Michael Emilio

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Roadmap to Become a Blogger: The Free Report Review (Part 1)

July 1st, 2009 · Internet Marketing

I just downloaded the free Become a Blogger Roadmap report and I’m definitely excited by the content! In my last post Roadmap to Become a Blogger: Download the Free Report I talked about the free ebook report written by internet marketer and professional blogger Yaro Starak and his business partner Gideon Shalwick so I figured let’s dig into the free report and write an in-depth review with my own thoughts and opinions built in. My recommendation is to download the free Become a Blogger Roadmap, give it a read, and read my review to get another take on the report.

Yaro starts off the free report by talking about his history as a blogger. He’s been a professional blogger since 2000 yet he feels 2004 is when he made his biggest income leap. Before blogging he was earning $30,000-$50,000 a year in eBay selling, a proof-reading business for students and as a manager for a content website. In 2004 he started a blog and went on from that to start his membership sites, including Become a Blogger. He now earns $40,000 a MONTH, with his best month being more than $80,000 USD. His income allowed him to purchase a 3 bedroom townhome in Brisbane, Australia (which I have just found out he’s paid off) and a new car for $25,000 cash.

His online blogging lifestyle has allowed him to travel around the world and experience the freedom that comes with being financially independent. Blogging is a unique business because you can work anywhere around the world as long as you have a computer and an internet connection.

His blogging has allowed him to become known as an expert in his field, he’s networking with the top minds in the internet marketing industry and his reputation has helped him sell more products due to the trust his customers have for him.

Become a Blogger Roadmap ReportGideon Shalwick is his partner in Become a Blogger – they met when Gideon came up to Yaro at an internet marketing workshop and asked if Yaro would be in one of his interviews with an expert and asked him to come up to his bedroom to record with professional equipment, a green screen, pro microphones, etc. They kept in touch and after some time Yaro asked Gideon if he’d like to become involved in a project Yaro thought up called Become a Blogger – a series of free videos helping beginners start up their first blog.

After the 10 free Become a Blogger videos, they checked the response and the site has had more than 200-300 downloads of the videos per day. They dedided to take it a step further and release the Become a Blogger Roadmap report.

What Yaro realized was that most bloggers that try to start up blogs as a business fail at it. Yet, many blogs do succeed and there is a pattern and formula to those successes – it’s the X-Factor. The Become a Blogger videos, the Become a Blogger Roadmap, and the Become a Blogger Premium online course all comes together to teach X-Factor techniques to help any blog succeed.

Blogging is a powerful tool for profits, traffic, and attention – in its own right using blogging as a business model and for using blogging to help your pre-existing businesses reach a whole new audience and client base.

They discovered what they call milestones – these milestones are needed in order to become a successful blogger. The milestones are like steps up a ladder, you need to climb the first and then you’re able to climb the second. You might also think about these 5 milestones as The Roadmap to Become a Blogger. Let’s look at each one in detail…

Milestone 1: Discover Your Passion

All successful entrepreneurs are passionate about what they do – there’s a sparkle in their eyes. You need to have motivation springing up from inside of you in order to really excel at what you do. This is no different in blogging. You sometimes need to make unpopular choices, to stray from the rest of the crowd that may be content with the 9-5 grind. Yaro brings up an interesting stat which I’ve heard before that only 3% of the world’s population controls 90% of the world’s resources. You need to stand out from the crowd and you can do this through your passion. To find your passion ask yourself questions. What do you think are your natural talents? What things do you do that you just “flow” with? What things do other people tell you that you’re really good at naturally? What do you like reading about, learning about, and possibly writing about? Learning about yourself is an ongoing process so don’t feel too bad if you don’t a definite answer. At least get a general idea about your areas of interest.

