Coffee Break Blogging (David Risley: Online Entrepreneur, Blogger, Blog Marketing Strategist)

Hello there! David Risley here; from blogmarketingacademy.com with Episode 30 of The Blog Program.

It's been a little while since you and I have spoken unless you are over at blogmarketingacademy.com and seeing what I have been doing there. I haven't actually done a podcast episode for quite a time and actually, the point of this particular episode is to tell you exactly what's been going on there and let you know what is going to be happening moving forward. :-)

So first of all, I want to start out with what my big mistake had been. It's one of those things to where none of us are fool proof. And anybody who goes out there and puts on a facade that everything that they've ever done was the best decision they have ever made, is bull crapping you. And I think we all kind of know this.

Hey there! Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging!

If you have an archive of blog content developed over the months or years past, then this is an extremely important episode for you. We'll talk about doing a content audit - an exercise you should do periodically to gain maximum leverage from your existing blog archives. In this installment, we talk about the exact methodology to determine which posts to optimize, and the 3 key things to optimize for each post.

So today, I am going to give you a tactic. This is going to be a very tactical episode. And this is something that you are going to need to follow through after you listen to this episode, especially if you have been blogging for a little bit of time. This is going to be something that you definitely want to put on to your list of projects to do with your own blog and it's called a...

"Content Audit"

We've talked a lot about using a traditional lead magnet to build your list. But, there is another way. And it could even be more effective.

And that's webinars. Webinars aren't just a way to make a sales presentation... they also work very well to build your list.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The psychological reason why webinars (or live events) work so well to create a bond between you and your subscriber.
• GotoWebinar versus Google Hangouts
• How to get people to register for a webinar AND join your list at the same time
• The "no prep" webinar that you can do immediately without any prep work.

I encourage you to give a webinar a try. And record everything. You're gaining massive leverage by doing so! ;-)

Most people create the product they think will be wanted and loved... then proceed to make the sales page and offer afterward. This can result in a flop.

In my opinion, the best way to do this is to start with your offer and then create the product to match it.

But, what goes into creating the offer?

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Why most people get split testing all wrong
• 6 factors for creating an offer that will sell
• How to remove risk so people will trust you enough to buy
• What to do if your perfect offer isn't something you feel you can deliver

Man, they appear to be doing so well. What’s wrong with me?”

This is a pretty common thought to a lot of people.

You may see somebody in a bigger house than you have… then look at your own and wonder what went wrong. You may see somebody else with a nicer car and wonder why you’re driving around such an average vehicle. Or, let’s make this even more common…

You’re scrolling through Facebook and seeing pictures of people’s parties, their vacations, their fancy meals. They seem to be living the high life. What’s wrong with YOU?

It has actually been proven through experiment that such use of social media actually helps further depression. People are unhappier due to social media, in a lot of cases. On top of the comparisons, it doesn’t help one bit that social media is being used these days to divide people and stir them up. But, that’s another discussion…

But, if you’re the kind who makes a habit of comparing yourself to others, then you’re more likely to find unhappiness breeding in you when you are active on social media.

But, let’s bring this back into the world of online business…

When you want to make money online, one of the first things you often do is search the internet for how to make money online, or how to make money blogging. And you come across people who are talking about it. And often they talk about how much money they make.

Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income, publicly posts his monthly income reports. It is a popular feature of his site, and many others have done the same. I actually used to do the same thing, but have long since stopped. Why is that?

… because I believe it leads people into making comparisons between themselves and me, or themselves and Pat – or whoever.

You get inspired by the money, then the next move is to try to do what they have done instead of charting your own path. Instead of doing what you need to do, you’re instead left trying to copy somebody else. And if you don’t get the forward movement, it is pretty deflating.

Plus, income reports put the emphasis on the income and not what actually creates that income… which is delivering value to others.

Comparing yourself to others will almost naturally lead to an attitude of “lack”. Your attention and your focus is on what you DON’T have. And you will inevitably get more of what you focus on.

The ironic thing is that, most of the time, these comparisons are based on an outright LIE.

Hello there! I'm back with another episode of Coffee Break Blogging; Episode 125. It's amazing how these episode numbers just stack up so quickly! :-)

In the last episode, we talked about how to take credit cards on your site. But, the next question is... how do you actually accept the order?

That's where the shopping cart comes in. And, there are a TON of these things out there to choose from.

But, what kind of shopping cart do you really need?

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• The different kinds of shopping carts
• In which circumstances you should use each kind of cart
• Different options for keeping things SIMPLE, especially when you have just a few downloadable products to sell
• An overview of the hosted shopping cart systems and why you may want one
• The benefits of using a membership site platform as your shopping cart
• Exactly how I do it at the Blog Marketing Academy

The shopping cart market is huge with lots of competitors. This episode of CBB will help you find your way through it all.

If you listened to the last podcast and decided YES to launching your own podcast, then let me help you get started.

In this episode, I'll share with you how to get started with your show and how to go about launching it.

You'll learn:

• How to come up with a show title and description
• What to look for in good podcast cover art
• Why you should pre-record several instances in advance
• Equipment to get started podcasting
• How to "power" the podcast off your blog
• How to maximize your opportunity after iTunes publishes your show, and how to build real inertia from being in "New and Noteworthy"

Welcome to Episode 101 of Coffee Break Blogging!

Today we are going to continue talking about videos; specifically on how to make good looking videos.

If we're going to use video marketing to grow our traffic, we want to make sure those videos look as "pro" as we can. It doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be Hollywood. But, it does need to look somewhat pro so that people enjoy watching it.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Microphones to use to make your videos
• Cameras to use to make your videos
• How to record audio and video separately and match them together
• How to script a video and not have it look robotic
• The hardware and software that I am using personally

It takes certain tools to run an online business, and there are choices that need to be made.

In this episode of The Blog Program, I get into some of the behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty details of what makes an online business tick.

Specifically, we'll be talking about email marketing, and why after YEARS of working with Aweber, I decided to switch away from it and make the move to Office AutoPilot (aka Ontraport).

This was a pretty big move for me, and one which isn't going to be applicable to everybody in my audience. However, this episode will be a good one for those of you who...

• Are running established online businesses and find yourself getting frustrated with some of the limitations of your current software, and feel you're leaving money on the table because of it. OR...
• You're still fairly new, but are still interested in some of the considerations that go into an online business as it grows.

This episode covers such topics as:

• Why I've been recommending Aweber over Mailchimp for my readers
• 8 different reasons why I decided to switch from Aweber to Office AutoPilot (aka Ontraport)
• What the #1 most important asset of your business is
• Some of the "holes" you may have in your business while using a traditional email marketing service like Mailchimp or Aweber.

I've been thinking a little lately about how things have changed.

Not in a bad way or anything.... just... different.

See, I've been at this for 16 years now, starting with my tech blog (which I also recently announced that my intention is to retire from). And over the course of 16 years - which is a LOOONNNGGGG damn time on the Internet - I've seen things change drastically.

It used to be easy. Today, only the tigers make it.

Then, along this line, I recently saw two long-timers that I've known of for quite some time express similar sentiments.

Chris Pirillo, of Lockergnome, recently expressed his frustrations on growing his business and how the things which used to work... don't. Chris comes from the tech space, as I do. So, I've known about Chris for years now and have watched him evolve. I watched an unlisted hangout video he did where he talked more about his current frustrations... and I know exactly where he's coming from.

Then there's Yaro Starak, from Entrepreneurs Journey. Yaro recently posted Blogging For Money Has Changed: Here Is How Smart Bloggers Can Profit In 2014. In it, Yaro talks, too, about how things has changed. Yaro has been at it for 10 years. And he gives his perspective on how things has changed.

So, that's two people I've known for awhile, both seeming to have similar thoughts as myself.

And so I decided to comment on it in this week's episode of The Blog Program.

In episode 25, you'll learn about...

• My review of the 13 points Yaro Starak mentioned in his post
• Why the "old school" model of "blog monetization" is deader today than it has ever been.
• Why blogging alone doesn't work anymore.
• The two pronged strategy I am personally pursuing, given the world we operate in today.
• Where the money really comes from.
• Why traffic numbers aren't nearly as important as they used to be, and what really matters more than traffic.

I got a little.... ranty in this episode. I got quite passionate. And, be forewarned, I did drop the s-word. (gasp!) But, this is stuff I feel strongly about.

In this episode, we continue with part 2 of the series: 30 Email Marketing Power Tips For Bloggers.

If you didn't catch episode #27, go back and listen to it so that you get tips 1-10.

In this episode of the show, I cover 11-20.

We'll talk about...

• The one thing you need to make sure you do on every email you send to your list.
• The big mistake that way too many bloggers make with their email lists.
• The ideal length for that email.
• How you should format your emails to work best on mobile devices.
• How many times to include a link in the email.
• And more. After all, they're 10 of them in this episode.

No doubt, writing blog posts can be tedious and time consuming. And it can be a big problem for blog owners who hold a day job or have a business to run. In this installment of our series, we talk about how to leverage your time to make creating content less time consuming and more productive... So once again, welcome back to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging! ;-)

A story that is all too common...

You get a product idea. So, you ask a few people about it and they give you glowing feedback. They tell you its a great idea and they'd be interested in it. So, you think you have a winner on your hands. You're onto something! You go and make it, put it out there for sale and...

