This a review of Yaro Starak’s course Blog Mastermind. Blog Mastermind is a program that teaches people how to make money with their blogs. I joined Blog Mastermind on November 1, 2008 and in only 7 short months I earned my first $1,000 in a single month. Not too shabby, me thinks.
Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind
Name: Blog Mastermind
Creator: Yaro Starak
URL: www.blogmastermind.com
Purpose: How to Earn Money from Your BlogPrice: $97
How to Not Make Money Blogging
I started my blog in May 2007 and blogged for just over a year. At the end of that year I was earning $30 per month; all of it from Google Adsense which wasn’t worth calling home about. I was stuck with a tiny trickle every month because I was faced with two challenges:
- I didn’t know how to drive traffic to my blog
- I didn’t know how to monetize and make money from my blog
You see, you can make money blogging. Some people don’t seem to think so, but you can if you have the right strategy and model. I’m living proof of it and there are dozens of others who make money from their blogs. But before you even start thinking about making money, you’ve got to understand how to drive traffic and how to monetize that traffic.
Enter Yaro Starak.
Yaro is an Australian expert blogger. I met Yaro for the very first time in Toronto in August 2008. At that point I had been following his Newsletter, Blog Traffic Tips for about 8 months. After meeting him in person and receiving massive value from his Newsletter I signed up for his program, Blog Mastermind.
What is Blog Mastermind?
Basically, it’s a program that helps you make money from your blog. But it’s more than just about making money. Yaro teaches you a step by step process to help you build a sustainable online business using your blog so that you can earn multiple sources of income 24 hours a day x 7 days a week x 365 days a year.
Does that sound like something you would be interested in?
If so, then you’ll want to keep reading. There are two important challenges to overcome when earning money from your blog: how to drive traffic and how to monetize that traffic.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
You can’t earn money from your blog unless you have traffic and like I said earlier it took me over a year of struggling on my own to figure that one out. I had great content, but I just didn’t have a big enough audience reading my blog.
In Blog Mastermind, Yaro covers six strategies of driving traffic to your blog:
- 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
I’ve used all of these strategies to varying degrees, but if I had to pick my favorite – it would be guest writing (Lesson 14).
Guest writing is when you create content for other prominent blogs or Newsletters in your niche. The owner of the blog or Newsletter publishes your content while you receive traffic and the audience (or readers) receive valuable content. It’s a win-win-win strategy and one of the reasons it’s my favorite.
But that’s not the only reason. Guest articles are a powerful way to drive huge streams of traffic to your blog in a short period of time. I highly recommend this approach for anyone who wants to make money from their blog. In my opinion, guest writing is the 20% of action that creates 80% of your results. In other words it’s effective action. You can see an example guest article I wrote here: Would You Rather Be Right or Happy?
Writing guest articles can be time consuming, but when you get good at it, you can drive thousands of new readers to your blog and add hundreds of new subscribers to your email list in just over a few days. I’ve done this on a few different occasions.
Traffic Snapshot of FreedomEducation.ca
Here’s a snapshot of my traffic over the past 7 months. Keep in mind that my blog traffic is measured by unique visitors for each month.
Now that you’ve got traffic, you can start earning money from your blog right? Nope, not just yet. Before you start earning money, you’ve got to have a strategy to monetize your blog traffic.
How to Monetize Your Blog Traffic
There are a gazillion ways to do this and so I won’t cover all of them here. Besides, most of the methods are already covered in depth as part of these lessons in Blog Mastermind:
- 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
I’ve tested most of these monetization methods. Some of them have worked very well and others have not. Since I’m not too big on theories and more interested in application (and therefore creating results), I’ve included my earnings so you could see the results I created last month (May 2009).
Here are the three ways I made money from my blog in the month of May (all in US dollars):
1. Life Direction Coaching = $ 506.75
This is the money that I’ve made directly from coaching clients through my blog. I didn’t get this idea from Blog Mastermind. This is something I came up with on my own. Since I was already coaching before I started my blog, I thought this would be a great way to get my message out to a new audience.