Milestone 2: Discover The Need

In order to crack into your target market you need to know where you can give the most possible value in the area that most interests you – what you found out about in Milestone 1: Discover Your Passion. You find a problem that people have and then solve it for them, while asking for a fair fee in exchange for that product or service of value. Find a need or place of frustration in your area of interest that no one seems to be addressing adequately and fill that need. However, to make your efforts worthwhile, you need to find out if there’s enough people having this issue to make it worth your while. One way is just by immersing yourself in that area and finding out the needs that most people in that same area have and then make the solution to that need or want. A more modern way is to spend some time in internet discussion forums and take note when a lot of different people are complaining about something. Another way is by sending out online surveys to people in that area or getting involved in hobby groups or special interest groups related to that area and get a feel for what they say and complain about. The more complaints you hear the more opportunity available. Don’t get scared about launching into a topic that another blogger is writing about! As long as there’s a market there’s opportunity. Think about McDonalds & Burger King & Wendy’s or CVS & Walgreens or Walmart & K-Mart or Publix & Winn-Dixie.

Milestone 3: Test Your Market

In Become a Blogger Roadmap, Yaro suggests making 3 separate blogs for the 3 topics you’re most interested in. So that’s one blog each for these 3 topic areas – think of this as market testing. Once these 3 blogs are up, set up analytics software like Google Analytics or Mint and take notes as to which of these 3 blogs you’ve been devoting equal time to has been getting the most traffic. Make sure you’re posting something new to your blog every 2 days at least. Make sure to wait about 3 months to get an adequate view of the traffic going to each of your 3 blogs.

Milestone 4: Focus Your Efforts

Lack of focus is probably the biggest reason most bloggers fail – this has been said by Yaro, as well as Rich Schefren and Eben Pagan, among others in the internet marketing world. So, this step might be a bit painful but must be done. Get rid of the under-performing blogs and focus all of your energy on the 1 blog that seems to have the most potential. Now you can focus all of your energy on making great content, bringing traffic and getting loyal readers – done in that exact order. For example, Yaro focused for 6 full months just building great pillar content before he even began making strides in implementing a monetization strategy – however, this may be a quicker process with you if you have the right strategy. Once you’ve chosen the blog you’re going to be focusing on, set up an auto-responder on your blog, something like Aweber in order to build an email list. Maybe start up an email course or newsletter where you give away some top-notch content related to the topic of your blog. Maybe a .pdf like Become a Blogger Roadmap or a 7 series email course. Put the opt-in form from the auto-responder service like Aweber into a easily seen place in your blog, perhaps up on top in your sidebar. Your email list will then become the main method to talk to your subscribers about products and services hitting the market – perhaps even your own.

Milestone 5: Start Making Money

Now’s when the profit comes rolling in. You can sign up for services like Google Adsense, Pepperjam Network, Commission Junction, LinkShare, etc to help you serve ads on your site and fill up space for banners and text link ads. As you get more traffic, you may want to look into private blog advertising where advertisers pay you a fixed rate to have their banner ads, text ads, or sponsor reviews on your site. Make sure you’ve fully realized Milestone 4 before you focus too much time on Milestone 5. For now, just choose one monetization strategy, like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network, then once you have that mastered move on to another monetization strategy.

The State of Blogging Today

The reality is that blogging isn’t a rare concept – about 2 new blogs are created every 3 seconds, this means about 7.4 million blogs have entered the internet in the last 120 days. This means the market for new bloggers is getting saturated. In this day and age, you cannot get away with writing substandard content for your blog and just banking on the fact there are no other real blog players in your niche. You need to do something more, something extra, something above and beyond what “the other guys” are doing. The good thing is that most bloggers don’t know what this “extra” is or how to use it maximally.

Multimedia and Social Media Distribution: The X-Factor to Blogging Profits

The key to modern blogging – the X-Factor – is multimedia blogging. By utilizing multimedia blogging, you’ll be augmenting your blog content and taking advantage of social media distribution in the marketplace today. Multimedia means things like audio podcasts, video podcasts through providers like YouTube, and images. Social media distribution means online based communication tools that share and discuss information through the web.