Nothing. No sales.

What the hell happened?

Another common one is to create a product you think is awesome. You let a few people into it for free to get feedback. They tell you great things. Then, comes time to sell it and once again...

No sales.

So, this begs the question...

How do you test out a product idea?
How do you test out a price?

Well, the short answer is "pre-sell".

This episode describes the typical situation people find themselves in - and then walks step-by-step through the pre-sales process and how to do this for yourself.

The Blog Monetization Model starts with "product/market fit". This process is a HUGE part of how you find and validate that fit.

Hello there! So we're here again in another episode of Coffee Break Blogging!

This episode is going to be fun... and that's because I shed light on some of my big product creation screw-ups over the last 17 years.

What can you learn from my mistakes?

My goal is to save you time and effort by allowing you to see some of my... shall we say, "finer" decisions over the years. ;-)

We'll discuss...

• Why the way to make more money with your business is NOT to focus on marketing and conversions
• Why you should literally SCHEDULE time for delivery
• The big mistake I made with my first training product
• Why you shouldn't make a BIG training course
• Why I moved from making big courses to creating "Action Plans" for my members
• How to structure your products so they're actually effective
• My somewhat humorous experiences with NAMING my products... how I screwed it up and what this means for you.

Learn from my mistakes. When I teach this stuff, I do it from a lot of experience. :-)

If you're going to use YouTube marketing to its fullest, then you're going to need to take the extra time to set up certain things for each YouTube video. One of those things is annotations.

What are YouTube annotations and how do you use them? That's the topic of this episode of CBB.

Also in this episode, I'll give you 5 specific tactics you can use annotations for in order to grow your list and increase engagement. I'll also share how this lazy guy (that's me) deals with annotations. ;-)

And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging.

Hello! Welcome to Episode 68 of Coffee Break Blogging!

This installment of CBB marks the end of Stage 2 of 7 of our full progression of building up a profitable blog-based business from scratch. Before we delve into Stage 3, let's review the overall bird's eye view of what we're doing here and what we've covered so far. This is our "pit stop" episode before we delve into email list building starting in the next episode.

So today, what we are going to be doing in this episode is we are going to take a little pit stop and we are going to kind of review where we are in the podcast; kind of take a little bird's eye view where we stand, where we are heading, kind of how the show is going... that kind of a thing.

You've probably heard it a number of times by now...

"The money is in the list".

Great. Cool. But, what does that mean? And why is it true? Does it mean you're just constantly pitching to your list?

No, not at all.

If you back up to the last episode (#148) where I once again gave the bird's eye view of how this whole business works, you'll see how the primary purpose of the email list is to move people through your sales funnels.

Those funnels are like pipes.... and the more people you can keep inside those pipes, the more money you make. And the email list is literally the force which flows people through those pipes or gets them to re-enter those pipes.

In this episode of Coffee Break, I walk you through how this works. What happens when people get onto your list? What do you do with your "general list"? Are you constantly pitching?

Let me show you how this works.

So today let's talk about how to use your email list to move people through your profit funnel; your sales funnel.

The whole purpose of the email list, really, is to keep people flowing through your blog profit funnels. Now the blog profit funnels; these are essentially your sales funnels. I would like to call them blog profit funnels, personally, because... You know, my whole business revolves around the blog and how everything tacks in to the blog, so I am fairly specific about the way that I define it. But at the same time, it is essentially a sales funnel. That is what it is.

We start off this episode with a matter of simple math...

You're not going to create a nice six-figure online business on the back of little eBook sales.

Remember, there are 3 ways to grow a business...

1. Get more customers
2. Get more frequent purchases
3. Get higher ticket sales.

With that in mind, we begin talking about DESIGNING your business with this in mind: Namely, your funnel and why you should lay it out BACKWARDS.

You'll learn:

• The inherent design flaw of any business which relies solely on low-ticket offers
• The huge benefit to the mere exercise of creating a high-end offer...even if you don't actually build it yet.
• The order in which to design your funnel
• The recommended order on how to BUILD the pieces of your sales funnel if you're just starting out.

This is part 2 of how to create a perfect lead magnet. In this part, we take the 7-point checklist from episode #70 and apply it to the "real world".

What are some bad lead magnet ideas? And what are some good ones to aim for? What's wrong with the "big honker eBook"? What is the problem with offering a 7-day free course as a lead magnet?

Also, we talk about why you should have MULTIPLE lead magnets rather than just one. This is an important episode, because the lead magnet sits right at the top of the blog profit funnel.

So with that,  welcome to Episode 71 of our Coffee Break Blogging series. :-)

Today we are going to do Part 2 of what we started in the last episode where we were talking about how to create our perfect lead magnet. So we are going to wrap that up today with this episode.

No doubt that YouTube is the big kahuna when it comes to video marketing. IT is the biggest video site in the world, also the world's second biggest search engine. You will no doubt be publishing any video you produce to YouTube.

But, where else should you put it? Is YouTube the only place to bother with?

In this episode, we look at the relative importance of some of the other video sites out there, such as Vimeo, Viddler, Veoh, DailyMotion, etc.

And where exactly does Facebook fall into the mix? Surprisingly well, actually.

If you've wondered if you should be bothering to post your videos anywhere besides YouTube, this episode will answer that for you.

Today is our last episode where we are going to be talking about YouTube here on our little traffic series. Okay? But today, we are actually going to mention it in the course of leaving it. We are going to actually talk about the world beyond YouTube.

Should we post our videos anywhere else besides YouTube?

What transformation are you in the business of delivering with your blog and online business? You better figure it out if you want to make money.

In this episode, we talk about the "transformation map"; a tool to help you define the transformation. This tool will help you map out blog content and products you will sell.

So with that... once again, , welcome back to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging! And actually, yes… I am having a cup of coffee. ;-) I do that a lot. It was actually something to do with the name of this podcast.

Now in this episode, like I said earlier, we are going to talk about something called “The Transformation Map”. This is what I call it. And we are going to create this because it is really going to help you not only map out your content moving forward but it is also going to help you brainstorm product ideas. It is also really going to help you REALLY understand the person you are addressing with your content and ultimately what you want to sell them.

Continuing our topic of webinars, this episode is a walk-through of a general layout for a 60-minute webinar.

You can download the reference for this episode at:
http://www.blogmarketingacademy.com/webinarplan

We talk about a general plan for:

• Introduction (10 minutes)
• The Content (40 minutes)
• The Close (10 minutes)

And we'll be discussing a lot of tips and strategies for how to execute each section of your webinar.

Hello! Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging!

As we continue with our ongoing step-by-step series to building up a blog-based business, we're now going to launch into the first step.

What MOST people do is get a bright idea then immediately go out and buy a domain and hosting.

But, let's slow down... Because, if you want your blog to be PROFITABLE, there's a wrong way and a right way to start.

So let's continue on our series to starting up a blog based information business online.

Today we are going to talk a little bit about the very first step that you need to take in order to start a profitable blog. It's a little bit different than what many people do because we have to ask ourselves...

"What is the first thing that most people do when they want to start up a profitable blog?"

We'll end off this multi-part series on pricing with a bird's eye view of the whole thing...

So many bloggers out there don't have any product yet. They just use banner ads... or affiliate links. And, all this stuff about pricing doesn't yet apply to them.

If that's you, then realize this...

Until you make your first offer and name your price, you haven't even really gotten to the starting line.

Your offer is the starting line.

Give this episode a listen. It is important if you ever intend to make your blog the crux of a full-time income.

Hello, there! David Risley here! Welcome to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging! ;-)

With episode 33 of Coffee Break Blogging, we're still working on setting up the framework for moving forward on the 7 Stages of Building an Online Business.

In this one, I talk about how to do all that we're going to talk about... but while holding down a full-time job. Specifically, I'm going to cover 7 specific strategies in order to build leverage. If you have a full-time job, but want to build up your blog-based business on the side, then give this episode a listen.

So in this episode let's talk about my 7 Tips For Growing Your Blog While Having A Full-time Job.

The first key to growing your blog traffic is understanding what the world of traffic looks like today. Bloggers have been using the same techniques to grow their traffic for years now. Things like SEO, social media shares, guest posting, etc.

But, does it work? Yes and no. They can work, but it is VERY slow. And for some people it just doesn't work because they have a hard time standing out in a sea of high quality content.

Thing is, blog traffic is actually a lot like rice. You need to understand this. So, in this episode...

You'll learn:

• How blog traffic has evolved over the last several years
• How monetization has everything to do with your blog traffic
• Why stating your blog and growing traffic is similar to driving a manual transmission car

In my years of helping bloggers monetize and build businesses, I've seen a host of common pitfalls. Unfortunately, too, I know that MOST people who embark on this journey won't make it.

Why is that?

Is it because of a lack of information, or marketers misleading them? Or is it something else?

Well, I'm here to tell you that is almost all cases, the reason the online business doesn't succeed is because of certain bad habits or mistaken viewpoints of the person trying to do it.

In this episode, I talk about 10 of the most common pitfalls that will ultimately lead to failure to build a business. Are you doing any of them?

In episode 23, you'll learn about...

• How money is REALLY made online (or offline)
• The activity you're doing right now that you have to limit... otherwise you'll never get the necessary work done.
• How preparing for success can be taken a little too far
• How a fear of selling really gets in the way
• Why you can't assume you know what people really want.
• Why spending money is necessary in order to make it.
• Much more...