This is not a huge chunk by any means, but it’s a start. I expect that as my blog continues to grow and become more popular this number will also increase. As of May coaching takes the top spot for earnings on my blog. Affiliate programs are a close second.
2. Affiliate Programs = $440.77
Affiliate programs are products or services that are created and maintained by 3rd party companies. These companies provide you with the rights to market and sell their products. Each time you refer a sale you receive a commission.
Commissions can range anywhere from $5 per sale a $1,000 dollars per sale. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs to choose from. If this is something that interests you, check out clickbank.com for a list of affiliate programs that may be in alignment with your blog niche.
3. Google Adsense = $73.08
Google adsense is a contextual ad program that pays when people click on your ads. This was the same program I started using back in 2007. It’s not a huge amount and at some point I may remove Google Ads from my blog completely.
Although I have a few dollars here and there from Amazon and a few other programs, I haven’t included them here. After all is said and done, my grand total for May was $1,020.60.
Can you earn money blogging?
You can earn money from your blog but it’s not going to happen overnight. You’ve got to be persistent and keep at it, but more importantly you’ve got to have a strategy. You need to have a plan. You’ve got to know how to drive traffic to your blog and how to monetize that traffic; and Blog Mastermind can teach you both.
One thing that has got me really excited about my blog is the scalability. In the past four months my blog has doubled in traffic and so has my blog income. I usually blog about 15-20 hours per week and I don’t suspect that will change. This means I can keep a fixed schedule that works for me while my income continues to increase. In my opinion, having a blog is a great way to build an Internet business.
What I didn’t Like about Blog Mastermind
The course starts out a bit slow. There are some preliminary lessons that help you create a web structure so that your blog is compatible with Search Engines. I’ll admit that most of this information was new to me and therefore valuable. If you’re a more advanced blogger or Internet marketer most of this information will be familiar to you.
The other thing to be aware of is that Blog Mastermind has two payment options. If you register for the monthly membership program, you will receive a weekly lesson via email every 7 days. The lessons come to you one at a time so you have to be patient.
The way to get around this and fast track to the more advanced lessons (so you can make money sooner) is to pay for the entire program upfront. This what I did in November 2008.
Payment upfront gives you instant access to all 27 lessons and 5 advanced lessons as part of Blog Mastermind. I highly recommend this payment option because at some point you’ll want to navigate to more advanced lessons and learn more about monetization and driving traffic.
What I Really Liked About Blog Mastermind
The membership includes access to private forums. I found the private forums to be extremely useful. In these forums you can post questions to the Blog Mastermind Mentors.
On more than one occasion I received great feedback and information from the Blog Mentors in the private forums. This helped me stay on track and kept me motivated in the beginning when I wasn’t earning any money. This alone was worth the price for Blog Mastermind.
There was more than one occasion where Yaro Starak responded directly to my questions via the private forums. He’s definitely a major player in this program so you’ll want to interact with him as much as possible.
Is Blog Mastermind for you?
In my own opinion after testing Blog Mastermind over the past 7 months I can honestly say that this program is fantastic and I endorse it 100%.
Blog Mastermind is for someone who is:
- an existing blogger who wants to earn more money from their blog
- the complete newbie to online business who would like to learn how to make money blogging
- an experienced Internet marketer who is interested in building an online business with their blog
If you’re still on the fence and unsure if this program is for you, I highly suggest you download Yaro’s free report: Blog Pofits Blueprint. His report teaches you everything you need to know about how to make money from your blog. You can download the report by clicking on the image above or clicking on the link here: Blog Profits Blueprint
To your blogging success,
Steve
See my Affiliate Disclosure here.
24 Comments
Liz Klein
June 9, 2009Steve, you are a breath of fresh air. It’s really great to read something realistic rather than pie-in-the-sky. I just attended an Internet marketing conference in Stamford CT (given by http://www.ryanlee.com) and there were some people there making millions, but also a lot of people just starting out, making a decent side income, and some making enough to replace their salary. To succeed on the Internet, people need a variety of role models, along with persistence and a willingness to experiment. Keep up the good work of sharing what really is working for you — and thank you!
