So here we are coming towards the end of 2009, and it has been a great year for me…

It was this time last year that I properly got interested in the whole make money online concept, but unlike in the past, this time I decided to take the plunge and get my very own website online.

Having my own website was something that I had been worried about doing in the past, it was the thought of all the technical stuff involved. But now that I’ve taken action and done it, using all the guides that are available these days, I found it was actually quite simple, and I now realise I should of done it sooner instead of putting it off.

My very first website was www.Online-Auction-Success.com , which I didn’t mention in my recent eBook Traffic Guide For Newbies because it wasn’t a very successful site, it was a project that I started with little knowledge or planning, and was somewhere that I was sending my eBay customers to at the time.

I worked on Online-Auction-Success.com right up to May/June, which was when I came across Mr Alex Jeffreys and his brand new coaching program, which after some thought I signed up for. It was at that point, following Alex’s advice, that I wound everything up that wasn’t making me any money in order to give all my concentration to the coaching. A few weeks later the coaching started and this blog, Paul-Lear.com was born.

Although Online-Auction-Success.com wasn’t a successful site, I believe that I wouldn’t have even considered signing up for a coaching program, had I not made that first step earlier in the year, and got a bit of experience with the technical side of things.

So if you are interested in making money on the internet, the best thing you can do, if you haven’t already, is dive in head first and get your own personal blog online, like I have here at Paul-Lear.com . Don’t waste time taking the route I took, with my unsuccessful niche blog. When you are starting out, personal blogs are the best way to go.

Referrring back to when I joined the Alex Jeffreys coaching program. Advised by Alex I started my own personal blog on a new domain name, and I can honestly say that my decision to have Alex as my mentor is the best decision I have made this year.

Here is what I have achieved since I joined Alex’s coaching program:

1. I started this blog, which as been reasonably successful.
2. I have met lots of great like minded people, and made many good friends through visiting peoples blogs regularly.
3. I have learned a great deal about how to drive traffic to a website, and I am still learning more about this each day.
4. I have learnt the importance of building a list of prospects and buyers.
5. I signed up to Aweber and I am now building an email list of willing subscribers. (which was another thing I had once put off doing)
6. I have built my email list to 215 subscribers, (bare in mind that I was neglecting my list building efforts until November)
7. I now have 4 websites online, and I’m about to purchase another new domain for a new project in January.
8. I made my first video and overcame my fear of speaking in front of the camera.
9. I made my first tutorial video using the screen capture software, Camtasia Studio.
10. I wrote my first eBook Traffic Guide For Newbies, and released it on 23rd November. It has now had 76 downloads on it’s own, and I also added it to a download package which has had 80 downloads.
11. I attended my first Live Workshop which was hosted by Lee McIntyre, and I met some great people including Alex Jeffreys, John Thornhill, and of course Lee McIntyre himself. I also met some of my fellow Marketing With Alex students there too which was cool.
12. I have started to develop a good marketing mindset, which makes it easier when it comes to creating squeeze pages and writing email copy for adswaps, and writing sales pages.
13. I have developed a love of blogging and writing, which at the start of this year I never thought I would even begin to enjoy those things!
14. I have driven many thousands of visitors  to my websites.
15. I’m now focused, dedicated and determined to succeed at Internet Marketing, and most importantly I’m enjoying it! 

I’m sure you can see from all that I have listed, that compared to where I as at the start of the year, which was pretty much a newbie, that I’ve achieved quite a lot in the last six months, and it all stems back to that one simple action I took at the beginning of the year, to get a website online. That was what started me on this whole journey, and I am looking forward to next year, where in 2010 I am certain I will achieve much more!

So if there is something you have been thinking about doing, that you’ve been putting off, just take action NOW, stop thinking about doing it and just get it done!.. You never know what it might lead to, and if you aren’t prepared to take a little risk now and then, you will never achieve very much, and you will remain at the same stage you are at now.

