Yaro Starak Interview with West Loh

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Yaro: Yaro Starak

West: Welcome! It’s West here and I want to personally thank you for visiting my site. You can get more great audios, videos and interviews with wealthy and successful people at my website at www.WestLoh.com. So let’s get straight into it. I hope you enjoy the recording.

Folks, welcome to the call today. So we have Yaro Starak, who’s one of Australia’s premier bloggers, so were very lucky to have Yaro. Yaro, welcome to the call.

Yaro: Thanks for having me, West!

West: You told me before, you sound a little bit nasally, but that’s cool; I’m totally cool with that as long as the content is awesome, I will let you off. Is that okay?

Yaro: That’s fine. I’m recovering from a cold so it’s gonna be a little bit deeper than usual and I have a pretty deep voice in general. So I apologize in advance.

West: Cool. Well, hopefully you might get a few more marriage proposals on your blog after this interview.

Yaro: No, there’s too many already. Can’t take it. Hahaha

West: Folks, I wanna tell a bit about Yaro. I’ve worked with Yaro in the past. He’s got an amazing program called the Blog Mastermind, which we’ll tell you about later. He’s got a ton of information about what he actually does and how he got to where he is on his blog which is Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. But Yaro, for those who have never heard of you, never seen you, we should give them a little smack on the wrist because they should have. But if they haven’t, in about 20 seconds or less can you tell us a little bit about your journey and where you are today? Just to set the framework.

Yaro: Twenty seconds, West? I have like, uh, I have over a five minute story I can tell at this point. But okay, I’ll do it in twenty…

West: Alright, let’s go two minutes.

Yaro: Alright. To make a long story short, I grew up in Brisbane, Australia. Went to school here, went to university here. Graduated from a Business Management degree and was very adamant about never having a proper full-time job.

But I definitely got into computers more as a hobbyist than any other reason beyond that. You do receive a free internet account when you go to university here so I discovered the internet in about 1998 when I just began university. And by the end of my course, I was well and truly an internet fan and I’ve discovered everything about hosting websites. And I even managed to get myself a help desk job at the university because I had skilled up so much just through my own playing around with the internet.

West: Cool!

Yaro: But I was very, very sincere about not having a full-time job cause I didn’t want to go anywhere that, you know, I didn’t choose to go to, I guess, on a very relaxed sort of time frame. So I knew for me that meant starting my own business. I just wasn’t sure what to start. That was the big question for me.

But what I started doing was just basically playing around with websites purely for hobbies. And with the first websites I had that was fairly big success was a card game website. I used to play a collectible card game called “Magic: The Gathering.” All the geeks listening to this call might know it. It’s probably none of you, but anyway, I played this game throughout high school and university. And I sort of lost interest in it as a player but I was very much involved with the trading of cards and being involved with the community. So I just started a website that talked a bit about playing tournaments and the cards and so forth. And the website turned into the largest site in Australia for this card game; and in fact, became one of the most popular trading hubs. So we have a lot of people go to the forum and trading cards and so forth. That was my first successful website. It taught me pretty much the entire framework of what it takes to create a website that’s popular on the internet.

West: And that just happened out of you chasing your passion?

Yaro: Pretty much. I really loved the card game; that was for sure. But I was even enjoying the internet even more than that. So I discovered this thing called geocities. Some of the older people might know this if they were on the internet in the early days. It’s just a free website building tool so you could host a website there. And it was a terrible… terribly difficult system to get, you know, cultivate it in terms of developing a solid website. But I did give me sort of the motivation to just set up a website. And I started posting content up there.

And eventually, I got more serious and bought myself a ‘Teach Yourself HTML’ book which is a textbook that covers the language that websites are written in. And I managed to clean up my website, present it with a proper domain name and turned it into a real serious hobby site from that point forward. And that was the first site I ever made money from as well. I sold banner advertising and other types of advertising on the site. And I started to get up to about five hundred to a thousand dollars a month just from that—purely, purely a hobby site.

West: Wow! That’s not bad. Not bad, you know.

Yaro: It taught me the groundwork, the framework for everything I did since then.

West: So how did you go from that to your massive hub now which is one of the most visited sites in Australia? Umm, all the blogs in Australia. How did you go from that hobby site to moving into what you have today with Entrepreneurs-Journey?

Yaro: There’s one connecting business. So I actually sold that magic site. I lost interest in it and I was not really keen on maintaining it anymore. This is after seven years. So I had started a proofreading business. And this is around about the end of the dot-com boom. So I was very aware of how much money people were making and the evaluations that some companies were getting even if it was quite silly. But you know, everyone knew about the internet and how amazing it could be for business so I was quite keen to put together another type of internet business.

So I started this proofreading website called BetterEdit.com. And that was the website that basically connected contract editors. So I hired contract editors and proofreaders who are usually university lecturers or PhD students and connected them with international students who are not so good with English. So their written English wasn’t very good. And through the internet, we provided an editing service and I sort of sat on top of that business.

West: It’s very cool. How did you identify that as a need? I think with any entrepreneur or business person listening to the call they are always presented with different opportunities. But how did you give that one a green light? I mean, was it just your experience or you had found working at the help desk that a lot of people were asking for this type of thing?

Yaro: There were two very pivotal reasons: The first was my participation—and you certainly know about this too, West, given how much study you’ve done—in a group of sites with international students in my university course. And I remember sitting up late one night, like 2am and I was given the responsibility of combining the work of all the members of our group for this assignment.

West: That’s happened to me before.

Yaro: Yeah. I had one student who was not a local and they were from somewhere in Asia. And their English wasn’t so great. And I had to take their written component and combine it, and of course, you know, make our document sound like it was just one person who had written it. And I just struggled because I couldn’t understand what this person was trying to say. Then I thought about it; and I started questioning how they were even managing to get through a university given their English. So that was the first big indicator, there was clearly a demand.

And that sort of showed me a lot of other positive points. International students are usually here on the back of their parents’ funding. It’s not cheap studying in Australia so they had to have money. The whole reason they’re here is because their parents want them to get a really good education. So they’re very pressured to get good marks. So they’re very likely to pay for services that will help them do that.

West: Definitely. Definitely. So it’s through your own experience?

Yaro: That was the first thing. And to be honest, there was one other thing. I ran a print version of the Yahoo magazine—which I don’t think they have anymore—but back then it was out. And there was this guy in the States who had started an editing service. It wasn’t quite the same as what I actually did but it was similar. They edited the entry papers you have to write to get into university there. And his business just went crazy. He turned it into a million dollar operation. He hired fifty Harvard professors and eventually got bought out for seven figures.

