Hello everybody,

I read a post this evening by a fellow Masterclass student, Ron Barrett. Here is a link to the post Are You Making These 3 Mistakes Building Your List. It is certainly worth the read! I felt like Ron wrote the post about the biggest things that annoy me about what so many Internet Marketers do (and mind you, many of the big names in Internet Marketing are guilty of these mistakes. In fact, I have gotten to the point that if I am still on their list, the only time I open their messages is to get ideas.). I am sure most of you will relate to what Ron has written about in his post!

So in a joking manner, I commented on his post that we should write a giveaway report called 101 Ways to Lose Subscribers – Guaranteed. Then about 30 minutes later, I started thinking that people would really appreciate a report that shows the “Don’ts” instead of all the “How-to’s” of building a list, keeping subscribers, and having them actually open and read the emails you send them. This might be a little different approach to teaching somebody how to build a list, but I’m thinking that if you don’t do these 101 things (which are to be determined), then you will be doing just the right things to develop a relationship with your subscribers.

I’m not sure if I will come up with 101 ways, but I think it is worth giving it a go. If you could leave a comment with at least one of your biggest peeves, that would be much appreciated.

In closing, I am going to leave you with:

Way Number One to Lose Subscribers – Guaranteed

1. Set your autoresponder to Email them immediately after they join your list with a sales offer. Don’t thank them for subscribing or give them any other bits of free information that might be useful to them in the first message they receive from you. Don’t make them feel valued…just try to sell ‘em before they even have a chance to look at the Free report you have provided them for joining your list.

So today, go back into your autoresponder and really look at the first message your subscribers will receive after joining your list. Put yourself in the subscribers shoes, as Ron suggests, and try to envision how that message would make you feel if you were a brand new subscriber.

Cheers to a fantastic week in all areas of your life!

Kelly

Just thought I would go off topic for this post to wish all you Dad’s out there a Happy Father’s Day! I hope that you were surrounded by loved ones or friends on this day set aside especially for you. I thought I would share a poem that I think sums up very well what all father’s should aspire to hear from their children someday.

My Father, My Guiding Light

Dad, you’re like the sun to me,
a sure thing, always there,
beaming light and warmth on my life.
Whatever is good in me today,
I owe to your wisdom, your patience,
your strength, your love.
You taught me by example,
as a role model,
how to be my own person,
how to believe in myself,
instructing me without controlling me.
Even when we disagreed,
you held us together,
so our bond was never broken.
I understand what you did for me,
and I am so grateful that I have you
as my solid foundation, my rock.
I respect you, I admire you, I love you,
my guiding light, my father.

By Joanna Fuchs

I know that I am not alone in struggling with what niche market to choose. Up to this point in the Masterclass, John has given us step-by-step videos and instructions to get our blogs set up. It has all been pretty cut-and-dry, and most people have been able to keep up.

However, now that we are in the niche selection phase of the course, I, and many other fellow Masterclass students, get stuck here. Since this requires more effort and isn’t so clear-cut, I think the tendency of many people is to overthink it. So my friends, I truly believe that overthinking can be the silent killer of our dreams…IF we don’t learn how to better master our thoughts.

John has still provided all of the tools necessary to select our niche, but this has taken us to a different level. One that many of us are not comfortable with. What am I good at? What do I enjoy? Is this a profitable niche? These are all basic questions that we have to examine in order to help us choose a niche. Once those questions are answered, many experience self-doubt. Then new questions and doubts like “Will I really be able to develop a good product?” or “This niche seems so saturated…maybe I should choose something else” or the worst insult that we can give ourselves “I’m really not good at anything” start creeping in to the mind. Overthinking and self-doubt are NOT part of the training! Yet these are exactly the type of mind battles that many of us face and will kill our dreams…..if we allow it.

As I reflect back on being in this exact same place last year where we needed to choose a niche, I had pretty much settled on developing a product that would teach people how to increase the speed of their computer. Then a funny thing happened…..I had a few unexpected “crisis” situations arise and I lost my focus. I tried to make other excuses for why I had stopped moving forward. Some were valid, but in reality, I allowed the silent killer of my dream to overwhelm me.