An example of social media is comments – something that’s already built into blogs based on the WordPress platform, which both I and Yaro in his Become a Blogger Roadmap recommend. RSS feeds are another method of using social media. RSS feeds allow a user to subscribe to your blog using products like Google Reader and can read your blog without even having to visit your site – giving you yet another way to reach people that may not visit your blog everyday but will check their Google Reader daily. Yes, you can add advertisements to your RSS reader! Twitter is another way to utilize social media to reach a larger audience, in fact, make sure to follow me on twitter while you’re at it to get more business and marketing thoughts and ideas straight to you. The power of twitter is that others follow you and whenever you write a twitter message of a few lines, all your followers will get instant notification of your tweet. You can use twitter to automatically inform followers that you have a new blog post up (I use this in my own twitter profile), recommend an affiliate product, or link to a video you’ve put up on YouTube. Speaking of YouTube and video, you can even use services like UStream where you can actually have a 100% live show on the internet, which is an amazing opportunity for you to forge intimate relationships with your readership and give you an edge over your rival bloggers. If you’re using audio, set it up so that readers can subscribe to your audio podcasts via iTunes so that your new podcasts hit their iTunes and get downloaded immediately to their computer and iPhone and iPod Touch. Readers can also subscribe to your videos on YouTube so make sure to remind them to do so when you make your videos!

The advantage of using images and video in your blog is that it really sets you apart from other bloggers that don’t do this and makes your blog become real, it makes your blog come alive. It supports interactivity with your site which generally creates a much larger amount of repeat loyal readers.

The advantage of social media distribution is that it allows you various ways for users to grab your content. They can follow you on twitter, subscribe to your RSS feed, subscribe to your YouTube channel, and subscribe to your audio podcast via iTunes.

The reason why multimedia plus social media distribution is such a powerful combo is that it allows you to cut into niches that may be saturated but since you’re going above and beyond what other bloggers are doing it allows you to stand out and grab attention and traffic.

This concludes Part 1 of my review of Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick’s Become a Blogger Roadmap. Make sure to download their free report and stay tuned to read Part 2 of my review of their report, including methods to implement the X-Factor to generate more profits!

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Roadmap to Become a Blogger: Download the Free Report

June 24th, 2009 · Internet Marketing

I’ll come out and say it: If you want to be a player in the modern business world, you need to be blogging.

Whether you as a business owner is blogging yourself or you’ve hired someone to do it for you, blogging is a necessity in today’s Business 2.0 world.

Blogging is a key tool to get the attention of your potential customers and clients. It can become a focal point for building a community in your business… and building a community means bigger profits for you. The reason for this, is that if your company is blogging and doing a good job at this, this can set your company as a thought leader in your particular industry.

It wasn’t so long ago that blogging was an option – something done if you had some extra time on your hands. Nowadays, you need to be blogging if you want your business to grow on an exponential level, on a national level… on an international level.

I’ll be going more into this topic in future blog posts, but for now I want to tell you about a new report by my friend Yaro Starak called Become a Blogger Roadmap.

Become a Blogger Roadmap ReportHe just sent me an email about this powerful new report… and guess what, it’s completely free.

http://michaelemilio.com/go/becomeabloggerroadmap

If you want to start your own blog and grow your business, this just might be the .pdf file you’re looking for. Make sure to grab Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat if you don’t already have it installed so you can read the report.

This report has already been downloaded over 20,000 times – that has to say something about the quality of the report.

I just went to the link and downloaded the report so I’ll be doing an in-depth review of it, but as a quick overview, it’s a step-by-step guide that takes you from absolute beginner to blogging pro in 5 easy milestones.

And once you have it all set up, you’ll also learn some extremely powerful “X-Factor” strategies for driving truckloads of traffic to your blog using a range of multi-media tools and the latest social media tactics.

One of those things you realize as you get deeper into internet marketing is that traffic is the basic key to major profits. The more traffic you get, generally speaking, the more money you see in your bank account.

Check out this free Become a Blogger Roadmap report for yourself and let me know what you think!

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The 2009 Real Estate Investing Market Predictions: Getting the Edge in the New Year

January 29th, 2009 · Real Estate Investing

When the market is hot, it’s usually a great idea to flip and take advantage of increased consumer demand for residential properties – holding on to properties may be difficult to convert into positive cash-flow due to market demand for ownership, especially in upper-income markets. But what do we do when the market is cold?

