headlines in your blog posts.

Chapter four continues with a lengthy discussion on titles and how they should grab attention and be written with regards to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Other considerations chapter four discusses when writing blog content include:

• How Long Should a Blog Post Be?
• How Often Should a Blogger Post?
• 20 Types of Blog Posts
• 10 Steps to Writing a Successful Series on Your Blog

Chapter four concludes with 9 points on blog comments and how to get them and interact with them.

With 8 exercises for you to do and the different types of blog posts discussed in chapter four, you’ll be on your way to answering the questions What should I write? and How should I write it?

Purchase at Amazon.com:

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

Make sure you subscribe by RSS reader or by email to receive chapter by chapter reviews of this book.

There are 10 chapters to this book so I’ll probably end up putting 2-3 chapters in my next review. More to come…

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I received an email form Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs Journey blog and his blog mentoring program Blog Mastermind. I am a former student of Blog Mastermind and I still review all the materials we received as well as his freely available Blog Profits Blueprint ebook.

When I look in my Blog Mastermind folder on my PC I immediately see over 30 mp3s from the course. I used to listen to them going to work and coming home as well as when I was working out and walking.

The ebook alone will last you a long time while you blog. Written using a blogging strategies metaphor and the tactics to execute those strategies, there’s a lot of information to help you strategically start and maintain a blog.

Below are some of the blogging lessons Yaro taught when I took the course, and I’m sure there will be even more information as well as richer information since he’s already taught it before I can only imagine it will get better and better.

1. Blogging MIndset
2. Topic Selection
3. Blog Content
4. Marketing Your Blog
5. Blog Monetization
6. Blogging and Social Media
7. more and more and more…

That’s just a few topics in the course I took. Yaro also provides mp3s of interviews he does with successful bloggers as well as extra mp3s on course topic.

On top of all that, Yaro has a forum with sections of the forum dedicated to Blog Mastermind students. This is where you’ll meet fellow bloggers ranging from beginning bloggers to experienced bloggers. There is definitely a feeling of community and support in the forums alone to want to belong to the Blog Mastermind course.

If you’re not sure about joining and you would like to check out Yaro’s information first hand, then check out these free videos on starting a blog at BecomeABlogger.com.

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