Since I provide a variety of computer services and about 80% of my service calls are from customers that are frustrated because their computer has gotten really slow, I feel that I could develop a product that would be beneficial to frustrated computer users. I enjoy it and many people are searching for solutions to that problem every day on the Internet.

I’m pleased to say that I am firm in my niche selection this year. That was a huge relief. I’m on week 10 of the Masterclass and have committed to choose the title of my product by the end of the week (guess what…..I have spent over 2 weeks overthinking the title! BUT, I will keep moving forward!).

My encouragement to those that read this post is to keep your dream alive and not let overthinking be the silent dream killer in your life. This is not just for my fellow Masterclass students, but for anybody that has a dream that hasn’t been fulfilled.

Wishing you the greatest success in all areas of your life!

Kelly

Well, hello everybody! Things are progressing along quite nicely in John Thornhill’s Masterclass. I am now beginning Week 8 and am very excited. Last year when I began the course, it was around Week 10 that my life went crazy and I didn’t finish the course.

We are beginning Phase 2 of the Masterclass, which is Product Creation. There are many people who have achieved tremendous success by promoting other marketer’s products (this is known as affiliate marketing).  John’s biggest success came when he began developing his own products. So that is what he is going to teach us! However, what is more important than creating and selling products is to provide great VALUE in what you deliver.

John has also created a Masterclass Forum as another means of support. This is for his students to use to get to know one another better, bounce ideas and ask for opinions, and just an overall great source of additional support! I tried to get into the forum early on using my information from last year, but it had been changed. So I will get back in there this week and re-introduce myself. One of the really great things about the Masterclass is  that in addition to internet marketing newbies, like myself and many others, there are also many seasoned marketing professionals who are willing to assist and offer advice. There is a sense of camaraderie and teamwork, which is something that is hard to find in the corporate world, let alone when you are working with people all around the world! I feel truly blessed to be a part of this Masterclass and am so excited to plow through any obstacles that may come my way this time around during Product Creation!

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain” – Unknown

May you dance like nobody is watching if you encounter a storm today!

Kelly

As I am progressing through the Masterclass, I have written a few posts on building a subscriber list, or list building. One of the things that I noticed as I was setting up my blog in the earlier weeks, was that my optin box that asks people to subscribe to my blog, was very boring! I have included a screen shot of what it looked like last week:

As you can see, it really didn’t give much of an incentive for somebody to subscribe! I do have a handful of subscribers as I’m writing this, but they are all fellow Masterclass students. Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not trying to minimize their importance at all (in fact, it is these relationships that are MOST important as I venture into this world of Internet Marketing)! My point is that because I have not begun utilizing traffic generating techniques, the rest of the world doesn’t even know my blog even exists. And without visitors, I won’t be getting any subscribers. Even if I had been getting visitors before, it seems very unlikely that they would have subscribed to my blog with the optin box I had before.

This was something that some of the students from last years Masterclass had mentioned also. They asked if there was a way to make a more enticing optin box that could deliver a free report for subscribing. As newbies, we don’t really have anything of value that has been created yet that we can offer as a free report.  John Thornhill listened and responded. He provided this years Masterclass with a report that he has created called Why You’ll Never Succeed Online. Not only that, but he also provided us with a variety of colors of the optin graphic that you now see at the top of my blog. Wouldn’t you agree that adding a free report and a nice graphic has made it much more appealing and gives a nice incentive to subscribe to my blog? Thank you, John Thornhill, for another way to help your students succeed!

