Alex Jeffreys

What’s been happening in my life lately? Well, apart from being on 4 weeks holiday in Germany and lacking a little focus and time to work on my business (but what’s new?), I have also taken a giant leap of faith and joined Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program. I had heard many (and only) great things about Alex, but as I was off doing my own little things so far I hadn’t considered signing up with him. My Internet and Affiliate Marketing efforts had shown some good results, and I was hoping to be able to just continually improve with what I was doing and increase my earnings over time.

Well, until I realized that for the past few weeks I had literally gotten stuck in a viscious circle of doing lots of stuff on the computer feeling really busy, but – when looking back – not having done a lot at all. I had started going off the rails, and when I realized that I knew I had to do something quickly to change that.

Funnily enough, right at that time Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program came up, and after thinking about joining for a day or so (the coaching fee was a bit of a stretch for my budget!), I thought that I really don’t have anything to lose, and I truly DID need some help. So I signed up!

The coaching started last Monday (6 days ago), and I now can truly say that it will be worth every penny and lots more if Alex keeps delivering like he has so far. On Monday night (for me, in Germany, unfortunately from 12am onwards…) the training call went on for 5 hours!!!! The question and answer section alone went for 3 hours or so, where you could talk to Alex personally. I couldn’t listen to the whole call as I absolutely had to catch some sleep , but the interesting thing was the topic he discussed in this first call:

Setting goals, planning tasks and getting organized!

That’s exactly what I had been struggling with over the past few weeks. Alex goes into great detail how to do your goal setting and daily/weekly/ monthly planning, and gives you all the help you need. I will have no problems on getting back on track and moving onwards and upwards with my online business now!

I can’t wait for the next call, even though I will probably have to listen to it in the members area after the recording, because even I need to get some rest

If you have ever wondered whether you should join a program to learn Internet Marketing, or to take your existing business to the next level, I doubt that you will find a better man to help you than Alex Jeffreys. He wants you to succeed, and he wants to help you – no matter if it takes 5 or 6 hours at a time!

In week 10 I finished my ebook on how to set up an SEO optimized WordPress blog and how to monetize it, and week 11 was about creating a free mini-course to go with my sales page. I called mine “Discover The 7 Secrets Of Successful Niche Affiliate Marketers” and you can access it at the bottom of my sales page.

Busy...

In week 12 we started with different methods of generating traffic to your sales page. Now this was fairly easy for me, as this module was about writing and submitting articles, and I have done that in the past. Writing articles is really one of the most effective methods to get targeted visitors to your site. If you do your keyword research right and then write your articles centered around your chosen keywords, you have a very good chance of coming high up in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) and get organic traffic to your article. If it is cleverly written and has a good resource box with a link to your site, people might be inclined to click on your link to check out more from you – voila, a new visitor! Writing articles is fun and can be very rewarding. If you are looking to get more visitors to your site, you should definitely start doing it.

Be courteus and help each other

Week 13 was all about posting on forums and on blogs. Another great way of getting people to visit your site – by participating in forums specific to your niche and leaving a signature with your link in it every time you post. It is very important though that you do not spam, and that you actually contribute in a professional and helpful way – this will make people trust what you have to say, and they will feel more inclined to click on any links you might offer them.

The same applies to leaving comments on other niche related blogs. If you do it right, it can generate you some good backlinks to your own site, therefore boosting your SEO, and again generating traffic. BTW, you might not have noticed, but I have made my blog dofollow and enabled CommentLuv, so please feel free to leave me any comments and you will have a valid backlink to your site!

Well, that’s how far I am in John Thornhills Coaching Program. Without him, neither my blog nor my ebook would have been possible, and I owe him heaps. He is a great teacher, and his program is easy to follow. I had actually signed up for his “old” coaching program; he opened his new coaching program a few months back and it is a bit longer than the one I am subscribed to, so you will even learn more in that one. He is not taking any more students at the moment, but you can still sign up to be considered for the next Masterclass Program and you will know straight away when he re-openes and slots become available.

Here is the work of art: Affiliate Marketing S.O.S.

Affiliate Marketing SOS

One more reason for me to be really excited:  I have put my all into this eBook and worked very, very hard at it. I am soooooo glad I made it through to get it finished and onto the Clickbank Marketplace! I had to literally learn all the technical aspects of writing a book with Open Office, and how to put in all the screen shots (there are plenty of  it!), how to make a clickable Table of Contents (to really work out how to do this took me a few WEEKS!), how to insert footers etc…..

I think Affiliate Marketing S.O.S.  turned out fantastic in the end,  because I designed it to be understood by anyone entering the game of Affiliate Marketing, or wanting to step it up to the next level. Because I kept on adding things, changing things, until it was the best it could be (in my humble eyes, anyway! )

When I wrote the book I just thought about all the eBooks I have bought in the past and how I always expected them to be easily understood and doable even by ME, but literally every time I had to find out that there were parts that I just didn’t know yet, so I got stuck time and time again and could not go through with what I was supposedly being taught.

