Okay, so as you can see from the title of this post and screen shot below, I have managed to build my list from 50 to 2000 subscribers in around 15 weeks, which means that I managed to hit my target goal of 2000 by 1st APRIL. (See My Goals For 2010 for more information)

And as I said in my previous post, I’m going to share with you what I did to build my list to that figure in that space of time.

My very first subscribers came in September from me tweeting about my various free offers on Twitter, I had been building my Twitter following since April 2009, and had built up around 4000 followers, mostly targeted to the Internet marketing and make money online niches. So I was lucky that I’d done that.

Twitter proved to be a very slow way of getting subscribers though, and they would often unsubscribe after they got the download. Those that did stay were very unresponsive because I hardly emailed them. The ones that did open my emails, when I finally emailed them that is, they would unsubscribe because they probably didn’t remember how they got on my list.

At the beginning of October of finally got over my fear of entering JV Giveaway Events, yeah I know it sounds funny but i was actually worried about entering these things. It was the fact that it says that you MUST promote the giveaway event to your list, and I barely had one!.. For some strange reason I also had it in my head that I might get banned from entering other JV Giveaway Events if I was caught not promoting (which was not the case at all.)

I really wish I’d started doing the Giveaway Events right from the start like I was told to by, Alex Jeffreys my mentor, because once I found a decent gift and entered as many as I could, slowly but surely my list would grow each week, and this time as the new subscribers came in, I made sure to email them at least one a week with something free and of value with no opt-in required.

I simply used Twitter to promote the JV Giveaway Events as best I could, and this helped keep me from getting my gift removed from a lot of them. However it was nothing like I thought and was no big deal if I didn’t manage to get enough hits to my link, as I’d still get some subscribers from the first few days which is when all the traffic is being driven to them anyway.

I also started using some Safelists to help get more people on my list faster, the main one I used was ListJoe, it allowed me to mail out to about 3000 I think as soon as I joined, and it got me a few subscribers. You then have to earn more credits to be able to send again, by clicking links in emails, that got pretty tedious though and I soon stopped wasting time clicking links in emails, so I didn’t mail out with them again and just did the same thing with a few others instead.

Don’t get me wrong the Safelist sites are ok, but only if you take the discounted one time offers for upgrades when you join, otherwise it is a lot more expensive later, but I didn’t have the cash to do that. I will probably look at joining one of the better Safelists and upgrading soon, as I know people who have done this and it helps them level out the unsubscribes they get. I will blog about it when the time comes, and let my readers of this blog know my recommendation of the Safelist I end up upgrading to.

October and November I spent writing my Traffic ebook, a long process but well worth it. I also attended Lee McIntyre’s Live Workshop in Manchester at the end of October, and this gave me a lot of ideas for list building, and I found out that Jit Uppal who was a speaker at the event built his list and made thousands of dollars, using adswaps.

I finally released my ebook on 23rd November and started entering it in as many JV Giveaway Events as possible.

By December I had built my list to around 50 subscribers using the above methods, which could easily have been a much higher figure but I just hadn’t been giving list building enough focus, I was far too wrapped up in my blog and driving traffic to it, in the hope that they would signup to my list through the free offers I had in my blogs sidebar. However that didn’t really work out, and it only got me a handful.

I decided it was time to start taking this listbuilding more seriously, as I could see my peers boasting mailing lists of up to 2000, and there I was at 50, and I started at the same time as them too… Anyway I think it was about the  first week in December that I started to getting interested Adswaps, after I had spoken to some of my friends that I had made along my journey, namely Paul Wilson, and James Howard, who told me how well adswapping was going for them.

So knowing that I needed to get some more people on my list before starting adswaps, I decided to pay for an upgrade in one of the big JV Giveaway Events, and I managed to add 30 subscribers in just a few days.

So I was now up to 80 subscribers, I knew this still wasn’t anywhere near enough to start adswapping, but I went out looking to try and get my first one set up anyway, and I was lucky enough to find someone with a list much bigger than mine, who offered to send out for me even though he knew I only had 80 subscribers… Very nice of him huh, and you will generally find there are quite a few nice people out there who will help the little guys out if you look hard enough.