If I hadn’t of made the decision to finally start a website this time last year, I would most likely still be doing the same thing I had been doing for the past couple of years, which was very little other than playing computer games and wasting time watching far too much television. Now don’t get me wrong, I still make sure I take time out to relax and do those things today, I just plan my time better to fit everything in that I want to do.

I hope you have got something out of this post, and I will be following on from this in my next post, with my plans for 2010.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers and everyone who has supported me throughout 2009, a very Happy & Profitable New Year!

Best Wishes For 2010

Paul

Images courtesy of Francesco Marino and Dan

I’ve decided it’s about time I posted an update of my progress, and what I have been doing recently. This is actually an idea I came up with after visiting Jacinta Dean’s blog. Jacinta has been doing weekly posts of her daily tasks, and I’ve been meaning to do something similar for a few weeks now.

I’ve decided not to do a list of my daily tasks for the week, as I doubt I would keep up with it. So instead I will try and do one of these posts, once a month, as I think this will be less of a chore for me!

I wasn’t really writing things down much back in August, so I’ll start in September.

Now I can see how important it is to keep a journal of your daily tasks, this is something that Alex Jeffreys talks a lot about in the coaching. So if you haven’t started to keep a journal yet, then I recommend you to start one today!

September

• Contributed in a Giveaway event for the first time, and unbeknown to me, I went and chose the only event with different rules from the average giveaway. The rules in this giveaway were that instead of all gifts being shown at the start, you had to earn points by referring people to get your gift shown! I don’t think my gift ever shown because I found it hard going to get referrals. So that put me off giveaways a little, as I thought they were all like that.

• Caught up on some coaching modules that I had fallen behind on.

• Ended up not being very well throughout September, and it made me lose focus a bit. I also let my birthday pass by without mentioning it here. It was on 17th September, and I turned 28! I had a few beers with my cousin, and despite being ill I still managed to have a decent time.

• Installed the Alexa Toolbar which sparked a string of posts about it – Improve Your Alexa Rank Challenge (Part 1), Alexa Rank Challenge (Week 1 Update), and Top 10 Tips To Increase Alexa Rank

• Started trying out different things with MyBlogLog to see if I could get some extra traffic from there.

• Started enjoying blog commenting more, and made some good friends in the process.

• Had an idea for my first ebook/report, and started to plan and write it.

• Purchased one of John Thornhill’s latest and greatest products – Profit From PLR . I’ve had a quick look at the videos and this is top quality information, and I’m pretty sure that once I put this into action (which will be as soon as I’ve finished working on my free ebook) I’m sure I will be able to make some good monthly income from this business model. I can also see this building me some big targeted lists in various niches too.

October …so far

• Made a blog post about what I had learnt from experimenting with MyBlogLog to drive traffic – How I Use MyBlogLog To Drive Targeted Traffic.

• Continued writing ebook, but started to struggle with it a bit. I’ve heard it called writers block, and I know exactly what they mean now. I have been writing pages, then having a break. When I come back and read what I wrote in the last session, I decide it’s a load of rubbish and delete it. But I’m getting on with it a bit better now and not reading it back so much. It’s also turning out to be a longer book than I planned.

• Found what I think it a decent package to use for the Giveaway events. I’ve submitted it to 2 events so far, which haven’t yet launched. I’m going to set a page up showing all the current giveway events soon, as this might help with referrals? I’ve seen a lot of others doing this so I think it must help a bit?

• I set up a second Twitter account based on one of my profit pulling platforms, and to help build my list. Currently I’ve grown it to 2,600 followers in 3 weeks. I’m not sure whether or not you are supposed to have more than 1 account? But I noticed one of my friends on the coaching has set up another account, and he doesn’t seem to have had any problems. And I’ve not had any issues either.

• Secured my place for Lee Mcintyre’s live workshop in Manchester, which is perfect for me because I live in Manchester! But this has also been a huge step for me, because as you may have read in my 25 Things You Should Know post, I have a bit of a problem with unwanted anxiety. Just a few short months ago I would have done anything possible to avoid going to an event like this. But ever since I started on Alex Jeffreys coaching program my self confidence has been rising at a fast rate, and instead of dreading the event I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be making a post or three about it afterwards, but it’s not for another week yet!