And it was just a very similar story, actually, ‘coz he started by being a business student at Harvard and started editing papers from his dorm room. And then it just grew from there.

West: Wow! That’s very cool! Now I’m gonna ask you one more question on that before we move on and you tell us how that bridges into what you’re doing now. And that is…to get that site up and running, you had to create relationships with people. Academics—you had to sell your idea to them. You had to go to them and say, “This is my site, do you want to be involved?” Was that a difficult task for you and how did you go about persuading people to be involved with that?

Yaro: A lot of it came about through the power of the internet actually. Having come from running my hobby site, I understood what, for example, search engines can do to bring attention, sort of bring traffic to the website. So it was a bit of a reverse actually. You’re talking about going out to other people and hiring them. We sort of let people come to us.

West: Ahh… okay.

Yaro: We’ve been in the situation of being in a case where there’s not much work and a lot of editors. So as a company we could basically pick and choose from the best of the best and hire those people to work for us.

So the very first time we did it, we did go to universities; we contacted the English Department and said, “Can we put up a notice somewhere about hiring some contract editors.” That’s the only time we ever did that. From that point forward, the website…

West: People approached you…

Yaro: Yeah, we had it on the website, a page called ‘jobs’. And people would just say, “I’m looking for editing work”. And once every six months we pick the best people and go through a hiring process. So…

West: Very sweet.

Yaro: That wasn’t too hard.

Getting the students to use the service was the hard part.

West: But you did crack that code, didn’t you?

Yaro: To a degree, yeah; enough to make a profitable business. I think there’s a huge untapped potential but I did sell that business.

West: Yes, we’ll talk about that a little bit later on—how you’ve managed to almost buy and sell websites like real estate properties. You’ve become a bit of a dealer in that sense, which I think is a really fascinating part of the internet because I don’t think people don’t realize the value of their website sometimes. It’s a process maybe you can talk us through a little bit later on.

But just carry on. Just finish that story, Yaro, how it bridges onto Entrepreneurs-Journey.

Yaro: Right. So towards year four or something like that, would have been 2005, I was told that these things called blogs—and I had no idea what a blog was—were very good for attracting traffic from search engines. So I decided to investigate and I found out a little bit about them, but I still didn’t really get it. So the only way to learn something, in my opinion, is to actually try it. So I installed some blogging software on my editing and proofreading website and attempted to write to attract what I thought was my audience for my proofreading business by writing content related to assignment writing and so forth.

West: So you actually started a blog for Better Edit first.

Yaro: Yes, that was the very first one.

West: Oh. Okay!

Yaro: BetterEdit/blog. So that was a terribly dry experience for me cause I really didn’t enjoy the topic. I was a business entrepreneur and not an editor or proofreader. And the other problem with that is I was trying to attract an international audience using English. So, you know, it wasn’t the most effective way to market that business. It’s still, I think, a probable thing to do but what I found through my own personal experience is I just didn’t enjoy it enough to make it worthwhile. But what I did realize is I actually started to enjoy reflecting on what I’ve done in the business world. And I started to write that on this blog. But obviously, it didn’t make a lot of sense to have it on this proofreading site. So after about three months of very sporadic writing, I sold it off so I created a second blog, called it Entrepreneurs-Journey and just started writing down my entrepreneur’s journey. And that’s how that blog came into existence.

West: Wow. So that’s the story, aye? That’s the low down.

Yaro: Yup. That’s the 20-second rhythm.

West: So moving into the blogging topic, I know you’ve been talking about blogs for ages now and a lot of people are approaching you and asking you for interviews to talk about it and you probably discuss it a lot of times, but I wanted to touch on a few little things and I want to ask you then more about your mindset on how you approach it.

The first thing is with regards to blogging. Do you think it is a trend? And I certainly don’t think so but some people, you know, when things happen on the internet they say it’s a trend, it’s gonna roll over and then something else, people come along… hat are your thoughts on that?

Yaro: As in Blogging or something else?

West: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yaro: Okay. Well, I’ve heard that said before and I don’t agree with it for the simple reason that a blog is just a new version of a website. And we’re well aware that websites are not going anywhere; it’s still the main medium we use to consume information on the internet.

So a blog is still just a website. There’s nothing that evolutionary in terms of form of media. It certainly enhanced the website in terms of certain things like leaving comments and the ease of publication of new information. But it’s not something that’s changed the fundamental nature of the internet. Now if that happens, let’s say it became some kind of immersive virtual reality environment that’s plugged directly into our brain, then maybe the blog will evolve to something that’s interactive in that sort of environment using that kind of media. But we’re not talking about, you know, I can’t imagine something replacing… It’s like saying something is going to replace the written word. And so far, that hasn’t happened.

West: Definitely. Definitely, I agree. And just for those of you who aren’t into blogging and don’t know what blogging is—I just don’t want to assume everyone knows what it is—what’s your elevator pitch, Yaro, when you’re stuck in an elevator with someone and asks you what you do and you say you’re a blogger and they say what is a blog? Give us your 20-second outline.

Yaro: It’s a website. And I just highlighted two points before that make it slightly different from the normal website. So, the ability for people to leave comments so you can publish your work and people could reply. So it’s a two-way form of communication. It’s actually very easy compared to at least what it was to set up a website. So setting up a blog is something that most normal people who learn how to use email, for example, are capable of doing. So it’s lowered areas of entry to get into web publishing.

It is born from journaling so very, very early blogs came about from people who are writing just a journal online essentially. So because of that, it’s just become a much more natural style of writing and it’s not very corporate the way some websites could be; some of them are very, very brochure like. Blogging has never been that way; it’s a lot more personal.

But essentially, you know, I tell people it’s a website. That all we are talking about here is a website with certain features that make it a little bit more powerful than websites from previous years. But I tell people just do a search for the word blog with whatever hobby they are interested in. So tennis blog, golf blog…they can see what it looks like and see if they can spot the few differences.

Another thing is the chronology. The content is published based on what’s the latest article. So the newest articles are at the top. That’s one way to spot a blog. You’ll see articles listed in chronological order.

West: Sure. And also from a search engine optimization perspective, they like websites that are regularly updated. And a blog has a way of telling the search engines in a way that websites do not. Websites tend to stay static if they’re not touched. Blogs have a mechanism to update search engines and therefore give you opportunity for more traffic.

Yaro: And in fact, really, the main reason why blogs have become so powerful for getting search traffic, I mean, like you say, they are built to get great rankings. But that’s really not the reason why. The reason why is it lowered the barriers to publishing, which meant people could publish more content and just become prolific publishers. Old websites, it was very difficult to do that. So blogs, because of the volume—and for people who are good writers who have a lot of knowledge—it becomes very easy for them to demonstrate that. And that, in turn, brings in the search traffic. So that’s really the reasoning.