This was a fun episode to record. I really enjoy getting into those topics where I get a little animated because... well, I have my opinions. :) But, also, some of these things are a bit frustrating because they actually get in the way of me helping people.

At the same time, don't be discouraged. I've done MANY of these bad habits myself - and none of us are perfect. But, the first step is to realize the problem and acknowledge it.

A lot of bloggers spend a fair amount of time trying to grow vanity metrics like their Facebook fans and Twitter followers. But, we must ask the basic question... "Does it matter anymore?"

In this episode, we'll discuss some basic statistics. Just what is the average organic reach of a post on Facebook? What is the average click-through rate on a tweet? And given these metrics, is this really where our time is best spent?

How should you deal with the issue of your fanbase on social media? Need you worry much about the size?

So let's talk about Facebook Page Likes and Twitter Followers and basically any of these vanity metrics that many people think about, here today at Coffee Break Blogging.

Should you have a community inside your membership site? Should you set up a forum or set up a private Facebook group? That's the topic of this installment of CBB.

Truth is, while there are many benefits of having a community inside your membership, it also comes with several cons. And those cons are much more pronounced in the beginning.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Pros and Cons of having a community
• Choosing a platform for your community
• When is a Facebook group better than a forum?
• When should you say "no" to a community for your membership?
• When is the right time to start a community?
• What is my preferred platform and why?

Lastly, if you're finding these episodes valuable, I'd highly appreciate it if you could post a quick review over in iTunes. You can also share on social media and direct people to CoffeeBreakBlogging.com. Be sure to use #cbb so that I can see it and thank you.

The first and possibly most fundamental concept to understand in order to build a profitable blog is the transformation.

Everything begins with the transformation. Product/market fit is determined by the transformation that your audience is looking to achieve.

In this episode, we'll cover:

• What do I mean by "transformation"?
• How the transformation maps out to potential products to offer
• How understanding the transformation is also the key to effective affiliate marketing
• How to move forward if you're in a niche where you can't figure out the transformation

All blogs have an inherent inefficiency in how they deal with traffic, and we see it show up in the form of our bounce rate. A certain percentage of people - often upwards of 80% - will visit a single page on your blog and then simply leave. And no matter what things you do to decrease that bounce rate, you can only fight it so much.

Enter the world of retargeting... Retargeting is the absolute easiest way to get started in paid traffic. It is also very cheap and very easy to get a VERY good ROI with it. It also just so happens to short-circuit the entire problem of bounce rate.

By "pixeling" every single person who comes to your blog, you are building what I call your "second list". It is a real asset almost as important as your email list. And in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, I'll show you exactly how it radically improves the efficiency of your blog as a marketing platform.

You need to act on this information right away. As ad rates increase, it could become cost prohibitive to advertise at all, UNLESS you have a retargeting audience built. So, this episode is very important... and timely.

If you back up one Episode, go back to the previous episode, we did a smackdown between free traffic and paid traffic. We did talk about the benefits of paid traffic and how you really do need to mix it in with your "free" traffic.

Now when it comes to the paid traffic side of things, it just so happens that retargeting is one of the easiest ways to get started with this. It is really cheap and very, very effective. So that is what we are going to be talking about in this episode.

The landing page software space has gotten extremely competitive in the last couple years - and it is now a much more complicated affair to choose which solution to use to make squeeze pages.

LeadPages has been the market leader. But, is it any good? What are its real strengths and weaknesses?

In this episode, I talk some "real talk" about what's good - and bad - about LeadPages. And he compares it to other solutions like OptimizePress, ClickFunnels and Ten Minute Funnels. If you're in the market, this is an important episode to listen to.

So once again, David here... :-) Welcome to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging.

There's lots of talk about how to get people onto your email list. But, then what? What do you SEND them? How do you find good material to send to your email subscribers? That is what we are going to be talking about in this episode; Episode 81 of Coffee Break Blogging.

There's no greater tragedy in this business than an email list which isn't being used. So in this episode, I will show you how not to make that mistake and also, we will talk about where to draw material from, to send to your email subscribers - both using your autoresponder and your broadcast emails.

You'll learn:

• The important mindset to bear in mind here, especially if you've been blogging for awhile.
• The simple tactic to use right after they subscribe.
• How to cross-promote different lead magnets
• The biggest mistake people make when sending a new lead magnet to their EXISTING subscribers
• How to identify "money posts" to send to your list

See, there's a lot of talk out there, including by yours truly, on how to get people to opt-in to your list. And that is certainly an important topic. I mean, really, your email list is the life boat of your entire business. So it is important to get people onto our list. And a lot of the last many episodes here on Coffee Break Blogging have talked about that in one way, shape or form. The question is, then what?

A quiz is a unique type of lead magnet to grow your list.

Typically, creating an online quiz has been a real technical challenge. But, one of the more recent tools offered from Thrive Themes is the Thrive Quiz Builder.

With Quiz Builder, you can create different kinds of quizzes. And here’s the best part…

You can use them to create segmented email lists, offer them different lead magnets depending on their answers, and more.

One of the biggest challenges can simply be coming up with an idea for a quiz.

From a marketing perspective, the aim is to have a quiz which gets them to look at the problem that you solve with your business. It can help raise them on the customer awareness scale from being unaware to problem aware. Quizzes which give them a score on something they can improve can work well for this.

The fact that you can build a simple assessment or quiz using a drag-and-drop interface like this is just amazing to me. Thrive Quiz Builder really is an amazing tool for that.

My relationship with Twitter has changed a few times.

Like a lot of bloggers, I used it. Built up a following, and used it to interact with others in my marketplace.

But, like a lot of people, I felt Twitter got to be super noisy. And my enthusiasm for the platform dropped. To be honest, I slowly shifted away from actually using Twitter. I barely ever used it… and almost all the posts that I made were automated. Essentially, I was link-dropping my latest stuff to Twitter and otherwise forgetting my profile exists.

And even though I was dropping those links out to over 14,000 followers, the results were a reflection of exactly the energy I was giving it. In other words… damn near zero. Twitter was almost zilch as a traffic source to the Blog Marketing Academy.

It seemed as if Twitter shifted. It seems like it has gotten really political. It seems as if Twitter is more of a platform for people in the media, politicians, celebs, etc. A place for them to vent off over things which, frankly, they should probably just shut up about.  And then, those tweets end up becoming the basis for entire “news” stories.

It works for reporters. Trump likes it.  But, for the rest of us, not so much.

But, recently, I decided to give Twitter another “go”. Only this time, quite differently.

Information overload and overwhelm are two of the biggest constraints to people looking to build their online business. But, here’s the rub…

Most people are doing it to themselves voluntarily!

Let’s look at a typical person who is trying to start and grow an online business. Let’s call him Bob.

So, Bob wants this. He has visions of making enough money online so that he can walk out of his day job. He is under no illusions that it will be an overnight thing. He knows it will take a lot of work.

But, Bob needs to figure out what to do. So, he goes out and starts searching for and reading various articles and “gurus” in the world of online business. He subscribes to several email lists. He puts a bunch of RSS feeds into his phone so he can keep track of different sites. He registers for some webinars.

But, Bob is confused. He feels like he is understanding the theory behind things. He can start to use some of the terminology from the world of online marketing. But, he’s still personally confused on what HE should be doing.

He tries to solve it by buying a few courses. Being on all these peoples’ lists, he sees things for sale. They look awesome. Certainly, the ad copy on those pages makes each of those things seem like the best thing ever. So, he picks up a few.

He also picks up some tools. He picks up a couple WordPress plug-ins and some online services. Every time he buys one of those things, he feels like he did something concrete to grow his business. But, there’s still this nagging feeling…

He’s still confused. He’s still feeling overwhelmed.

So, today again, we are going to continue on our series to creating and growing a profitable blog-based information business online.

In order to be able to go into a market with your blog and make a dent (and make money), you need to be pretty in-tune with what they need and want.

In this episode, we talk about how to learn what they want. We talk about how to use surveys to find out, and ways to get people to answer your survey - even when you don't have a blog yet.

And so now, what we are going to talk about is the next step in evaluating a niche. And in this one, we are going to get a little bit into surveying; which is actually a skill that is going to become handy to you throughout your career in this particular business. But what we are going to talk about specifically today is how to find out what your market needs and wants. It's a very important thing because we have looked at demand, we have looked at what the level of money flowage (I know it's a made up word, but I'm going to use it anyway) :-) in this space, but now, if you are going to personally enter that particular market you need to be really in tuned with what people need and want.

The concept of the "funnel" has been used in sales for years. And it is quite possible that you've heard the idea of the sales funnel before. In this episode of CBB, I outline what I call the blog profit funnel.

This is the sales funnel adapted to what I believe is the best version of it for a blog-based online business.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The 3 key ways to grow any business
• How these 3 business growth strategies are built right into our funnel
• The key role of each of the 3 stages of the funnel
• Why a membership site is, in my opinion, an awesome business model. Especially for bloggers
• How these funnels fit into the blog

Today we are going to talk about what I call The Blog Profit Funnel. What we are basically going to be talking about here is the idea of a sales funnel. The reason I call it blog profit funnel is simply because the way that I put the system together is that it is very much integrated with the blog, which is something that not all marketers do. A lot of marketers run paid traffic and stuff; that stuff, we will be talking about as well. But being that we are talking about here is a blog centric business, I am basically just kind of adding a little naming tweak to the concept of the sales funnel because we are applying it to our blog.