• Started keeping a journal of my daily tasks rather than just writing the odd thing down, which I was doing before.

• I seem to have been focusing too much on my blog recently, and not spending enough time on my list building. So I’ve changed my focus back to list building, which is where it should be.

• Installed some  more plugins on my blog, and updated my Blog Plugins page. One of the plugins I wouldn’t have found, if I hadn’t of paid Norene Broyton’s blog a visit. Norene made a post titled – Hear Ye, Hear Ye — A Unique Blogging Tool , which is about a plugin that you will see at the top of each of my posts. It gives you the choice to listen to the blog post, rather than read it. I find it quite fun to listen to. You can also download the audio as an MP3 or Podcast.

And finally that’s about it. Phew!!.. That was a lot of typing, and yet another long post from me. I do hope I’m not boring anyone with these long posts? And try to keep them as short as I can, while fitting everything in. But it can be hard as you can see.

Right now I’m going to have a well earned rest, and then I’ll get back to joining a few more giveaways. And continue writing my ebook of course, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will have at least finished writing it by the end of next week. Then I will need to look at getting some graphics.

So until next time…

Paul.

I’ve just finished watching the latest coaching call, Module #5 – Traffic Tornados. As the title suggests this module was all about the best ways of generating traffic. Most of the ways were totally free too. So I will give you a quick summary of what was covered, and then some time in the future I will make individual posts and possibly videos, going over these methods in depth.

At the start of the call Alex first reminded us about Module #1, and how we need to stay focused and have a plan of attack. Now a lot has changed since I made my plan back in Module #1, so soon I will be adding all that I’ve learnt since then into my master plan. I’ve only been doing weekly plans so far, this time I have enough knowledge to know what I want to be doing for the next 90 days. And I’ll still be learning more stuff on top of that, but that statement is always going to be true, even after the coaching has ended, because as humans we never stop learning new things.

But even when the coaching is over, it’s never really over, we have access to the private members forum for life, which the value of I think is priceless. The community we have over there is great, and creating a program or product of my own, and maybe having a forum is something I plan to do one day. Of course I won’t be able to do that just yet, but it’s one of my main goals for the future. Before I can do anything like that I need to put everything into practice, until I’m seeing all the right results. Until then I all I can do is share with you what I’m learning, so you too can put it into practice.

So on to…

Traffic Methods:

Forums

Forums = traffic + JV partners – Using this method you should not try & sell, and just be YOU and give value in your posts by helping people. If you do this people are more likely to want to find out more about you, and they will click your link that you will have in your forum signature file, which is underneath each post you make. This is also a great way to get a lot of one way backlinks to your site.

Search for forums in your niche on google, for example: internet marketing forums list, brings up some good lists/directories of forums in the Internet Marketing niche. You want to join the forums with the highest traffic, this would usually be the forum at the top of the search results. You can check the forums traffic ranking on Alexa.com against other forums if you want too.

Articles

Article marketing is a great way to drive traffic, and get backlinks to your site. If you have trouble writing articles, you can research the article directories for your subject, for ideas on what to write about. Once you find an article you like, you can totally rewrite it in your own words and add your own twist to it. But you need to make sure you add your keywords into the article. You can also use this method for ideas for your blog posts too, you’ll never have writters block again!

Search for Article Directories on google. Ezine articles is the best with the most traffic, but it’s also harder to get your acticles accepted because they are more strict. That’s the reason they’re the best though. I’ll make a post of all the best Article sites soon.

Blog Catalog

Use Blog Catalog and similar sites to search for the top listed sites in your niche, and add value comments on their blogs and build relationships with the site owners.

Google.com

Use the search term – link: (example- link: http://paul-lear.com ) to find out which sites are linking to any given site. Then go out and see if you can get your link on those sites somehow, if it’s a blog you can comment on a post and leave your link.