Srinivas Rao
June 9, 2009Nice review Steve. It’ funny because I was just thinking about doing a review on blog mastermind as my product review for this week. Maybe I”ll do the beginners perspective and then do it again in a few months.
Jared | SpiritualZen.net
June 9, 2009Ditto Liz. Everyone is selling something right? Thanks for the straight forward here’s what I did, use what you want and leave the rest.
I love the thought of writing for a living. My goal is to be location independent. Yet I don’t want to be just another blogger selling stuff… I really want to make a difference. Sure, that’s what they all say right? ha!
Anyway, thanks for this post and I hope you continue to share things you learn as you go.
Rahul
June 9, 2009Great review and practical too…earning 5,000$ is huge.
Vitalia
June 9, 2009Fascinating! This is all very new for me and although I have heard the term “blog”, I am not all that familiar with it.
My husband and I just invested in an on-line company to set up our own webpage for online marketing. There is so much to learn. Your article is making me consider additional affilate programs and blogging. Our goal is to get everything up and running by the end of next month.
We have always been fascinated by PIG farming (Passive Income Generators)! :-)
Getting paid 24/7 is my idea of a good retirement plan! :-)
Thanks Steve for sharing your insights and experience!
Vitalia
Steve
June 9, 2009@ Srini – I think I might do the same thing in the next few months depending on how everything progresses. All the best Srini :)
Vladimir
June 10, 2009Congrats Steve!
Yaro should pay you a serious amount of money for this review cause you are better promoter of his product than him.
Vladimir
Steve
June 10, 2009@ Vitalia,
Your most welcome. Blogging is pretty powerful – I have to admit.
@ Vladimir,
Thanks Vladimir. I wanted to be completely honest and upfront about what this program has done for me.
Monique Gallagher
June 30, 2009So how does one set up a blog to maximize impact? Is it best to have it associated with one’s primary business website or stand alone?
Steve
July 1, 2009Hi Monique,
As you’re probably well aware, I use my blog as the hub for my coaching business because it’s such a great tool and medium for sharing ideas and receiving feedback.
I also use my blog as the hub of my internet business. So I personally have both business working as one through my blog which gives me greater leverage – if I were to do it over again and start today I would still setup a blog.
Does that answer your question?
Movie
July 14, 2009I always have issues getting people to come visit my blog, even when it’s got topical information. Any tips would be appreciated.
Steve
July 14, 2009@ Movie,
Register for Blog Mastermind or at the very least download Yaro Starak’s free report I’ve linked to in this blog post.
Young Job seeker
October 23, 2009Good morning. How can i get Gogle Ad Sense setting up while i have free web site?
I have already google adsense Ads on my blog but I do earn any money. Any suggestions how to make people click on my gogle adsense Ads?…
ha*********************@gm***.com" class="url" rel="ugc external nofollow">sharadchandra
November 12, 2009to earn $5000 per day
laptop
December 5, 2009well i think affiliates can help much more in earning then adsense but it is a hard way to go
Debra Zimmer
February 9, 2010Thanks for reviewing the course. I’ve been wondering if the students suddenly became six figure earners as a result. It’s nice to hear that you have also found that your blog is growing at a steady pace. Keep up the good work.
Steve
February 9, 2010Hi Debra,
Your welcome.
I doubt many graduates of Blog Mastermind become six-figure earners. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but if you really take a look at six figure earners (from blogs) you’ll soon realize that they either have a massive amount of traffic or an offer for a product that has grabbed a lot of attention (and therefore sales).
On the other hand if you’re a coach, I think you can just as easily earn six figures online using a blog. I haven’t done it yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do :)
SEO Firm - Globalsoftsols SEO services Firms
November 22, 2010Global soft web solutions based SEO, found your blog is growing at a steady pace. Keep up the good work.
Palanivel Raja
October 11, 2011Its a great news. Will try????
SEO Expert
July 10, 2014yeah! i was thing so much how to earn money from my blogs. i am gonna try this.. but it should be promising.
Karaikudi
January 11, 2015Thanks for the post. I want to do this.
site link
December 20, 2015That is a very good tip particularly to those new to the blogosphere.
Simple but very precise info… Thanks for sharing this one.
A must read post!
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