So I want to be clear about that; it is called the blog profit funnel, at least in my world. I want to also say that what are we going to be doing in this episode is kind of giving a broad overview of that funnel. But we are not going to be getting in to all the details of it. And I am actually not going to spend a lot of time on every little nitty-gritty detail of it only because it is the stuff that I teach inside the Blog Monetization Lab.  So with that being said, let us go ahead and start talking a little bit here about this funnel.

Hello there! Welcome to this episode of Coffee Break Blogging. This is no. 56 and in this one we are going to talk about your blog's bounce rate and how to reduce that bounce rate.

Bounce rate is one of those numbers which always shows up in your site stats... and you can't help but wonder what you should do. Is your bounce rate bad or good? What should you do about it? In this installment of our ongoing series, we discuss the bounce rate, how to decipher the causes of the bounce rate, and then what to do to improve it. ;-)

Now, first of all, we should probably define what "bounce rate" is if you are not already familiar with it.

Selecting a niche to blog in is perhaps one of the first decisions you will make. And it is a pretty important decision.

Thing is, many bloggers have already been blogging in a particular niche for some time and they still have this nagging doubt about their market.

Perhaps you're there. Maybe you're disappointed with the traction you're getting with your blog and you wonder if you are just in the wrong niche.

In this episode, we talk about the 4 indicators that you've hopped into the wrong niche for your blogging efforts.

In episode 19, you'll learn about...

• The 3 factors which businesses are made from.
• Why competition is actually AWESOME
• What you should do if your niche only has physical products and no information products
• What you should do if you're running out of post ideas
• Whether gaining no traction really means you're in the wrong niche

For many bloggers, promoting their new posts on social media is pretty much the only way they try to gain new traffic. Well, at least if you're going to do it, do it right. :-)

In this episode, we talk about how to promote your posts on social media - primarily for free. We talk about Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google Plus. I share some tools you can use to automate it, and I also share a strategy you can use on Facebook to give each new post a jumpstart in the very beginning.

Since the beginning of 2014, I've been pretty regular about posting new videos to the video blog.

Since I've done that, I've had some people (surprisingly) think that my setup is a lot fancier than it is. So, in this episode of the podcast, I break down the entire process I use to make these videos.

I share the setup, the idea phase, the equipment, the entire process of actually recording them, etc.

This episode is a little bit longer than the others, but it is insanely practically (if I do say so myself). :)

In episode 21, you'll learn about...

• Why I stopped making videos in my car
• How I come up with and track topics for my web videos (and other things)
• The exact equipment I'm using for my videos
• The entire process, from beginning to end, I use to make every video blog entry
• How I use my 3-piece lighting kit
• How I got my video intro done
• Much, MUCH more

This episode was very practical, so for that reason I mentioned a lot of tools.

In school, we're taught a lot of different rules about writing. We're taught different formats, different rules, and all kinds of grammar rules.

Well, the good news is that you can toss most of that out the window when it comes to your blogging.

In this episode, I talk about 5 specific aspects of effective blogging that just might piss off your English teacher. If you want your blog posts to be more effective, or you want your blogging to take less time, then listen to this episode now.

In episode 20, you'll learn about...

• Why academic writers make crappy bloggers (most of the time)
• What paragraphs in blog posts have in common with comedic timing
• What happens when you use big fancy words in your blog posts
• How you should view people who point out typos and grammar issues in your blog posts
• What the true purpose is of all your blogging

This episode was a lot of fun to record. I hope it is as fun to listen to. :)

In this episode, I give a powerful strategy for testing out a niche and business idea... even when you don't have an existing audience in place yet. If you execute this strategy, you'll either save yourself a lot of time and money down the road... or (if successful) you'll give yourself a REAL foundation from which to build a very profitable blog-based business.

That last episode was a lot of fun to record because A: it is a cool topic but B: I kind of flawed here and there. :D

Here is the thing, I am trying to do these episodes in one take. It makes for faster production, it also is a little bit more natural for me. So, if there is a screw up on these things, I am probably not going to go back and edit it right away. And that is kind of what happened with our last episode. But anyway, I thought it came out okay... "considering" ;-) Anyway, we are going to go forward here talking a little bit more about testing our business idea.

In Episode 40 we talked about the Lean Canvas and how to use it to verify a business idea and not waste a heck of a lot of time going down a path all that far when it may not have legs to begin with or possibly you need to make some adjustments there to make it truly a profitable idea. But we left that episode with this idea of...

How are you going to test out these ideas when you do not yet have a blog audience to go to?

Hello there! Welcome to Episode 73 of Coffee Break Blogging. In this episode, we talk about several different tools to make this happen. One of them you've likely never heard of, but looks very promising. :-)

In the last installment, we talked about how your blog content itself will be the area where you can get the highest opt-ins to your list - IF you use the content upgrade strategy.

But, how do you insert opt-in forms into a WordPress post or page without the editor screwing it up?

WordPress is designed to be a blogging platform, not a marketing platform. This means that the post editor will tend to strip out things that you may want to put in there, including opt-in form HTML code.

Today we are going to jump right in to how to easily insert opt-in forms inside of your actual blog post.

Blogging and email marketing go together like fish and water. In that the fish just freakin' dies without the water.

In the same way, your blog will usually limp along in life support with the email list. So, for that reason, every blogger has to engage in email marketing.

In this episode of the podcast (as well as the next 2), I am talking about all email marketing. I am going through a list of 30 actionable tips... things you can immediately put to use to get more email opt-ins as well as properly utilize your list after they've subscribed.

In this episode of the show, I cover 1-10.

We'll talk about...

• Why a giveaway offer is a good idea... and what KIND to create to earn new subscribers.
• The typical conversion rates for sidebar opt-ins, and what converts FAR better.
• The one word that SO many bloggers use to describe their list - and they SHOULDN'T be.
• When - and when not - to use "blog broadcast" emails.
• And more. After all, they're 10 of them in this episode.

In this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, we talk about how to select the best web hosting for your blog. What's the problem with free web hosting? Should you use shared, VPS, dedicated, or managed Wordpress hosting? You'll find out my specific recommendations. ;-)

Now, today we are going to move on to phase 2; Stage 2 of the 7 Stages of Building an Online Business. Now if you are wondering what I'm talking about when I say that; then back up to Episode no. 45 where we took a little bit of a pit stop and kind of reviewed where we are and where we are heading and I talked about the 7 stages there. So we are moving into Stage 2 today and we are going to be moving in to talking about the platform; building up the platform which is our blog... building it up in the right way. And we are going to be talking about various aspects of that for the next many episodes here of the show.

Now what we are going to be talking about today is How to Choose Hosting for Your Site. It is a very important topic; something you do want to get right at the beginning. It is not something where it is set in stone. You can change your mind later when it comes to hosting but it is something that you want to get right because you probably hear horror stories out there who have had problems with their web host. I've got people in the VIP Program over at the Academy who told me about their experiences about web hosts. One where the web host from all practical sides literally went out of business and the person can't get their site off because nobody will pick up the phones are answer their emails. I mean, it is a heck of a thing, I've never heard of that one before. So this is something that you want to get right.

When you're setting up your blog in a strategic way to accomplish your business goals, it needs to be designed to CONVERT. To do that, you need to understand how a reader's attention lands and FLOWS across the site - and then design your blog to work with that.

In this installment, let's discuss about how all this works, and how to make your blog's design work FOR you in terms of conversions and sales.

Welcome to Episode 55 of Coffee Break Blogging and we are continuing on, on our series here. We are talking about the platform and how to set up our blog in the right way. And this all fits within the bigger picture that we are doing here on Coffee Break Blogging of building up a real information business based around our blog that is generating revenue all based around your blogging. Yes, it is certainly possible so let us go ahead and get started with this.

Today we are going to be talking about... How To Flow Attention Via Your Blog's Design.

As we near the end of our series on email marketing and building our email lists here at Coffee Break Blogging, I want to talk about a more advanced topic...

Marketing Automation Tools

A marketing automation tool like Infusionsoft, Ontraport or ActiveCampaign.... when combined with your blog... makes a very powerful combination.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to make your tool and your blog "talk"
• How to make your blog proactively reach out to prospects
• How you can use lead scoring in combination with your blog
• How to rescue lost sales using your automation tool

There's always that tiny risk, yet many bloggers who are new to all this fear it almost out of proportion to the reality... You put your product out there, and somebody gets mad.

"You've sold out!", they say.

How do you deal with the haters, if they happen?

There are two aspects to this that we discuss in this episode...

1. The truths about the haters
2. The truths about YOU.

It goes both ways. So let's address this fear head on, in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging.

Now, let us talk about our topic of today which is... HATERS.

Here's the description for this episode...

In this episode, David talks about why he has made the decision to walk away from the tech site (PCMECH.COM) which got him started in this business, and he has been operating for the last 16 years. It is a time to move forward. David gives the background and the thought process leading up to this... in his own words.

I have already written a post talking about this, but I thought I would detail some more specifics about this my talking directly about it in the podcast.