Yahoo.com

Use the search term – linkdomain: (example- linkdomain:http://paul-lear.com) to find out which sites are linking to any given site. Then go out and see if you can get your link on those sites somehow, if it’s a blog you can comment on a post and leave your link.

Alexa.com

Search for big name sites in your niche i.e:- the sites on the first page of the search results on google, yahoo, etc… Then go out and see if you can get your link on those sites somehow, if it’s a blog you can comment on a post and leave your link.

Press Releases

These can get you a lot of traffic, you can even end up getting picked up by Yahoo News. This is more advanced stuff though, press releases can cost around $200. But there are some free press release sites too, but obviously you won’t get anything near the results that you’d get by using a paid option. This is something I will go into at a later date when I know more about them. For now I’m sticking to the free options.

GiveAways

GiveAways are a great way to build your list and drive traffic, for more information on this you can download my free Listbuilding With Alex report. It gives step by step instructions on how you can use GiveAways to build your list.

Video Marketing

Use sites like YouTube to your advantage by submitting targetted videos, then do some keyword research and include these in your description, title, and tags. Also make sure to include your full website url in the description.

Social Media

Use sites like stumble upon, digg, delicious, to bookmark interesting posts including your own.

UStream

You can use ustream.tv to broadcast yourself live, it’s like having your own TV station. You can advertise to your list, on your blog, Twitter, when you will be broadcasting. I’ve not really looked into this, but it has huge potential.

I think that was about it, I’m sure you’ll agree there’s plently to keep you busy there, and great potential in all of the above methods discussed. Now all we have to do is take action and put them all to good use, and very soon I’m sure we’ll all be seeing floods of traffic.

Just remember though, you can’t do everything at once. Tackle one method at a time, and be consistant, consistancy is key when using free traffic methods. And make sure to always have a plan, and stick to it at all times!

Until next time….

Paul.

Well after much stress &and many takes I finally managed to record my very first video. I decided I might as well make this a welcome video for my blog, so you will now see this video in my sidebar over to the right.

As you will probably be bale to tell while watching it, I was very nervous. I’ve never EVER recorded a video of myself, in all my life, so this was a pretty big deal for me. I’m really glad that I decided to take action and just get it done though, I actually kind of held myself accountable in a comment on fellow student, David Walker’s blog, although I didn’t fully commit & say I’d definitely get one done. But that comment made me feel that, because I’d said that I would practice & try to produce something, I felt that I MUST get a video uploaded today, even if it gave me a headache in the doing. (which it did)

The main thing is I’ve done my first video, and took myself WAY out of my comfort zone, which is a massive achievement for me, as I actually have an anxiety disorder which I’ve let stop me from doing things in the past. I don’t know what is, but joining the Alex Jeffreys Coaching program has really done something for my well being, I honestly haven’t felt so good about myself in years. Even my friends and family have noticed the change in me, and have commented a few times as to how much more confident and upbeat I seem.

We are just about halfway through the coaching now, although their will be many bonuses after that. We also have access to the private members forum for life, which the value of is just priceless if you ask me. Great things are happening now, and there are more great things to come for everyone involved in this coaching.

Now this doesn’t mean that if you weren’t able to get on the coaching, that you need to get left behind, as I said in the video I’ll be sharing a lot of what I learn right here on this blog. And the bits that aren’t shared here will be shared in free reports, so there’s no need for anyone to get left behind. If you have any questions at all, just leave a comment in one of my posts on this blog, and I’ll do my best to help you.

I want to help as many people as I can acheive what I’m achieving now, okay I’m not making any money right now, but I’m moving in a forward direction, little by little. I’m doing this all at my own pace, and my main focus is building my list. And list building is where your focus should be too.

So my message is this, don’t hold back, don’t let your fears get in the way. Take action on something like I’ve today with my first video, and prepare to be amazed at yourself.

Paul.

P.S.

I’d love to hear what you think, good or bad. So please leave your comments below… Thanks

EDIT: 6th August 2009

When I got up this morning I decided that I wanted to have a try at improving on the first video, so here’s the result of that.