West: Wow! Fascinating. So in your opinion Yaro, let’s say there are some business owners and entrepreneurs listening to the call and they don’t have a blog and maybe their competitors are, or do have a blog, would it be fair to say that there is a significant disadvantage or they’re missing out on potential business?

Yaro: Yes, it’s funny. Sort of living in a bit of a bubble sometimes and, you know, you sort of assume everyone has a blog and know what one is.

West: Yes, yes. Most people don’t.

Yaro: And you don’t. There’s a very small population who actually even know what a blog is but in the business world, if you’re keeping up to date with where things are going, there’s definitely a trend away from traditional marketing which is very much… well, for a lot of businesses, especially small business, it’s often shotgun: so basically, people putting ads up with the hope that they’ll work with not really much thought behind it. It’s just done because that’s they way it’s always been done.

And I think, nowadays, the way marketing is heading, it’s pretty clear that the means of communicating with people has become a lot more natural, a lot more organic, and a lot more human, essentially so. If you want to get that natural conversion process—and every business owner knows what it’s like because when they interact with other humans, their customers, they know what it means to get a loyal customer and have that customer become a person who delivers word-of-mouth for their business. So that’s essentially what blogging can help you do on the internet; it creates an organic and a natural dialogue with people interested in whatever it is you do. And that’s so much more powerful—generating word of mouth—because it’s like a friend recommending a friend instead of a corporate business trying to put a sales pitch on people who always feel like they’re being sold to.

So if nothing else, I’d recommend to any small business owners or entrepreneurs listening to this, to just start blogging their business in terms of an industry. And start by helping people, like start teaching people on their blog how to do things. And that would demonstrate that you actually do know the service or the products that you’re selling. And that, in turn, will lead to sales.

West: Well, what do you say to those people listening saying, “I’m in a really obscure niche. No one really would come and visit my blogs because people just don’t do that. I’m in a niche that is not well known and I provide very specific services, products or whatever it is to a very specific audience so I don’t think it would be worth my while.” What do you say to those people, Yaro?

Yaro: Well, it depends how obscure they’re talking about. There are a few cases—very, very few—that probably have an audience of one…and that’s the person who’s doing it. But for the most part, I mean, if you’re doing anything and you’re interacting with other human beings who also share that interest, then that means there’s a market. And that’s a beautiful thing about the internet—through the power of search and through the power of online communities, it’s quite easy to identify where your market exists and bring it to your website, provided you give the anchor: the reason why they visit which is usually content.

So putting content out there in a specific niche, other people who share your passion, your interest will find you. If not, go out and find the forums or other websites where they hang out and tell them about your blog.

I think almost any niche can build an audience. Not every niche can be profitable; but a lot of them can. And it’s fun to talk about something you enjoy. So, if nothing else, just do that.

West: If I know, you’re a prolific writer, Yaro, but all your stuff is actually good quality content, which just amazes me. Most people who write, a lot of it is awful. I guess that’s one of the reasons why you’ve got so many visitors who find what you do very valuable.

On the topic of blogging for business, now let’s say a business has a static website right now, which a lot of businesses do; they’re not using their site at all for any particular purpose besides what you said before—branding themselves and creating an awareness. How simple is it for them to then plug on a blog on to that and how do they integrate that to start getting some traffic and start monetizing that website?

Yaro: Well, it depends on what they’re currently doing as an online content strategy. If they don’t have one, that’s the first thing they have to do—is get a content strategy and start putting content online. The way I tell people to get into that is to actually, like I said before, think about the most common agitations your customer group has, what their big problems are and provide some free information to help deal with that. Now, some people have concerns about doing that because they feel like they’re giving away everything that they currently sell.

West: It’s a long philosophy, isn’t it?

Yaro: It is. And the reason why that’s not such a negative thing to do is because by demonstrating your knowledge in something people are usually too lazy to go and do it themselves… Excuse me, West. I got a call here.

I’m gonna grab a lozenge so we don’t… Can you hold on?

West: Alright…

Yaro: Okay.

West: Alright. Sweet.

Yaro: Now I’m going to have to ask you the questions to keep you talking. So… [laughs]

West: No, no. This is good. This is good. Carry on.

Yaro: Okay. Right.

So the first step is to deliver that education. And that shows people that you know what you’re doing, but most people are too lazy to do it themselves. And that’s the good thing. You can show people the solution to their problem, but chances are they’d rather hire someone to do it for them. And that’s where you come in. So you become the source of the information and then you become the solution. That’s where you make the money.

West: So the blog provides a bridge, an opportunity, a medium for you to build a relationship with them and how you choose to monetize that later on is up to you.

Yaro: Right. And in the case of a small business that already has some sort of online strategy, this could be simply adding a blog to what you do already. So just have your website address, forward slash blog (www.websiteaddress.com/blog) and start putting out information at that blog. Simple as that.

Though if you want to go really hardcore into this—and a lot of businesses are doing this—switch your online brochure website into a blog. So your actual homepage becomes a blog. And that’s actually performing really well for some types of businesses, not all businesses.

West: What kind of industries would tend to be better for that strategy?

Yaro: Well, it depends how important a personality is to what you do…

West: Yes

Yaro: A blog, whoever is writing the blog, becomes identified with the content, the business. So if you’re a small business who’s a consultant, a trainer, a coach, an author, those are businesses that naturally let themselves… perfect with the blogging. When you start getting into other areas, it might be better to have a blog more as an additional content stream, not necessarily replacing the brochure website but maybe having a doorway into the behind the scenes of the company. For example, Microsoft…

West: Like the Google blog or something like that.

Yaro: Yeah exactly. So, you know, it’s not going to replace what they currently do but it’s a nice addition.

West: Sure. Now for those people—and this is probably a question you get regularly—but for those people who are… Actually, for anyone—as a side point—for anyone wanting to learn more, Yaro has an awesome report called the Blog Profits Blueprint. I don’t want to cover a lot of content in there because it covers a whole ton of stuff but this question is, I believe, important. And that is: For those people who don’t want to blog themselves but want the benefits of blogging, what advice do you give to people there besides don’t be lazy?

Yaro: Well, it is hard without running your own blog.

West: Yeah, I know you have actually started with experimenting with getting guest bloggers and paying people to blog on your blog. But you still actually keep your hand in the pie, so to speak, like you never fully leave and say ‘I’m not blogging for a year and let someone else take over.’

