[Warrior TV] Creating a $1 Million Blog with Yaro Starak - Thursday 30th July 7PM Eastern

We've been looking forward to this event. Yaro Starak, founder of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com will be answering your questions and providing timely advice to create highly successful blogs. Yaro has sold over $1 Million from his blogs.

Make sure to tune in on Thursday July 30 at 7PM Eastern time!

Have a question for Yaro? Ask below.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Update:

The recording is now available to watch here: http://www.warriorforum.com/war-room...ro-starak.html

If you're wanting to become a professional, full time blogger like Yaro, this recording is a great place to start.

This was an incredible event and we hope to have Yaro on again in the future!

Click Here to Watch Now

Transcript for the event:

Alaister: Welcome to Warrior T.V. This is Warrior Ask Me Anything where we bring to you the world’s best internet marketers and online entrepreneurs for you to interact with. I am Alaister Low.
Daniel: And I am Daniel Burford. Today we are talking with Entrepreneurs-Journey founder, Yaro Starak. Welcome to Warrior T.V. Yaro.
[00:37]
Yaro: Thanks for having me Daniel, happy to be here.
[00:40]
Alaister: Great so Yaro tell us a little bit about how you actually got started in internet marketing and what brought you to where you are today?
[00:48]
Yaro: Well it is a long story now, I started as an 18 year old way back in the University of Queensland in Brisbane, that was my first access to the internet through a 512kb modem, you might remember the really old school slow modems. So I fell in love with the internet back then and pretty much became an entrepreneur almost right away. I started a little hobby website about a card game called Magic the gathering, and I sold cards through that site, I had a little ecommerce shop and I made some money not full time income but sort of $1000 a month which was pretty good while I was in university.
And then I started another company a proofreading business. I saw this opportunity to connect like PhD graduates with international students at University and I acted as middleman, so I made a bit of money running that proofreading company. It was actually my first full time business. And that business led me to blogging which I started in 2005.
So it is a 10 year anniversary for me this year and I pretty much have been blogging and teaching and podcasting and being an information marketer and content creator since then. But it is almost a fifteen year career as an online entrepreneur now.
[2:00]
Alaister: Ah congratulations on ten years blogging that is a huge milestone.
Yaro: Thank you.
Alaister: So it is interesting it seemed as if straight from University you decided and it was kind of a mental decision for you to jump straight into entrepreneurship. Did you ever consider starting a career as an employee at a company or anything like that or were you kind of set on forging your own destiny?
[02:22]
Yaro: You know the number one goal for me has always been the freedom aspect. I really, I don’t know I am not built for doing the one thing for eight hours a day, ten hours a day whatever it is. Even if it is your own business I can’t do the same task for eight, ten hours a day. So my primary goal was the freedom to choose how I work. I wanted to make a lot of money too, who doesn’t especially when you are eighteen and you are still living with your parents, you are thinking a lot about getting enough money to move out, buy a car, buy a house, travel, do all those things but most importantly to me I just wanted to avoid a job.
I really hated that idea and I did successfully manage to never have a full time job. I had casual jobs and part time jobs but I am very grateful the internet came along at the time it did allow me to make a bit of money here and there, then make a bit more, and then finally start to put everything together and actually make a full time income, leave casual jobs, quit part time jobs and become a full time internet marketer. I think by the time I was 22, 23 just after graduation I as making a full time income from the internet.
So it is definitely more about the freedom, the lifestyle, travel, that aspect and not having a job and also not working too hard on one single thing. I just can’t do that.
[03:36]
Alaister: Yeah it is interesting you mention that the primary driver was freedom. I think a lot of people can get caught up trying to chase the million dollar idea and forget about what is important, and it seems as if you transitioned into the full time online marketing. So tell us a little bit about the blog that you run now and what you are actually currently working on right now.
[04:02]
Yaro: Yeah so I have obviously had a lifelong love of entrepreneurship and when I first started blogging I actually started proofreading a blog because it was meant to be this tool to grow traffic to that proofreading business I had back after graduating from university and I tried to write about proofreading but it is a pretty dry subject, not something I enjoyed writing about, but I did love the subject of pure blogging about being an entrepreneur.
So by that stage I could write about the card game website I had. I wrote about what it is like to run the proofreading business. I just also journalled, I had ideas like I think this would be a great idea for an advertising campaign on billboards and I would write about that. Sometimes I would write about really personal stuff going on like how sometimes I felt lonely being a guy sitting at his computer where everyone else had full time jobs with fellow employees and I was rolling out of bed and turning on the computer and having no one to talk to, and those sorts of early day problems you know.
So I wrote about all of that and this audience kind of started following me. They loved hearing about the lifestyle and also starting your own business and just the basics like how do you get traffic to a website? How do you sell products? How do you take payments online? How do you get your customers? Deal with all those things to do with running a business. I wrote about them on my own blog and the blog eventually became an income source equal to the proofreading company plus I loved it, I really loved the writing, I really loved the email marketing because I started doing email marketing to go with blogging.