When the market is cold, it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of the large available inventory, sellers motivated to sell, and the low rates available for mortgages. Flipping may be dangerous in cold markets if you don’t have the capital to hold on to the property for a year or more if it doesn’t sell quickly though. However, if you’re looking for passive income, this is a great time to invest, since a lot of people can’t afford to own and thus are looking for rental properties – including yours!

One of the best ways to find hot new properties to invest in is by using the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)contact a real estate agent to find out more. Short sales and REO properties are now searchable in the South Florida MLS system – this may be available in other areas as well. You might also want to Short sales may be a great opportunity to purchase a home at very low prices, fix it up, and then sell for a nice profit.

Opportunities available include new construction, foreclosures, and FSBOs (For Sale By Owner) properties whose owners are finding it difficult to sell. In order to get a property that you can sell quickly, generally try to find homes with about 3 or 4 bedrooms around the middle of your market’s price range. You’ll have a good available market when it comes time to sell since almost any type of family can live in a home that size.

Condos are an interesting concept in cold markets, some investors love to invest in them and others stay far way. On the negative side, condos may be problematic as they often are in competition with apartments for renters – making it more difficult for you to find tenants. On the positive side, you don’t have to worry about having to maintain the exterior of condos as that’s handled by the condo association.

If you’re an experienced investor, you may want to look at helping out investors looking to get out of the game – to your benefit of course. New investors, thinking that real estate investing is just running numbers in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, can burn out easily if they can’t handle tenant complaints, property management, and negotiation techniques. This is a great opportunity for you to swoop in, help someone get out of a property they want to get rid of, and get yourself something you want for your portfolio.

If you have a real estate license, this can be an excellent time for you to grow your real estate investment portfolio. One way to do this is by buying properties from sellers when a deal doesn’t go through – make sure you always adhere to your fiduciary duties though. Although some agents don’t take a commission if they buy a property from a client, you are in your legal right to still ask for the commission. If the property is actually on the market, and the owner is your client, first refer the listing to another real estate broker for a referral fee and then purchase the property. You want to do this in order to avoid any violations of the Realtor’s Code of Ethics. I also would suggest you always state that you a licensed real estate agent or broker up front when you’re purchasing a property, even if you have no agency role in the particular purchase. If you represent real estate investors, never bid against one of your clients – your clients’ welfare is your main concern! A solid tip is to offer the property you’re interested in first to your real estate investor clients for 48 hours; if none have expressed an interest in purchasing, then go ahead and purchase the property knowing you’ve kept your client’s welfare in mind. As long as you always abide with the Realtor’s Code of Ethics, you can rest assured that you can generate some incredible long-term wealth by investing in real estate in an ethical manner. There’s a reason why 41% of real estate professionals own investment real estate and that reason is that there’s money to be made in investing!

Even with all the temptation to rush out and start buying investment properties like mad, resist the rush and don’t buy more than you can handle! Even if all the properties you come across are “good deals”, don’t get greedy with your purchases. You don’t want to get in over your head – it may be very hard to get out if you’re in this situation if the markets gets colder. Many conservative investors only like purchasing 1 or 2 investment properties a year – of course they make sure these are great deals! Other investors purchase dozens of properties a year (or more)!

When picking your properties to invest in, you need to analyze them thoroughly. Many investors feel there are only good deals or bad deals and that there’s no such thing as good markets and bad markets. Of course, even so-called “bad markets” may net you great deals if you purchase wisely.

“I want positive cash flow” is a phrase I hear prospective real estate investors say often – with good reason too. Tax benefits, appreciation, and leverage are other benefits of holding investment real estate but making positive cash flow after taxes and mortgage payments (or at the least, breaking even and then selling five or more years down the line) is the goal for most.

When looking at annual cash-on-cash returns on investment properties, you generally want to look for returns of 3%-5% on single-family homes and condos and 7%-8% on triplexes and fourplexes.

When looking for prospective residential real estate investments, always keep in mind you’re generally looking for properties that have high demand. Buying homes in areas near shopping, job opportunities, and quality schools can do wonders for your ability to find tenants and buyers. Do some research as to which areas seem to be in the path of progress for economic growth and jobs. Don’t be afraid to go small as well because, depending on your area, single family homes with relatively smaller square footage area can often get higher rents per square foot than larger homes. If you sense a sense of pride of ownership in the neighborhood you’re considering to invest in, then that’s a great sign there will be demand by tenants to live there as well.