Yaro: Well, one blog I recently sold was actually written completely by a team of, well, basically volunteer authors. So that website did function eventually entirely autonomously because I put someone in charge of it as well as a project manager.

West: Awesome.

Yaro: So that was an independent project. But see, that wasn’t necessarily a small business; that was more like a magazine. So it made money through advertising and just put out content on a very consistent basis.

You know, if your small business is about you, then you can’t have someone else write about it. But if you are resource-limited, if nothing else, you can go to other blogs that are talking about your topic area and become an active participant in the conversation as it’s called. So basically leave comments, maybe even just submit a few guest articles to some other blogs that are popular in your area. And that can create exposure for what you do. And, you know, it’s never going to be as effective as running your own blog but these are places where other people are congregating. And often, they are doing some of the very natural way and usually the person who’s running the blog has a strong influence over that audience, which is a really key point. The influence can help with making the sale, it helps with the conversion.

West: So that’s great advice. Thanks for sharing!

So in essence, if you’re really looking at creating a relationship with someone and it is personalized, you’re kind of in a personalized industry, it’s not a good idea to try and completely outsource it or get someone else to kind of ghost blog for you. You want to actually be there building the relationships with your clients.

Yaro: That would be the ideal situation. I’m not going to say, “it can’t be done”. You know all about outsourcing, West. It’s something that, if you find the right person, can be a very effective. It depends what message you’re trying to get across and who’s supposed to be endeavoring it. But you can find talented people who do amazing things. So…

West: Definitely. Definitely. That’s good, that’s great! I’m assuming with your blog you keep it very personal because I think that’s one of the successful factors of it.

So I just recently saw you at a recent venture workshop, Yaro, and I want to ask you now about building relationships and creating those kind of dynamics with other list owners and site owners where it’s beneficial for both. Now I want to ask you a two-pronged question: firstly, you get a lot of people—I’m sure—that come to you and ask you to do business together or ask you to promote their product, to do joint ventures, what are the some of the strategies or what makes someone stand out when they come to you as to whether you’ll do business with them?

Yaro: You know, the only people who I do business with are the people who have not made contact with me initially to do business with me. If that makes sense.

West: Yes, that does make absolute sense.

Yaro: Most of the people that I do promote, either they’ve really helped me or I can see way in the future that I would like to work with them. You know, there is a hierarchy. People are probably aware of this. Certain other people have larger email lists or bigger websites or just access to a lot more people, and you’d know them and you know you want to get in contact with them. And no matter what point you are on the ladder, there’s always someone above you. So that is someone you might want to know, you know, up until maybe the President of the United States or Oprah or something like that, you know, to reach a certain pinnacle.

But in terms of working with your peer group, I find that the best way to make a connection is to do something that we’re doing now, which is some sort of a mutually beneficial, a more creation of content that’s specifically about me promoting you or you promoting me to make a, you know, just part of a launch. That may come now in time. And no doubt, you’re going to put this to your people, I’ll put it to my people and we’re further cementing our relationship. But because we’ve done this, we’ve opened the doors to doing more substantive forms of promotions.

West: Absolutely.

Yaro: And that’s how my promotions have come about. So I’ve either worked with my peers who I’ve established long term friendships with at least online; or in terms of the people I promote for, they’re usually the top tier marketers in my industry because I want to maintain a good relationship with them because I hope they’ll promote my product down the line too.

The simple fact is that these guys put out the best products so let’s not forget the fact that you have to have something really great to promote. It has to really hit the nail in terms of the author and the audience I have. So…

West: I know you’re a stickler for quality, Yaro. And you won’t promote something just for the sake of it. And that’s actually a really good thing because I’m on your list and you’re one of the very few that I don’t ignore.

When you actually come with an offer, I read it and I consider it because, one, it doesn’t come every single day; and two, I’ve got five to six, you know, really good content pieces before I’ve even heard about the offer. And usually, you built it up so that there’s a link in to the content. So it’s a completely different strategy from ninety nine percent of the list that I’m on where everyday you get some new product and it’s all a sales pitch and I know you’re against that. But it’s a formula that works.

Yaro: Yeah. In some ways, I’m only against that because of my personal standards. A lot of people will argue that you actually can get better results by focusing on the marketing. And if people unsubscribe, that’s good because they’re not the people who would buy from you anyway. So you only want who are buyers on your list. But I’ve always put the philosophy that you should do unto others what you would like done unto you. So I use content to market and that’s the way I like to be marketed to myself, so…

West: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more…

Yaro: with relationship forming for joint ventures, I think it’s all about friendship first and then the actual marketing—the sales part of that—comes organically after the fact.

West: So you’ve never or you very rarely respond to someone who just out of the blue emails you and says or sends you some sort of message that says, “Yaro, can you please promote this to your list. This is your commission,” you know.

Yaro: I have to know them already in terms of purely by reputation, not personally, because obviously they’re coming out of the blue.

West: Yes.

Yaro: And the product would have to be so specific, I have to see, ‘Wow. Yeah, I would want to use this.” And I think my audience would then, too. That’s the only way.

West: And usually, they would send you a copy of it, right? So you can sample it or at least have a look at it and mull over.

Yaro: Yeah. There’s a template I give, an email template that I give to some of my students when it comes to approaching for joint ventures. which, yes, it includes things like “here’s a free copy of the product, here’s statistics on the conversion rate we’ve had so far for people sending emails out and how many opt-in sales.” But more importantly, a little bit of preamble to say, “Hi! I’ve read your blog or read your email or news letter. I really like the article you wrote about this…” And, you know, having some more in-depth connection with the person as opposed to copying and pasting template emails you send everyone.

West: For sure. Because you’ve got to remember, these guys who are up, up on the list, you know, up on the hierarchy, they get literally hundreds of requests each week. So they can’t possibly respond to all of them especially the amateur applications, so to speak.

So how do you, when you want to approach someone, Yaro—and I’m not sure if this happens because obviously with a very popular blog you tend to get approached a lot—but have you ever found a blog person or someone who you haven’t made contact yet with that you want to potentially do a JV with? And do you have a… Is it similar for you? Like you would contact them, make a relationship point of contact and with the idea, later on, of promoting something with them down the track?

Yaro: Nowadays, the people I’m going to approach are usually at the top of their field. And when it comes to meeting those people, the best way is referral; that’s almost always the case. And the good thing is once you reach a certain level you sort of know someone who knows someone else who knows someone else. So if you just put out through your network, “I’m looking to get in touch with so and so… anyone have a connection to him so that I can get an organic introduction…” and that’s something that, you know, it’s networking 101. This is what happens. This is how humans meet each other in a lot of ways. So obviously, this is a bit more protracted because we’re doing something deliberately to hopefully get some kind of outcome. But it really is a case of, okay, I really want to get in touch with, let’s say Joe Vitale. I just finished reading or in the process of reading his hypnotic writing book. I know he’s a well-known internet marketer/author.