And then I also discovered this whole world of becoming an information publisher so I started selling eBooks and membership sites and courses and basically teaching everything I knew, predominantly around the world of blogging because by then I had already spent two years building up this blog and making a full time income from it. And it was the hot thing you know this was 2005, 2006, 2007. Blogging was social media; there wasn’t anything else yet at the time so I just really threw myself into becoming a blog teacher as well.
And I actually sold off all my other business, brought myself a car and a house, all that fun stuff but then just really stuck with blogging about it. Since then I really really loved the whole aspect of teaching and writing, being a content creator and I love the simplicity of the business model behind blogging as well that it is just basically you sitting in a café sharing ideas, sharing what you are learning, also writing some emails, and then creating products that help people based on what you are learning, what you are doing, what you are getting results with.
And that is pretty much what I still do today like I haven’t done nay work today beside work with a couple of my contractors. Yesterday I was sitting in Starbucks putting some emails in my auto responder sequences and that is sort of how my day looks so it is a great business model and that is why I have pretty much stuck to it for so long now, ten years.
[07:05]
Daniel: Yeah it is really interesting that you bring that up and how some of the topics you talk about on your blog. Do you follow a certain process in terms of coming up with ideas of what to write about on the blog?
[07:20]
Yaro: Yeah I mean it has changed over the years. That is what I love about blogging; you have to look at your blog as sort of this platform where you get to explore different subjects around the core subject that you are covering but you also have to bear in mind you are trying to help your audience to do something.
So you know when I started my blog I was a lot more over the place and I kind of threw subjects out there and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write about and then I slowly tightened up the subject matter and I realized I really liked information marketing, I really liked email marketing, I really liked building a sales funnel, using a blog and those kind of subjects but I also like mindset and productivity.
So what I found is strategically speaking the blog itself talks about this range of subject matter around the area of entrepreneurship but then my email lists are the focused area like when you join an email list it is one thing, it is just about how to get more time out of your day or how to think better as an entrepreneur. Or this is just about how to buy and sell blogs as a strategy. So it is much more specific information. And when I tightened up my strategy I realized I need to tighten up my blog post because a lot of my email content points to blog posts as well. So you can kind of go back in time and almost read my old blog posts and see that refinement of things changing
But you know you can talk about whatever you like that is the great thing. I can wake up tomorrow and say you know I had this interesting thought about personal development and just writing about it. And it is contributing, it is building relationships, it is establishing my brand, it is educating people. There is no real such thing as bad blog content as long as you are sort of staying around what your audience is there for and you are providing value. As long as you have that system behind it which is very focused. You need the focused products and the focused email content. That is where you have to be very clear you are helping your audience.
[09:17]
Alaister: Yeah there is a huge amount of different topics and ideas that you just talked about there and I kind of want to drill down into some of them .So I have actually got a question here that just came from Mary D and she is asking, “Do you actually write all of the content yourself or do you outsource a lot of the content creation for your websites and blogs?”
[09:35]
Yaro: It has almost been 100% me over the ten years I have been doing it. There was a period where I experimented with a multi author format where I brought on columnists basically to write a regular column on the blog. I actually believe there is two strategies with blogging. You have got what you might call the magazine model which is the multi author, lots of content, things like Huffington post, Mashable, Techcrunch all those big blogs follow that model . And then there is more the expert author speaker trainer teacher coach type model where it is more about the expert behind the blog. Usually just that person writes the blog. They sell their own teaching products or their own book, or their own speaking from stage or courses, whatever it is they do. So it makes more sense for their personal brand to be associated with the content.
And those things can merge a little bit. You get sort of personal blogs that invites a few guest bloggers on and you have got blogs that start off like Mashable or TechCrunch used to have one main person like Michael Errington or Pete Cashmere but then slowly turned into these multiple author blogs. I personally prefer the expert one and that is what I focused on, my own content, for the last I think three, four years now. It is 100% my content.
As I said in the earlier days there were a few experiments but pretty much now if you are reading a blog post or an email newsletter or buying one of my products it is all from me. And I actually really like that because it is basically I am a writer who gets paid really, really well for my content. And there is not a lot of writers in the world who get to say they actually make a lot of money from their writing. So I think it is one of the best ways for people who like to product content to make a living and a great way to reach an audience too. It is a form of online marketing that I believe is one of the most powerful is content marketing. So yeah it is mostly me at the moment.
[11:33]
Alaister: Yeah that is amazing. When we first announced that we would be having this Warrior Ask Me Anything Event with yourself a lot of people commented about, they love to write however they find it difficult to stay motivated to publish content continually and regularly especially when they are not getting a huge amount of traffic. How did you overcome this initially? I mean I know in the beginning it is difficult to continually write and publish things on a regular basis if you are not receiving traffic and you are not seeing results immediately. How did you overcome this?
[12:07]