As a result, what you will find in my book are the steps I would have liked to see when I was learning. No technical mumbo jumbo talk, abbreviations and all that kind of stuff. Everything laid out in laymans terms, with plenty of graphics to make it even easier to follow.

I guess what I want to say now is – if you are new to Affiliate Marketing, or you are struggling to make things work, or you are confused and without real direction, then Affiliate Marketing S.O.S. can help you. I can help you.

So that’s it from me for today, I am off to keep working on my Affiliates page. After all, I would like to see that other people (you?) start recommending Affiliate Marketing S.O.S. to their friends and earn a massive 50% of the sale price by doing so. I hope to have the page up and running in the next few days (if my kids let me work in peace!).

See ya – from a very happy Petra

Today I made it into week 9 yippeeeeh!! (After my last post I have to bow my head in shame , after all it is MARCH now!). We were going to create our thank you page and get Clickbank approval this week.

One of the tasks to perform was as simple as putting one folder on my desktop into another one by dragging and dropping. Something I have done before, but most of the time just by cutting and pasting, but nevertheless, not an action to be scared of – or so I thought!!! Turns out something simple like that can make your hair turn grey…

I have to say that I have got Windows Vista Home Premium on my computer. Now, every time I wanted to simply drag and drop my folder into the new folder, I was prompted that “Windows needs your permission to continue”. It looked like this:

Windows Vista Problems

So then I thought – I can do this! I just click on the continue button, no problem! But ALAS, another window popped up prompting that I need permission to perform this action.
Permission – from whom? I am the Administrator, I am the ONE and ONLY to access these files, never had a problem with any of this stuff, what’s changed??

Anyway, long story short, I had a few attempts and they all ended in failure. Such a simple task which should have taken one second turned into a couple of hours work and frustration.

I started researching on the Internet for Windows Vista problems and found quite a few posts about this particular annoyance (hah – me not crazy!), but none of the threads got me much closer to solve my problem. I learned an awful lot though about changing file permissions and security settings and stuff like that, had to reboot my computer and struggle with getting the settings on my monitor back to normal, but in the end I was still left with a task I couldn’t perform to keep going with my Coaching program!

Well, then I stumbled across this site and had a read through their suggestion to turn the User Account Control on or off, and ended up doing just what they suggested, and VOILA – everything worked fine!!! It was such a simple solution, but if you don’t know these things, you can spend hours in trying to fix life’s little problems, just like I did today.

That said, I had to (and still have to) really learn everything from scratch, and even if it can make you feel very frustrated and stuck at times, I have noticed that if you really want to know something or solve a problem, if you keep at it you will eventually find the answer. And it is such a good feeling when you do!

I never had planned to do a post today, this happened just “out of the blue” because  I had to vent my frustration and then my relief when everything was back to normal and I could continue with what I had to do. Whilst this post might not concern most of you, there might be just the odd reader of mine whom this information might help one day….

Where has Petra been?

I thought I needed to write this post today to let you all know why I haven’t really updated my blog with proper content for (…–I have to check this right now….–) almost 2 weeks; 2 weeks??? Is that all??? For some reason it feels a lot longer LOL!

It’s nothing special, nothing exciting has happened, all I am doing right now is trying to get the tax back on track for the food retail businesses my partner and I run. And believe me, it takes a lot of time! So, because we are quite a bit behind in our tax returns, I had to start focusing on that rather than providing you with great content and something new to read every few days (even though that is obviously something I would MUCH rather do!!). I had to start learning bookkeeping and have a lot of data entry to do right now!

I have also decided to practice what I preach and that is – don’t keep jumping from one thing to the next, but focus on one task or program and get productive. Now, I have been doing John Thornhills Coaching Program – which goes for 16 weeks – for more than half a year now (I can hear you all calculating!!!), and I am just about half way through HAH! Because this is not such a great achievement, I decided to cut the c**p and spend every free minute I have – apart from bookkeeping, that is – on getting through this coaching program.

But don’t despair – I have a new post in the making (seems like it’s not that easy to give up old habits of doing too many things at once ), and it is about how to hide affiliate links like the pros! Hopefully you will like it when I finish it off!

That’s me for today, now you know where I have been, it’s again nearly 12am here and I am off to bed (I do sleep occasionally!).

Over and Out.

You might recall that I moved forward to week 8 of John Thornhill’s Coaching Program at the end of November, and week 8 was all about sales page creation. What should have taken me one week (if I was really good and stayed focused) has now turned out to be rather 5 or 6 weeks, but again, AT LEAST I AM STILL AT IT! – My weeks are rather long, aren’t they? – Oh, and I have run in a few glitches with my WYSIWYG Editor (for those who dont know: WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet), and even though I know a little about HTML editing, this one is driving me nuts!