West: He’s on The Secret, I believe.

Yaro: Yup. So a lot of people probably know him. Obviously he’s very well- connected, knows a ton of people and I thought I have a product that just happens to be great for, I think, his audience. And I have to go through my connections, “Who knows him?” Okay, I’ve actually got Mark Joyner’s email in my email. And I’m pretty sure Mike Joyner is friends with Joe Vitale. So I go, “Hey Mark, just wondering if you could get me an introduction to Joe.” And that would probably be all I need to do. Of course I could just go and pitch to Joe straight away; it would be a case of, you know, let’s make friends, what can I do for you first, maybe can I just grab you for a podcast interview—like we’re doing now—just to open the doors to something more. So…

West: I think it would be much more powerful with Mark’s endorsement, wouldn’t it?

Yaro: Yes. Yes. And that’s so important, you know. Credibility is transferred that way so much better than just coming out of the blue and talking about yourself. It’s always the case.

West: Definitely, that’s powerful. And that applies offline as well as online. I think these strategies that Yaro is mentioning could be applied offline as well. So that’s great! That’s great.

Okay, moving on. I worked with you in the past on your Blog Mastermind Membership Program. And one of the things that I really admired about what you did, Yaro, was you actually created an awesome team around you. And I think that’s been partly the key to your success because from what I’ve observed, you really enjoy writing; you enjoy writing, you enjoy building relationships with people. But you let people who are really good at doing what they do, do what they do.

So my question is, firstly, how do you find people to do and how do you then recruit them and get them on board to help you out for whatever it is that you want them to do for you—be it a launch or, you know, just general maintenance of your site?

Yaro: Well, you know, once again, one of the lovely benefits of a popular blog is how much attention you have. So nowadays, when I hire, I just put out a blog post saying, “I’m looking for someone who’s good at this,” and that usually gets me more than enough applicants and I just need to find the best ones. So that’s been the more recent way I’ve done things. Mick Real, my graphic designer, came to me that way.

Before that, it was very, very organic, again, with networking actually to do with, you know, you hear about people who are helping other people. If you operate in an industry, you’re very likely to be associated with peers in that same industry and they will have people they work with to do certain tasks. So it’s simply a case of asking, “Hey, do you know a good copy writer?” or “Do you know a good web designer?” And, you know, they can pass you on to people you can use.

I often recommend to people—and I know you do this too, West—that they look at freelancing websites like Elance, and Guru.com. But to be honest, I’ve never actually needed to use one to find someone who is to work close with me. I mean, I’ve used it, you know, one off jobs for transcribing, things like that. But I just never needed to do that because I consider that like a last resort.

West: Yep. I know you like to have like a personal communication with the people who work for you as in contrast to sending a task halfway around the world to get done that you’re just not sure will be done to your standards.

Yaro: Yeah. I mean, that thing said, I’ve got some blog themes being created now by an Indian who outsources to… I think he outsources to Russia. But I’m not sure what the connection is but, you know, it’s a real worldly project. So I’m an Australian outsourcing to an Indian who’s acting as a project manager to a team of Russian designers. All I’m getting done is some blog themes that I want to give away as a bonus for part of a membership site. So I found this person, again, through referral. I have another fellow blogger who writes in the similar industry. He seems to give away these free themes all the time so I decided I might do the same. So I asked him who does he have to do that and he referred me to this person. So that’s such a common practice. But as you see who’s getting something getting done that you want to do, you ask them how to do it.

West: And you find people are generally happy to help out with that? Like they’re not protective or “I don’t want you using my, you know, my designer because you might be stealing work away from me or you might be competing with me,” and that sort of stuff. People are generally happy to help?

Yaro: Generally. I mean, as I was an element of that, it depends what kind of person they are. Are they thinking scarcity or are they thinking abundance? But I find especially, you know, in the blogosphere where most bloggers are, they’re not running large companies. They’re usually independent sole traders who have contractors working with them for certain tasks. So they don’t have the sense “this is my full-time employee and I can’t let you use them”.

This is the case of the contractor who I use every now and then. And I’m sure they’ve got capacity for work. And in fact, it’s probably a good thing because you keep my contractor in work. So I know he’s not going to go and get a full-time job to survive.

West: Yeah. Definitely. Abundance… abundance mentality.

Yaro: Yeah.

West: Now I remember an essence of you doing this actually, we’re at a seminar in Brisbane at the convention center and we’re having a chat [40:03] to Ed Dale, I believe you asked him for a good referral for an accountant who knows a bit about the internet.

Yaro: Right. I’m still using him actually.

West: Oh, you’re still using him! Wow!

Yaro: It’s the person I referred to, yeah. It was a lawyer or a legal advise person.

West: A legal adviser, that’s it, yeah. That’s Yaro in action guys! He’s not just talking the talk; he’s walking it as well. I can vouch for that!

Alright. So in terms of your blog now, Yaro, how do you stay innovative? How do you keep people coming back? How do you keep your business fresh? I know you’ve launched a few programs in the past. Do you spend a lot of time on strategy? Like, you know, “where am I going to take this blog? What’s the long term end point for it?” Or do you just pretty much “focus on a daily task and want to provide content for my clients” and things would go from there?

Yaro: All of the above. It’s a case of two things. In terms of staying innovative, I think the most effective way to get that outcome is to actually be always doing something. So as long as you’re being active in your market and working in your project, you…

West: I love your new blog design, by the way.

Yaro: Thanks!

West: It’s fantastic!

Yaro: See, that’s a perfect example. So Mick, my designer, created that.

West: Love it!

Yaro: We wrote about it. Obviously, Mick’s your designer too. There’s another example of networking connection…

West: He is. Yeah, I stole Mick from Yaro.

Yaro: So, that experience was an experience for me. So I was then able to write about it and then had three articles that go to my blog talking about just from that one change he made in my blog design. So that’s the simple way.

And if you’re not doing things in your industry, then you are obviously either no longer interested in it or plain lazy. And if you’re not doing things, you’re going to become stagnant and lose any leadership position you might have. So it’s a curse and a blessing to be a leading blogger; you have to always be innovative and bring up your content. You know, you get a lot of benefits by being in that position of leadership. So…

West: Yeah, and I noticed that you teamed up with Darren Rowse as well to talk about design at a time.