Yaro: Well my story is actually probably not the most applicable yet for the current environment. I wouldn’t actually suggest you do what I did because it is too slow. What I teach my students now and I have seen this work because I have seen all my clients build successful blogs and they did it so much quicker than I ever did back in the early days. So back in the early days I just threw a lot of content out the door and hoped that built an audience and it kind of worked because it was early. People just didn’t have a lot of other blogs to read or all this content competing for attention.
I think today what you have to do is make sure you are really clear about who you help and what you help them do. That is really vital so right now I publish maybe once a month to my blog and I actually think you can get a lot more having really powerful content like it is a quality over quantity equation at the moment especially for one individual. If you are just the only person writing a blog you will get a lot more by really knowing your market and what you help them do. And of course being certain it is actually a money making market. You don’t want to spend time building an audience that doesn’t actually spend money.
Assuming you have done your research I figured that out you are smartest to put a bit of effort introducing the piece of content but then spend equal amounts if not more amounts of time actually marketing that content. So I have found the relationship between marketing and content production, when I started it would have been 80% content production: 20% marketing. Today you almost need to flip that around and spend 20% doing content and 80% making sure people find that content.
And to make that job easier on yourself if you are very clear on who you target the marketing process becomes much easier, much more effective because you can pick one channel and find that perfect audience for your content and just share that one piece of powerful content and then get a lot of results from that.
And what I mean by results I mean share one piece of powerful content, it might be a blog post or a podcast or a free report or a video, whatever it is you put some effort into and then seat it on a platform, whether it is a You Tube or a community or a social media and then get those people back onto your email list.
It is really important you have that synergy between the platform you build with your blog and the capturing of the audience with your email list: you need them both. If I didn’t have them both I would have maybe 20% the size of business that I do have today. But when you do get that right it is really quite elegant, it is a very efficient machine, but you do have to get a lot of pieces of the puzzle right: Knowing your audience, going to the right place to get traffic, giving them the right content and having the right system behind all that to actually make a living and make some money from it too.
And that is pretty much what I spend my day on now, doing that myself and teaching all my students how to set up that system.
[15:02]
Alaister: Great. It is a little bit counterintuitive I suppose, when you think of blogging you think most of the time is spent creating content and actually writing stuff but it is interesting that you mention in this sort of environment it is important and crucial that people spend maybe 80% of the time actually marketing as opposed to writing the content.
So with this 80% of the time, what are some marketing strategies that you would recommend? You mentioned some of them, so seating content on social media sites like Facebook or You Tube for example. What are some of the other strategies that you would recommend people spend this 80% of their time working on?
[15:37]
Yaro: I am a big fan of focus so I believe a person new to building their platform and doing their marketing to get traffic should first of all lean on their strengths. So I would look at myself and go am I a writer? Am I good at video or do I want to become good at video? Do I love doing podcast interviews? Am I very social and I want to spend all day on social media? Pick your strength, pick your passion and then make sure your audience is on that platform; and then focus on it.
A lot of people I think get caught up in the potential of so many different platforms and they try and do everything and then do them all badly. You have a little bit of time on social media, a little bit of time on You Tube, you know you publish two or three videos and then you stop. You start a podcast because everybody says you should do that but you only end up publishing one episode every three months. Meanwhile you are trying to write blog posts, emails, create product and all of that. Most of that comes later.
At the start you pick one platform so let’s just say I decide I am a writer. So if I was going to start from scratch right now I actually believe my greatest strength is writing, so I would choose writing as my platform. And then I would look at where my audience is. So it might be there is some established other websites that actually do allow other people to contribute content. So I would make sure I get my blog posts, I would write content specifically for that platform.
If I was a writer but I actually didn’t feel confident maybe putting a lot of big articles out there, I might find a forum or Facebook group that has a lot of activity with my target audience and I would spend my time writing in there, helping the other members. But I would focus on this. This is not something you spend 20 minutes once a day on, you actually need to go in there and you are building your presence.
I actually see online marketing as about kind of like building two platforms. You are building your own platform with your blog and your email list and your products but you are also building a presence, a platform on some kind of external website. Most people focus on one thing and have their breakthrough. It will be like You Tube and they spend six months on You Tube and they are getting a ton of traffic from that. They spend six months on podcasting. They spend six months only on Facebook and building relationships and connecting with people there. It has been six months just nothing but Pinterest graphics and just really building a huge following on Pinterest or Slideshare or maybe Periscope if you are really cutting edge and you just build a huge Periscope following today you know and you drive people to your email list and your blog using Periscope.
The options are there but you have got to have the focus and you have to make sure your audience is there. And definitely don’t try and do them all at the beginning. I mean that would be foolish. You expand when you have got the resources to expand.
[18:28]
Alaister: Yeah it is great.