It actually didn’t take many takes this time, as I already knew what I wanted to say. I think this is a slight improvement on the first video, apart from the part where I had to cough..

What I will say as words of encouragement for those yet to get their video up, it does get easier with each video you make. I think I just need to work on sounding more natural in the way I speak now.

Bonus Call #1

This was a bonus that Alex arranged earlier in the year with Maria Andros. It was all about video marketing, and if you haven’t heard of Maria Andros, she is known as the Queen of Video Marketing.

Here’s a few key points that we learnt from Maria about how to market ourselves using video:

• Just be you.

• Let your audience know who you are, don’t be fake.

• It’s not who you know, it’s who knows YOU that matters.

• Video converts upto 600% higher than text alone.

• Do keyword research to maximize your visibility when people search YouTube, and more importantly, to help you rank high in the search engines.

• Be inspiring, and don’t forget to smile.

I actually managed to pluck up the courage & make my first video today, it’s a welcome video for this blog. You”l either be beable to see it now, or very soon in the sidebar to the right. It’s not brilliant, but it will do, the main thing is it’s brought me out of my comfort zone.

Module #3

Module #3 was all about blogging, and the importance of having a blog as an Internet Marketer.

Here’s some of the key points we learnt:

• “Winners never quit, quiters never win” – This was one of my favourite quotes that Alex mentioned

• Blog about all the steps you take, before and after.

• Blogging maintains your focus, as you can hold yourself accountable to the world.

• Don’t hold back, give as much information as necessary.

• The feedback from your blog will give you questions to answer in reports, and ideas for new blog posts.

• Tell your story, & give value.

• Write as you speak, don’t use vocabulary you wouldn’t normally use.

• Blog comment on other blogs in your niche, and make relationships with other blog owners.

• Show your commitment in your posts.

• Fail Forward Fast – You have to have seen some failure in order to succeed.

• Add your story in with your message.

• You can get ideas for blog posts from other blogs in your niche.

Module #4

This module was all about building a network of targeted links back to your blog from all over the internet. This is done by simply commenting & adding value to other blogs in your niche.

Here are some key points we learnt about this:

• Add this traffic method to your plan, and spend a certain amount of time doing this each day.

• Comment on blogs with high traffic

• Engage in conversation with the blog owners, get to know them, and get them to know you.

• Examine successful blogs and make notes of changes you’d like to make to your blog in the future.

• Your biggest competition are your best JV partners.

• Associate yourself with people you can learn from by commenting on their blogs and getting to know them.

• Keep track of which blogs are bringing you the most traffic, and only keep doing what works.

As I’ve not made an update on where the coaching is up to since the first module, I’m going to give a quick summary of the ALL the modules right up to date. This is going to be the first of 2 posts.

Module #1

This module was all about goals & planning ahead. Here are a few of things we learnt:

• To start small, but think big. This basically means although we are just starting out, there is no harm in thinking about the big things we will be able to achieve in the future. By thinking about the things we want to achieve, we can then start to plan backwards from that end goal, to find out all the things we need to do, learn or outsource in order to achieve it.

• That we need to have personal goals as well as business & entrepreneurial goals. It’s important that you have personal goals, as they will help you to remain focused, and determined to not give up when the going gets a little tough. I find that having my goals stuck on the wall near my desk is good for motivation. It helps me to not lose track & stick to my plan at all times.

• Scrutinize your day by logging everything you do, and how long you spent doing it, Alex calls these ‘daily did sheets’. Then at the end of the day you will see exactly how much time you’ve wasted, and you can then try and cut out the things that wasted your time the next day, and onwards.

• Plan the day ahead, the night before, prioritize your tasks. For instance you would make an ,A, B, and C list. Your A list would be high priority tasks that need doing first, and so on.

Module #2

This module was all about getting a Profit Pulling Platform set up. A Profit Pulling Platform is basically a series of web pages that will become your sales funnel. You can then channel traffic from the internet through that sales funnel, and start to pull profits.