I really couldn’t believe my luck, and it really was a case of being in the right place at the right time, as it just happened this person had decided to break his list down, and had some adswaps with a few smaller lists this particular weekend to help the little guys like me out.

I ended up adding 50 people with that adswap in the space of 48hrs, and I had about 120 clicks to my squeeze page. This left me with a total of 130 subscribers, still not really enough (recommended is 250-500 to start adswaps) but I had been bitten by the bug and did everything I could to seek out people with small lists like mine, and offer to send twice for lists twice my size, all the time being honest about my list size, which is very important.

So apart from carrying on joining all the latest JV Giveaway Events, Adswapping is all I have been doing between now and December, and that is what has seen my list grow from 50 – 2000 in 15 weeks. counting all the unsubscribes that I’ve had, and people not clicking on the confirmation link in the emails, I think I must of had about 4000 submissions to my opt-in forms all together… but i make a habit of deleting unsubscribers each week, or you end up paying more for subscribers that are no longer receiving your emails.

I’ve also seen my first sales as a result of the adswaps that I’ve been doing, and I’ve been seeing some consistent small sales each week over the last month, so all the effort I’ve put in to this is really starting to pay off.

If you’ve made it this far down the page, well done. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my little story, I know it’s a long piece of writing that I could of explained in fewer words, but once I started typing the words just started to flow, and before I knew it I’d wrote over 1000 words! (Pitty I wasn’t doing it for an exam, eh!)

I’ve really enjoyed writing this, and it brought back the memories of how frustrated I felt when I had such a small list, that was growing at such a slow rate, and which was all fault of my own. I really hope anyone who may be just starting to build a list will learn from my mistakes by reading this post.

And just to make sure you start off on completely the right track, I’m going to write a short and to the point, step-by-step report for you all, on the exact steps you need to take, to get get your first subscribers and build your list to 2000 and beyond in as little time as possible.

I have only just started writing the report today, and I really want to make sure I include everything you need to get going. I’m going to try my best to include all the resource links and tools, and exact steps needed so that you can get your list off to a flying start.

You can expect that to be released sometime in the next 2-3 weeks…

In the meantime I would love to hear what you think of this post, did you like my little story and the way I told it?… Or did it send you to sleep it was that long?… Either way I want to know.

Until next time…

Sionara,

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…

==============

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

The time as I write this is 2am here in the UK …. I was just about to go to bed actually, but I simply had to get a quick blog post published about this right away!!

As you may know back in July I enrolled on Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program – Marketing With Alex. And In this short space of time I’ve gone from having no website/blog, no list and no idea….. To having my own blog, regular visitors that leave me comments, and a steadily growing mailing list… And Alex’s business knowledge to go with it.

It has to be one of the best decisions I ever made, as I’m petty darn sure that if I hadn’t of found Alex when I did, I’d still be going round in circles right now!

Now the reason Alex is so successful today and was able to be in a position to run a coaching program, was because he paid huge amounts of cash to some of the top level gurus to get ahead of the game. One of those gurus was Rich Schefren “The Guru to the Gurus”. And Rich Schefren is one of the guys behind what I’m about to share with you right now…

>>The League of Extraordinary Minds –  Get Your FREE Pass Here <<

(The above is affiliate link, if you go on to purchase any offer by going through this link I will receive a commission)

Here’s the interesting part, Alex had to pay Rich around $10,000 for Rich to mentor him, which was $5,000 per program!! But right now you can get access to Rich Schefren and 53 of the most influential, most respected, and most recognized business advisors in the world…

For FREE !!

>>The League of Extraordinary Minds — Get Your FREE Pass Here <<

(The above is affiliate link, if you go on to purchase any offer by going through this link I will receive a commission)

I know!.. I couldn’t believe it either, but it’s true!… And something as rare as The League of Extraordinary Minds is not something that comes along very often!! So as you can imagine I grabbed it with both hands.

Yes I’ve already secured my place and will be studying this intensely over the next 6 weeks.

My advice is get signed up now, get lots of note paper, watch the first video, and start taking plenty of notes.

I’m really excited about this, it’s designed to make small businesses like ours take off… And it’s going to be good sharing our thoughts on this as the series progresses.

>>The League of Extraordinary Minds — Get Your FREE Pass Here <<

(The above is affiliate link, if you go on to purchase any offer by going through this link I will receive a commission)

Please leave your comments if you are joining me on this one off opportunity, and if you have your own blog, be sure to blog about it too.