Alaister: Yeah it is great, I think that is really good advice in terms of picking a specific strategy and spending a lot of time and really understanding how you can leverage that specific platform to generate traffic rather than going everywhere and trying to be a jack of all trades I suppose.
Yaro: Yeah.
Alaister: What is interesting is you talked about a lot of email marketing, sending people to your website and then converting them to your email subscriber list. Was this something that you knew early on and you started this right from the beginning or how did you kind of figure out this model or this system of generating traffic and then signing them up to an email list so you can communicate to them and then continually marketing them and pushing perhaps your products or affiliate products or whatever it may be?
[19:15]
Yaro: For me it has been three stages of a very very long period of time as you could say, ten years now. So you know phase one was I don’t do email, I do RSS feeds because that is what blogs were about in the early days, you wanted to grow your RSS subscription not your email. Thankfully within a year I had listened to the internet marketers and I was studying pretty aggressively a lot of internet marketers at the time. And everyone said the money is in the list. And I was like okay let’s test this theory out and I added an email list. And I already had one for my proofreading company but it wasn’t as aggressive I guess as it could be for an information publishing business. So added one. Twelve months later I kind of wasted a year worth of potential subscribers there with my blog, but thankfully I did eventually.
So I started the list and that was great. Immediately I noticed a huge difference especially when I launched my first product. You know when I launched my first product two years later after starting my blog I think I had about 3,000 email subscribers and 3,000RSS followers. And most of the customers came from the email list you know to be absolutely truthful, so a big difference.
But the one thing I didn’t really get was I was still kind of using my newsletter as this random broadcasting tool and I think a lot of people fall into this category still today, where you are kind of sending out content whenever you have it. You know I wrote a new blog post, check it out. I just found this great podcast check it out. Or whatever it is, you are having a dialogue with your email subscribers but there is no real strategy behind it.
So around five, six, seven years ago started really falling in love with the idea of an automated system behind the blog which is all based on traditional sales funnel marketing, which for those who aren’t familiar with that you are basically setting up email auto responders as well as products that have upsells and downsells that functions automatically.
So I had this sort of dream where a person would maybe do a Google search, come across one of my articles, read it, like it, join an email list, get these emails that I had written maybe a year ago, I am not sending them out by broadcast these are autoresponders. They go through the sequence, get more value, then they would see an offer for a product. Some of them would buy it some of them would take upsells, some of them would eventually buy my high end courses or coaching and so on. Bu that is all set up. It is a machine so to speak. And I love that vision.
And I think I completed about half of it before I kind of got burnt out. I was very much focused on the launch model back then which I think a lot of Warrior People would be familiar with. Jeff Walker is entirely responsible for that problem we all have, “problem” you might call it. So I was doing a lot of launches, making a lot of good money but you finish a launch and the money almost dried up completely.
So I wanted to have the best of both worlds. I wanted to take launch techniques, put it into automated email funnels and have that sit on the back end of my blog so my blog would build my audience, it would connect with people, the funnels behind the blog would sell the products and services and what happened was about three, four years ago I kind of went through a reset. I actually closed down all my products because they were dated. And I had a couple of years where I just didn’t have any products and then about three years ago I said it is time to rebuild this funnel how I originally envisioned it.
So I actually spend the last two and a half three years, completely recreating new products, updating my flagship training, rewriting these email sequences and proving this whole formula which I call a blog sales funnel actually works. And so far, so good . I think it is one of the best business models because I have got blog posts I have written five, six, seven years ago that will attract people to an email list which will send them this evergreen content whether it is my blog posts, my podcasts or just whatever training I offer them and then it makes offers for my eBooks and my training courses and my community membership site that I run. And I get sales. And I don’t do anything new to bring those sales in, so this is the main model I actually teach all my students right now.
It is a struggle for a lot of people because we are so used to the “I just need a list for the sake of having a list.” I am trying to get everyone to realize well no the list is actually the automation part of your business. It should be about setting up these ever green sales funnels to run behind your blog so you can actually have that lifestyle freedom otherwise you are stuck on launches or you are stuck on stop I need to send a newsletter, I haven’t sent one in a week, I have got to go send one.
I don’t really do that nearly as much as I used to do because I have these automated funnels now and I think it is really key, it is a real secret and unfortunately not everyone has tapped into it yet with email marketing.
[24:17]
Alaister: Yeah what is great is we actually had Jeff Walker on the show a few months ago I think it was. And it is interesting you kind of listen to all the different online marketers talking about the different strategies they worked and different strategies work for different people but I think what is great about this is you were able to pick the launch strategy from Jeff Walker, this blog sales funnel strategy from yourself and be able to put it all together and make it something that works really well.
What I find interesting about your story and what you just mentioned there is you did create an automated blog sales funnel early on and then you sort of felt that you got burnt out and stopped that and decided to rebuild it now and obviously you have rebuilt it into a successful machine.