Here’s some key points that we learnt here:

• Our main focus with our Profit Pulling Platform is to get people to sign up to our list.

• Treat your list as real people, not as numbers.

• To keep an eye on our conversion rates, and do split testing (I’ll explain split testing at a later date.)

• You will need to outsource certain tasks like graphics for instance, various other things that would take you to long to learn.

• To track our traffic using Google Analytics. (I’ll be making a post explaining about this soon)

We are actually up to Module #4 now, I will continue this coaching update in the next post, which will be tomorrow.

Paul.

(Please note, if you purchase by going through the links in this post I will receive a commission)

I’ve not updated my progress for a while, so here’s an update of what I have achieved since my last post:

I’ve updated the blog theme, signed up with Aweber, added an opt-in form & gift to my blog, set up Google Analytics to track my traffic, submitted my site to some RSS feed directories, and set up a profit pulling platform. So as you can see although I’ve not updated my progress here for a while, I have been quite busy behind the scenes, most of the time sticking to my plan. Although my current earnings online to date are zero $0. Doe’s this bother me? No, I’ve only just got going & I’ve not even started to drive traffic to my site yet, I would also rather concentrate on building my list right now than make money anyway. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “The money is in the list” right? Well I believe that to be very true, & I can understand why having a mailing list is so important, so that is what I’m putting all my effort into. And I would strongly advise you to do the very same.

Now I’m guessing that if you are following my progress you are either one of the students on Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program. Or you are not on the Coaching Program, but you are more than likely interested in making money online? Now some of you may have already taken some action & got a blog, hosting, domain name, & auto responder set up? If you have well done, you’ve taken the first steps to success online. But if you have yet to get started that’s not a problem, because I’m going to take you through the steps you need to take to get yourself up & running, or at least up & crawling. Because we don’t want to run before we have learnt to walk, always remember that.

So let’s start with what you need first:

Domain Name & Hosting

Before you can get your blog set up you are going to need your own domain name & hosting account. Now some people try & save money when they are starting out & go with a free wordpress blog from WordPress Direct or a free hosting account. But for what we are doing you are going to need to pay for your own hosting & a domain name, the reason for this is you are going to want to have full control over your site. With a free wordpress blog or free hosting account you are always at the mercy of the company who is providing your free access, there’s also a chance you won’t own the content that you write, on a free hosted blog. Also with blogs on WordPress Direct, you won’t be able to use a lot of plugins that you will need, & you most likely won’t be able to have an opt-in box to build your list either. So just trust me on this one & go with the paid hosting from the start, it will save you a lot of headaches.

So for your paid hosting account I would recommend using Hostgator.com, this is the hosting company I use, as do many other successful Internet Marketers. I haven’t noticed any downtime in the 5 months I have been with them, & they have plenty of tutorial videos in the members area, to walk you through everything you need to set yourself up.You also get a 45 day money back guarantee, though I’m sure very few people need to use it, it’s nice to know the option is there.

I’ve also found a 20% discount code that you can use, it’s only valid for July 2009, but I’ll try & replace this code with a new one when it expires, I will try & keep these discount codes up to date. If you are reading this post & I’ve not updated the codes lately, just leave me a comment & I’ll get right on to it.

The latest code is: BEACH

The process for purchasing your hosting from Hostgator is fairly simple:

1) Go to HostGator.com. Select ‘order now’ under the plan that you want. If you are just starting out, I would suggest choosing the Baby plan, which is the plan I am subscribed to. This allows you to host unlimited domains which is important, also unlimited bandwidth, & unlimited disk space.

2) Register your new domain, now you can do this with Hostgator for ease, but I would recommend registering your domain name with namecheap.com. It’s a very simple process but I can go into the details of it more if you have trouble, simply drop me a comment. However if you’d rather keep things more simple, you can register your domain name with Hostgator like I said. So if you went with Namecheap.com you already have a domain, so click “I will use My Existing Domain” and type it in the field, click “next” to continue. If you prefer to get your domain name with Hostgator, proceed to register it with them.

