Yaro Starak, who makes $10,000 to $35,000 a month from blogging, working only a few hours a day, doesn't just “blog for money”. His blog is part of a carefully planned business strategy.
His Blog Mastermind blog coaching course [UPDATE: Now closed] eaches you how to set up and customize your blog, attract readers, and generate revenue – maybe BIG revenue. Yaro himself is now earning $200,000 a year.
In early 2005, Yaro's blog was like millions of other blogs – just generating a trickle of money from advertising and affiliate links. However, he has transformed it into a very serious business.
These days, Yaro doesn't just write a blog, he runs a business and uses his blog as a marketing tool.
“Sadly, most bloggers do not think like a business owner,” Yaro says. “Many of the most successful bloggers today make poor incomes despite significant traffic. Even those who realize four-figure incomes, seldom establish a business attitude and as such are well paid writers, working article-to-article, hour-to-hour for a paycheck.”
This is the BIG difference between the usual blogging advice you can read anywhere and the techniques Yaro teaches.
While he teaches you the basics, such as blog creation, plug-ins to use, getting traffic, etc, he also explains how you can grow in leaps and bounds the way he has by using your blog as a traffic funnel to your business.
He uses a blog, an email list and automation to create a professional business system.
Blog Mastermind was shut for six months while Yaro added new content and continued to help the initial 500 Blog Mastermind members he has mentored. It re-opened on Tuesday, July 29, 2008.
The Blog Mastermind course uses text, audio and video to show you in 27 lessons…
How to set up and optimize your blog for explosive growth from day one
How to create blog content that magnetically attracts devoted readers
The exact traffic techniques that took Yaro's blog from 0 to 5,000+ daily readers
Super-advanced traffic techniques to really ramp up growth
How to make REAL money with your blog – monetization secrets
How to turn your blog into a real business (Or, “How to Work Less and Earn More”)
BONUS Advanced Module: Lessons From Professional Bloggers
Here's the core training you get…
Lesson 1: Let's Get Blogging!
Lesson 2: Blog Foundations
Lesson 3: RSS, Social Proof and Plug-ins
Lesson 4: Finalizing Your Blog Structure
Lesson 5: Set Up Key Content Pages
Lesson 6: Content Focus and Structure
Lesson 7: Authentic Content
Lesson 8: Personal Branding and Sourcing Content
Lesson 9: Hiring Bloggers
Lesson 10: Copywriting For Blogs
Lesson 11: Marketing Through Conversations
Lesson 12: Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 1 – Forums
Lesson 13: Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 2 – Article Marketing & Blog Carnivals
Lesson 14: Leveraging Content For Traffic Part 3 – Guest Writing
Lesson 15: Search Engine Optimization For Blogs
Lesson 16: Impact Marketing
Lesson 17: Podcasting
Lesson 18: Publicity
Lesson 19: The Traffic Secret Every Blogger Knows
Lesson 20: The Monetization Process
Lesson 21: Contextual Advertising
Lesson 22: Affiliate Marketing
Lesson 23: Direct Advertisers
Lesson 24: Five Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog
Lesson 25: Email List Profits
Lesson 26: Buying and Selling Blogs
Lesson 27: Blogging As A Business
You can choose to read the lessons or listen to them on downloadable MP3 files.
One of Yaro's core concepts involves what he calls pillar articles which are designed to attract a rush of new readers and attract links to your blog, and then attract more readers as other people refer to these articles. They also attract visitors via search engines over time. Pillar articles are fairly timeless, so a year later they will still be relevant and popular. Yaro describes in detail six ways to create pillar articles.
Another core concept is the use of an email newsletter which funnels traffic to your business. “An email list is one of the most powerful marketing tools you can create on the Internet. A blog and an email list are the perfect melding of all the key ingredients for online success,” Yaro says.
He also tells you mistakes he's made, so that you can avoid them. For example, letting a year go by before starting a newsletter was a BIG mistake.
What he did right, though, was using an autoresponder/newsletter service – Aweber – to distribute his newsletter. After spending a year writing it, he had 52 newsletter articles. The Aweber autoresponder now automatically ladles out those 52 articles, one by one, to new subscribers. New articles can be added to the series any time he wants.
Becoming an authority in your field
It's all part of turning yourself into an authority in your field AND funneling visitors who trust you into your business.
There's far too much good really stuff in the core training to describe in detail in this review of Blog Mastermind.
And that's just the core training. You also get heaps more, such as…
Access to a private forum which is ONLY for members – “no jerks, wannabes or time wasters”. Some members see this as the most valuable part of the Blog Mastermind course.
Blog case studies.
A huge library of Question and Answer audio recordings where other Blog Mastermind students grill Yaro. You'll receive insider info from Yaro you won't find on his blog.
Interviews he's done with other professional bloggers such as Collis Ta'eed of Freelanceswitch.com, who attracted over 10,000 New RSS readers in less than a week; Anita Campbell of SmallBizTrends.com, who has over 85,000 RSS subscribers; and David Krug, who explains how he sold a 3 month old blog for $60,000.
Advice on blog flipping. In 2006 Yaro bought a blog for $2,000 and invited people to write posts for it. He increased the blog's monthly income from $400 a month to $1,500 a month, and then in 2008 sold it for $25,000. That's a nice profit! In Blog Mastermind, he describes exactly how he achieved that 1,000% profit.
As I'm sure you know, you can get endless free advice on blogging on the Internet. In contrast, Yaro doesn't just teach you how to create a successful blog. He teaches you how to turn a blog into a remarkably successful business, which can be run from anywhere in the world. That's what he's done.
He ends each lesson with a quick summary of the action steps to take, so you're never left wondering what to do next.
Who's the Blog Mastermind course for?
Yaro gave me access to review Blog Mastermind so I've been able to study it all from the inside. It's a remarkably comprehensive course, suitable for those just starting out but also suitable for experienced bloggers who want to do more than just “blog for money” and want to ramp things up and own a real business.
In no-hype style, Yaro is extremely generous in sharing the details of his 6-figure business.
I recommend his superb course to anyone who's serious about making serious money online.
I recommend it to any blogger who wants to stop churning out endless articles and start WORKING LESS and working SMARTER.
Learn more about Blog Mastermind here
(TIP: When you get there, for a good quick overview, watch the video.)