Were there any specific differences or changes that you came across when you created the second blog sales funnel that you weren’t aware of or you didn’t know or maybe a change in the landscape that you had to adapt to as compared to when you first created it?
[25:17]
Yaro: Well I mean the obvious change is certainly technology based I mean nowadays we’ve got webinars. There were webinars back when I did this the first time but they weren’t as prevalent nor as easy to do so there is that. But really the most important change was a strategic decision to actually build funnels that have more longevity. Back then I had this email funnel. When I say I had a funnel I probably had half a funnel. I had one great long twelve month sequence of emails that lead to a five hundred dollar course. And that did really well.
I did better when I launched it, but it did fairly well as a consistent ever green funnel and I was missing I guess you could say the parts in between it and after. I was missing the lower front end products I was missing the higher priced back end products. Plus I was having the problem of having written an email list that was littered with content that would date as soon as technology changes. You don’t want to be saying do this thing to get a top number one ranking in Google and then twelve months later Google doesn’t even have that feature any more, something like that.
So I made the change to be I guess more fundamental in my teaching. I teach more fundamentals and strategic device. I try and avoid teaching too much technical training in terms of “There is a cool trick you can do with Pinterest now, go here and do this,” because it may not work in twelve months time. And that is a deliberate strategic decision to make my content be more valuable long term.
But I also know that those sorts of discussions of the tactics, the stuff that could go out of date is better done in a community. That is like why something like Warrior Forum is great because you can go into the community and say, “Hey does this still work?” Or, “You guys should check out this technique” and it is in the moment stuff. Where you don’t want that in the moment stuff in an ever green funnel, and a blog sales funnel.
So there is a place for every type of content but it was a big strategic change.
And this is something that is not necessarily applicable to all niches. For example I have got a student who teaches how to clear their acne and she makes $100,000 a year doing the same business model. But acne, it doesn’t really change as much as someone who is teaching social media. So a lot of my customers, well my clients, my students, people who teach acne, teaching how to get your book published, someone is doing home studio audio recording, the transitions aren’t necessarily as rapid as someone who is doing social media, mobile applications, programming languages you know the stuff that has got the quicker turnover.
So for me there was definitely a change I could make and that is what I focus on, fundamental ever green funnels. And so far so good.
[28:08]
Alaister: With the current products you are selling within your funnels are they all products you have created on your own or do you promote affiliate products as well?
[28:17]
Yaro: Yeah at the moment my funnels are entirely my own I mean I will promote webhosting here and there. Again to kind of look at the evolution of myself as a blogger I started predominantly with advertizing and affiliate marketing as my income streams. So the first two years when I got to about ten thousand a month that was entirely advertizing and affiliate products. I was promoting other people’s courses, books and I had ads on my blog paying sort of $50 to $100 a month for banners and things like that. And that to me was familiar.
My card game website had advertizing on it as well. But I was learning and sort of verifying that having your own product suite and having an email list worked better. So two years into blogging I had my first course launch and I had another course launch and a third course launch over the next two or three years. And that proved to me that is way more lucrative. It is more personally satisfying I mean I actually like the idea of a student getting a result from something they learned from me versus just sending someone away on a click for an affiliate link.
And don’t get me wrong I have done over a couple hundred thousand dollars in affiliate products for other people’s training which has been fantastic. It is almost like lazy money if you want to call it that because you write an email and you can make ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars, but it is missing the intrinsic satisfaction and as I have gotten older, it sounds kind of funny saying this, but you know getting close to a twenty year career online, I have made more money and I have wanted to gravitate to more personally satisfying things as well.
So I love working with people who love their subject because they are more excited about writing an eBook or doing even a private coaching call where they help a client get a breakthrough or solve a problem, because that is always going to be both financially lucrative and personally satisfying.
So today to answer your question I sell, I have got three different eBooks, I have got an interview club where I have interviewed a bunch of people, I have got a flagship blog training course, a couple of smaller courses on a niche subjects like podcasting and productivity and it is all my content. And all my funnels are my content. Like I said there is maybe hosting, domain names, the odd software tools here and there but actually I promoted Jeff Walker’s stuff probably more than anything else over the years as well because I loved his training. But even that I kind of don’t really do the big launches anymore. I actually think the stepping stone model is better to start by selling your own service as a coach or a consultant or freelancer.
I think affiliate marketing and advertizing is great you just need so much more traffic. The good thing about selling your own stuff and starting with coaching or consulting or freelancing is you can get ten or twenty customers a year and be making a full time income from that and that doesn’t require as much traffic as you are going to need to make that kind of money from adsense or selling Amazon affiliate products or something like that. You just need way more volume. We are talking tens of thousands of visitors to a blog where you only need two or three thousand subscribers to an email list to make good money selling your own products and services.