I know now what my problem is – to actually start what I have in mind to do. Especially when it comes to writing. Writing is not something that comes easy to me, so I tend to procrastinate without consciously noticing. Like, I am finally on my way to the office to sit down and write, and then I simply find other things to do on the way (dishes, filing some other paperwork, picking up after the kids….).

At the end of the day I think I have done quite a lot, but alas – again I did not have any time to work on my sales page/book or whatever I am working on at the moment.

Does that sound familiar?

The funny thing is though that when I finally sit down and force myself to write, I actually enjoy it, and I can get quite a bit done. And really, what I heard before and what I am experiencing myself now is that the more you write the better you get, and the easier it will be. It’s true! Try it for yourself.

My big advice for you here is DON’T GIVE UP, pursue your dream(s), no matter how long it takes, don’t get discouraged, because in the end you will get there (I think I said that in one of my earlier posts, too, but hey, better say it once too many than not enough!).

A couple of famous quotes on Not Giving Up:

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

“Never, never, never, never give up!” – Winston Churchill during World War II

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Success through Perseverance

You might not believe it, but I have actually FINISHED my ebook – I wrote about it at the end of September, and should have finished it by early August – huh! It’s now end of November, but you know what? It doesn’t matter, the main thing is – I finished it!

I just want to throw in here that no matter where you are in Internet or Affiliate Marketing, I think the most important mindset you have to have is to KEEP GOING, not to give up, no matter what. Keep going until you reach your goal! It doesn’t matter if it takes a lot longer than what you thought, just stick with it and see it through to the end. Remember: You have not failed until you stop trying!

So, I have converted my ebook into pdf, and have sent it off to some of my friends for a read (and a laugh? who knows!). I can’t wait what they will have to say! Hopefully all good

Having finished with the product creation means that I can move on to the next step in John Thornhill’s Personal Coaching Program – Sales page creation! So I will have to dive right in to week 8 of the training, yipeeeh! That’s about half way….. I wonder what else John has in store for me!

Anyway, I hope that this next step will not take me 2 months again…. I’m better off straight away to start working on my sales page! Cheers!

Tour Guide Petra with kids on Penguin Island, Rockingham

Huhuh, long time no see here! You all sure think Petra has slacked off and once again done what happened so often in the past – started something at full speed to slow down “fast” to something like a crawl, until there was another program that bit the dust!

Well, I am happy to tell you that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE! John Thornhill’s Personal Coaching Program is the one program I am absolutely committed to, because he is fantastic in his approach and what he teaches you. I am no quitter this time!

Sure, things have been going extremely slowly, I have to admit, I am now about 6 weeks behind, but you know what the good thing is? That it doesn’t really matter. I have John’s material available to me for-pretty-much-ever, and I can take things at my own pace. Of course I would love to be on track, but

• I had my parents here in Australia visiting from Germany for 4 weeks, they just left last night. So I was “Tour Guide” the whole time. Did a lot of trips in and around Perth when I usually would have been behind the computer screen (or at the gym);
• I had the kids(5 and 6) on 2 weeks school holidays early October, too (and every mom/dad out there will agree with me, there is very little time available for anything else but kids when that happens!)
• I have been trying to play catch up with our “real” business (all you Internet Marketers out there, don’t kill me! I know I shouldn’t say that, our ventures into Internet Marketing are just as real as other businesses out there, but most “normal” people just don’t see it like that) where we are more than a year behind in paperwork – I feel sick just thinking about it

So, I have been trying to write my ebook, update my blog, create a new blog, tweet on Twitter, write Articles (didn’t happen) and keep learning about internet marketing every day after 9pm when the kids had gone to bed. And you know – somehow the brain doesn’t put out a lot of great stuff any more at that time of the day!

On top of it all we will have to go and visit the kids sick Grandma in Adelaide from Sunday (coming) till Thursday next week. And I haven’t got a laptop, and Grandma hasn’t got a computer. So – you will not be hearing from me for a few days! I think I will go mad, because I am addicted to all this stuff, it is sooooo interesting.

But back now to John’s Coaching Program – I think I am actually getting quite close to finishing my first ever ebook (won’t tell you yet what it is about!), and once that’s done, I will try to play catch up with the weeks I am behind now in the program. I know I won’t be finishing within the 16 weeks, but the main thing is – I WILL BE FINISHING THIS TIME!

Just watch me.

I guess I am a bit of a perfectionist, so I want to have it really really good, and on top of that all I can put in per day at the moment is about 1 – 2 hours after 9pm at night when the kids are in bed. By then I am usually knackered and ready for bed myself!

It is good to know though that all the material in John’s course will be available to me for the next 100 years or so (I should be finished a bit earlier than that though ).

I have to say again, I can’t recommend John’s Personal Coaching Program enough. The amount of stuff you learn here about becoming successful at Internet Marketing is fantastic. Thumbs up, John!

Never mind! I am looking forward to finishing my first project! (Yeah, right, haven’t even really started yet )