TIP (If you decide to use Namecheap.com you can find discount coupon codes by searching on Google for “namecheap July 2009 coupon” Replacing July 2009 with the date you are currently looking for. Namecheap also offer free WhoisGuard subscription for the first year, which I highly recommend to you. This will stop your name, home address & email & phone number being made publicly available to all kind of spammers.)
3) Back now on hostgator.com, Select the desired “billing cycle”, and type in the coupon code. Now click ‘calculate totals’.

4) You should see the discounted price.

5) Complete checkout.

Once you’ve done all that you will get an email from Hostgator with all the details of your account, you will want to keep this email for future reference, & you will need this for updating your DNS (Domain Name Servers) info in the steps below. If you purchased your domain name with Namecheap, then you will need to update the DNS (Domain Name Servers) with your hosts name servers info. So go to namecheap.com & login to your account, then:

1) Go to the section on the your account homepage where it says “QUICKLY MODIFY ONE OF YOUR DOMAIN” & enter the domain name you just purchased. Then click “Modify >>”

2) Then on the menu to the left, you will then need to click “Transfer DNS To Webhost”

3) Now go to the email that you received from Hostgator, which contained your account info. Now you need to find the part where it says-

EXAMPLE:

Nameserver 1: ns1.mydomain.com

Nameserver 2: ns2.mydomain.com

Then copy & paste the nameserver info into box 1 & 2 on Namecheap.com

4) Click save changes… (The changes are sometimes instant, but you may have to wait up to 24hrs for the changes to take effect. For instance don’t be alarmed if you can’t view your website straight away, just wait upto 24hrs & everything should be fine after that. If not just contact Hostgator & they will be happy to help you. I’ve emailed & phoned them a few times, they’ve always been very helpful, & replied in a timely manner.)

That’s basically all there is to it, but if you have any problems just leave a comment & I’ll do my very best to try & help you get it sorted.

The next thing you’ll want to do is set your wordpress blog up in Hostgator, you can very easily do this using the Fantasico script setup in your cPanel, you will find videos explaining everything in your Hostgator account, but again if you need help drop me a comment. I will reply to any question asked

Now at the beginning of this post I mentioned all those other things I’ve done in the last 2 weeks. I will talk about setting those up in the next few posts. I hope this post has been of some use to you?

I’m currently in the process of learning how to use Camtasia Studio, if I can master this I will be bringing out some tutorial videos to go with this post & future posts. For now I will try & at very least add some screen shots. Now I must admit I’m finding Camtasia a bit difficult at times, & I’m also having trouble projecting my voice to make the recordings sound lively & loud enough. Hopefully I will get the hang of this soon, so if anyone has any tips for me, I would be very grateful. I guess I’ll just keep practising for now, as they do say practice makes perfect.

Thank you for reading,

Paul.

(Please note, if you purchase by going through the links in this post I will receive a commission)

So last time I said I would go further into why I am now about 95% more productive than normal, & I’m being serious when I say that, I really was getting nothing done. Well as I said in the last post, it’s all about having a plan, but not just any old plan. No, it has to be well structured & organized, you see I have made business plans in the past, but I was doing it blindly. My idea of a plan before was, have a few ideas, write them down, then somehow try to make them work. When I think about that now it is no wonder I wasn’t getting anywhere, it might have been a plan of kinds, but it wasn’t organized.

So what Alex has made us realize is, “Know that end goal, & plan backwards from there.” The whole planning backwards thing sounded funny at first, but it’s obvious that is what you should do when you really think about it.

So if you are reading this & haven’t yet started YOUR plan, now is the time to “TAKE ACTION.” Think about the things you REALLY want, this could be anything, a new car, new house, speed boat?? One of my personal goals is to help my farther be able to take an early retirement from his day job.. Another is a new car for myself. Whatever you want, it’s all about starting with your personal goals, this will give you the drive & desire to succeed & not give up half way through.