Yaro: We did that a while ago actually.

West: You kind of brought it… Did you bring it back up? Like, you know, bring it back to the forefront or refer back to it?

Yaro: You must have seen the podcast down the bottom of my…

West: I think. Yeah. I was just browsing through it.

Yaro: I just highlighted a few of the more popular blog press or podcast I’ve done and stuck it in that player. So that’s one of the… and you’re right. That is very on topic at the moment.

But going back to the strategy part of your question, I always marvel at people who are very good at mapping out—and I think you do this, West, a bit more than I do—and really sitting down and writing down strategic objectives and goals and mind mapping. And, you know, Andrew Grant, the two friends of ours, you know, they do this sort of thing too with their decision matrix and these sort of things.

I’ve always been more organic. And that’s, I think, purely a personality thing. I’ve looked to what I do like and don’t like about my life circumstance and then take those elements that I want to change and think about what I need to implement in order to make that change happen. So that’s when the strategy comes about. So I sort of think, “Okay, I want to start making money this way because I find it too labor intensive. How can I change that?” And maybe I want to see my blog get to the point that it’s doing this sort of outcome in terms of advertising revenue, “what do I need to do to make that happen?” Or my membership site’s doing well but I’m not liking the fact that I need to always find these number of new students each month to keep it going, “how can I automate that marketing process so it doesn’t involve me so heavily?”

So I think about those things on probably no longer than a year by year basis. I think about what I’m planning to do for the year—and that could change; it’s very fluid, very organic. But most of the time it’s wake up in the morning, I have a little checklist of tasks which is nothing more than dot points on a notepad. I might prioritize them in terms of what needs to get done first and I’ll just sit down and do whichever one. And usually, one of them is ‘write a blog article’ and that has to happen every second, third, or fourth day; otherwise, I start feeling agitated.

West: You get withdrawal symptoms.

Yaro: Well, I just start to, you know…when hen you start running a blog and it really starts to take off, you know you can’t go longer than sort of five or six days where you… otherwise, you feel it. And you feel this obligation. Your traffic might start to fall down, people start wondering where you are and…

West: Wow! Really? Is it that dynamic?

Yaro: Well, it’s like a drug, you know. You got to keep feeding it. Otherwise, it starts to teeter off. And that’s one of the reasons why most bloggers fail—is they don’t keep at it for long enough. And once you establish something, you have to keep building on it. And if you want to get to that pinnacle, the really big result, which is the point where I’m at now, where you can actually relax a little bit—you know, it’s not relaxing to the point where I can’t stop writing all together—but I don’t have to write everyday now. At least I can write every third or fourth day and still maintain the outcomes that I want.

West: But you really enjoy it. I mean, that’s another thing we need to point out to these people, is that you love it!

Yaro: Well, yeah. Let’s not forget that. I mean, no blogger would do what they do if they didn’t enjoy writing on their blogs.

West: And, you know, if you didn’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t do it. So I think that’s powerful because another example I share with these people is you’ve had a lot of opportunities to speak in front of very big groups of people, very influential people, marketing circles in Australia. And you’ve told me personally that speaking is not a sign that you see yourself doing… because you love it.

Yaro: At the moment.

West: At the moment, yeah. So you don’t choose to go down that path. And I think that’s a good lesson for people who are trying to maybe do stuff just for the sake of doing it even though they don’t enjoy it.

Yaro: I’ve always made the choice—and this is something I admire about you, West—to choose lifestyle before financial gain. So I will turn down opportunities that could make me more money and, you know, connect me with people that could make me a lot more money simply because it would take away from some of the freedoms that I enjoy. So that’s part of why I like what I do; it’s very flexible, it’s very independent and it’s ‘work when you want to, not because you have to.’ So that’s the attitude that I like to keep. And it helps you.

I see a lot of people like, just recently, wasn’t it Mike Filsaime who had to pass a kidney stone? Apparently, it was the second or third time he’s had to do that because the guy’s sitting in front of his computer till 2 or 3am everyday trying to do his next product launch, his next product launch. And he’s a multi-millionaire. The guy’s running a ten million dollar business. And I totally admire that but I can’t imagine myself having that kind of work ethic. It’s not healthy to me.

West: It’s not worth it, Yaro. Yeah, yeah. I agree with that and I’ve seen similar instances in other industries, you know, people who invest in real estate and who trade; and they just sacrifice lifestyle for what they do. One of the guys I was personal training, and he was a young guy—twenty-seven, twenty-eight—his blood pressure was hypertensive. For those of you who—I won’t say the specific numbers but that was very high for someone who’s in mid twenties. Very high stress. Putting himself under a lot of pressure. And, you know, it’s just not worth it. You don’t want your health being adversely affected by what you do.

And speaking of that, like Yaro and I, for those of you—Yaro and I are going to have golf again this afternoon. And, you know, just the middle of the day, we’re going to have a bit of a bash before he heads of for six months to explore more of the world. So how’s that for lifestyle?

Yaro: [Laughs slightly] I’ll be blogging from Hawaii and Fiji.

West: Oh wow! You excited about that?

Yaro: Yeah, I haven’t seen Fiji before so I’m looking forward to that.

West: I can’t wait. Make sure you take some photos, Yaro.

Yaro: Yep. Definitely. I’ll be photo blogging, as they say.

West: Cool. Cool.

Alright. I’ve just got a couple of more questions, Yaro, then I’ll let you go ‘coz I know you’ve got to hit the driving range to get your game sharp enough for this afternoon. I’m just curious…do you have any sites—industry sites—or blogs that are on your roll that you visit really and regularly? You know, maybe the Google blog or whatever it is just to keep up to date with stuff that you do or sites that just really inspire you.

Yaro: You know, in terms of blogs, I kind of read my peers’ because they help me stay up to date without me having to look around. So I look at the ProBlogger and DoshDosh and Shoemoney and John Chow. And these are the some of the A-players in my niche.

You can go out of that and slightly veer to the left and you can hit the marketing area. And there’s quite a few blogs like, Marketing Pilgrim, Seth Godin, these are the leaders in marketing. They’re a bit more mainstream. They haven’t focused specifically on online business; they’re just general marketing.

West: Do you make time to actually visit these on a daily basis? Or, every, you know, once a week you visit them or…

Yaro: For me, blog reading is not something I do a lot of actually. I prefer to do writing on my own blog. What I do is, often, when I’m in my period where I’m, you know, I’ve done the work for the day and I’m not really feeling productive, that’s when I’m more likely to just sort of browse around and just read a few of the headlines of some of the more newsie-type blogs and find out what’s been going on.

