What is a blog? Why start one?

I’m going to be as honest as I can with this post, starting from the very beginning. So to kick off this vow of honesty, I have something to say. If you don’t know what a blog is, we have a lot of work to do.

Blogs are created by online software formally known as content management systems. But what you need to know is that in order to run the most basic blog, you need absolutely no prior technical knowledge. As long as you know how to navigate around a Web page and you can type into a box, you can easily manage your own blog. This brings me to my next point.

Are blogs for everyone? Simply put, yes. Whether you are the CEO of the largest corporation in the world or you have yet to graduate high school, you can benefit from owning a blog. Blogs can be political, religious, personal, professional, just for fun, or any combination of the previous words. For example, you can maintain a blog on a more personal level to keep family and friends informed about your current life. At the other end of the spectrum, if you run your own business, you can run a blog to keep your clients informed and up-to-date on the health of your corporation.

So, is running a blog for you? Absolutely it is. I need to reiterate that you need no prior technical knowledge to run a blog. Forget any notions you have linking blogs to coding and advanced degrees of technical comprehension. Those are the days of the past.

Coming up with an idea for a blog.

Before you can dive into the blogging software and start writing to your heart’s content, you need to establish the scope of your blog. This can be the most challenging part of starting a blog if you don’t already have an idea defined. If you already blog, than you know what I’m talking about. Due the sheer volume of potential topics, it’s hard to pick just one thing to blog about.

The most important piece of advice I can offer for this step is to start a blog only on a topic you are passionate about. It helps to have some prior knowledge of your proposed topic as well. If you fail to pick a topic that interests you, you’ll find yourself bored out of your mind in a few weeks and you’ll be stuck with a topic you no longer care about. Blogging will become more like work and less like a hobby. Your initial monetary investment as well as your invested time will have gone to waste. This is what we want to avoid.

Spend an hour or so developing a list of potential topics that interest you most. Start broad and narrow down your field. For example, suppose you want to start a baseball blog. As a single person, covering the entire MLB is simply impossible. You’re going to take on way too much work. You could choose to cover your favorite team or you could cover your favorite player if you wanted to get even more specific. Covering a specific player would be your niche, or distinct web page in a broad market. You are more likely to succeed and attract visitors with a specific theme.

A sure way to know if a topic is suitable for you is to ask yourself this question: will I be interested in this topic 6 months from now? If the answer is no, it’s time to start back at square one. If you found material that will hold your interest, it’s time to move on to the next step: finding others with shared interests.

Figure Out Your New Blog’s Competition

One of the biggest mistakes many new bloggers make is the failure to find out what’s already on the market for their idea. There are claims that a new blog is born every half-second. This means there are over 175,000 blogs created every day. Technorati, the world’s largest blog directory, is currently tracking over 50 million blogs. Your original idea probably isn’t very original. Frightened? Don’t be. By reading StartBlogging.net you already have a huge advantage over most of the blogs at Technorati.

Before continuing with your idea, you’ll want to find out who some of the bigger names are in your category. You don’t know anything about blogs? That doesn’t matter. All you need to do is type the idea of your blog into Google and you’ll get a list. For example, if you wanted to start a relationship and dating website, you could search for “relationship blog” or “dating blog” and now you have a list of the bigger names in the relationship and dating theme.

I want you to spend some time reading a few of the blogs in your category. Figure out what makes them work and why people continue to read them and comment on them. If they’re listed on the first page on Google for their theme, they are obviously doing something right. Study their content and figure out what you can do to become just as successful. Also, try and leave a few comments on some of their posts. You’ll want the author of the blog to be able to recognize your name.

I also want you to find other popular blogs because these people will most likely become your friends, as well as, your biggest competition. Blogs are all about community and you’ll want to establish ties with other people in the same category as your new blog. Befriending other popular bloggers will help you in the long run.

Wrapping Up

At this point in time, you should have an idea for what you want to blog about and some of the more popular blogs on the topic. The only thing left for you to do is to start your very own blog, with my help of course.

Ready to get started? Click here to read how I’ll set up your new blog completely free of charge.

One Week Marketing is a system that will teach you how to successfully leverage article marketing to pull in affiliate commissions rather quickly. It was created by Wealthy Affiliate user PotPieGirl and it is the exact method that she used to go from nothing to breaking $100,000 per year in just three years time.

