Hey there people,

As you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been by here recently, it’s been quite a while since I last blogged, in fact it’s the first time since I started this blog, that I’ve let a month go by without blogging!

I’ve just been really concentrating on building my list this past 30 days, because I’m doing everything I can to try and make 2000 subscribers by April 1st… That was part of my first goal on my last post My Goals For 2010.

So far so good, I’ve gone from 345 to just over 900 subscribers since I last blogged, so I’m certainly getting there.

I’m treating it as a bit of a game where 2000 is the number of points I need to get to “the next level”, and I must say I’m quite enjoying the challenge, and watching the numbers grow each day.

Of course we all know it’s not a game, and what this is actually doing is building the foundations of my business, and as any Internet Marketer will tell you, their subscriber list is the main part of their business, which doubles up as a push button traffic solution… You can’t get much better than that, FREE traffic at will.

Not only that, I’ve also made my first 4 sales, as an affiliate. Two of these were signups for 14 day trial offers that didn’t stick, but there’s still another ongoing that may stay on for the first months training.

The other sale was a one time offer sale from someone who signed up through me on a JV Giveaway Event, and the best part was i got 100% commission on it.

Those sales were the proof I’ve been waiting for, the small amount the sales were worth is irrelevant to me, it’s enough for me to truly see the massive potential and power of Internet Marketing and Listbuilding combined, and things can only get bigger and better… And now I’ve seen for myself that this stuff really does work if you stick at it.

Also in the month of January I got my first product on Clickbank, I’ve not really done much to promote it yet, and it’s not getting as much traffic from the Clickbank Market Place as I would like, but it’s a start and another big chunk of progress for me to look at and feel proud of.

It’s a very good traffic related product that I bought private rights to, I’ll probably blog about it soon once I’ve seeked some professional advice on what I should be doing next with it. I already have a pretty good idea of what I should be doing with it, I’ve just not had the time, so I may end up outsourcing to help get the word out.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress with that too.

I’m also pleased to announce that my Traffic Guide For Newbies eBook, has now had well over 1000 downloads, so I can safely say that writing your own eBook/Report is definitely worth the time and effort, especailly when you consider that each subscriber on your list, is worth $1 per month on average over time.

If you’d like to hear more about the steps I’ve taken to get my list to where it is now, please leave a comment below, and I’ll put something together on it for my next post.

If you have any other questions just let me know.

Paul

This post is a little overdue, but first I don’t want you to think I started the year off slacking… Far from it!

I have been very busy behind the scenes concentrating on setting things up to build my list, and I’ve also been working on a few things that will hopefully help bring some extra money in to fund things like Aweber, hostsing, etc…

I will most likely blog about my other projects when I’ve had time to see if they bring in the desired results, and what ever happens I will more than likely create a product for you to benefit from, be it about my success or otherwise… And of course I will make it free of charge to my subscribers!

I’ve also spent a good amount of that time planning for the weeks and months ahead, so I’ll move on now and state my goals for 2010 to the world, something which I’ve never done before might I add…

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My Goals For 2010

These are the things I am going to achieve by the end of 2010:

Business Goals

• Build my list to 10,000  (current total stands at 345 so I have a looong way to go, I think it’s achievable though)

For the first quarter of the year my goal is 2000 by April 1st (I will update this every quarter)

• To be Consistently making between $2,000 – 3,000 per week
• Get my Alexa traffic rank inside the top 100,000 (currently stands at 211,236)
• Create a successful Membership Site of some kind
• Create and release at least 2 products based on my results with things I’m doing to build my business
• Help as many newbies as possible get started with their online endeavours, and give them my full support
• Make a blog post every 1-2 weeks
• Do a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum in February
• Create videos for my blog and subscribers every month (currently in the process of learning more about creating screen capture presentations)
• Make easy to follow action plans for each part of my business
• Do more keyword research and Search Engine Optimise this blog and rank on the first page for all my chosen keywords and key-phrases
• Add some sales funnels into the mix
• Surround myself with like minded positive people and keep in contact on a daily/weekly basis (already in process)
• Test and track everything that I do, and work on ways to improve the results
• Give myself a set start and finish time for working on my business each day, and use the time wisely. (Any internet usage after that is my leisure time.)
• Work to a countdown timer on each task to get the best use of my time, and increase my productivity
• Treat this as proper business, if YOU don’t work hard enough YOU get fired! ( this is to give me some motivation when I read this back each week.)
• Make a new pledge to myself and read it each day before I start working on my business
• Look back at these goals every day to remind me why I’m doing this, and what I want to achieve by the end of the year ( This is written in my pledge)
• Stick to a strict plan of action at all times
• Have a set routine to motivate myself before I start working each day
• Keep a Journal documenting everything that I do each day, and make it a part of my daily tasks to write it.