[31:35]
Alaister: So for someone looking to get started in information marketing, creating their own product, how would you recommend they start? Would you recommend they start building an audience, writing content and then once they have got an audience then worry about building a product? Or what would you advise your students to start with?
[31:58]
Yaro: Well I can tell you what I do advise them. The first step I almost call a pre-step before even starting a business is actually getting that clarity about who you serve, what their problem is, who they are, what their emotions are behind why they are spending money to solve a problem.
Actually I think this is where you need to spend more time than anything else to start with. I would avoid studying anything to do with all the traditional business building stuff until you are clear on who you serve. You do have to do something, like I actually teach a process where you do some initial research by just observing, searching, going to Amazon.com, Ebay, Clickbank, Warrior Forum offers, all the areas where you can see products actually being sold, to see what is being sold.
And then graduate from just observing to actually having some kind of interaction, going into a community even like the Warrior Forum, asking questions, saying “Hey guys is this something you are trying to solve or what is your biggest problem with this issue?” And try and learn about your audience whatever it is. If you are in Brazilian Jujitsu head to some Brazilian Jujitsu forums and ask those questions, start learning about your customers. And then form an assumption.
You have assumed that okay I think their biggest problem in Brazilian jujitsu seems to be there is a market for little guys who keep struggling against really big guys. I think there is a possibility to launch an information publishing business around that, and I have actually got a friend I know who does that. And I would come to a conclusion that is the thing I want to see if there is a market for. Obviously you would have to have some sort of affinity with it. You are probably a Brazilian jujitsu teacher yourself, maybe you are a small guy or something like that and then you actually need to get in front of people who pay you money.
Now I would start with coaching I would actually say, $50, $100 an hour I will solve this problem for you. We will deal with it. I will give you an action plan on a coaching call, we will get the solution. And see if you can get yourself ten customers.
Now to do that you obviously need to start setting up a few basic systems and I would actually start with the email list just to start the coaching, getting ready for the next phase. And the reason you do all of this is purely to learn more about your customer and make sure you have a customer. That is so, so important. I think 90% of the failures come from not actually servicing a market that people understand and that spends money.
Once you have done that, then you can switch over to I am going to build a platform around serving those people. And that becomes so much easier after doing some kind of interaction with the customer because you know what questions they are asking, how they phrase the question, how much money they are currently spending to solve that problem, who they are, male, female, young, old, what kind of demographics they have. So it becomes so much easier to start building a funnel. You know what blog post to write, you know what offers to make .You know what products to start creating and delivering to people and you can formulate a strategy.
So I actually have people go through a kind of a pre-training program called The Blog money Finder which helps them go through that process.
Then you can move onto the platform blog sales funnel building process with the confidence to know you have got a market. And that is just standard you know, domain name, Word Press for a blog, write your life story, your about page, get those basic pages set up. Then start writing the first sequence of content that will actually be your first email funnel. Like there is no reason not to go straight to the funnel that sells the product or sells the coaching if it is a server, straight away. And just keep building, climbing that success ladder. Add more to it, work on your conversion, maybe create some up sell products, bonuses and just build out a platform.
You know that is what we spend all day on me and my students and what I love about it is you see it working in the different marketplaces you know.
Like I am talking a lot about marketing here and business and blogging and entrepreneurship but when you see someone do it…I had a client he was a partner with his mom and his mom was about helping women get out of abusive, verbally abusive relationships, you know something so specific as that. But you look at the funnel, it is the same thing. It is a blog, it is free content, it is an email list, maybe a webinar. Then promoting some sort of coaching product or video course something like that. It just keeps working in whatever market you are going into. As long as there is a market that spends money to solve problems.
[36:31]
Alaister: Yeah I think that is really good advice. A lot of people spend a lot of time just diving straight into the first idea they can think of without really kind of assessing the situation and really trying to understand what problem they are trying to solve and how they can offer value. So I think you know that sequence of events, building up into…I think it is stages and steps rather than just one big leap into the deep end. So I think that is really good advice.
I have got a question here from Tony R. and he asks, “What are some books or internet marketing books that you would recommend that people would read?”
[37:05]
Yaro: Well I am a big fan of the biographical type books. I actually predominantly read a lot of the sort of tech startup books. I just finished the story behind Groupon, I have done recently the Twitter background story, obviously the Google background story, Amazon, Ebay; I love all those. I have read about even the early days, the Napster, Paypal, I think even those stories because you learn about the leverage points that these entrepreneurs used. Like I love hearing what took you from a standing start to suddenly having three million subscribers, followers, customers, whatever it is they have in such a short period of time. So I love reading those.