PotPieGirl is one of the most helpful members on the Wealthy Affiliate forum. She routinely gives advice to beginners and offers plenty of guidance for those looking to get started. She’s compiled her advice and has expanded on it to give us the One Week Marketing system. PotPieGirl writes, “Every element of One Week Marketing is broken down into daily items that last . . . yes, you guessed it, a total of one week. With my system, there’s no worrying about becoming overwhelmed. Just pull up that day’s action plan and follow the simple steps and you’ll be well on your way to making money.”

So, will One Week Marketing live up to the hype? Our lovely secret agent Cheryl will be putting it to the test. Cheryl has worked for us before on A Deeper Look Inside Project Payday and agreed to take a proper look inside the One Week Marketing program. She will be fully testing the program and methods taught and will report her findings here on this blog. So stay tuned!

In the meantime, be sure to click here and read more about the One Week Marketing system. You can read the first 18 pages for free, but the good stuff is going to cost you. If you have any experience with the program of PotPieGirl please share it within the comments.

It is more directly about the tactics that marketers use to capture your interest and sell things to you. One of the first shady practices we attacked here when we launched this blog was the dishonest sales page. You know the kind: you click on a job link or a work-from-home link and land on a loooong page that tries to sell you something. We called out those pages as misleading for hyping their offers as “jobs” when they are anything but.

But sales page dishonesty does not stop there. I’ve learned after three years of swimming in these waters that unscrupulous marketers will say absolutely anything to make a sale. No lie is too far fetched, no earnings snapshot is too shamelessly photoshopped. People sometimes ask in emails to us or in the comments, “Don’t they care that the economy is bad and that we’re struggling to make ends meet?”

No, they don’t. Of course not. All they care about is separating you from your $197 (in the case of a recent “auction processing” offer).

That’s why Niche Blitzkrieg is so refreshing. It is one of our recommended programs for several good reasons, and one of the top reasons is its honesty.

We have gotten to know the creator, Michael Brown, quite well over the months. He recently wrote to let us know about the exciting new and improved Niche Blitzkrieg that is about to launch. It is clear that the Niche Blitzkrieg people are going to great lengths to make sure their sales page is 100% honest. Unheard of lengths, in fact. Here’s what Michael says:

I am having a top notch copywriter work on the sales page and it’s been challenging having someone not over hype us and convey our message at the same time.

We’ve taken several steps to make sure that we are not only 100% compliant on this but we are also 100% honest and upfront with people on our sales page, the order page, and immediately inside the course. For a member to cancel their trial it literally takes about 30 seconds.

I’ll tell you more about the NB updates and 7-day trial in another post. My point in this one is just to emphasize how rare Brown’s approach is. He’s not just trying to stay in the ballpark…he’s working hard to be absolutely honest with the claims he makes. And not only on the sales page, but also on the sign-up form and inside the course itself.

Believe me, that’s a rare thing in the world of online marketing. When you find someone who works that hard to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you should take a very close look at what they have to offer.

Blogging for Beginners

I’ve been working on the blogging guide for beginners for a few months now and have nearly completed it. However, I need your help in finishing it. I want to cover as many basics for beginners as possible. Here are the topics already covered. This is just a rough overview of the topics I’ve covered and each bullet point will be much more in-depth in the actual guide.

• Introduction: What is a blog, benefits of having a blog, how to get started
• Getting Started: Coming up with a name, idea, how to get setup
• Using your new blog: How to make posts, edits, and manage your blog
• Writing content: Finding topics, setting schedules, breaking news
• Driving traffic: How to get people to come to your blog
• Making money: Ways to make money, optimizing your site to make money
• Conclusion: Wrapping up

Now, what I need from you is suggestions on what else you would like to see covered. Please leave a comment below or send me an email with any topics you would like to see covered or any questions you would like answered regarding blogging.

Thanks!

Steve

We’ve been covering Wealthy Affiliate quite extensively over these past few weeks, but if you don’t know much about the program you can use the following links to learn more:

Wealthy Affiliate: Our Number One Recommendation
One Month with Wealthy Affiliate

Join Wealthy Affiliate for $1 and We’ll Send you $5

As an added incentive to joining, we’re offering all new members $5 via Paypal for registering an account at Wealthy Affiliate today. Sign up for $1 using the big button below, then forward your receipt and Paypal email address to Steve@IveTriedThat.com and I’ll send you $5. Quite a few members have taken advantage of our promotion and now you can too.

Why are we giving away $5 to new members?