Yes, we’ve all heard this before…and while we know this to be true of babies, I think that as adults, we sometimes forget this when we have begun a new venture outside of our comfort zone. I’m sure some of you can relate, but speaking from my own experience, I am definitely outside of my comfort zone!  I began John Thornhill’s Masterclass last year and had many other things come up in my life that needed my attention. As the months went by and I saw how far behind I was getting, it became too overwhelming for me, and I gave up. I expected to be walking when I still hadn’t learned how to crawl! What a huge burden I placed on myself by expecting more than I could possibly be capable of (not the first time in my life I’ve ever done this, mind you! And I’m sure it won’t be the last). So with this realization, guess what I caught myself doing tonight?! Looking at fellow students blogs from last year and wondering how I’m EVER going to learn to do the things they are doing. Feeling overwhelmed that I just don’t have what it takes. Allowing negative thoughts to flood into my mind.

So I sit here and remind myself that I’m still learning to crawl! None of my fellow students learned how to do such amazing things in a week. It was a 9 month process! And isn’t it ironic that it takes 9 months for a baby to fully develop before they are born into the world. Then another 6 months, on average, to learn to crawl. Then another 6 months to learn to walk. Well, you get my point.

While I know this to be true, I must confess that I really don’t want to take the baby steps….I want to know it all now! Oh, how ridiculous and impossible that is! But isn’t it just like so many things in life….we want what we want, and we want it NOW! So to anyone who reads this and can relate, we must remember that we will get to the finish line. But ONLY by taking consistent action and persevering when we stub our toe, or trip and fall. I am willing to bet that every one of John’s students (and I know John himself), has encountered an obstacle that hindered them from walking the way they wanted to.

Please feel free to share any thoughts or experiences you have had on your journey to confirm that I’m not the only one who has had these feelings! Lol. I know I’m not alone, but sometimes it is nice to be validated and hear examples from real people who worked through a similar situation.

Hope everybody is having a healthy, productive and positive week!

In this world of Internet marketing, it seems to me that the key thing that John Thornhill is trying to teach us as the main focus behind what we are doing is to get subscribers and begin list building. Your subscribers are the main ones that will sustain you through the course of your Internet marketing career so it is very important to give them value. You will be building relationships with these people and they will come to know, like, and trust you so it is absolutely crucial to your success to be honest and dependable. Even though this is a “virtual” business, it is still a business and even if your subscribers are on the other side of the globe, they deserve to be treated with exceptional service….just as they should receive in a face-to-face business.

John Thornhill has gone above and beyond in week 6 of the Masterclass. As a newbie, most of us don’t have anything to give to our subscribers for subscribing to our blog. Right now, my blog sign-up box is very boring and a person visiting my blog would see no value in subscribing. John is giving us the report and a very cool graphic to use on our blog to get a free report that has helped him generate many subscribers. I haven’t quite made it to the video that will show me how to implement it onto my blog, but I expect to have it on my blog by Monday. So stay tuned for a much more dazzling subscriber box with an amazing free report.

This tool that John is giving us as part of the program  is another example of his integrity and desire to see his Masterclass students achieve success. He is also offering an amazing trial to his program so that if you are interested in learning what I’ve been learning, you can also have John as your mentor. Click here right now to learn more about this amazing program.

Meanwhile, I wish you a very Happy Easter and hope you get to spend it with family and friends!

Yesterday began week number 6 for me of the Masterclass. One of the biggest things that John stresses is to post to your blog on a regular basis. He is recommending that we post daily so that we get in the habit and it will help us start getting traffic because  the search engines will see new, fresh, regular content. He is also having us look at and comment on our fellow students blogs. Most importantly, this helps to build camaraderie, but also will help our sites start getting ranked higher because the search engines will begin to see links to our sites more frequently.

With the start of this new month, I am setting a goal to make a new post each day throughout the month of April. One of the hardest things as an Internet marketing newbie is coming up with ideas of things to write about, so this is going to be a real stretch for me! So there will be many random posts this month as I learn to take a little time each day to write a blog post. I also am committing to 5 comments per day on other students blog posts.

