Study the Best & Replicate Success

Many personal development gurus including Anthony Robbins recommend the idea of studying those who are successful in what you want to achieve, then modeling their habits, traits and mindsets. As far as the make money online realm goes, two of the most successful bloggers are John Chow (Johnchow.com) and Darren Rowse (Problogger.net). John Chow recently layed out the plan for how to get your blog business to really take off in 2009.

Here's the major points John makes:

- Get a domain and Wordpress blog
- Brand yourself
- Post frequently and regularly
- Use Twitter
- Build a mailing list

Some people will quickly say "The Monetizer uses Blogspot". Correct friends, but 2009 will be my year to move one of my blogs onto a hosted domain. I believe this alone can take a blog to that next level, and I regret not doing it sooner with another blog I run. Opposing viewpoints correctly claim that one can make money using free Blogspot blogs as well, but if you want a blog that not only makes money but can also be sold for a hefty sum one day, getting a domain is key.

Branding is very important as we all know. It's what sets you apart from the rest, giving you a distinct look, feel and presence online. My brand is the adorable green moneymaking man, The Monetizer. Some call him "shifty-eyed" or may view him as greedy, but all in all he works for the good of money. 2009 is a great time to evaluate your blog or website's brand concept. Logos can be cheaply purchased by freelancers these days.

Here at the Monetizer blog I will admit there's times when I'm positing several entries a week, and times when my other blogs have exhausted my energy. I'm going to make a goal in 2009 to post much more regularly with at least 3-5 entries per week here. If you've got just one blog there's really no excuse not to be posting 3 times a week, if not daily. This can help you get discovered by search engines and gain new subscribers.

I don't currently use a mailing list but definitely see the advantages in having them for your blog or website. If you were to use your feedburner account to email all your RSS subscribers "Hey buy this cool moneymaking product", you'd quickly find your RSS count diminishing. A mailing list allows you to send out newsletters highlighting blog posts, insider tips and of course affiliate or commission-based products to people who opted in to the mailing list.

The Monetizer uses Twitter but not like others use it, and that may change in 2009. Many twitterers use the program to gain a massive following, but also to propose questions, network and find out about news, deals, websites and events. Many businesses are jumping on the bandwagon, such as Amazon.com which posts its latest MP3 album deals and more on Twitter. For bloggers, there's also a great program available that automatically will post your blog links to Twitter as they publish. This way anyone following you can click the link and arrive to the post. John Chow and others have even suggested that Twitter may become the new RSS.

Of course debates run rampant amongst bloggers as to the value of using Twitter or how often you should post, but it doesn't get much more simple or logical than what John suggests. He's been able to take his blog from $0 to over $30,000 a month, and that track record speaks volumes in itself. A few other things that John Chow has done to achieve success: networking, paid reviews, media spots such as TV & magazines, and last but not least, eating and taking pics of his meals. Follow in Mr. Chow's footsteps with your blog and you just might find similar or greater success. Just like someone can always "build the better mousetrap", it's still possible to build a better "make money online" blog. Here's to your success!

4 Books to Jumpstart You in 2009!

One of the best investments you can make in yourself is to continually learn through reading. That doesn't just mean reading blogs online, but even old-fashioned page-by-page books as well. There's some classic financial, business, entrepreneurial and "get rich" style titles out there as well as, dare I say it, self-improvement. Everyone can improve, so to think that genre is only for people with a thick psychiatric file folder is a huge misconception.

For this blog entry, I wanted to provide you 4 books in particular I've enjoyed that can help you along on your way towards more success in 2009. They provide positive insights into how our minds work and how to "re-wire" our thinking so that we can become more motivated and successful! While they may contain several overlapping principles amongst them, you can definitely jumpstart yourself in this new year by picking up any or all of these titles!

1) Think and Grow Rich! by Napoleon Hill - This book is considered the blueprint of most other success books that have been written, and also the blueprint for your own personal path towards riches (monetary or other). Hill studied the attitudes, traits, habits and skill sets of the most successful people he could find. From his findings he produced a fascinating book with recollections throughout US history telling how those individuals achieved sucess, and how you can translate that to your own success. This book includes everything from discussions of American History, to how to conquer your six internal ghosts of fear. If this book doesn't get you inspired with its nuggets of wisdom, nothing will!

2) Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Ecker - Ecker admits in the intro to this book that what he presents are merely truths about how the rich become rich, and why the poor stay poor. It's definitely an interesting read and gives you all sorts of great advice about how to plan, create and maintain a rich financial future. One of the things that separates the rich from the poor is that the rich manage money well while the poor mismanage money well. A great suggestion Ecker gives is to create separate accounts for necessity spending, luxury spending and investment spending, as well as the idea of dropping loose change into separate pots daily to help you learn to manage your money well.