Because we truly believe we’ve found the best program for beginners to learn how to make money online and So, sign up, try it out for 7 days and see what you think then. If you like it, great! You can remain a member of one of the best online training programs. If not, cancel your account, keep the $5, and continue searching for a program that suits you best.

Click here to join Wealthy Affiliate for just $1.00!

Week 4 with Wealthy Affiliate

I admit that my time spent working could have been better managed. I spent the better half of this week reading the forums, getting involved, and learning from new resources more-so than writing articles and working on building my earnings.

In addition to the article marketing training offered by Wealthy Affiliate, the members of the program have contributed 19 eBooks, 52 Tutorials, and 5 Training Videos on how to succeed in article marketing. That’s right, the members of the program have taken the time to write up and record what has successfully worked for them in the past in order to share their secrets with other members. Needless to say, I spent most of this week reading user-content and deciding on what would be the best way to continue and expand my article marketing career.

I ended my month long review with 9 affiliate sales and $135.78 in commissions. My review has been a moderate success since I was able to make back the cost to join the program and then top it off with additional income. Is $135.78 life changing? Of course not, but there are two key points here I want you to take away from this review.

1. An extra $100-$200 a month is a big help.
2. My previous articles will continue to earn for me.

If I decided not to write another article ever again, the articles I wrote in the past will still be active and working for me. Traffic will continue to visit these articles and I’d still make commissions.

This brings us to the ultimate question…

Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth Joining?

Absolutely, yes.

It is among the few programs out there that I can honestly say is perfect for beginner’s looking to learn how to make money online from home. The training and support is top-notch, but none of that compares to the community behind Wealthy Affiliate. It’s members make the monthly membership worthwhile. The forums include some of the most helpful people I’ve come across online. Everyone is interested in helping others succeed. It’s unreal.

Aside from the forums, members can contribute lessons and training programs directly to Wealthy Affiliate. When I say the members of Wealthy Affiliate are interested in helping other members becoem successful, I truly do mean it.

To help new members out, I’ve compiled a few links for Wealthy Affiliate members that have helped me out over the past month.

These links will only work if you’re logged into the program.

The New 8-Week Action Plan
Article Marketing Training
How to Make a Squidoo Lens
How to Get Your Squidoo Lens Indexed
How to Write 90 Fresh, Unique Articles in 3 Days To A Single, Targeted Niche
10 Questions with PotPieGirl

Wealthy Affiliate is ending the $1 trial on Sept. 29th.

For now, you can join Wealthy Affiliate for only $1 for 7 days. You will have full access to the program and However, on September 29th, they will be stopping the $1 trial promotion and you will have to pay your first month in full in order to gain access to the program.

If you were on the fence about joining Wealthy Affiliate, now is the time to become a member. Spend the $1 and take a look around Wealthy Affiliate. If you like the program, great, become a monthly member. If not, you can cancel your account and you’ll only be out $1 instead of the $39 monthly price.

Weeks 2/3 and My First Sale!

Wow, Weeks 2 and 3 have been a lot more interesting. I’ve repeatedly found myself excited to do work during this week. I’ve learned the ins-and-outs of popular article marketing techniques, including keyword research, how to discover niche markets, and how to find a proper audience.

I spent last week learning and understanding how to do niche research. Basically, you learn how and where to find ideas that will ultimately make you money. I landed on a topic I know quite a bit about, computer products, and decided I’d write a few articles and see how they would perform for me.

While I chose the niche of computer products, you can find your very own niche that best suits your interests. There are literally no limitations here. Wealthy Affiliate will help you find your niche, then will teach you how you can profit from it.

I spent the next couple of days following the Wealthy Affiliate guide. I was taught how to conduct article marketing. Mind you, I had no experience in article marketing prior to joining Wealthy Affiliate, but within a few hours I learned how to properly write an article, how to include affiliate links in my article, how to drive traffic to my article, and how to make money off of my hard work.

My first sale!

It didn’t take long to see some results either! I had submitted my first handful of articles to various article directories and began to see a little bit of traffic. Not that much was happening, but finally I saw this fantastic email:

I quickly logged into my affiliate account to check my stats and was greeted with this magnificent image:

It’s been only a few days, but I’ve already made back half of the membership fee to join Wealthy Affiliate! This alone has answered two of my biggest questions regarding Wealthy Affiliate.

1. Can you make money with Wealthy Affiliate? 100% Absolutely yes. In just a few days time, I’ve gone from knowing nothing about article marketing and have managed to make my first ever commission through it for $19.22!
2. How long will it take to break even? I paid $40 to join Wealthy Affiliate, and I haven’t had to put out any extra money. I’ve already made back half of my investment and I expect it won’t be long until I break even. In fact, it won’t be long until I’m actually making money.