I am also going to let my PCMech.com audience know about this particular episode, so if you're coming over from there - WELCOME.

In episode 24, you'll learn about...

• The background of PCMech and what's happened to it for the last few years
• Some "behind the scenes" info on the tech niche, and how PCMech has been operated lately.
• The MOST IMPORTANT lesson I have learned though this.
• Why you DON'T have to continue running with everything you've started
• Why you should build to sell - even if you don't intend to ever sell your site.

This episode is different than the usual fare. Instead of talking about business growth and blogging growth, I'm talking about what is essentially a "fall from grace". But, there are lessons to be learned here by everybody - including myself.

Now that we've talked about how to create the perfect lead magnet in episodes 70 and 71, it is time to talk about your general opt-in strategy on your blog. What are the most effective ways to build your email list from your blog?

In this episode, we cover 7 different strategies for building your list effectively. These strategies are specifically chosen to increase your conversion rate on your blog and put more people onto your list.

• What are the best converting locations on your blog for opt-in forms?
• How do you integrate squeeze pages into your blog?
• Should you ask for their first name?
• When is it OK to turn OFF double opt-in?
• How does a two-step opt-in increase conversion rates?
• What's the most effective opt-in strategy for a blogger - bar none?

All that, in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging.  :-)

Do you run a service business? Are you a consultant or a coach?

If so, then you’ve likely thought about the issue of how to scale. The idea of trading time for money is something many people grow allergic to. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, however every service provider eventually starts to look ahead at how to evolve the business beyond that.

How can you scale a service business? How can you turn it into a product? How can you begin to set things up so that it isn’t simply a trade between time and money?

In this episode of Coffee Break, I’m talking specifically to people who run service businesses. We’ll be discussing 7 specific strategies to begin executing so that you can begin to scale a time-based business.

This isn’t a transition one just jumps into. And I’m not going to recommend you just jump into the world of membership sites and online course creation. There are certain systemic things you need to be doing internally to strategically AIM your business toward more systematization and productization.

It is a myth that the kind of marketing and revenue generation strategies we discuss around the Blog Marketing Academy somehow don’t apply to service businesses. They most certainly do.

In this informal episode of Coffee Break Blogging - and the first episode in some 6 months - I cover the question of...

What happened?

This episode is primarily an internal look at the Blog Marketing Academy itself, this podcast, and some general news. I discuss:

• Why the podcast was originally discontinued
• Why I'm bring it back now
• What I've been working on behind the scenes

“Subscribe to our Newsletter” is quite possibly the dumbest call to action ever to litter the internet. It might have worked back in the 90’s when “You got Mail!” made people feel special. But, today? Ha!

Today, you need to give people a damn compelling REASON to subscribe to your email list. And that reason is simply an opt-in offer, otherwise known as a lead magnet.

Now, for most of you, I would imagine the concept of a lead magnet is nothing new. However, ask yourself this…

Do you have only one or two lead magnets?

If so, then time to get busy. Because…

The more lead magnets you have, the easier it is to grow your list.

If you're going to create informational training products that SELL, you're going to need to make it effective. With that in mind, you need to pay some attention to specifically engineering your product to get the stated result on the receiving end: your student.

To do that, we need to look at the different learning styles people have and specifically create our training to cater to them. In this way, you'll have students who get results and end up praising your course.

We'll discuss:

• The 7 primary learning styles
• How we can build each of these 7 learning styles into our product
• An overview of the 4MAT learning system
• A simple 5-party structure you can use to create training videos

In the end, it doesn't matter how well you sell a course... if it doesn't actually get the result, it will ultimately all come down. This is how you make your course DELIVER.

Selecting a Wordpress theme can be a pretty frustrating experience because there are SO many options out there.

In this episode , I give my take on what to consider - as well as my specific recommendation for the best option which will give you a professional design now and a great foundation to build from, later. ;-)

The thing I want to first start off with is the idea that I actually just want to acknowledge the fact that WordPress themes are a huge, huge business. And for that reason, you are going to find a lot of them out there. And as a consumer of WordPress theme, just somebody who is somebody trying to pick a WordPress theme for your site; you are going to be inundated with options. You are going to be wondering which way is the best way to go.

There is just a colossal amount of choices out there. So I want to preface all of these by saying that you are not stuck with the decision, you can change to a different theme later and not only that, I recommend highly that you keep your eye on the ball, here and not get stuck in the decision of what theme to get. I want to recommend my personal recommendation here on this episode, but there are just so many options out there they are going to be very paralyzing and you need to have the discipline not to become paralyzed by the decision. Nothing that we do here is set in stone; you can change your mind later, so pick something and let's move on to more important endeavors in the development of our business here and not get stuck on the idea of what WordPress theme to get. It is not the most important decision that you have to make here.

This podcast has been planned out through the end of 2015; through episode 146, to be exact. This is a level of content planning that I haven't done in quite some time.

Thing is, it has been a HUGE time-saver. And that's the topic for today's episode of CBB - planning your content in advance.

When you fly by the seat of your pants on your content, it leads to a lot confusion on what to talk about, a lot of pressure on yourself... and it generally turns your blog into a digital slave driver. It isn't that much fun anymore.

It also happens to be not very effective, either.

The answer is PLANNING.

There are 4 specific reasons to plan your content in advance, which I share in this episode. Plus, I'll share some more details on exactly how I planned out this podcast so far in advance. Behind the scenes, baby! ;)

Hello! Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to continue on our series to creating and growing a profitable blog-based business online.

Now, part of evaluating a blogging niche isn't just looking at the demand and size of the audience, but also looking at the potential for monetization.

In this episode, we'll talk about 4 important things to look at when judging the amount of money which is flowing in a particular market.

In many cases, it makes sense to take the "blog" out of blogging. When is it time to stop calling it a "blog" and start calling it a "learning center" or something similar? In this episode 64 of Coffee Break Blogging, we take a look at the "payload" that the word blogging has and how to work around it - and WHEN you should.

Now for me, it feels like I'm getting back into the chair. :-) I know I'm releasing these things every couple of weeks but I actually, internally; I'm doing these things in batches. So I actually sit down and record either a couple of weeks of these things in advance. Sometimes I shoot all the way and go for the entire month in advance. So for me, the last time I sat down to record an episode of this show was about 2 weeks ago. And today, I'm sitting down to record a few more. So if you are watching the video component of this on YouTube you will all notice that my shirt will be the same for the next few episodes and that is exactly why. :D

But today, I want to talk to you about this idea of Blogs versus the idea of a Learning Center.

Sometimes it is valuable to step back and look at the big picture. And in this episode of The Blog Program, that's exactly what we're doing when it comes to the state of blogging.

See, if you stay in a bubble, then you'll just keep on doing things the same old way. And if the world is changing around you, you won't keep up.

I know this more than most. Not only have I been doing this long enough to see just how much things have changed... but I also know what it is like to stay in a bubble and not adjust to change. I got sorta good at that last year. ;)

In this episode, we step back and look at the trends - and what they mean for us as content creators. I talk about:

• How Google's search changes have affected the world of blogging.
• Why old-school link building is dead.
• Why sticking to written blogging only is a loser's proposition.
• What its going to take to stand out in the noise.
• How we're moving into a "pay to play" environment, and what this means about building your OWN platform.
• Why email delivery rates have fallen, and what you need to do about it.

In the second installment of what will be a 4-part series, we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work.

Today we discuss:

• Stories
• Simple & Easy
• Common Enemy
• Curiosity

Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be.

Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it.

In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them.

And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)

The About page on your blog is one of the important core pages of your site. Most everybody has one, yet a majority of bloggers set it up in the completely wrong way.

In this installment of Coffee Break Blogging, I talk about the most important mission of the About Page. I also share the exact layout that will make your About Page truly convert and grow your business - and essentially do what it was made to do.

Welcome to Episode #51 of our podcast. :-)

The About Page is one of those pages that most people have but I find that they undervalue its importance and therefore they treat it wrong. And so, I want to talk about that because it is one of the important core pages of your site. Your site needs to have an About Page. But not only that, it needs to be treated in a particular way that it will actually maximize your opt-in opportunities which is what the About Page is really all about.

Hello there! Welcome to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to talk about your email list some more. We are on Stage 3 of the overall cycle of building our online business; that we are talking about in Coffee Break Blogging and Stage 3 is all about building and using our email list effectively.

Your autoresponder sequence is what allows you to put a large part of your business on automatic. At the very least, it saves you a lot of work. But, what do you put in your autoresponder?

So in this episode, we discuss 7 different strategies you can include in your automatic email followups. These strategies will allow you to provide lots of value to your subscribers, make sales on auto, AND get an ongoing flow of feedback from your subscribers which you can use to make better content for them.

When we started Stage 3; this is going back to Episode 70 or so, we talked the one about how to get people on to your list, we talked about lead magnets, we talked about putting together opt-in forms; things like that. In the last episode we talked about the perfect opt-in confirmation page. That is going to be the first page that they see right after they opt-in.

Today, we are going to talk all about what do you send them after they have subscribed. Obviously, putting people on to your list is useless unless you send them things.  That part should be pretty obvious. Now the good thing about an autoresponder is that you can put a lot of this on automatic. Obviously you can email people, email your list on a one-off fashion. So you type something, you hit send and it is real time. And there is definitely a place for that. You will be doing that with your list. However, you also want to be using your autoresponder; your follow up sequence capability so you do not have to do everything manually. Because I have seen people make a mistake of doing this list and then they are like, "I don't know what to send them" and then they just don't send anything and that is such a waste of an asset when you do that.