3) The Success Principles by Jack Canfield - Canfield is famous for being one of the authors behind Chicken Soup for the Soul, which made him filthy rich. In this book, Canfield seems to have summed up many of his predecessors from the success genre, which makes the book extremely valuable. He'll teach you exactly how to go from where you are at this point in your life to where you really want to be by examining your life, goals, dreams and desires. It's a lengthy book, but you'll find that Canfield can propel you to set goals, motivate yourself and become the successful person you've always wanted to be.

4) Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy - Brian Tracy presents tips that other successful people have harnessed to achieve their maximum potentials. He also presents a look at how we turn out based upon our parents' attitudes and roles and how they've shaped us. It's a book which relies heavily on the "mind over matter" theory, like most success books do. Tracy discusses ways to focus on your goals, ignore negatives or overcome them, and even ways to handle personal relationships such as those with your parents, spouse or children. Tracy's book also encourages the reader to actively participate in the included steps and guarantees more success to those who keep with them. A riveting read that will put you in the positive frame of mind for achieving at your maximum success level.

So what are you waiting for? Pick up copies of the above and get started. Even better, find any of the titles at your local library and get a free investment in your own growth and future! The New Year is still young, so there's no better time than right now! Here's to your success!

Slate.com Looks at Blogging for Dollars

There's a fascinating 10/1/08 article over at Slate.com by Michael Agger entitled "Blogging for Dollars - How Do Bloggers Make Money?" The article takes a look at how blogging has exploded in size and continues to grow exponentially each day. According to the stats there are 900,000 blog posts created daily across the world. So this post is just a fraction of that!

Even more interesting, the article takes a look at the big money some people command from their blogs. Examples you may have heard of:

The LOLcat empire rakes in $5,600 per month;
Overheard in New York gets $8,100 per month;
Perez Hilton, gossip king, scoops up $111,000 per month.

(info source: Slate.com)

The article may state the obvious to us bloggers. That is in order to get the income you want from writing a blog regulalry, you need to have visitors and a high level of traffic. The example of 43f is given, which started out small then exploded and began to pay the bills.

Agger writes:

While monetizing your blog may be easier than ever, all of this comes with an ever-present hammer: the need to drive traffic. This month, the writer/blogger/productivity thinker Merlin Mann opened a window onto his angst with an anniversary post. Mann is best-known as the creator of the Hipster PDA (index cards clipped together by a binder clip)* and his Inbox Zero talk (turn your e-mail into actions). In a post titled "Four Years," Mann sketches out how his site, 43 Folders, grew from a personal dumping ground for his "mental sausage" into a full-featured destination for productivity nerds and life-hackers. In 2005, he experienced a key transition:

At some point that year, 43f became the surreal and unexpected circus tent under which my family began drawing an increasing amount of its income. This was weird, but it was also exactly as gratifying as it sounds. Which is to say, "very." But, my small measure of something like success did not go unnoticed. In fact, the popularity of small blogs like 43 Folders contributed to the arrival of a gentrifying wagon train of carpetbaggers, speculators, and confidence men, all eager to pan the web's glistening riverbed for easy gold. And, brother, did these guys love to post and post and post.

It is amazing the amount of money and traffic that some blogs generate. Shoutouts are given to Shoemoney and Problogger in the article, with link backs to their respective blogs. Both of their blogs command lots of visitors, subscribers and moolah. Yours can too if you follow in their footsteps, build something people return to and find often, monetize it properly, and you're well on your way...

Read the full artice here at Slate.com for inspiration and possibly some ideas on how to get your moneymaking blog into full gear!

Goal Setting & Maximum Achievement

Goals are considered the driving force in many peoples' successes. Most successful people who you read about had what many refer to as a "definite purpose" in mind. They knew what they wanted to do, kept at it constantly with a large amount of desire, and eventually they achieved something great. The success all started with a goal in mind.

According to Brian Tracy in his book Maximum Achievement, every successful person is a consistent goal-setter and achiever. Tracy goes on to state that there's more to goals than just setting them and maybe acknowledging them from time to time. There's actually a 12 step detailed process used for carrying your goals to fruition, aka the "Master Plan" which Tracey discusses in his book.

The 12 Steps in Goal-setting:

1. Develop an intense burning desire to achieve your goal.
2. Develop belief that your goal will be achieved.
3. Write down your goal.
4. Make a list of all the ways you will benefit from achieving the goal.
5. Analyze your position or starting point on the way to your goal.
6. Set a deadline for achieving your goal.
7. Make a list of all obstacles standing in the way of achieving your goal.
8. Identify any additional information you'll need to achieve your goal.
9. Make a list of all people whose help and cooperation you'll require.
10. Make a detailed plan for accomplishing your goal (including #3,4,5,6,7,8,9)
11. Use visualization of what it's like to have achieved your goal.
12. Make a decision in advance to never, never give up on your goal.