I also tend to go through books or materials specific to the problem I am solving at the moment. So I read the bios for almost like interest sake. I am educated but I am also a fan of that subject so it is like a hobby for me as well. But if for example I am maybe at a point in my business where copywriting has become important, you know I need to do some sales pages. So I am actually going to grab that John Carlton materials now or the Dan Kennedy stuff now or whoever he is, the copywriter that I follow or have access to. Maybe it is paid traffic. I have to take a Facebook advertizing product now, so maybe Amy Porterfield, or the Get 10,000 fans, Brian Moran, someone that I again trust, know…it has to do with my problem right now.
So I take courses, read books, I do mostly audio books to be absolutely truthful. I am a slow reader but a fast listener. So I have got my audible ap and I listen at two to three times the speed and go through it.
So when I answer this question, it is the biographies for general reading and that is because they are about internet companies. And then it is the specific problem solving books and courses to do with the business. So I would sort of reflect that back on Tony and ask him what the problem he is trying to solve in his business right now and pick a book or a course or whatever it is for that because there is a time for educational leisure reading and there is a time for reading that actually helps you to solve problems and grow your business. So be clear on that.
[39:27]
Alaister: Yeah I love audible as well, I mean audio books I find much easier to consume as well.
Yaro: Oh yeah, way easier.
Alaister: So I know you have been really generous with a lot of the information you have provided here with us today. Tell us a little bit about the deal that you have with everyone? We spoke about it earlier but tell us a little bit about what you are offering?
[39:48]
Yaro: Well you know when I was talking with Daniel on this, it sort of thinking about what is the first kind of entry point that a lot of the Warrior Forum people would be at and what they would be most interested in. And in my product suite I think the number one need, question, stumbling block (is probably the best way to put it) is actually traffic, but in particular getting those subscribers since you know as I said you need the email list and you need the blog posts to kind of work the blog and email list to go together. And most people if you said “What’s your problem?” It is, “Well I don’t’ have enough customers” which probably means “I don’t have enough traffic and I don’t’; have enough subscribers.”
So my entry level traffic eBook or eGuide as I call them, it is called Blog Traffic for Beginners. It is focused on getting your first 1,000 email subscribers using the traffic methodology that I follow and I recommend you use today that all my students use today as well. So normally this book sells for $49 to the public and it does sell through all my funnels.
I had a sale earlier today of that eGuide so I know it is still current. I kept updating it and in fact published it only last year so it is very, very new. So it is a good starting point if you don’t have enough email subscribers, simple as that. And if you are looking to sort of learn the basic blog methodology in regards to growing traffic and getting subscribers, that is what this guide is about.
So for the Warrior guys we put it up. Daniel is good at twisting my arm because I have to say I have never sold it for $9 before. It has always been at least $29 that is the lowest price. But for the Warrior guys, I know there is a lot of bargains in the Warrior Forum so it is just $9 for the Warrior community.
[41:35]
Alaister: Excellent, that is great. We will add the link to the bottom of this video and you will be able to access this book for $9. So that is an amazing product and I definitely recommend that you guys go and purchase it.
So Yaro just before we wrap up, what would be three things that you would advise people looking to get started with your strategy and with blogging?
[41:56]
Yaro: Well the obvious thing is to start something. That is step one. When I first started online I threw a lot of stuff out there and most of it didn’t work. And I had an activist blog, I had a blog on buying and selling secondhand goods trying to be the next Craigslist. I had a lot of these in the morning 1:00am ideas and then went and registered the domain name, installed blog software and started a blog.
Now not necessarily saying you should do every single idea you have, but that attitude of actually starting something rather than thinking over it and wondering whether it would actually work, doing some good research to make sure there is an audience but being action focused you know. I notice a lot of people seem to get hung up on, “I am not good enough; people won’t pay me for my skills. I won’t know enough. I am not talented enough. I won’t have enough qualifications.” And I am a really big believer that out there is the perfect target audience for what it is that you can sell. And when you find them it is extremely satisfying.
Like I am one of many, many blog teachers out there but there is a certain group of people who just love the way I teach and what I teach and it is very satisfying. And I think for the person listening to this when you can find that person there is a lot of gratification and a lot of money to potentially be made to. It tends to blow away any concerns about not being good enough because you provide some information and this perfect customer says, “Oh my god you just changed my life.” So I think doing some action, finding that perfect customer and I will be biased I really do think that a blog with an email list is the best model today to do it with.
So I would suggest as sort of third and final step, make sure a blog is part of that strategy because whether you do podcasting, social media, any kind of content based marketing, any kind of traffic buying even today, you pretty much are sending people back to a blog post. Your podcast is a blog post, the content you share on Facebook and Twitter they are blog posts. People are spending money now on those platforms, Google Adwords to share blog posts. So get yourself a blog and learn how to blog well because it is an integral part of that online marketing formula. So blog; That is the simple answer.
[44:15]
Alaister: Great. Well thanks very much Yaro we really appreciate you giving up your time to be with us and to speak to all of us. So just remember for everyone at the bottom of this video there will be a link to Yaro’s blog as well as the offer, so make sure you check them out and we will speak to you soon Yaro. Thanks very much.
Yaro: Thanks for having me guys, good luck everyone.
[End Recording]