But for me—and I’ve said this to my students an awful lot—the best bloggers are not people who are reading every single blog out there. They’re the one’s who spend the time writing for their own blog. So it’s about creating ideas and not consuming them all the time.

I don’t want to say ignore everything going on around you because you do need to keep abreast especially if you’re trying to be a leader in your industry, you have to know what’s going on, but a lot of it is too much information. You don’t need most of what you’re consuming. You can really break it down and there’s an 80 20 rule here. So if you cut away eighty percent of what you’re reading, focus on the really high value, very relevant source of information. That’s, really, all you need to do.

And think about what you’re trying to achieve right now too. Make sure whatever it is you’re studying is related to that. You don’t have to be abreast of every single thing at this point in time; you can study it when you need it.

So I’m more inclined to be reading completely non-business related information. I read about tennis a lot, the professional tennis tour. So I read about that or movies, games, something like that.

West: Cool, cool. So in terms of business, all anyone needs really is to subscribe to Entrepreneurs-Journey RSS feed. I’ve got all their business and all the entrepreneur and marketing needs covered.

Yaro: If you do something along the path that I’m doing, I recommend that. But, you know, there is a lot of great, unbelievable amount of great content out there. So you’ve got to find what relates with you.

West: Absolutely. And now I completely agree with the information overload and getting caught up in too much information and not taking action on your own. So it’s an absolute nightmare for someone who likes having lots of information before making a decision and I fall into that trap. And I’m definitely working on nullifying that floor, that good bit of advice.

Now you’ve actually interviewed, Yaro, yourself personally, at least twenty really successful, wealthy people in varying aspects, cultures all over the world. I wanted to ask you, who is the highlight for you in terms of content or what they had to say, their message?

Yaro: Let me check my podcast archive. I think Tim Ferriss is a favorite. I’m pretty sure he would have been a favorite for you, too, West. We all love Mr. 4-Hour Workweek. He was fine.

You know, Andrew and Daryl, or should I say Daryl Grant’s one was probably among the most popular podcast to date.

West: Wow!

Yaro: That was two parters. That was the interesting to not simply because, I think, of the appeal and the practicality of what she talked about. She was teaching us how to do ebooks and make quarter of a million dollars a year, how her and Andrew do it. And that was very practical. So I think people really enjoyed that one.

West: I think you have the similarity there and you both really like producing quality content and not so hard on the massive sales pitches.

Yaro: Yeah, Tim Ferriss definitely stands out. I’ve done a few of the few bloggers who, like Darren Rowse from Problogger and Brian Clark from Copyblogger, Andy Wibbels from various sites…those guys are interesting.

Yeah, looking through my list, Mike Filsaime, we talked a bit about him. It was interesting to hear about his back. [Laughs] It’s just the way he does things. So we really can’t blame him. It’s just what he does.

West: Cool! And these are all available for free on your website, correct?

Yaro: That’s right! Yeah!

West: Okay. So under podcast—under one of the podcast tab I believe—you’ll be able to access all these interviews for free. And I had a chat with Yaro probably like early this year or late last year and I, for one, wanted Yaro to actually make these. They’re so valuable. I wanted him to actually sell these because I believe that they are a product that is worth quite a lot of money, in my opinion, when I heard them.

So you guys listening to this call, you better rush over to the blog and actually… If you haven’t heard every single interview, get them onto your mp3 player and make sure it’s something you listen to before he takes them off and makes you pay for them. We’re just trying to create some scarcity here, Yaro.

Alright, the final question. It’s a very generic one, and again, you probably have no elevator pitch for this. For those people who aren’t online or maybe it’s an individual looking to either get started online or turn their hobby into a serious business, knowing what you know now about the internet, about the whole process about having done multiple product launches—you’re quite an established and quite an accomplished marketer, an internet marketer—what advice, you know, general advice would you give them starting out?

Yaro: Alright. I think it’s really important to become good at one or two things and sort of ignore everything else; at least, don’t try and become and try to be an expert at everything else. Try and find experts to work with. So pick one or two things. And, you know, you can take some time to figure this out. You may realize that you enjoy looking at keywords, so maybe doing a bit of pay-per-click marketing using Google Adwords is your thing and you’re quite prepared to study up on that and implement and practice. And that’s just going to be your lynchpin, your really powerful traffic building technique. So that could be what you do.

You might enjoy search engine optimization. So you really research how to—again, it would be very keyword-related—and how to produce content that search engines really like.

Perhaps for you, it’s a case of picking a medium. Maybe you’re really good at doing interviews on podcast like were doing now, and you’re just going to do as many really great quality interviews as you can. And that’s going to be your powerful hook.

A video is something that a lot of people are becoming really good at. A student in my program, Frances Kerr, who’s doing a blog on acne treatment, bought herself a webcam and discovered she loves sitting in front of the webcam and talking about acne. So she’s created quite a following of people who are…

West: Wow! I might see if we can capture our golf swing today and put that on her blog.

Yaro: [Laughs] Right. So it’s pick something you decide to get good at and be prepared to take six months to get reasonable at it. This is not something that happens immediately.

West: Yes.

Yaro: Leverage that for an outcome. And then everything else that’s required to make that outcome happen, get other people to do it. So you get your graphic designer, you get your technical person to handle the scripts and the servers, get your copywriter if you need to do copy, get your video person if you’re going to put the videos together—everything else around you can be built through talented people. And you just need to focus on what it is you’re going to be good at. In my case, it was obviously writing to my blog. That’s my big focus.

West: Did you ever make the mistake—and I certainly did—did you ever make the mistake of trying to do it all yourself at the start?

Yaro: I did, I did. And I think it always comes down to money issue or maybe a control issue or maybe a bit of both.

West: Yes.

Yaro: And, you know, there’s still some element of that in what I do. You know, I probably still have too much control if I wanted to grow beyond, you know, maybe double the size of what I’m doing now. I’d have to start relinquishing more and more control obviously because, you know, when your business starts getting bigger you can’t look after everything.

But early on for me, money was the big one. I always thought that it was a smarter thing to save money so I should try and do it myself. You know, in hindsight, that’s the one single thing that slowed my progress down more than anything else because I spent a good two years, three years setting up websites, trying to make a word float to the right, to the left of my website. And it would take me hours. And I’d celebrate once I got it done. But I could have hired designers to do it in ten minutes for the cost of fifteen dollars but instead I decided to waste entire days on it. There was a lot of ego involved with that, you know, “I’ve got to make this work!” It was a huge lesson for me once I started to see how…

West: Very powerful. Very powerful.