Until next time…

Paul.

P.S

I’m off to Lee McIntyre’s workshop on Friday, where I’ll hopefully be meeting Alex Jeffreys himself, along with some of my fellow students and other top marketers. I can’t wait… So stay tuned for my blog post all about it soon, and I’ll try and get some photos too.

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.

As you may recall in my last post I said I would be posting some tips to help you improve your Alexa rank. I found quite a few tips, here are the beter sounding tips I found that may help you improve your Alexa rank. If you would like to know more about what Alexa rank is and how it works, please see my Improve Your Alexa Rank Challenge (Part 1) post.

Top 10 Tips (In no particular order)

1. Install the Alexa Toolbar – Seeing as Alexa rank is based on how many people visit your site per day, who have the toolbar installed. Install “Sparky” The Alexa Toolbar for Firefox today! Alternatively you could install another firefox plugin, which also exchanges data with Alexa – Search Status.

2. Install the Alexa Site Widget on your blog/site – The reason you want to do this is simple,  you want as many people to download the Alexa Toolbar as possible. So by installing the Alexa Site Widget on your blog, you are more likely to get people interested in Alexa rank, and if they have a website they’ll most likely download the toolbar. Even if they don’t have a website, they might find it interesting and install it anyway?

Here’s an example of what the Alexa Site Widget looks like:

3. Encourage others to install the Alexa Toolbar – This is a pretty obvious one, and you will probably have already noticed me doing this. So encourage everyone you know to install it, friends, family, work collegues, your nexdoor neighbours, the milkman … Everyone!!

4. Bookmark every post you make, and encourage others to bookmark your posts too – We all know bookmarking your posts is a great way to get lots of backlinks to your site, but it can also help you get lots of traffic too if done properly. For this to work you will need to do some research to find out what the hottest topics are in your niche, and then write very informative content answering the most popular questions. Use tip 5 to help get some exposure to these posts.

5. Visit Webmaster and Internet Marketing forums – On these type of forums the majority of people will have the Alexa toolbar installed, all you have to do is get them to your site. The best way to do this is to use your forum signature to link to popular posts on your blog, preferably offering free tips to improve Alexa rank. Or link to a post that answers a much asked question.  You can also try and offer them something of value for free, and experiment with different subject lines in your text link.

6. Make an ‘Alexa rank’ category – Register with Alexa.com and opt-in to receive occasional news emails from them, and blog about the latest Alexa news as soon as you get it. It would also be a good idea to create regular posts with more Alexa rank tips as you find them. Also be sure to do keyword research, and submit your posts to Article directories and link back to your Alexa rank category.

7. Blog about, or write and submit articles about Alexa – If you write about Alexa often enough, and do a little keyword research you are more likely to get found by people searching for information on Alexa. These people will more than likely have the Alexa Toolbar installed, which means when they pay you a visit, your Alexa rank will improve. If you are submitting articles about Alexa, make sure you give a good enough reason for them to visit your site in the resource box.

Example: “Find out how Paul improved his Alexa Site Rank by 1 million in 30 days.”

8. Talk about Alexa rank on social networks – Use sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Youtube to get people interested in the Alexa  and how it works. When doing this post a snippet of the post, and give it an interesting subject line. And always include a link back to your site, to a relevant post. Of course you can do this with any subject matter, but for this we want people to get interested in Alexa and installing the toolbar, so a post about Alexa is needed.

9. Create a Webmaster Tools Section/page – The trick here is to attract Webmasters to a page on your site, where they can gain access and information to the latest and greatest Webmaster tools. If your page is good enough it will get bookmarked, linked to, social bookmarked, etc…

10. Join communities like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog - Sign up for these blog community sites and add your site link to your profile, next install the site widget. You can see an example of one of these site widgets on my sidebar to the right. Doing this and various other things to do with these sites has almost doubled my traffic. I haven’t got a BlogCatalog account yet, but I will be signing up this week and putting the widget under the MyBlogLog widget.

For more Alexa rank tips check this post out from DoshDosh.com – 20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank, it is the post where I got most of my Alexa Traffic tips ideas from.