Entrepreneurial Goals

• Create a system that brings me a consistant flow of leads into my business
• Refer back to the MWA coaching and listen to it all again, check my notes from the first time and see what I missed.
• Work harder at branding myself
• Learn more about making video screen presentations
• Study copy-writing
• Study sales funnels
• Study SEO
• Study product creation
• Get into the habit of focusing on the positives, and irradiate the negatives
• Study motivational material

Personal Goals

• Make enough money so my dad can take a well deserved early retirement. (This means so much to me, and is the main reason I’m doing this. My dad has barely taken a day off work in 10 years, probably longer.)
• Make enough money to put towards buying a detached house for my parents, and me while I still live with them (I still live with my parents in a small semi-detached house right now, so we all need somewhere bigger now)
• Make enough money to be able to afford my own place and all the bills that go with it
• Treat my mum and dad to an all expenses paid holiday
• Do more exercise and get out of the house more
• Keep things neat and tidy and have a clean up each month (right now I’ve got papers everywhere, my desk is dusty, and I keep losing things)
• Book myself a holiday
• Book myself and some friends on a driving experience weekend at Silverstone Race Track
• Treat myself to a 50″ widescreen TV (or maybe slightly smaller if I’m still in this small house..lol)
• Purchase a PS3 once I’ve acheived some of my big monetary goals (I could afford one of these now, but I don’t want to distract myself from my business, so this will be a treat)

I’m off to start breaking this down into monthly and weekly plans now, I hope you have enjoyed this insight into my business and what I have planned for the future.

Now go and create your own plan of action, feel free to use mine for ideas… But remember that your goals and plan will be different than mine, and it is important to include things in your personal plan that will motivate you and drive you to succeed, no matter what it takes.

Also you may wonder why I haven’t really added that many expensive treats for myself in my personal goals, well for me it is making other people happy and seeing their reactions that gives me a buzz… And doing things for the people I care about is more than enough motivation for me, so the most expensive of my personal goals are actually for other people as crazy as that sounds.

It’s also so I can tell my Dad ” I told you so”… He doesn’t believe that it’s possible to make money doing what I’m doing, which only pushes me harder to make it happen… So thanks Dad.

Paul

PS- Making your goals public like I have here is the best way to accomplish them, you see holding myself accountable to you all, and displaying my goals here for all to see, is going to make me work my butt off to achieve them. Because I will be writing another post at the end of the year, like I did with  2009, The Year It All Began…., and while it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t achieve everything I set out to do, it won’t make me feel to good having to say I didn’t manage to achieve this , this and this.

Also feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of my goals, and if you don’t have a blog of your own yet (highly recommended) then you can simply hold yourself accountable to me and the readers of my blog by replying to this post with your goals.

Don’t be shy, give it a try!

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

It has now been a week exactly since I set off to attend Lee McIntyre’s Profit Max Workshop in Manchester. So you’re probably wondering why I haven’t posted until now about it?

Well the reason is this, the day after the workshop finished which was last Sunday, I came down with a bad throat infection. So I’ve been coughing and spluttering all week, and well, I still am a little bit now. But at least I now feel well enough to make this post.

Right so what did I think of it all?

Well first of all whether you’ve been to a seminar/workshop before or not, most of you will know that they are usually pitch fests. So let me tell you now that Lee’s workshops are completely the opposite! Not once over the whole 2 days were we pitched to, and the only things for sale were the odd few DVD’s at the back of the room which were returns that had been opened. Obviously they were unable to be resold to normal customers, so Lee was offering them us for a discounted price.

The information Lee shared with us was amazing, he was showing us exactly how he had built his business to the level it is at now. And if you don’t already know Lee makes around 100k a month!

Here’s a few things for you to think about, the following points have come from my notes that I took over the 2 days.

• Use anger to motivate yourself
• Are you doing things too slow? — All successful people do things fast!
• Are you trying to make everything too perfect? — There will always be room for improvement, just make sure your content is helpful, and get it out there.
• Your focus should be on creating content and products — And in turn content and products will help build your list (business)
• Stop thinking about doing things and just take action!
• Believe in yourself and tell yourself you are going to do this.
• Don’t market to the many, market to the few. — i.e. a specific niche/group of people.
• Segment your list into buyers and prospects.
• Over deliver and be personal with your customers and affiliates.

And here is a basic overveiw of Lee’s business:

• Killer Squeeze Page >
• Immediate Low priced but High Value offer (after prospect opts-in) >
• Upsell -a related higher priced offer that compliments the original purchase (if prospect purchased) keep offering low priced offer (if prospect didn’t buy) >
• Multiple backend sales – if they buy the previous upsell, offer your next higher priced product and so on.

I learnt so much in those 2 days and what I’ve shared here is only scratching the surface, if you want to find out about everything Lee talked about there will be a DVD box set out after Lee has finished his workshop tour.

But if I were you I would get down to his next workshop, it’s in Newcastle in January. Just go and get on Lee’s email list and I’m sure he’ll let you know about it soon.

As you can probably tell I was extremely impressed with Lee’s workshop and I’m sure you will be too, if you manage to get to his next one, or if you buy the DVD’s?

Lee even gave us 2 unrelated free DVD’s at the end, and a certificate. It was was like a graduation Ceremony. Lee called our names out one by one to present us with our certificate and DVD’s, and also to shake our hand. I’ve not watched the DVD’s yet but I think they’re probably worth the price of the workshop alone.

All in all it was a great 2 days, and I’m pretty sure I will remember the occasion for a long time to come. And I’m very glad that I took action and just went for it. Sure I had a few problems with social anxiety, but I met some really good people and surprised myself as to what I was capable of if I just put my mind to it.

Thanks for reading, please share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment.

Paul.

P.S

Don’t take my word for it, go and check out this video of everyone at Lee’s workshop (including me) saying a few words on what they thought of it.

Lee McIntyre’s Profit Max Workshop Video Update

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.