The idea is if you make a goal with at least a 60-70% chance that you can achieve it, and you follow the above steps, you are well on your way towards success! Thinking of the achievement of your goal daily is a great way to overcoming negative feelings too. And once you've achieved the goal, you're ready for even more challenging goals!

Tracey's Maximum Achievement is a great positive book about how to achieve success. There's more detail given on each of the above steps as well as questions to ask yourself to help identify the major goal you really want to achieve. The Monetizer greatly recommends the book as well as goal-setting! If you choose not to read the book, make the effort to set goals on short term and long term bases. Stick to them, refusing to give in to the temptation of "I Can't". If it's worth achieving, it's worth writing down, acting upon, believing in and eventually reaching!

Does Modeling Equal Blogging Success?

The book "Unlimited Power" by Anthony Robbins discusses the topic of how to achieve the same success as others. In his book, Robbins suggests that if you model your actions, techniques and/or thought process as close as possible to the successful person's, you too should achieve a similar success. It's not always true, but it can produce great results.

For example, Michael Jordan is one of the greatest, if not greatest all-time NBA player. Future stars such as Kobe Bryant and Lebron James credit their success to studying Jordan while growing up, mimicking his style and basically putting in the hard work he did to succeed. Many NBA players even go as far as hiring Tim Grover, who is MJ's personal trainer. Grover gets them in top physical shape with grueling workouts just like he did for MJ. You see in this example, how players study the legends and in effect become the next legends.

I feel the same can be said of John Chow, Shoemoney and Problogger among other "A-List" bloggers. Here's some things I take away from their success, simple and broadly stated concepts:

- They all are dedicated to their niche, and blog at least daily.
- They all have their blogs self-hosted.
- They've all had their blog sites designed by pros.
- They all offer something different with their blogs, whether it be John Chow's dining photos, or Shoe's UFC predictions. Each blog is unique and speaks to audiences on many levels.
- They continuously test and implement new monetization strategies to see what works best.
- They realize their blog readers are extremely important for their bottom-line results, and they do everything they can to reward them.
- They benefit at times from the use of guest-post bloggers.
- They don't stop with what they have. You see John Chow has hit a $30,000 a month level and claims he won't stop there. Is this greed or purely incentive to always improve, always do better?

These are just 3 A-List bloggers, and there's many more out there in various niches. There's also many up and coming bloggers who will set the blogosphere ablaze with great new blogs and material. I feel we can all take away from the concept of modeling. This isn't to say copy their exact blog designs and steal their material, but it is to say following most of the above concepts will help you on your way to blogging success.

Find a blog in your niche that is doing very well and study it. It may even be your biggest competitor who is outdoing your site. See what it is that has them doing so well, and model to improve your blog in those areas. Are they higher up in search results? Do they have more content posted? Do they get more reader feedback and if so why? There's plenty of things you can look at then attempt to model those techniques for your blog.

I hope this provides some quick food for thought on how to make your blog even more successful than before.

50 Suggested Success Classics

A great way to pave your way towards success is one of the easiest things to do, and it's far from a secret. It's the good ol' fashioned concept of reading. Reading books on subjects such as success, biographies about perserverance and money making, as well as business and entrepreneurial titles can really charge you up. As many say, if you find at least 1 new nugget of wisdom in a book it can very easily pay for itself many times over.

The following is a list of "50 Success Classics" from butler-bowdon.com. Right now Monetizer is on a mission to read all 50. I'm about 1/5th of the way through the list. The titles with links are those that I've read, and recommend all of these. Maybe give yourself an assignment to read a book a month, or a week, or if you're a fast reader 2 a week. In no time you'll be giving yourself a great foundation for success!