The next part would be to plan your business goals, again this is for you to decide what you want to do? You need to find a profitable niche to work in, do some research by looking at similar businesses, & find out what seems to work in that niche. Once you find someone who seems to be successful, you could sign up to their mailing list & get some ideas from what they are doing. After you find out what this person is doing, you should then have an end goal, to get to the level this person is at & model your business on theirs. You would then work backwards from there, writing down everything you would need to do, starting with the most important things first, like making a blog for example. You would then break these things down into months, weeks, & daily tasks that you can tick off as you do them.  It’s all about getting started & asking questions later, the main thing is you just get started & you can add to your plan as you go along.

Then there will be your entrepreneurial plan, on this plan would be skills you need to learn & tools you need to master. Things like learning how to make instructional videos to put on your website, how to drive traffic to a website, learn how to market yourself or your business.

To help you keep track of all your thoughts & ideas you can use mind mapping software, this is the one I’ve been using FreeMind, & the best part is it’s free to download & use. Mind mapping is a very effective way to keep track of all of your ideas, meaning you don’t have to keep track of lots of bits of paper or files, you can have it all there on 1 page. Whenever you have an idea you need to get it out of your head, & onto the mind map before you forget it, or lose the piece of paper you wrote it on.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post, I will be setting my mailing list up soon where I will be sharing more great info like this, & giving away all sorts of great stuff. It will also ensure you never miss my latest blog posts, So stay tuned for that.

I look forward to helping you get started, let’s go on this journey together.

To OUR success,

Paul.

Hey everyone!

Yes today is the first day, of the rest of my life, & also my first blog post here.. Yay!

Let me introduce myself, my name is Paul Lear & I’m 27 years old. I have started this blog to document my journey as I learn internet marketing, from my Mentor, Alex Jeffreys. If you haven’t heard of Alex Jeffreys,  just run his name by google, & you’ll find plenty of results for him. I was lucky enough to get a place on his coaching program, Marketing With Alex 2.0.

So why is today the first day, of the rest of my life? Well the first thing Alex has taught us, is that in order to succeed we need to have a plan, & then work at that plan little by little, as fast or as slow as you want, & eventually you will see the end goal. That’s where I was going wrong before, I didn’t have any plan. So that is exactly what I have started to do, & the first thing on my list is to get this blog set up, which as you can see it is now under way. It’s far from perfect but it’s all about making a start & perfecting it later, or as Alex would say, “speed up the learning process – learn as you apply”. I’m not sure if that was his exact words, but I’ve added quotation marks anyway.

So I’m doing well so far today, these were my goals for today, & I only planned what I knew I’d have time to do:

Purchase Paul-Lear.com – Done

Update my domain name servers to point at my hosts name servers. -Done

Install WordPress & add a new theme – Done

Make first post on blog – In progress as I type

Create about Me Page – Will be done after I finish typing this post.

So there you go, not really a lot of goals to get done for today, but I didn’t start on them until 5pm, & I’ve had a few distractions. But I remained focused on what I had to do every time I returned to my desk, & I got everything done that I wanted to do. There was also a few personal things on my “To Do” list  for today as well, I’ve just not added them here as it wasn’t relevant. Now I probably wouldn’t have got all these things done if I didn’t have my main plan & daily goals to keep me on track. I know this was only a very small part of my plan, but each day I will set different goals/tasks from my main plan, as my goals for that day, the goals I choose will depend how important I have ordered them. So before I finish this post I want to leave you with these 3 quotes:

“Plan ahead for success.” ~Alex Jeffreys

“The greatest things ever done on Earth have been done little by little.” ~William Jennings Bryan

“To make something big and beautiful, we have to take small steps. Doing so, we look back to see what we did with a smile.” ~Caitlyn Mcdougall

Okay, I’m going to wrap this post up here as it is nearly 11pm & I have the About Me page to write now. But just think about what I have talked about in this post, & think about those quotes.  I will be making another post shortly, where I will be going further into what I have learned from the first module of the Marketing With Alex coaching, & how it has helped me become 95% more productive than normal, yes I was very lazy before I started being coached, more on that soon.

Until next time,

Paul.