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

(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)