I will be making another post probably later this week, where I will be sharing what I’ve been doing with these blog community sites to increase my traffic… Stay tuned.

In the mean time amougst other things, I will be trying out some of these tips to improve my Alexa rank. I’ll be posting another update of my Alexa rank on Friday, hopefully I will have hit my 500,000 target by then after only 2 weeks!

I’ll try and get the blog community traffic tips post up by this Wednesday.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post, please leave a comment and tell me what you think?

Paul.

P.S.

I messed my blog settings up last night and spent about an hour  reseting everything, so I decided to change the header as you’ve probably noticed… What do you think of it? I’ve done it for a bit of fun, and it makes me smile when I see it.

I will most likely be getting a professional header graphic made in the next couple of months. I’ll most likely have a play around in Photoshop in my spare time first though, even though my mentor, Alex Jeffreys doesn’t recommend it. As long as you do things like that in your spare time, and not when you should be working on something, I think it’s fine.

Hey everyone!

This is an exercise in creative blogging that, The GazzMan, AKA Gary Simpson, has introduced to us over in the Marketing With Alex private forum.  It all started with Gary writing 25 things about himself, then he picked 5 random people who he wanted to know more about. And each person who takes up the challenge is to then pick another 5 people out of our fellow students.

I’ve actually been tagged by 3 people, Roger Edwards, Mick Fallon, and Steve Wakefield. Anyway I’ve finally got around to listing my 25 things, so here goes.

1. Paul was born and still lives in Manchester, UK.

2. Paul loves animals, and especially cats.

3. Paul feels strongly about cruelty to animals, seeing and hearing about it upsets and angers him.

4. Paul was once pinned up against a fence by an Alsatian dog, while it overtowered him and repeatedly barked at him. This happened when he was about 4 or 5 years old. His mum managed to distract the dog eventually and he was able to get away unharmed.

5. After the Alsatian incident, Paul developed a fear of dogs. He later got over it, by facing his fear and doing his work experience at a dog boarding kennel, where he was locked in with a variety of different dogs while he cleaned/mucked them out.

6. When Paul was about 13 years old, he and his cousin once collected a small amount of frog spawn from a local pond. He then kept it in a big bucket in his back garden, and studied them as they developed from tadpoles into frogs. He then set them free once they had grown arms and legs, near a local garden that had a pond.

7. Paul loves watching fireworks displays.

8. Paul has had 2 pet cats in his life, and 2 gold fish.

9. On January 14th 2009, Paul’s latest pet cat, Blackie, died aged 14. Paul buried him the next day.

10. Both of Paul’s cats lived to the age of 14.

11. This is the longest period of time that Paul hasn’t had a pet cat. He currently doesn’t have any pets, but daily feeds and looks out for a local cat, that has been practically abandoned by it’s owners.

12. Paul passed his driving test first time.

13. Paul suffers from an generalized anxiety disorder, if you don’t know what an anxiety disorder is you can find out more about it HERE.

14. Paul finds his anxiety problem embarrassing, but does his best to get on with living as normal a life as possible.

15. Paul would like to travel more.

16. Paul has never been abroad.

17. Paul pushed himself this year, and got his first ever video online.

18. Being on the Alex Jeffreys Coaching has had a big effect on Paul, and his friends and family have noticed how upbeat and positive he is now.

19. Paul plans to continue pushing himself out of his comfort zones in his business, and also with his anxiety problem.

20. Paul has added to his plan, a side project in a different niche than Internet Marketing. He plans to keep a journal of his day to day life, and how he copes with anxiety, and then create a product to help others with the same problem.

21. Paul has always been fascinated by clouds, here is a picture Paul took a couple of years ago, of a sunset at the front of his house.

22. Paul likes watching film/movies, and his favourite type of movies are Action, horror, thrillers, and gangster type movie.

23. Paul loves music, and likes to listen to many different genres.

24. Paul is somewhat addicted to playing on games consoles.

25. Paul is interested in doing voluntary work for charity, and his community.

I could go on further but it’s now time to find 5 people who haven’t been tagged and made their list yet. By the time this post goes live their names will be listed below.

I would like to tag:

Alexis Salaam

Ian Buchanan

Julie Newman

Barbara Harvey

Jeanette Fitzgerald

But will you take up the challenge?

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.