Mandy, I’m sure you will comment on this post because it seems you are right on top of everybody’s new posts. So, my question to you is…..how do you manage to comment on new blog posts so quickly?!!! Really, I don’t think I have set up anything to notify of new posts, but it’s inevitable that you will read this and I would love to hear your secret! I haven’t gotten the information for forum access again this year, but when I attempted the course last year, Mandy was one of the most (if not the most) active participants in there.  When I started this post, it was just to write about beginning week 6, but it has steered in the direction of a tribute to Mandy! Lol! So with that, I guess I will close this post by saying that Mandy Allen is a most professional, caring, helpful person who we are all blessed to have in our class! Thank you for being such an inspirational role model and I will see you at the finish line of the Masterclass this year!

Today I am going to review a product called  Multi Profit Websites. This is a combination product dreamed up by John Thornhill and Dave Nicholson and their development team. I must say, this site was one of the most impressive sites I have ever come across in a long time. The shear usability sold it for me right away.

How much do you think it would cost to get your own website built and maintained by a website support company? I can tell you it would be at least 3 times what they are charging for this product!  The price tag is very, very small to what you would pay in comparison.

Anyway enough about the pricing of the site, lets get down to the business end of this site and what you can actually achieve with it. When you first upload the website to your webspace (with the help of the in-depth online videos, I might add) you can immediately see in the personal website control panel that your options are extensive.  The amount of customizable options is virtually limitless. You have the ability to add your own SEO (Search Engine Optimization), choose your own passwords to login to the site, setup your eBay shop (if you have one… if not, simply remove the option), you can affiliate any eBay product you wish, use Amazon, Clickbank, Pay Dot Com, or simply use your own content by using the easy edit HTML builder..

There are a host of affiliate sites you can use if you want to too, these includes Amazon, Google, Clickbank, Pay Dot Com and eBay. With MPW (Multi Profit Websites) versatility is key and there is very little you can’t do. For example, if your business is flowers you can use a custom banner and footer relating to flowers, add your payment buttons and you’re ready to go. There are sections all over the site which you can edit as your own, add your own links and pages as you see fit.

Like I said it so versatile you can do almost anything you like with the site. You could actually build a new site everyday with a different niche and have hundreds of sites online earning you an affiliate income in a short amount of time. If you don’t have an exact business and need content for your site, you will be provided with a ton of fresh content articles to use as your own. They even have RSS feed to create content on your site so you don’t even have to write anything if you don’t want to.  This is a total turn key solution, if you want it that way, with many options to customize if you prefer to make it more personal.

John and Dave have thought of everything for this site from the business user, to the affiliate marketer. It is so versatile that it can be used in any business environment from building a kitchen to building a subscriber base.

This is hands down one of the greatest products I have in my collection and I know I will use it as a template for a long time to come. Where else can you get a website up and ready to go in about 20 minutes?  So for anybody looking for a user-friendly website builder, go to Multi Profit Websites and get your online presence established today.

Thanks for reading,

Kelly Bradley

Hello everyone! I started this blog and journey to become an online marketer about this time last year. As most of you know, unforeseen things sometimes get in the way of staying on course to complete a goal. I started John Thornhill’s Masterclass last year and got so far behind beginning in the 10th week. As the weeks kept flying by, I felt frustrated and overwhelmed, so I quit moving forward. In fact, John wrote a great post on his blog that most people should be able to identify with in one way or another. It is called The Struggles of an Internet Marketer. Then one day I blinked and 2009 was over and January 2010 had already slipped by as well.

But, as luck would have it, I was able to get in on the 2010 class and am just finishing up week 4. I see many familiar names from last years class and many new names. Congratulations to all of you who completed the 2009 class! It is so great to read of your achievements and I hope you are truly reaping the rewards of the seeds you sowed last year!

Looking forward to journeying with you and really getting plugged in this time around. I can see the friendships and relationships that develop with people around the world and how priceless that is. So if you’re new to this class, trust me when I say that if you persevere, you will make new friends and see results! If life gets in the way, as it did mine last year, keep plugging away when you can, but DON’T GIVE UP! And if you were in last year’s class, whether you completed it or not, I really hope to become acquainted and look forward to sharing in your success!

Cheers to the Masterclass of 2010!

Kelly Bradley