Here we are at dinner in Vancouver, BC

After finding Yaro Starak on the internet I quickly came to realize that he was providing some pretty awesome materials on his website — then he launched Blog Mastermind.

Yaro Starak put together this program for bloggers to help them take a blog from start to profit, which I joined back in 2007 and knew right away that this would definitely help me. Yaro makes his full income online so why wouldn’t I learn from that?

(You can download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint here for free)

Here is an Outline Of The Program

Lesson 1 – Let’s Get Blogging!
Lesson 2 – Blog Foundations
Lesson 3 – RSS, Social Proof and Plug-ins
Lesson 4 – Finalizing Your Blog Structure
Lesson 5 – Set Up Key Content Pages
Lesson 6 –  Content Focus and Structure
Lesson 7 – Authentic Content
Lesson 8 – Personal Branding and Sourcing Content
Lesson 9 – Hiring Bloggers
Lesson 10 – Copywriting For Blogs
Lesson 11 – Marketing Through Conversations
Lesson 12 – Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 1 – Forums
Lesson 13 – Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 2 – Article Marketing & Blog Carnivals
Lesson 14 – Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 3 – Guest Writing
Lesson 15 – Search Engine Optimization For Blogs
Lesson 16 – Impact Marketing
Lesson 17 – Podcasting
Lesson 18 – Publicity
Lesson 19 – The Traffic Secret Every Blogger Knows
Lesson 20 -The Monetization Process
Lesson 21 – Contextual Advertising
Lesson 22 – Affiliate Marketing
Lesson 23 – Direct Advertisers
Lesson 24 – Five Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog
Lesson 25  – Email List Profits
Lesson 26 – Buying and Selling Blogs
Lesson 27 – Blogging As A Business

Sadly right when I decided I wanted to review and apply everything inside the program I was dealing with going back and forth to the hospital on top of running my online business.  I did manage to put together a checklist one night at the hospital and did manage to implement things here on my blog but not enough to have me feel that I did everything I could to put this program to the true test.

When I say I didn’t do everything, well I’m pretty picky with myself and probably go overboard on all programs I review but I always want to make sure I applied everything possible. So, I’ve probably done a lot more than most for that reason.

Just One Little Problem

This program is so massive that it can be a little overwhelming — that’s why I will outsource the entire process and focus on the checklist that I created at the same time, I totally plan to update my checklist too. 🙂

How I Personally Learned The Program

Inside the program it is very easy to follow – you can listen to the program which is what I did because I got a bonus from Yaro — it was an IRiver that was loaded with every lesson. Plus I absolutely prefer to learn this way.  But if you prefer to print out the lessons and read everything that’s easy to do as well.

What I loved too is that Yaro put out a lot of free tutorials, videos & proof so that if you couldn’t afford the membership price tag you could still learn and apply lots to your own blog.  One video in particular that I enjoyed was the conversion blogging video.

Yaro talks in the beginning on how internet marketers and bloggers are somewhat separate. He says that he wanted to show bloggers how to use internet marketing to their advantage and work on converting people who come to your blog.

He also stresses the importance of creating a real business and not just a blog – there’s really no point to having tons of traffic either if you are not converting it into income. The best part is that Yaro is teaching from experience and I respect that far more than someone who has just learned the techniques.  He actually applied everything himself and could even travel the world (from my memory I think he was on the road for a year or so) while he made money from his blog. I even got to meet him during his travels here to Vancouver, BC Canada.

I personally increased my income at this blog so quickly that there was a serious problem — it was far too fast! I even had to slow down the growth because I was falling into doing things and working on projects that I wasn’t enjoying. I guess you could say it’s a nicer problem to have than being stuck in a 9-5 job or business like I was.

I will continue to work on all aspects of the Blog Mastermind Program but I do plan to outsource 100% of the work, there is just so much to do for it. This will be my second round covering the program but I will be more diligent to grab screen shots and provide a true case study for you.

I would like to leave you with an article written by Yaro so you can start applying the program to your blog even if you don’t purchase it — I challenge you to dedicate yourself completely to all of these top 10 tips. Just get it done and see what kind of results it can bring.

(You can download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint here for free)

Here is Yaro’s Article …

10 Blog Traffic Tips

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
www.BlogMastermind.com

Don’t forget — You can download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint here for free