So let us jump right in to what to do with this autoresponder sequence. And we are going to talk about 7 specific things to do.

In our last episode, we talked about member onboarding and how it helps you keep members in your membership site longer (member retention).

In today's show, we're going to go right at the topic of retention head on...

How do you increase member retention rates?

We're going to cover 10 specific tactics to make it happen, including:

• Orientation
• A member challenge
• Community swag
• Get them to promote your program (and its for a specific reason)
• Gamification
• Payment Plans
• Monthly content teasers
• Community
• Stand For Something
• Promote best members to VIP

For an explanation of each of these tactics, give this episode a good read. :-)

Lastly, if you're finding these episodes valuable, I'd highly appreciate it if you could post a quick review over in iTunes. You can also share on social media and direct people to CoffeeBreakBlogging.com. Be sure to use hashtag #cbb so that I can see it and thank you.

In the last episode;  Episode 128, we talked about member onboarding which is that on ramp that you need to send new members to your Membership Site through in order to get them integrated and moving along. Now, that has a lot to do with retention; which is how long will your member stick around. Along that note, I want to go a little further on that topic of Member Retention. And we are going to talk about 10 different tactics for increasing your member retention rate on your membership site.

And we are going to go fairly quick through this; we are not going to get super-detailed on them because this is a "coffee break" session.  It is not supposed to be that long. If you want to jump further into all these things, I actually am working on it currently and it will be posted soon inside the  Blog Monetization Lab, but I am creating a new very in-depth Action Plan called the Membership Site Blueprint. And this Membership Site Blueprint will be a full, beginning to end on a how to set up a membership site that is profitable. Not only that, I am going to take you behind the scenes on exactly how I built the  Blog Marketing Academy. Not only every little tool, but how those tools are configured. It is all going to be there, it is going to be a true blueprint and it will be only available to members of Blog Monetization Lab.

So let's jump right in to it. ;-)

Now that you've decided to start and launch your own podcast, it is time to start thinking about the long road to growing your audience. Podcasting is indeed a long-term content marketing play. Results are not immediate. This episode will show you some of the tactics you need to build into your podcasting for the long haul.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why your show's USP is so important
• How to cross-promote your podcasts on your blog
• Why you should have an official landing page for your podcast
• How you can use Facebook ads to promote your podcast
• How to use other podcasts to promote your own
• Much more ;-)

If you're going to bother podcasting, you might as well do it for keeps. :-)

It has been a long time since we've done a new episode of Coffee Break Blogging. I've had many people ask if I had any plans on bringing it back.

With this short episode, I explain what happened. And, what's coming.

Today, here at Coffee Break, we are going to talk some more about membership sites. And because I've been asked many times what tools I use personally to build my membership site, the Blog Monetization Lab, this episode is my answer to that question.

We'll discuss...

• What membership plug-in do I use?
• How do I build my sales pages and checkout page, and what do I REALLY think about Lead Pages?
• How do I process credit cards?
• How do I put together the Action Plans and courses?

Today, actually, we are going to specifically get a little bit technical. We are going to talk about the tools that I use to build membership sites. So we are going to talk about some specific tools that basically, this is how the Blog Monetization Lab is built. So if you have ever wondered how I put it together, this podcast is going to answer that question.

As we begin our series on monetization and the business side of blogging, we simply MUST address the topic of banner advertising. Banner ads is usually the default way to monetize a blog. It just so happens to also be the DUMBEST way to go about it.

In this episode, I'm going to make it very clear where I stand on banner ads. Even though I've made quite a bit of money with banners in the past, I still believe it isn't the best way to go for many blogs.

It comes down to some problems which I give the details below...

The 5 Problems That Come With Banner Ads

1. It doesn't make much money at all.
2. It sends people away from your blog.
3. Readers hate them.
4. It delivers no value.
5. It makes a mockery of what you're doing.

In this episode, I explain all 5 points - with backup. I also reveal the one SMART way to make money with ads. Lastly, I talk about the one situation where banner ads is really the only way to go for you.

Mobile traffic is a really big deal these days. So many people are browsing our sites on mobile devices so it is VERY important that your site is mobile responsive to work on smaller screens.

When I look at my own stats as of this writing, about 38% of my traffic over the last 30 days was on a mobile device. And, almost all of that was on a phone of some kind – not a tablet. We’re talking small screens.

So, the question is… do your opt-in forms adjust properly and work well on such small screens?

• A sidebar opt-in will usually be pushed way to the bottom of the screen on a mobile device, since sidebars usually just get kicked to the bottom. Your opt-in rate will be garbage.
• If you use an exit pop or some other popup, the trigger settings might not work right on mobile. Plus, there’s little that’s more annoying than having an opt-in completely takeover my iPhone screen when I’m on a site. It is interruption marketing at it’s finest.

So, you may want to change up your opt-in strategy for mobile devices. Display different forms that are more likely to work correctly on small screens.

In this episode, David comes back from never, neverland with Episode 14 of The Blog Program.

'Bout. Damn. Time. :)

Actually, this was a decision I made while I was in Las Vegas recently, for the New Media Expo. While I can't remember exactly how many years I've been going there, it has to be at least my FIFTH time attending this conference. And I can tell you...

Never before have I seen so many podcasters.

Not only that, but many of my acquaintances in the business who were not podcasting are now... podcasting. Lewis Howes is now podcasting. Amy Porterfield is now podcasting. Pat Flynn is going to be starting a second DAILY podcast. Jason and Jeremy from Internet Business Mastery are flirting with the idea of a daily show (at least judging from a recent survey they ran).

Listening to Cliff Ravenscraft and John Lee Dumas talk about their podcasting and trends also has me convinced that I'd be an IDIOT not to get regular about my own show.

And, so it is. :)

And, we usher in 2014 with episode #14. A dose of irony, there.

In this episode, I talk about my biggest takeaway from the year 2013. In this one, I talk about:

• What its like having been in this business for 15 years.
• What went WRONG in 2013.
• The moment I had an "aha moment" which brought this lesson to mind.
• How business is like an art form
• How this lesson translates into ALL areas of our lives, including relationships, diets, and all of our goals.

I also start off this episode singing a little bit of Britney Spears. So, there's that. ;)

It is common advice to hear... that the first priority of your blog is to build your email list. Cool... we got it. But, what is the SECOND priority?

What is the one that so many people seem to forget about? It has everything to do with higher conversion rates and a more effective blog marketing strategy overall.

It is email list segmentation.

In episode 17, you'll learn about...

• The most effective way to get new email subscribers
• Why emailing your whole list every time is... well, rather dumb.
• Ways to segment your list.
• How to actually go about segmenting your list
• Some of the powerful marketing ideas you can implement using list segmentation.
• How your blog is really an extremely powerful tool for segmenting your subscribers.

Also mentioned in this episode was one of my past posts: The Essential Guide To How To Build Your Email List [The List Building Formula].

For the longest time inside The Lab, my private community was running inside of a closed Facebook group.

My thinking was this:

• My members most likely are already on Facebook
• They find it easy to use
• It saves me hassle
• Notifications will mean they see conversations

As I now sit here a couple years later, I realize I was mistaken.

In this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, I share with you 7 specific reasons why I decided; after a couple years of having my member community on Facebook, I switched to a privately hosted forum for our Lab Community.

I also recommend that anybody else looking to have a private community inside of their membership site should set up from the start on a private forum that you own and control.

Make time for this episode... and learn from my mistakes.

One thing all blog owners want is TRAFFIC.

It is one of those things that nobody thinks they have enough of. And, for brand new bloggers, it can seem like the hardest thing to get.

In order to get traffic, you have to PROMOTE. But, what exactly do you do?

What do you do to get the word out?

How do you let people know what you're doing?

How do you build leverage?

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why you need to stop tweaking your blog.
• What it really means to create "good content".
• Why content creation should represent a minority of your blogging schedule.
• How most bloggers are grossly under-utilizing social media.
• How to alleviate all doubt about what content you need to be writing right now.

... and more. :)

In all the talk about themes, plug-ins, retweets and pings, it is easy to lose sight of the TRUE purpose of a blog. And that purpose is COMMUNICATION.

Might seem obvious on the surface, but seeing how a lot of people blog, they don't really get it. In this episode, David breaks down exactly what this means and how it should impact what you do on your blog.

The end result? An audience that actually pays attention to your content and responds to it. And ultimately... buys from you.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• Why most bloggers don't get ANY reaction from their blog posts.
• Why thinking of your blog like a magazine is a mistake.
• The communication sequence - broken down into components.
• Why acknowledgement is VERY fundamental to your success online.
• Specific tactics in order to "train" your audience to respond.
• What this all has to do with marketing and making sales.

I hope you enjoy this episode. I was a little late on getting it produced.

I encourage you to take the message of this episode to heart. A lot of people dismiss these basics. They think it is "obvious". But, then I see what they go and actually DO on their sites and it is clear that THEY DON'T GET IT. So, this stuff is NOT obvious.

Hello! Welcome to a new episode of Coffee Break Blogging!

