The First Steps to Blogging 

As I go through this process again, I really like the way this course has taken me step by step on creating my new blog. While I have several blogs going I can see that I need to go back and adjust them so they will actually provide value, encourage return visits.

Affiliate Marketing

Most of my previous blog  efforts had been in a strictly affiliate approach, beginning mostly in the binary options arena. These blogs consisted of reviews of the systems and brokers containing links to signing up with broker firms. What could be described as a one time and done system. Not really the best model I have come to find out.  One of my mentors recently pointed out a until now was an unknown fact to me. If you are not getting some of the back end sales you have an almost zero chance of succeeding.

Unfortunately I found that the binary options industry is nothing more than a rigged a gambling operation run largely by not so honest people. Like a casino even when you really win they are very likely not going to pay you, in many cases. Your recovery options are limited as it is largely unregulated industry with rules and methods designed to take your money. They cheat. The thought that I was basically luring people into a losing situation did not work with in my code of ethics. Just because”they were going to do it anyway” was not a justification to use my skills to entice people into a bad situation. I had been lured in much the same way even though my background had a significant amount of financial knowledge. Such unethical behavior certainly is not and does not follow the Law of Influence nor is it following the Law Of Value. It definitely is not the best way to provide value to the most people or putting their interests above your own.

Affiliate Marketing is Helpful

This is not to say that all affiliate marketing is bad. In fact it is not and provides a great service to millions of people. Affiliate marketing done correctly  truly follows the Law Of Value. Good honest reviews of products for the consumer really helps them make educated choices. It is an opinion by someone other than the manufacturer or end retailer on a given product. Most reputable reviewers have tested and tried the products and many of the competitors products. In most cases it is an area they are really interested in, even expert and are able to provide very valuable advice.

Take a look at this review of these high powered big bore air rifles. This review is about a very specialized product, big bore and high pressure air rifles. In this case the links are all to Amazon to read more reviews and to purchase these particular rifles. The review gives a great deal of information about the products and suggests a place to buy them. For that the affiliate receives a small percentage of any future sales generated by the review.

This type of review sometimes brings the reader back to check out other like products of interest, but for the most part again it is a one and done system.

The Money is in the List

If you have been researching blogs and how to create one this phrase most has likely  come up. “The money is in the list.” The logic of the numbers just makes sense. Providing great value to several thousand people at a low monthly fee really begins to take your blogging job to the income approach. One such blog about blogging I subscribe to uses a nominal fee of  $9.99 collecting that from around 500 members monthly. You might say so what, $5000 a month is not all that much. Think about it,$5K a month for writing about a subject you are interested in while sitting at home or on the beach anywhere in the world? Not bad. Most of you do this on Facebook for free. This does not include all sorts offers and products of specialized interest to the mailing list. The people on the list regularly opt into them which might be ten times the membership income.

After discovering this truth I realized much of what has been missing in my original approach has been the membership or subscription opt in page. I really had no clear idea of how to set the opt in portion up. In fact I had not explored the various services that specialize in email management. There are many email operations at varying prices. One piece of advice Dean Holland passed along was to pick the best and stick with it. This was not a time to be cheap.

Email Management

I went with Aweber. Price seems reasonable and the axiom is the money is in the list. Aweber provides drag and drop editing, templates, unlimited image storage. Also Aweber has the rss to email possibility so my posts can become emails to the list. That saves a bit of double work. They claim 99% deliverability for the email. You certainly need the email delivered, otherwise what was the point?

Aweber provides sign up forms templates to mix and match the offers. You can run split tests to see what works best. Here is a link to a pdf about Aweber and how their system works. It will give you the basics on email marketing and getting set up.

Setting this service up in Optimizepress was painless and quick. Now it is time to write a number of follow up emails that will automatically be sent in sequence to when someone subscribes.