Closing Out Weeks 2/3

Like I said before, these past two weeks have been a lot more interesting. In addition to the email above, I managed to close out this week with:

And my affiliate account is currently sitting at:

I made $75.26 within a few days of working with Wealthy Affiliate. And it was all thanks to the article marketing method they teach. I wasn’t even home at the time the sales were made. In fact, I didn’t do anything other than write a few 600-word articles and I’m already making money.

Let me recap these last two weeks exactly for you:

• Week 2 taught me the ins-and-outs of article marketing.
• Week 3 proved that it is really possible to make money with Wealthy Affiliate.
• I found a niche, wrote a few articles, and submitted them to various article directories around the web.
• I might have spent 8-10 hours learning and writing.
• I now have $75.26 in commissions sitting in one of my affiliate accounts!
• The articles I wrote in the past will continue to work 24/7/365 for me.

Stay tuned for Week 4 and the Review Week conclusion.

Interested in joining Wealthy Affiliate? You can do so by clicking here. Memberships cost $39/month and is it well worth every single penny. When you join, be sure to look me up. My username is IveTriedThat.

Introduction to Article Marketing

The first few chapters of the article marketing training give you background information on how to conduct research and find profitable, interesting niches to write articles on and promote affiliate products.

The articles you write will be submitted to various article directories with high rankings in search engines. This works to your advantage because by submitting the article to these sites you are adopting their search engine ranking, meaning that you can get listed on the first page of the results in a matter of days. You leverage the power of large sites to get top natural listings for your articles in a fraction of the time.

What this ultimately means is that Wealthy Affiliate will teach you how to write articles, get them listed high in search engine rankings, and make money off of your hard work.

What I Accomplished in Week 1

The first week of my review has been mostly training. I needed to learn the ins-and-outs of article marketing. I didn’t expect to dive right into work from the beginning. The sheer amount of information and training available is remarkable to say the least.

The quantity of information may be high, but they, by no means, skip over quality of information. I am thoroughly impressed, more than I’ve ever been with any other program so far. It’s easy to see how a beginner would be overwhelmed with information; however, Wealthy Affiliate does an amazing job breaking down information into easy to follow steps and advice.

So far, I’ve learned how to:

• Pick a niche market that ultimately needs my help.
• Find an audience and how to conduct market research. Wealthy Affiliate helped me figure out: Who is my audience? What are they looking for? Where can they get this (online)? Why do they need this? How can my offer help or benefit them?
• Conduct keyword research which will help me connect with my audience. I needed to know what they will be searching for and how they will be searching.
• Find a product to sell because without something to sell, article marketing wouldn’t exist.
• Properly write and article and have it show up in search engine results ultimately driving traffic to my article, but more importantly, my affiliate links.

I admit this week was a bit boring, but you need to learn the basics if you plan to make it anywhere as an affiliate marketer. I took this week slow, focused on learning as much as I could on article marketing, and spent a good amount of time reading articles on the topic and spending time within the forums.

Tomorrow’s post will include a lot more details regarding my personal experience and you’ll get to see how I made my very first sale. Stay tuned!

Like previous reviews, I took a beginner’s stance and worked through the program as if I had no experience doing any form of marketing online. It was a challenge not to use any previous knowledge, but I wanted to mirror the experience that a beginner, with no experience, would have if he or she were to join Wealthy Affiliate today.

Background Information on Wealthy Affiliate

The Wealthy Affiliate presell page boasts that it has turned tens of thousands of no-experience-beginners into successful Internet business owners by teaching them the methods of some of the best affiliate marketers in the world.

But wait, let’s back up for a minute.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

It’s very simple: you own a web site where you sell other people’s or companies’ products and make a commission on each sale.It’s not exactly like an online store, though you could set up something like that. It’s more like you telling a friend about something, and then, if she buys it, you get a little bonus.

How Does It Work?

The selling is done through affiliate links—little bits of Web language that contain a code linking the sale to you. When someone clicks on your link and then makes a purchase, the original seller or clearing house gives you credit for the sale and you receive money.

Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer.

• You have no inventory to manage.
• You don’t have to deal with customer service or handle refunds or exchanges.
• You have an unlimited supply of products to promote.
• Your web sites (containing your affiliate links) work 24×7.