Today we are going to talk about the perfect opt-in Confirmation Page. So this is that page that they are going to see as soon as they opt-in to your email list; as soon as they opt-in for one of your lead magnets. The question is going to be, what do they see?

Your opt-in confirmation page is the very first page your subscriber will see after joining your email list. So, it is a highly important page and you want to optimize it for maximum results.

In this episode, I share 7 important tips and tactics for how to maximize the marketing impact of the confirmation page.

You'll learn:

• Why you might want to put an offer on this page (and how to price it)
• 3 tools for giving an immediate survey to your new subscribers
• How to get your new subscriber to SHARE your squeeze page on social media and get more vital impact
• A quick tip to get more people to actually confirm their email address
• How to give them a "hook" to also follow you on Twitter or Facebook.

In this episode, we discuss the reader avatar and how to actually develop it. Doing so will allow you to create much more effective content as well as products your audience will actually want down the road.

First of all, I want to welcome you into 2015!

This is my first podcast to the year. I almost thought I might not get this thing out on time today. See, I have a Wednesday and Saturday release schedule that I have imposed myself for this podcast, but I actually brought in the New Year with a cold, which kind of suck. :-(

I actually went out in my RV to finish planning out all of my business goals for 2015 and I came down with a cold while I was in there. So I spent a lot of time snouting and all that. I only bring this up because I was really hoarse, I actually didn't know if I was going to sound okay to record this episode. But as it turns out, my voice is fairly normal today. Still coughing a little bit, but I am going to go and get this thing out because once I set a goal; if Wednesdays and Saturdays is my time to get these episodes out, I want to stick to it as much as I can. So that is what we are going to do.

Today, we are going to talk about how to define your Reader Avatar.

It is all too easy to develop tunnel vision on your own blog. After all, you made all the decisions about it and you spend more time looking at it than anybody else. But, it is VERY easy to assume that your blog is going to strike others the same way it does you... and it isn't always true. User testing is how you get out of that tunnel vision. In this installment of our series, we'll talk about various tools to help you do user testing for your own blog and to see what you're doing from an outside perspective.

And with that being said, let me welcome you back to Coffee Break Blogging!

For anybody who creates digital products for sale, there will inevitably come that concern of other people stealing it and making it available for free somewhere.

It happens.

How much should you really worry about it? Is it really that big a problem? And, what can you do to keep it from happening?

In this episode, we'll talk about tools you can use to protect your paid content from getting stolen (at least easily).

Keep in mind... if a person has the right tools and right knowledge, there is little you can do about this. Where there is a will, there is a way. :-)

So, let's talk about what to do about it and to what degree you should let it occupy your thought process.

So, let us get into that... Let's talk about Securing Your Product... Namely, how to keep people from stealing it.

Now, here is the thing... I know that especially when you are first getting started and you put products out there for sale that you want to prevent people who have not bought your product from being able to gain access to it. Now, I will be upfront with you, that I believe that many people who are first starting out tend to worry about this problem a lot more than they probably need to. I mean, the thing is... the nature of digital products is that it can be duplicated. There is not much that you can do about it at the end of the day. If it can appear in somebody's web browser and if somebody has the know-how, they can get it. They can download it; even if you try to keep them from downloading it, if they have the right knowledge and the right software, they can get it. Okay?

So the first thing that I want to do is discuss the question of:

Should you even worry about this? Should you put a lot of effort into keeping people from stealing your stuff?

I have been talking about Ten Minute Pages lately. It is no mystery that it is something I recommend to much of my readers and listeners.

But, aside from the solution itself, there is also a business behind it.

And around here, that topic interests me. We're all working to build and expand our businesses, and I find that there are usually certain common elements that entrepreneurs master before success comes.

So, I decided to invite Kyle Graham, the creator of Ten Minute Pages, to come on The Blog Program. As of this recording, he was in the middle of his official product launch - which is always a pretty CRAZY experience (anybody who has done one will attest).

In this interview, we go behind the scenes into the growth of a software business online.

This interview covers such topics as:

• What its like being in the middle of a product launch
• The "aha moment" which suddenly lead from years of mediocre performance and client work... to the creation of Ten Minute Pages and really rockin'
• How important picking the right target market really is
• Some of the growing pains of a rapidly growing business - and how Kyle dealt with it.
• The #1 most important skill that you MUST master before you'll achieve rapid growth

Definitely a good conversation.

I get asked to evaluate blogs a lot, either privately or for members of my various training programs. In this episode, I'm going to share some of the key things I look for in determining whether a blog is laid out well for grabbing attention, holding attention, converting visitors into readers, getting people onto an email list, and much more.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• The #1 priority of your blog
• The mental state most people arrive on your blog in (and how this impacts how you must do things)
• 4 of the big "no-no"'s I see people doing with their blog homepages
• The true purpose of your blog's byline and why you MUST get it right.
• Why you should AVOID most of the built-in sidebar widgets in Wordpress.
• How many people screw up their blog's navigation menu.
• How most bloggers totally screw up their about page.
• And a lot more.

Continuing on the theme of the last episode, this one contains several actionable tactics about high leverage content creation... How to work less and produce more when it comes to making content for your blog and social media channels.

Hello! We are now on Episode #63 of Coffee Break Blogging and today we are going to continue talking about High Leverage Content Creation and how to make more content by putting in less effort to do it. This is highly important for those of us who were a little lacking for time; whether it is because we've got our families, whether we've got a day job, whatever it might be; we need to be able to create good content and do it without giving our entire lives to it. So that is what we are going to be talking about here.

Once again, welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging!

It is always best to, early on, move from the "niche" right into the actual business model. If you want to create a REAL online business based around your blog, then we definitely need to think of it as a business and not a topic. In this episode, we make that bridge into business. I introduce a one-page business plan idea and begin taking about how to TEST your business idea before investing a bunch of time into it.

Now in our last few episodes we have been talking about selecting a good market or a niche to get into with our blog. And we were evaluating this based on its business potential.

Now by this point in our series you should have some potential ideas if not the one main idea that we are going to go ahead and proceed in our process with. Because what we are going to start talking about in this episode is actually how to start verifying that business model. How to actually make that bridge from a niche to an actual business model because a lot of bloggers actually really fall short on the whole idea of actually developing a real business model. They literally go from having a niche idea to just start the blog right off the bat. And that is the problem where people come into this a little bit down the road and they try to "monetize" that blog because it tends to be an afterthought. They just went literally from "interest-niche-setup the blog" and that was it.

That was their pathway into it and it just breeds so much complexity down the road usually in the area of coming to grips with the fact that they are not really going to make any money with that site. And that is not something that I want you guys to have to worry about.

So what we are going to talk about in this episode is how to bridge into the actual business model. And what I want to introduce you to in this episode is a concept called...

"The Lean Canvas"

You ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption?

FANTASTIC movie. Hard to believe it was made 24 years ago now. Anyway…

If you recall, Morgan Freeman’s character was in prison and he was afraid to leave prison. He saw what happened to some of his fellow prison mates when they were released. Free from the structure of the prison, they lost themselves and committed suicide in many cases.

There’s that sad scene where the old man was released from prison, felt completely lost in the regular world without the prison rules, and ended up hanging himself.

But, I thought about that. And I saw some parallels to people who are trying (or simply want to) gain freedom from a traditional 9-to-5 job.

While there are negatives to having a 9-5 job, the truth is that it is actually easier than trying to build a business.

With a job, you live within the confines laid out by somebody else. You play by their rules. You do what you’re told. You do it well enough and out pops a paycheck.

There’s a kind of order to it. It is an order laid out by somebody else, so there isn’t that responsibility of having to drive the ship.

Once you go into the uncharted territory of your own business, then you’re on your own. You’re like a pioneer. All of a sudden, the rulebook is gone and you’re the creator of your own rules. You have nobody to impose discipline on you but yourself.

In the third installment of what will be a 4-part series, again we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work.

Today we discuss:

• Anticipation
• Status
• Social Proof
• Reference Points

Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be.

Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it.

In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them. And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)

Blog categories are often one of the most overlooked parts of the setup of your content. People use them as little digital filing cabinets - and often they end up with way more categories than they need (or even intended). In this installment in our series of Coffee Break Blogging, we discuss a MUCH more strategic way to think about how you define your blog categories. The usual way... nobody will use them. Done THIS way... and they will. ;-)

So today, we are going to be talking about our Blog Categories and how to actually set them up in the correct way.

Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging!

Today we are going to talk about what kind of information product that you can sell. We are kind of going to do a little bit of a bird's eye overview over the different product types.

But before we jump in to that I want to give you a quick reminder, especially for those of you who are newer to the show that this is of course a podcast but it is more than that. It is actually a course that goes in a particular order. And so, we are at a particular stage in our overall sequence of starting an online business from scratch and we happen to be at that point now where we are talking about building the actual business side of things where we are going to start talking about money and product creation and that type of thing; hence today's topic. But if you would like to play "catch up" and look at the past episodes of the show, you can go over to coffeebreakblogging.com, check out the archives, go back in time and check out everything that we have done. This is Episode 115, so obviously it goes back away. So once again, coffeebreakblogging.com.

Okay, let's jump right in to today's topic... What kind of information product should you sell?

A Bird's Eye View Of Main Product Types You Can Make

• Physical product
• Software product (software as a service)
• Training/Info product
• Service

I give the pros and cons of each, then we dive into the main types of information products.

