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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Wishes For 2010

Paul

Images courtesy of Francesco Marino and Dan

I’m pleased to announce my very first ebook…. Traffic Guide For Newbies is now LIVE!… Go and grab your FREE copy now!!

Revealed: 11 Traffic Generation Techniques To Drive Targeted Traffic To Any Page Online !!

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Just enter your name and email below, and I’ll send you a copy right away!

You can grab your copy of the ebook right away, you will receive a zip file as soon as you confirm your email address. And I will send you the link to the download page as soon as it is ready. EDIT: >>> Download page is now live and ready !!

Yes you read that correctly… Unfortunately The download page isn’t quite ready yet, you see I had some trouble with making the squeeze page today. After hours of trying to get the opt-in box where I wanted it, I found a really good tool that completely solved the problem for me!

I’ll be sharing that tool very soon on the download page of Traffic Guide For Newbies, I’m currently in the middle of adding more bonuses to the download page too.

I would love to hear your thoughts on my ebook,  as it is my very first creation.

So if you’d be so kind as to leave your comments, testimonials and reviews below, and the best ones will earn a place on the squeeze page.

I’m going to be driving a lot of traffic to that page over the coming months, so not only will this help me, but it will also help you gain some free exposure for you and your business.

Enjoy the book!

Paul.

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

Module #1

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

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

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

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

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

Module #2

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

Here’s some key points that we learnt here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul.

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

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!!