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

Hello there!!

After many weeks slaving away at my keyboard I have finally finished writing my first ebook… Yay!!

Well I say finished, there is still some grammar and spelling mistakes to correct, but I feel confident enough now to announce the release date, which is….

*drum roll*

Traffic Guide For Newbies goes live on Monday 23rd November 2009

If you would like to receive a FREE copy, then please fill out the form below. I will then send you a copy before I officially release it here on my blog.

I decided to purchase the domain name for it as well, and luckily for me the .com version was available. It was very lucky really as I’d already had the cover graphics made.

http://TrafficGuideForNewbies.com

You’ll also notice that Aweber have done something different to their system lately, the old opt-in webforms have gone! That was the only sort of webform I could get. Maybe there’s an option that allows you to change it to the old standard format, but I couldn’t see any option for it?… Maybe it was because I’m tired though?

Anyway… That’s it from me for now, I’ve got a lot of work to do over the next few days. There’s the corrections to make as I said, but I also have the squeeze page and thank you page to make yet. I also have other things I need to get done in-between that too.

So look out for the release of this in my next post on Monday, or sign-up above and have your copy sent directly to your inbox before I release it.

Take care everyone!

Paul.

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

As promised, I’m going to walk you through setting up your first list in Aweber. This guide is assuming you have already created your account, so if you haven’t already done so Click Here to sign up. The sign up process is pretty straight forward, & you get a 30 day money back guarantee. I will also add that the if the small monthly fee bothers you, once you’ve got a couple of hundred people on your list, it has the potential to pay for its self. I will go into some of the things you can do to get people on your list in future posts, but for now let’s just concentrate on setting your opt-in form up.

1) Login to your Aweber account, then from the menu at the top of the screen, left click on ‘My Lists‘

2) Left click on ‘+ Create a New List‘

3,a) List Settings: Fill in the following details: Choose a unique name for your new list, this need to be 15 characters or less, Aweber will indicate if the name you choose is available or not. You will also need to give a short description to tell your subscribers what the list/campaign is about. And then in the ‘From Address’ field, enter your full name & email address which you want your emails to appear sent from. This should be an email address you check regularly. Unless you want to recieve an email each time someone subcribes, leave the ‘Subcriber Alerts’ field blank.

3,b) Company Branding: This isn’t essential, but I usually fill it in, see the screenshot below & fill the section in if you want to. If you haven’t got a company logo, then leave that section empty, then click save settings:

4) Back to the top menu now, Left click on ‘Web Forms‘

5) Left click on the ‘+ Create Web Form‘ tab. Then fill in the form name (this name only appears to you). Now look at the screenshot below, these are the settings I use. When you’re done here click ‘Next’ at the bottom right of the screen.

6) Web Form Edit: The form that you see on this page should be fine as it is for your first web form. But if you would like to add a header or footer, or change the text on the submit button, simply hover over them & click to edit. After you’re done here click ‘Save’

7) Now we need to go back to the ‘My Lists’ tab on the top menu, & click on ‘Confirmed Opt-In’

8.) Go to the bottom of the page, Now this is optional, but creating a success page with a download link, using a HTML editor, is something I would suggest doing. You’ll need to find a good ebook or report that has giveaway rights, you then use this as a incentive for people to sign up to your list. So when you’ve chosen your gift, upload it to your webspace using the file manger option in your cPanel.  Then all you need to do is add the URL to to the .html page that you’ created with the download link on. Once you’ve done that click on the ‘Save Confirmation Success Page’ tab.

9) Now go back & click on the ‘Web Forms‘ Tab, Now click on ‘Get HTML’

10) Now select all the text, as shown in the screenshot below, & copy it (Crtl+C)

11) Now for this example I’m going to show you how to add the Opt-In form to your blogs sidebar. So login to your WordPress Dashboard, now goto Appearance > Widgets:

12) Locate the Text widget, then drag & drop it into one of your sidebars, which you’ll find to the right of the screen you are on.

13) Paste in the script code you copied from the Get HTML section on Aweber, give it a title, click ‘Save‘ & that’s it. Now visit your site & you should see the Opt-In form in your blogs sidebar, this will be viewable no matter what page someone is browsing on your blog.

Congratulations, you’ve set up your first Opt-In form, you will now want to start adding some follow up emails to the list you’ve just created. Be sure to give value to your subcribers, & don’t send any promotional emails to them right away. Instead give them more free stuff, & start to build a good relationship with them, tell them about yourself, let them know who you are & encourage interaction from them, do this & you won’t go far wrong.

Stay tuned, I’ll be making another ‘how to’ type post soon.

Thanks for reading,

Paul.

Before I go through setting up your autoresponder I’m going to talk a bit about what exactly an autoresponder is. & why you should use a paid subscription service like Aweber, which is a thirdparty autoresponder service, it’s also the service that I personally use.

Firstly, What is an Autoresponder?

An autoresponder is a basically a piece of software that allows you to collect & store peoples email addresses, when they opt-in through a form, such as the one in the top right sidebar of this blog. It also allows you to set up a series of pre-written emails to go out at specified regular intervals. This means you can send out emails without the need to be at your computer, you could just set whatever emails you wanted to go out over a weeks period, then come back a week later & all those email will have been sent without you having to lift a finger.

Why you should NOT host your own autoresponder!

Some people don’t like the idea of having to pay a monthly fee to an autoresponder company, so they choose to host their own mailing list on their server. This could be more trouble than it’s worth, you see ISP’s are so fed up of spammers they will shut you down & ask questions later, & needles to say this could cost you a lot more in damaged reputation, not to mention you could even end up losing your hosting account & domain name. There’s also software out there that you can run from your desktop, but the minute you start sending mass emails from your home computer you risk having your home internet cut off, my advice, just don’t do it.

The benefits of an autoresponder service

With an autoresponder service like Aweber, which is who I use for my mailing list, you irradicate all those above risks & problems. If anyone does complain you spammed them, as long as you have the confirmed opt-in turned on, Aweber will have proof that everyone on your list has confirmed they want to receive information from you, & you should be safe. Aweber also has many advanced features like, track who opens your messages, track who clicks your links, See which ad campaigns or signup forms bring you the most subscribers, & excellent email deliverability + too much more to mention. Of course they are other autoresponder services out there, but in these uncertain times I prefer to keep my list of prospects safe with Aweber, the biggest company of them all, & recommend you do too. At least we know they aren’t going to disappear, along with our lists.

In my next post I will go through setting up your first list in Aweber.

Thanks for reading,

Paul.

PS

If you’d like to learn about how you can start building YOUR list, & how profitable it can be? Then you might want to download my free report.

FREE LIST BUILDING REPORT!!