Yaro: Yeah. Outsourcing, contracting, using other people.

West: Definitely. I just gave a presentation on that to a group of small business owners and that was one of the issues as well that a lot of them had. This is relinquishing control and being able to identify what they’re really good at, their core skills. And I think Mike Filsaime or Jim Collins calls it the hedgehog concept where you basically focus on being a hedgehog, which does one thing really well, and that is roll up into a ball if it’s in trouble and just lie there as opposed to a fox who tries to always do different stuff, try different strategies, sort of hopping all over the place and will never, ever get the hedgehog if the hedgehog is in any good form of condition because it does its one thing so well. So good analogy there for you.

So what does the future hold for you, Yaro? I know you’re traveling, Yaro. And we’ll talk a bit about your sites and products after this, but I know you’re getting into traveling. But in terms of Yaro the business person, well, where is that heading in the next…? Are you able to share or disclose any secrets?

Yaro: Haha. This year for me is a sort of a… it’s a bit of a consolidation year as well as a releasing of a few new products, like I have a membership site; well, a membership site training program for bloggers who want to launch membership sites.

West: So that hasn’t been launched yet?

Yaro: It’s in beta. We’ve got about 50 students who are running through it at the moment. I’ll do a public launch probably around August of this year and that would be my second membership site. So basically, I want to get that out the door and then consolidate my two membership sites, work on the conversion process, all the while—of course—continuing to blog. I’m in a lovely position that I have now where my blog is almost the only marketing tool I need. So it delivers enough leads into my business funnel that I could run a profitable business out of it. So what I want to do is just tweak all the leverage points that are already in front of me rather than chase anything new. So by the end of this year I just hope everything is sort of tight and working like a well-oiled machine. And then I can start thinking about new products. But, that’s this year. And of course, I’m traveling so that tends to slow things down.

West: Definitely. But I think it will add a bit of definite spice to your blog as well. I’m sure you’ll be talking about business opportunities or do have people run businesses overseas as well.

Yaro: Yeah, I plan to attend a lot of conferences.

West: And meet new people.

Yaro: Yes. Networking.

West: Absolutely. That’s another powerful thing that I think you do really well. Alright! Well, that’s been awesome, Yaro. I learn something new every time I interact with you.

Now for members who want to find out more about what you do—and obviously they can go to your blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, which is, as Yaro says, type in Yaro into Google and it should be number one. Is that still correct, Yaro?

Yaro: Yes.

West: We’ve spoken a little bit about the Blog Mastermind Program and that program is all about building and maintaining a profitable blog. Is that correct?

Yaro: That’s right. It’s zero to hero in terms of blogging. It does begin without any assumption that you have a blog, although it’s certainly applicable if you do have a blog, but I’ve got some resources there for people to get started and get their first blog going. And then we basically quickly go through the whole gamut of strategies and tactics to get your blog going. So it’s traffic tactics first, ‘coz obviously you have to build an audience before you can do anything. Even before that, we look at the structure of a blog so that the layout is optimized for search engines and so forth. Then we start diving into monetization; so that’s the different ways you can make money from blogging. You know, using advertising, affiliate programs and then eventually creating your own products.

And then some of the more advanced topics which are things like buying and selling blogs—which we never actually got the chance to talk about, West—but…

West: I’m just going to have to join the program, Yaro.

Yaro: And email list building, which is something that very few bloggers do at moment; building an email list through my blog has probably been the number one enhancement I’ve done in the last two years. It’s tripled the size of my business just by utilising an email list.

West: Now, in terms of small business owners or even medium business owners who have a site and they don’t have a blog kit, obviously, they can still benefit from all these principles that you put in there for individuals just looking to get a personal blog successful and monetized will also apply to the business blogs?

Yaro: Definitely. But the marketing content in particular will be very valuable because it is about traffic. What I recommend to those kinds of people actually following our recommendation with outsourcing is pick one of your employees or maybe even a student, like an intern or something like that, sit them in front of the course and get them to go through with it and implement it as they’re going along. So you probably hire them for a 6-month sort of contract basis, you know, maybe a couple of days a week, and just have them go through the entire program, set up your blog, do it all for you and even get the content done for you so that you could not worry about it. And you know you’re going to get, if nothing else, a very well-built and a great foundation of a blog within six months. So that’s what I recommend to those people.

West: That’s a great strategy, I think. So guys, if you’re listening to this call and you’re thinking “I can’t do all that stuff myself,” get the course. Get someone to do it for you and you can still obviously reap the rewards.

Now one other membership program you’re about to launch, I want you to tell us about that.

Yaro: That’s called MembershipSiteMastermind.com. It’s an obvious extension so that’s why I was just mentioning it before. So it’s a program for people who are—usually for bloggers. It’s not specifically for bloggers but it’s so relevant to what I’ve done that it makes sense to have other bloggers take this course. And it’s about leveraging the foundation you built with a popular blog to launch a membership; so paid subscriptions site through that blog.

So it’s really…sort of like a step two. A lot of bloggers and website owners are stuck at the point where they’re purely making money off the back of advertising, maybe some other programs. And if you really want a stable business, you want to start selling your own products, and as most people who eventually launch membership sites realize, the membership site is the best product you can sell online today because of the nature of the recurring payment and so forth.

West: Definitely. Definitely.

Yaro: So this program is a bit of a behind-the-scenes of what I did to leverage my own blog to launch Blog Mastermind. And of course, an all around coaching program for anyone who wants to launch a membership site online since I’ve been studying that for the last sort of eighteen months with the whole process of launching my own.

West: So people even with a list, and they’re a list of clients or maybe they have a website or maybe they’re in a niche that potentially is amenable to putting out a membership site program, that will still teach them how to leverage it even though they don’t necessarily have built it all on a successful blog.

Yaro: That’s right. I mean, I’m referenced two ways to both traffic: blogging and list building. So as long as you got one or both of the two or you’re prepared to work on building one of those two, that’s really the foundation of anything successful on the internet. Then you can launch a membership site as well.

West: Fantastic! That’s awesome, Yaro. And I think I’ve applied some of your strategies for my membership website, money-mind-set.com as well and it proved to be quite successful. So a personal thank you for that.

Well, that’s pretty much it from me. I want to thank you, Yaro, for giving up your time. It’s been an absolute content packed call as I’ve come to expect. And this is right up there with what I’ve come to expect with you. Thank you, Yaro!

Yaro: Thank you, West!

West: And I look forward to having our game this afternoon. And make sure you keep us posted on your holiday shenanigans.

Yaro: See you soon, West!

West: Cheers! Bye!