50 Success Classics

1. Horatio Alger Ragged Dick (1867)
2. Warren Bennis On Becoming A Leader (1989)
3. Frank Bettger How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success in Selling (1947)
4.Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson The One Minute Manager (1981)
5.Edward Bok The Americanization of Edward Bok (1921)
6. Claude M Bristol The Magic of Believing (1948)
7.Andrew Carnegie Autobiography (1920)
8.Chin-ning Chu Thick Face Black Heart (1992)
9.George S Clason The Richest Man in Babylon (1926)
10. Robert Collier Secrets of the Ages (1926)
11.Jim Collins Good To Great (2001)
12.Russel H Conwell Acres of Diamonds (1921)
13. Stephen R Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
14. Michael Dell Direct From Dell (1999)
15.Henry Ford My Life and Work (1922)
16. Benjamin Franklin The Way To Wealth (1758)
17.Timothy Gallwey The Inner Game of Tennis (1974)
18.Robin Gerber Leadership The Eleanor Roosevelt Way (2003)
19. John Paul Getty How To Be Rich (1961)
20.Les Giblin How to Have Power and Confidence In Dealing With People (1956)
21.Baltasar Gracian The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
22. Earl G Graves How To Succeed in Business Without Being White (1997)
23. Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich (1937)
24. Napoleon Hill & W Clement Stone Success With a Positive Mental Attitude (1960)
25. Tom Hopkins The Official Guide to Success (1982)
26.Muriel James & Dorothy Jongeward Born To Win (1971)
27. Spencer Johnson Who Moved My Cheese? (1998)
28. Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad, Poor Dad (1997)
29.David Landes The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1998)
30.Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz The Power of Full Engagement (2003)
31.Roger Lowenstein Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (1995)
32.Nelson Mandela Long Walk To Freedom (1994 )
33. Orison Swett Marden Pushing To The Front (1894)
34. JW Marriott Jnr The Spirit To Serve (1997)
35. Margot Morrell & Stephanie Capparell Shackleton's Way (2001)
36. Donald T Phillips Lincoln On Leadership (1992)
37.Catherine Ponder The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity (1962)
38.Cheryl Richardson Take Time For Your Life (1998)
39. Anthony Robbins Unlimited Power (1986)
40. David Schwartz The Magic of Thinking Big (1959)
41.Florence Scovell Shinn Secret Door to Success (1940)
42. Thomas J Stanley The Millionaire Mind (2000)
43. Brian Tracy Maximum Achievement (1993)
44.Sun Tzu The Art of War (4 th century BCE)
45. Sam Walton Made in America (1992)
46. Wallace Wattles The Science of Getting Rich (1910)
47.Jack Welch Jack: Straight From the Gut (2001)
48.John Whitmore Coaching For Performance (1992)
49.Richard Wiseman The Luck Factor (2003)
50. Zig Ziglar See You At The Top (1975)

If you've read any of the above and particularly enjoyed them, drop a comment here to let others know your thoughts on the title. Here's to your success!

Take the Mascot Quiz and Get Rich with Mr. Buffett!

(Above: Will the real Ronald please step forward?)

It's Sunday, so time to let loose and have a little fun here at the Monetizer blog. It's going to be another busy day for the Monetizer between blogging and setting up ebay auctions, among other endeavors. Here's some random fun and thoughts for your day.

AOL Money Presents the Company Mascot Quiz

This is a fun one, it's a 20 question quiz to identify the correct mascot for each company. Some of the all-time greats are represented like Mr. Peanut and The Pillsbury Doughboy. Try your luck and see if you can guess which of the 2 similar-looking images is the correct mascot! (Note: Monetizer scored 17 correct of 20...Toucan Sam got me! ;O )

Take the AOL Money Company Mascot Quiz!

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Warren Buffet's 10 Ways to Get Rich

In today's Parade there's a very interesting article on billionaire Warren Buffett which presents his "10 Ways to Get Rich". Part of the article discusses how Buffet had hundreds of thousands of dollars by his mid-20's! In the Parade article, Buffett lists out his secrets to moneymaking. Some may be common knowledge to you, other ideas might be eye-opening. There's a new Buffett book coming out as well called "The Snowball - Warren Buffett and the Business of Life" written by Alice Schroeder, set to hit stores in October. Parade offers a chance to win one of 50 copies of the book here.

Here's Buffett's 10 Ways to Get Rich:

1) Re-invest your profits
2) Be willing to be different
3) Never suck your thumb
4) Spell out the deal before you act
5) Watch small expenses
6) Limit what you borrow
7) Be persistent
8) Know when to quit
9) Assess the risks
10)Know what success really means

There's more detail given for each tip on the Parade site. Perhaps the biggest of these to apply to blogging are "Re-investing profits", "be willing to be different" and "assessing risks". If you're making money on a blog, consider taking some of it and putting it back into the blog in the form of advertising, new logos, design, branding, or anything that may relate to your blog topic (example: better camera if you run a photo-themed blog, etc).

Being different is something many of the A-list bloggers recommend, as well as The Monetizer. Why blog what everyone else is already blogging? A common issue addressed with all the "Make Money" blogs there are is that it's just a recycling of the same material over and over. I've yet to read Chow, Problogger or Shoemoney, but I doubt they have the "Mascot quiz" up today! :)

Also, the risks are something we all should assess with our Blogs. Are you putting enough time in to make your blog a profitable one? Are you putting too much into it? Are your profits measurable with the effort you're giving? Is the competition ahead of you? Does your blog topic have enough of an audience? Should you tweak that Adsense ad, or try another advertiser? These are just some of the risks you might weigh when you have a blog or website for profit. Get some more ideas on Buffett's money-making strategy by reading the ten tips explained.

Read the full Buffett article here at Parade.com!

Stay tuned this week for more on how to set up your own Ebay seller's business!