Wealthy Affiliate claims that it can take you, the most inexperienced newbie with no knowledge of making money online, and turn you into a successful Internet marketer. These are some pretty hefty claims, but we love nothing more than a good challenge.

I’ll be focusing on Article Marketing

Wealthy Affiliate is filled with thousands of pages providing the best content on how to build your career as an affiliate marketer. However, for this week, I’ll be focusing on one aspect of their training: article marketing which focuses on how to write targeted articles to attract highly qualified visitors to your affiliate links without having to shell out any money for advertising. This ultimately means:

Free Traffic. Free Advertising. No Additional Costs.

I chose article marketing because I found it to be the best path for beginners to take. There are no additional costs to perform article marketing making your entire operation rather low risk. Instead, what you’ll find is hard work that translates over directly to earnings. Earnings that you get to keep.

Article marketing serves as a introductory crash course to affiliate marketing. You’ll learn in-depth the methods and details behind Wealthy Affiliate without having to deal with any risk. Article marketing is perfect for the beginner looking to take the plunge into an affiliate marketing career.

What to Expect this Week

I set out to test how much money I could make in one month’s time. Each post this week will correspond with a weeks worth of training and results. Along the way you’ll receive:

• Insider Information – I’ll reveal as much as I can about the Wealthy Affiliate training program. I can’t reveal it all naturally or the owners would be knocking on my door.
• Full Earnings Statistics – You’ll get a behind the scenes look at my affiliate stats which willl show exactly how much money I spent.
• My Overall Opinion – What I liked, what I didn’t like, and was it worth it in the end?

Stay tuned because this is one series of posts that you won’t want to miss.

New Features

Wealthy Affiliate has been our number one recommendation to beginners looking to make money from home and with good reason too. Wealthy Affiliate has the single best online training I’ve found since launching my online career. I’ve been able to work full-time from home thanks to the methods and teachings behind Wealthy Affiliate.

In addition to personal one-on-one training and the best customer support I’ve seen any online program offer, Wealthy Affiliate has made a number of recent upgrades to their system. Some of these upgrades include a better training system with 8 different Internet marketing categories, brand new keyword research tools, interface updates and changes, and a whole collection of networking tools to keep you in contact with the creators of the program as well as the thousands of others members. These are just a few of the changes I’ve noticed thus far. I’m sure there are many more yet to be discovered.

Limited Two Week Bonus

As an incentive to join, the creators behind Wealthy Affiliate have decided to give away two of their highly-valued books away to new members. The books retail between $67-$77 and will be a great addition to your membership.

There are three books for you to choose from. They include:

1. Beating Adwords – Our most popular and highly acclaimed and popular e-book focusing on conquering the worlds most profitable Pay-per-click network, Google Adwords.
2. Inside The List – Focusing on our techniques, strategies, and secrets of building a thriving online business through email marketing. Every successful Internet marketer knows that there is huge power in building a list.
3. Who Loves Money – How to start-up a successful Internet Marketing business without investing a penny into driving potential customers. This e-book is for people on a shoestring budget, no seed money required!

My personal suggestion is to grab a copy of Who Loves Money as I find it’s the best book for beginners and will compliment your Wealthy Affiliate membership rather nicely.

In addition to the book of your choice, every new member will be given a copy of Vegas Confidential, which is described as a “Step inside the minds of 5 highly successful WA Super Affiliates. Access our raw personal notes, strategies, and techniques as discussed during our annual Super Affiliate conference in Las Vegas 2009!”

Finally, the free book offer is only available for the next two weeks. Members signing up on October 1st will have to pay to gain access to these materials. Sign up today to ensure you gain free access to some of the best material on the web.

The Best $1 You Ever Spent

Finally, you can gain full access to Wealthy Affiliate for just $1. One measly dollar will grant you full access to the entire program and forum for an entire week. If at any time during your trial membership, you decide you don’t like the program, you can cancel your account and forget all about Wealthy Affiliate.

I do have one piece of advice for you should you sign up for the trial membership. Treat your trial membership as if you paid for a full monthly membership. This means that you need to read as much material as you can, get active in the forums, and soak up as much information as possible. Wealthy Affiliate is the best resource I’ve found online and I suggest you do not take your trial membership lightly.

That’s it for now. Click here to join the Wealthy Affiliate. Once you have your account setup you can add me as a friend and find me on the forums. I post under the user name IveTriedThat and will gladly assist you in any way possible.

See you around Wealthy Affiliate!

Steve