Probably because of the remote area I live in, my postal mail service is about as bad as my internet connection, which is to say it oftens sucks. And parcels, especially, arrive late or never, and Christmas cards arrive at Easter or the following Christmas.

This means I’m very late to the party to suggest that you quickly send off for Yanik Silver’s new Maverick Business package, which is free, except for the postage costs of just $7.95 if you’re in the USA or Canada (ships worldwide for a bit more)

I’m late to the party because it’s already been written about by half the internet marketers in the world

Yanik emailed me to say he’d sent me the package and asked me to let you know about it. And while I trust that everything Yanik does is top notch and great value, I just couldn’t go against my principles of not promoting something I haven’t personally read or watched or used.

So while other’s reviewed it I held back.

But I got the parcel late yesterday (though I’d already seen a pdf of the newsletter) and I’ve read the very inspirational, and helpful, book (excellent, will probably end up as a big time bestseller on the business shelves of the major book chains) , and I devoured the printed newsletter. I haven’t had time to watch the DVD yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

I especially liked the interview, in the newsletter, with Mike Geary who makes millions from one book on Clickbank, selling between 400 and 700 copies A DAY. In the very detailed interview, Mike talks about ‘how’ he works to increase sales, by
boosting the sales page conversion rate, having one sales letter for men and a different one for women, how he helps affiliates, etc. (I really hope that Yanik gets him along to the next Underground seminar in Washington in March)

Mike’s sales page is at www.truthaboutabs.com/ but more impressive is all the affiliate help page and the pages leading of it. For instance, look at the alternate landing pages provided.

In my opinion you (one) can learn a lot about boosting sales of your own product just by studying this site. But you’re not going to learn as much as reading the interview Yanik did with Mike

So I loved the newsletter, and the book is one you’ll want to keep re-reading.

Ok, click this link and get it

BTW, as you might expect, there is a continuity program involved, because Yanik has put this quality package together to get people to subscribe to the monthly printed newsletter. But if, after reading it, you decide not to continue with the subscription you can easily cancel.

since I got back is set up hosted a Wordpress blog for Lindy, a neighbour and good friend who has a horrible degenerative disease called Spinocerebellar Ataxia. The blog is at http://spinocerebellarataxia.org/

And I’m a bit stuck with something on it, so I may as well ask for help.

See the "Most Popular Posts" top middle of the site? A plugin was supposed to come with the theme, but didn’t, and I can’t find it. The source code shows

<div id="mostpop-Post">
<h2>Most Popular Posts </h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#"></a></li>

Anyone know which plugin this is?

And BTW, if you have a non spammy health site, Lindy would love a link from you

Way back on the 14th July I wrote a blog post saying, and I quote, "I’m going to start passing on more of more knowledge, and more frequently. So I hope you don’t get sick of too many newsletters from me"

Ha :)  Well what a joke that turned out to be.

I meant it at the time, but then life got in the way and I ended up travelling for over 3 months. My daughter, Kate, got married in Australia in early September, so I always knew I’d be having a week off for that. But then, unexpectedly, my parents decided to fly out from England to the wedding six weeks early, so that I could show them parts of Australia they’d never experienced.

So I packed a suitcase, grabbed my wallet, and drove 8 hours to Brisbane airport to pick them up…then off we went. Five weeks of the best the east coast of Australia has to offer, then a long drive into Queensland’s dust bowl interior to show them what it used to be like before the coastal areas turned into a cross between Florida and California.

The wedding, which I’d not been looking forward to because all I could think about was the cost, and having to make a speech and dancing (which I hate) turned out to be great. Then we all went away for a few weeks to the lovely Qld beach resort of Noosa.

After that my parents flew back to England, followed a few days later by Kate and her new husband Ed, and I settled down to start work again.

But suddenly things took a turn for the worse.

Just days after they’d all gone we got a phone call from England saying that a very sick relative wasn’t expected to survive until the weekend, so I quickly bought plane tickets and within 4 hours we were heading overseas. And stayed away a month. A fairly horrible month.

Anyway, now I’m back.

With nothing much else to do, because I’ve spent most of my time sitting in a house with grieving relatives, I’ve thought about business and work and money quite a bit while I’ve been away. And really I want to carry on pretty much as I live now. Loving life, enjoying life and the freedom I have.

I’ve said this before many times: for me this internet business is all about living a more laid-back lifestyle, earning just enough to keep staying in the worlds top hotels and flying up front at the pointy end of planes, goofing off for a while on tropical islands lying in the shade of palm trees and swimming in seas so full of brightly coloured fish that they wisp against your body as they swim around you.

But that might not be what you want. Many people come online wanting to make millions, and then more millions (and some like the guy featured in the first issue of Yanik Silver’s new printed newsletter do, making $3 mill a year from one ebook on Clickbank) so if your only aim in life is to make millions, live in a big house and drive flashy sports cars then you need to work and work and work till your eyeballs pop from staring at a screen too long.

You’ve got to decide what you want out of all this Internet stuff. Because what you want decides the way you’re going to get there, the steps and actions you need to take.

Me, I’m going to keep on just the way I do now. And that means NOT sending out email sales pitches every few days. Not trying to get money out of you at every possible opportunity.