You'll find out:

• The problem with eBooks as a product type
• What a membership site is, really
• Why I prefer the membership site as a product platform
• How a live workshop has many benefits as an offer

I sat down and looked at the big types of products here and I came out with those 4 huge categories of products mentioned above. Let's discuss each one in bird's eye view, at least.

This will be our final Coffee Break installment for the year 2015. We'll be on a brief hiatus and then hitting the ground running in the new year.

But, to that end, I thought it'd be a good idea to review where we've been this year, how things are moving along, and where I intend to take the show in the year 2016.

In this episode, we will discuss:

• The original reasons I started Coffee Break Blogging
• Why I do solo shows and don't generally have interview guests
• A review of the "7 Stages To Building An Online Business" and where this podcast currently stands in the 7 stages
• What I'm looking to do with this show in 2016
• What is going to happen after the 7 stages are done?

When we focus on what we don’t have, it will often lead to more of that. See…

You get what you validate. And, when you validate your shortcomings by focusing on them, you’ll just magnify them.

I’m about to get a little “woo woo” on you here, but I personally believe this…

As beings, we imbue the world around us with energy. It is like we’re literally painting our environment with energy. That energy can either be positive or negative. And that “painting” is driven by our attention.

Not only that, when we give something our attention, we’re also giving it power. We’re validating it. We’re imbuing energy into it, merely by focusing our spiritual energy on it.

That energy has a quality to it, however. It can either be positive or negative.

There are those people who, when they put their attention on things, things tend to go right. There are also some people who tend to screw up anything they get involved with. There are lot of different scenarios here, but all of it is summarized by simply saying that we imbue things with energy and that the nature of that energy has a lot to do with the effects.

Positivity or negativity toward things is a learned skill. You might have a natural tendency toward one or the other, but you have control over it. You can train yourself to be more of an optimist by taking time each day to list one or more things you are grateful for.

Being grateful is literally injecting beauty into the world.

One might not think of gratitude as imbuing their world with positive energy. Many think of it as merely “being thankful for” something. But, it is so much more than that.

It is something to strive for.

And something to be aware of the next time you find yourself being rather negative about your own situation. When you’re doing that, ask yourself…

What reality are you postulating for yourself right then?

Today, let’s talk about placement of your opt-in forms. We’ve already talked about running split tests on your opt-in forms. But, one of the things you definitely should be testing is placement of your opt-in forms.

Most blogs have a primary lead magnet placed right in their sidebar. However, the sidebar is usually one of the worst performing locations for your opt-in.​ Typical conversion rates for this location are like 1%-2%. And frankly, that sucks. Most bloggers put that thing in the sidebar simply because they see everybody else doing it. So, it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind.

Definitely experiment with opt-in form placement. Don’t just fall back on your sidebar because that’s what everybody else does. To grow your list effectively, you can’t just do the bare minimum.

Your action item for today is…

Set up a different form of opt-in placement than you are running right now and test it out.

What is a lead magnet? Well, it is just something to give away to get people onto your email list. Right?

Well, there's more to it. In this part 1 of 2, we're going to dive in to how to create the PERFECT lead magnet. And in this episode, I share the TWO main purposes of a lead magnet (most people forget the second one). And I'm going to share a 7-point checklist of criteria for the perfect lead magnet. And the good news is that it will save you a lot of time, because the perfect lead magnet is actually a lot LESS work.

So, welcome to Episode 70 of Coffee Break Blogging!

In the world of internet marketing, you very often see people price their products with prices that end in 7. $7.... $27.... $97...

Why do they do that? Is there some hidden psychological reason for this?

The answer is no, and this episode goes into it.

We discuss:

• How the 7 prices got started
• How you never see an emphasis on 7 outside of the IM world
• Whether it makes any sense or not to test out incremental price changes
• When is the ONLY time it makes sense to make such tests?

Let's put this into perspective.

What we are going to be talking about today is going to be kind of informal but it is one that you guys have seen many, many times... And that is Prices that end in 7. Very, very popular in the whole internet marketing world. And you might wonder, is there any reason for it? Is there some deep reason you are unaware of why so many internet marketing prices end in the number 7?

Do you really need to be everywhere?

In this episode, I take a good hard look at "be everywhere" and whether it is necessary - or even smart - for a blogger looking to grow their web traffic. Is this the real secret... or a recipe for burnout?

I'm a HUGE believer in leverage as we grow our business. Truth is, trying to be everywhere is just inviting you to spend time on very LOW LEVERAGE activities.

I'll explain in full in this episode of CBB.

We're talking about podcasting in these few episodes because it can definitely help you increase your traffic - and that's the stage of our business that we're currently talking about on Coffee Break.

But, surely... and ultimately, you want to build your list and sales. We start podcasts to grow our business.

But, how?

In this installment, I discuss a few specific strategies to help you monetize your podcast.

• How to deliver calls to action on your show
• Specific tactics to build your email list from your podcast
• The 3 ways to promote your own products on your podcast
• A more advanced tactic which will allow you to specifically track the ROI of your podcast
• How to learn how to build your email followup engine, so that your podcast will then result in residual sales down the road from your email list.

In the 4th (and last) installment of this 4-part series, we will discuss conversion triggers. In other words, we will talk about the psychological principles behind much of the marketing you see today and why they work.

Today we discuss:

• Sense of Belonging / Community
• Current Events
• Scarcity
• Controversy

Understanding these "triggers" will allow you to move people into action.... whether that be to buy something, to opt into your email list, to open an email, to click on an email, to post a comment, to click on a tweet.... whatever it may be.

Moving people into action is the name of the game, and these conversion triggers are a very important part of doing it.

In this series, we will discuss many different conversion triggers, why they work, and examples of using them.

And perhaps you'll even learn something about yourself. ;-)

So like I said, what we are about to do is Part 4 of our Conversion Triggers series where we have been talking about various psychological components that you could build into your offers, your emails, even your blog post in order to move people into action.

Now if you want to catch up with us, it is the last 3 Episodes here of the podcast where we have been talking all about these various Conversion Triggers.

What we are going to do in this one is quickly wrap up 4 more; and this will actually wrap up this particular series on Conversion Triggers.

This episode is a "pit stop" episode, as we end off on stage 3 of our business-building roadmap and move into Stage 4.

In this episode:

• An overview of the 7 stages to building an online business.
• A review of Stage 3 (Email Marketing)
• A look at what's coming up with Coffee Break Blogging
• A few awesome iTunes reviews. :-)

In the next episode, we'll get started on Stage 4 which is TRAFFIC BUILDING.

Like I said, we're going to do a pit stop today. So let's get going! ;-)

So, once you have a member sign up for your membership site, how do you get them started? How do you get them to stick around?

After all, your monthly program really doesn't matter that much if people don't stay a member.

An important component of this is called ONBOARDING.

It is what happens immediately after they join in order to get them up to speed, get them consuming material, and get them winning.

In this episode, I talk about the goals of onboarding and some ways of doing it. These tactics will also go along way toward increasing your member retention.

Lastly, if you're finding these episodes valuable, I'd highly appreciate it if you could post a quick review over in iTunes. You can also share on social media and direct people to CoffeeBreakBlogging.com. Be sure to use hashtag #cbb so that I can see it and thank you. ;-)

OK, let's be real... all this talk about membership sites lately here on CBB, and what really makes it "sexy" is the monthly recurring revenue. I've made it clear that a membership site can be used in many other ways, but people REALLY like that monthly recurring revenue.

So, how can you do it? What can you offer that justifies a monthly subscription?

We'll discuss:

• The one simple rule that you must follow to sell a subscription and keep them from cancelling
• The 5 things people will pay the MOST money for
• Examples of how to build these 5 things people buy into your membership
• 2 key factors of delivery to keep your members around
• How I deliver monthly content to my own members
• How to go about building a member community
• How to do what I call "outsourced thinking" and charge for it

This episode will likely get the gears going and generate some ideas for you on how you could set up a monthly recurring subscription program for your blog. I hope it does, because this kind of business model is the "holy grail" of online business.

Once you've set this up, you'll find there's no more preferable way to go. :-)

Well, hello there! Welcome to Episode 80 of Coffee Break Blogging.

Today we are going to be discussing a little bit more about the whole idea of our email list. We are in Stage 3 of the overall 7-phase system to building up our online business. And what we are going to be talking about today is the one blog - one list strategy that most bloggers are using.

Most bloggers who are building an email list have one list for their one blog. And this is certainly better than nothing... but it could be a LOT more effective.

Today, we discuss the use of multiple lists for one blog and why it is so much more powerful.

You'll learn:

• Why list segmentation is so important
• The most effective (and simplest) way to begin segmenting your list
• How you should structure multiple lists for your blog
• How to get people onto your "general list"

This episode is important for your success with email marketing, moving forward.

We take a minute to pause and look at the big picture of where we are with the Coffee Break Blogging series. In this episode I share with you the big vision of the show, review the full 7 stages we will be going through, and take stock of where we are now.

Hello and welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to continue on our series to creating and growing a profitable blog-based business online.

Now actually, what we are going to do today is we are going to take a quick pit stop in our series and we are going to review where we are at. And also; it occurred to me that I have probably not done a super-fantastic job of explaining exactly how this podcast is going to be working, so let me try and do that now.