The Roadmap To Become A Blogger Report!

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There is a brand new blogging business website online with the name BecomeABlogger.com packed with free video tutorials created for you by Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick.

Here are the names of 10 free videos you’ll like:
Video 1 – Why You Should Use WordPress
Video 2 – How To Get Your Own Domain Name
Video 3 – How To Get A Web Host
Video 4 – How To Install WordPress
Video 5 – How To Upload Files To Your Webhost Using FTP
Video 6 – Choosing A WordPress Theme For Your New Blog
Video 7 – How To Install And Use WordPress Plugins
Video 8 – How To Create Your First Blog Post And Blog Page
Video 9 – What RSS Is And Why You Need It
Video 10 – How To Use Feedburner For Supercharging Your RSS Capabilities

Also at the website don’t forget to claim Your FREE Copy Of a new book “The Roadmap To Become A Blogger”! Inside the roadmap you’ll discover plenty of useful information including:

- 5 essential milestones for a successful blog;
- What the “X-Factor” for successful blogging is and why you’ll fail without it;
- How to use social media to boost traffic to your blog and so on and so forth;
- How to ethically exploit the biggest wave in technology since the invention of the telephone;
- 7.4 million reasons why your blog will fail, unless you know how to take advantage of the intersection of two huge Internet trends;
- How a new way of using video, images and a blog turned a penniless actor into an Internet Superstar!
- 13 secret strategies to attract traffic to your blog like bees to a beehive, turn your competitors green with envy and provide you with multiple streams of passive income. And much MUCH MORE…

The roadmap is not just another report on blogging. It melds together what Yaro and Gideon learned and implemented over the past fours years to create an entire business based on the blog alone, with some brand new techniques that combine the power of social media and multimedia to take any blog to the next level.

Gideon Shalwick, the video wizard behind the Becomeablogger.com site, injected his unique understanding of multimedia (video, audio, online radio and tv) and social media (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc) into this report.

Keep in mind that also on December 4t, 2008 a NEW PREMIUM COACHING course on how to Become A Blogger Premium is going to be released. And If you like learning through step-by-step video training, you believe in the ideas that Yaro and Gideon teach in the Roadmap and want to learn directly from them how to implement them on your blog (or create a new blog), then you are an ideal candidate for their coaching program!

Claim Your FREE Copy Of The Roadmap To BecomeA Blogger Report Right Here Right Now!

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Interview With Yaro Starak About Comments to Your Blog!

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Today we have an interview with Yaro Starak. O.K., you might ask “Who is this guy?”. Yaro Starak is a young entrepreneur from Brisbane, Australia (sometimes he lives in Toronto, Canada). He is a 29 year old male – with big hair who is presently blog about Internet marketing, blogging, entrepreneurship and self development at
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

According to Yaro, he has been blogging since late 2005 and make over $10,000 a month from Enterepreneurs-Journey.com blog and over $30,000 a month from his online business in total – which by the way, is based entirely on his blog. Yaro has created, managed and sold several different Internet businesses since 1998 and currently teaches people how to make a full time income from blogging part time through his Blog Mastermind mentoring program. If you want the long story about Yaro (with pictures and his comments!) you can read his five-page bio at http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/yaro-starak-timeline/

All right, no more questions about Yaro? Let’s start the interview.

- Yaro, the focus of this interview is something all bloggers love – comments. Unfortunately most blogs, especially new blogs, receive very few real comments from real people (everyone gets spam comments though). Yaro, what is your point of view on why is it some blogs have a ton of comments while other blogs never receive any?

- Let me set something straight right now. If your blog has no traffic you will not receive
any comments. It makes sense of course, but some people don’t see the connection between these two elements. If no one is reading your blog then no one will leave comments either. Simply posting great articles to your blog is not enough – you have to *market* your blog to bring people to it.

- Sure, it makes sense – no comments = no traffic = nobody is reading your blog, right?

- Correct, understand if you don’t receive any comments to your blog it’s probably not that your content is bad or people don’t like you, it’s because you simply don’t have enough traffic. If on the other hand you do have some traffic, yet no one replies to your posts, there are ways to stimulate comments.

- Yaro, do you have some tips for our readers on how to stimulate comments?

- Yes, I sure do. And here are some of them. First of all, write articles that reference or focus on other bloggers. You will get their attention that way and there’s a good chance they will come to your blog and leave a comment as a result. Then, ask your readers a question at the end of your articles. Also, try to write about topics that stimulate conversation, such as current events (think politics, news, entertainment, marketing). Don’t be afraid to be controversial with your writing. Have a strong opinion and others with strong opinions will reply to argue or agree with you. Always be patient. Sometimes you just have to wait until the first person leaves a comment which opens the floodgates.

- Yaro, what do you think do you need to reply to all the comments, or just let them go?

- I am convinced you just have to reply to any comment and I can tell you why. A while ago I stopped actively responding to comments on my blog unless I was asked a direct question. I really had no excuse for not doing it, I was just lazy and working on other writing projects. Consequently the average number of comments on my blog entries dropped A LOT. I noticed the regular commentators stopped commenting as frequently and most conversations on my blog ended very quickly. This is really tragic for a blog and I’ll tell you why – it reduces your “Social Proof“.

- What is “Social Proof” by the way?

- Social Proof is when humans take action or make a decision based on seeing other humans doing it first. It’s sort of like an implied recommendation – if other people do it, it must be good. It’s like when you see a bunch of people all looking up at something in the sky at the same time. You can’t help but turn your head skywards and see what all the fuss is about. When first time visitors to your blog see other people making lots of comments they are more likely to decide there is something valuable at your blog and bookmark or subscribe to it and may even make a comment. This is good for blog traffic. This is social proof in action. I was very conscious of always taking part in comment conversations at my blog and consequently my readership was growing in leaps and bounds. I stopped and I noticed I hit a wall and my blog didn’t grow quite as well as it was.

I know a blogger who has a rule – she responds to every single comment made to her blog. Consequently she has developed a fantastic community around her blog and her traffic has
skyrocketed in a short period of time. Remember, comments on your blog are very important, take the time to respond to them.

P.S.: If you have a question for Yaro or need advice about blogging or business please ask in the forums (click the link below). If you have a problem or question about a product or service you have purchased from Yaro, please send an email to the address below:
http://replytoyaro.com

Thank you!
Michael B & Yaro Starak

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Are You (Yes, YOU) Making Money by Blogging? Why not?

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Are You (Yes, YOU)

Hi to all!

I just finished reading a fantastic report on how to make money
blogging. You can get your copy from here: http://www.blogmastermind.com/affiliates/index.php?af=875252

It shows you everything this guy did to build a blog that makes him over $5000 USD per month! It’s a great read, I recommend you check it out.

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 eaders.

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 or you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually 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 an 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 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 enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://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.

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: http://www.blogmastermind.com/affiliates/index.php?af=875252

Thanks,

Michael B and Yaro Starak (My BlogMasterMind.com)

PS. I’ve already started to implement the “Pillars” technique in my
blog and I’m experiencing a nice increase in my traffic.

To find out what I’m talking about see the section on “Pillar content” in the report.
http://www.blogmastermind.com/affiliates/index.php?af=875252

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