But I have been rethinking my whole, almost private, and perhaps selfish (because I don’t really share it with you) approach to earning money online, and I’m going to make some changes. But not ones that affect my lifestyle too much

You’ll see soon

Unless you’re a brand new reader you’ll know that I stay well away from almost all the big product launches. Usually because I’m put off by all the hype, where dozens of affiliates with big lists send out canned promos.
 
Most times I’m invited to be one of the first to promote these products. I’m sent a review copy and after looking it over I think  "Yep, this is good and worth recommending."
 
But then the hype starts, and I back away because I don’t want to be a part of it. Unlike the Internet marketers who are prepared to churn and burn their email lists, I value the fact that you take the time to read what I write. And I also value that many of you reading this have been subscribers to my newsletter for years. Some of you since the very first issue way back in 1997.
 
The downside (for me) is that staying away from major launches means I lose out on a lot of affiliate commissions. But because I’ve been doing business on the Internet a long time, and because most of my affiliate commissions come from sources well away from the online business/internet marketing niche I don’t really care. I don’t need to pimp products to you to put bread on the table.
 
Obviously - I know you’re not dumb - this is leading up to a recommendation.
 
And, as you’ll have guessed, it’s for something that quite a few people have promoted in the past 24 hours. And that’s Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind  training course which teaches you both basic and advanced blogging techniques, but much more importantly leads you from just being an everyday blogger to earning considerable sums from your blog.
 
Even though we both live in Australia, and in the same state, I don’t know Yaro (except by reputation) so I wasn’t offered a review membership.
 
So I dug deep into my padlocked and cobwebbed wallet, and signed up. Partly because I’m heavily into blogging, and in  particular Wordpress, partly because of the very good (though also very long) sales page, and partly because I was intrigued by the story of how Alborz, one of his ex students, took a start-up blog about cars from zero to $10 a day (with Google Adsense) and then very quickly on to a multi million dollar valuation and a huge monthly income. (Alborz provides you with a bonus tutorial in the course)
 
It’s a great success story, and one that shows you (more than anything else I’ve read) just what you can achieve with blogging if you go about it the right way.
 
And going about it the right way is what Yaro’s 27-week training is all about. In short, it shows you how to turn your blog into a real business.
 
He gives you concrete strategies and clear, hype-free, interactive lessons, with six modules in all, broken up into weekly multimedia lessons where you’ll learn from text, audio, and video content.
 
These core modules are just a small part of the overall system, and I can’t see that anything is held back as he goes about showing you how to turn your blog into a full time income stream, step-by-step.
 
__________________________________
 

Now I’m no dummy when it comes to blogging. For a couple of years Wordpress has been my weapon of choice, and I use it for nearly everything, from simple mini sites to complex datafeed driven sites.
 
I like to think I know how to do almost anything with Wordpress and technically I do. Financially I’m not doing bad either.
 
But  I can see already from Yaro’s course that I’ve been missing out on the strategic side, on the overall vision. On the "where am I going with these blogs?"  and  the "how am I going to get there?".
 
You’re probably in the same boat as me. You blog. You do well. But not as well as you know you could.
 
Well, if you let him, Yaro will take you there with his excellent Blog Mastermind training

 

Here’s what you’ll find in the Blog Mastermind weekly lessons, using text, audio and video to show you:

·        How to set up and optimize your blog for explosive growth from day one

·        How to create blog content that magnetically attracts devoted readers

·        The exact traffic techniques that took Yaro’s blog from 0 to 5,000+ daily readers

·        Super-advanced traffic techniques to really ramp up growth

·        How to make REAL money with your blog - monetization secrets

·        How to turn your blog into a real business (Or, "How to Work Less and Earn More")

·        BONUS Advanced Module: Lessons From Professional Bloggers

And here’s the core training you get as a member:

ü  Lesson 1: Let’s Get Blogging!

ü  Lesson 2: Blog Foundations

ü  Lesson 3: RSS, Social Proof & Plug-ins

ü  Lesson 4: Finalizing Your Blog Structure

ü  Lesson 5: Set Up Key Content Pages

ü  Lesson 6: Content Focus and Structure

ü  Lesson 7: Authentic Content

ü  Lesson 8: Personal Branding and Sourcing Content

ü  Lesson 9: Hiring Bloggers

ü  Lesson 10: Copywriting For Blogs

ü  Lesson 11: Marketing Through Conversations

ü  Lesson 12: Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 1 - Forums

ü  Lesson 13: Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 2 - Article Marketing & Blog Carnivals

ü  Lesson 14: Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 3 - Guest Writing

ü  Lesson 15: Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

ü  Lesson 16: Impact Marketing

ü  Lesson 17: Podcasting

ü  Lesson 18: Publicity

ü  Lesson 19: The Traffic Secret Every Blogger Knows

ü  Lesson 20: The Monetization Process

ü  Lesson 21: Contextual Advertising

ü  Lesson 22: Affiliate Marketing

ü  Lesson 23: Direct Advertisers

ü  Lesson 24: Five Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

ü  Lesson 25: Email List Profits

ü  Lesson 26: Buying and Selling Blogs

ü  Lesson 27: Blogging As A Business