Ive had a blog on the wellness /fitness industry in spanish for 4 years now Wellness Coach del Bienestar Para Obtener Calidad de Vida Wellness Coach del Bienestar Para Obtener Calidad de Vida Attending Yaro's webinar is more than a perfect fit for me, no doubt.

Looking forward to meeting u all!.

Looking forward to attending. Thank you for the opportunity to do much more with my blog.

I'm in! This looks like it will be a good one for sure. Looking forward to it.

Thanks guys, I look forward to responding to your questions later this month.

Feel free to post some in here too so I know what to prepare for...

Yaro

hi will this be recorded ?
and where can we find it to view it at a more convenient time for uk susscribers
thanks

Will have to check this out, trying to start out and love hearing about people's journeys.

Hi Yaro,

i'm happy to see you the 30.

I'm from Belgium and this is an amazing occasion to look a million dollars podcaster.

Thanks for your sharing

See you soon

Thats interesting to see. I am exciting to see it.

Just register. I eager to know how can earn from a blog.

HALLOO MY NAME IS HAMZA

I just reserved my seat to this event. I am a web blog flipper and i have some questions bothering me which i will be glad to get answers too ..

Dear Yaro, I'm planning to open a blog that talks about life issues and problems and the way to pass it perfectly, with my experience as a smart guy. Questions:

1- There is no problem to do that over Weebly. Right? I mean it's not where you open your blog but what you put in it. Right?

2- How much should I wait until I start receiving financially benefits?

Thanks very much for your valuable time with us.
Yazeed.

I just registered, looking forward to it. I started a blog and so far it generates $50-$60 per month, maybe with these tips I can reach my million dollar goal.

Looking forward to it!!!

This will be interesting. Looking forward to what new can I learn

Registered, hoping you will cover some info on high quality content outsourcing resources

Hi Yaro my health and life insurance call center pretty much started from a little blog and email list. I will definitely be attending your presentation.

Time for me is very awkward 4 am in the morning, will it be recorded? so people like me can watch it when they wake up?

Any chance for a recording replay for this? I will be at dialysis so can't be here to see it and I sure would like to. Please.

Looking forward to see how he did this amazing Blogg & made so much money

This is the perfect timing, I have been working on creating a new blog, so I do have lots of question, I hope i'll learn lots of things that I can apply on my new blog!

We're live in just over 30 minutes.

Join the conversation on Twitter!

We're live in under 5 minutes.

Do I remain a faceless blogger or do I have to reveal my identity to build trust?

Are bloggers who are transparent more successful anonymous ones?

Thanks all for tuning in today. This was a great event. Yaro was great to talk to and we negotiated a special offer on his amazing book Blog Traffic for Beginners. Usually $49, now just $9 for a limited time:

Click here to check out the deal!

When the event has been produced we'll upload to the War Room.

Guys who missed the show, see my thread.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...warriortv.html

I would love to know about the show because I'm into blogging and my only problem is traffic. I'm planning to do a lot of SEO for my blogs but time is a big factor. Any replay for the show, guys?

Hi Yaro. I'm new to Warrior, and I would have liked to see your webinar. is it possible this was saved for later viewing?

Yes this is possible viewing .

The recording is now available to watch here: http://www.warriorforum.com/war-room...ro-starak.html

If you're wanting to become a professional, full time blogger like Yaro, this recording is a great place to start.

This was an incredible event and we hope to have Yaro on again in the future!

Click Here to Watch Now

Very interesting post!

I've been building a website for 3 years now and still haven't reached these heights! It's impressive to know there are people out there who can do this in such a short space of time.

Oh Oh me old mate Yaro....

I've been a guest blogger on his site Entrepreneurs Journey...
Dee Kumar, Author at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Top guy and really useful info.

Great info!

Focus on customer.Great

Great to see that

how well does this work ?

anyone try this ? this work ?

Thanks.

Yeah I love audible as well

1 million is a big number and its very hard to reach this goal.

I have registered with warrior forum just one day ago.
I've been building a website for 1 month. It's impressive to know there are people out there who can do this in such a short space of time.
Great! It's very interesting post!

Never really took in consideration starting a blog for my business! This may definitely be a great method to take a gander at!