If you’re looking for quick appreciation, smaller properties and newish single-family homes can be a great place to look. Of course, if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, properties in need of some do-it-yourself handyman work can also be a nice source of investment properties for you.

In general, unless you really know the area extremely well, I would avoid purchasing investment properties in distressed neighborhoods, even if the price is great. Think about it this way, even if the numbers work well, what happens 5 or 6 years down the line when the local economy in that neighborhood withers to nothing?

Following that line of thinking, while purchasing luxury properties for investment can be a source of bragging rights among your buddies, I would suggest you focus more on middle-range properties more moderately priced. Average priced homes mean average priced rents, which can usually give a wide group of potential tenants that may be less likely than other income groups to move to a home higher up on the luxury scale. If following this strategy, look for areas where the average person in the area is a reliable working person who perhaps lacks this ability to quickly move up to buying a home.

As a general rule, when it comes to sell, single-family homes are the easiest to sell and multi-unit properties are generally more difficult. The reason for this is that multi-unit properties are judged according to NOI (Net Operating Income) while single-family homes, if sold to an owner-occupant, are often purchased for more emotional reasons. Having multi-unit properties so tied to NOI can be tough if rent prices don’t go up as quickly as interest rates do – this may cause that multi-unit property to decrease in value. However, if you know what you’re doing, multi-unit properties are the only way to go for experienced investors – they can give you huge amounts of passive rental income!

For a quick guide when you’re running the numbers, I would suggest using a 35% expense factor. The reason for this, even though some may think it’s too high of a number to use, is that it gives you a realistic gauge as to the profitability of the prospective property. In other words, if the property is still coming up as profitable when using this high expense factor, you may have just landed on an investment gold mine! What you do is take this 35% expense factor and then subtract it from the projected income. This will let you know if this property will be bringing in enough cash flow to cover your monthly payments.

Now that we’ve gotten ourselves acquainted with how to invest in real estate in a cold market, we’re now going to be talking about a topic that may be on your mind once you’ve gotten to this point… which is where to get the money to do all this! Although some real estate gurus might like to tell you otherwise, in most large markets, it’s extremely difficult to find no money down deals – even 20% soft second mortgage deals are rare. Prepare yourself to pay a down payment, it’d be extremely difficult to get a loan anyway if you’re only putting down 3%-4%.

If you’re investing in smaller properties, then you’ll likely be putting 20% down on conforming loans – this is because of the changes in mortgage insurance restrictions. Of course, do your best to raise your credit score – try companies like Lexington Law and Source One Credit Repair for some help in this area.

With all the mortgage law changes, loans may sometimes be hard to come by, but if you have 20% available to put for a down payment, verifiable income tax returns for the last 2 years, and verifiable assets, then you’ll stand an excellent chance of getting approved. Local lenders may be your best source of investment funding.

I really advise you to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in laws and regulations that apply to real estate – I cover the most I can in this real estate blog but you would be well advised to also read publications such as the New York Times and your local newspaper. What I can tell you right now is that the financial climate coming up in the near future may be more challenging, but by no means impossible. A new Freddie Mac regulation prohibits the agency from buying any mortgages that have been made to investors that own more than four 1-4 unit financed properties. Fannie Mae still has its loan limit for investment property ownership set at 4 – this number is expected to hold constant.

Moving forward, I see most real estate investors going for the 30-year fixed loan approach in order to finance their investments. Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM), known as Variable-Rate Mortgages in other parts of the world, are too volatile in cold markets. 30-year fixed loans, in cold markets where buy-and-hold is generally the preferred strategy compared to fix-and-flip, may give you the best opportunity to get positive cash flow.

If you are going to be holding on to a property for only the next 3-5 years, then short term loans can make definite sense. I’ve touched on short term loans in two posts, Consumer Debt Worst Offenders: Banks, Advertisers, and Advisors and Rule to Grow Rich By #2: Refinancing Your Home, but the main factor you want to consider is whether the market will be strong when the rate eventually changes.

In order to be able to move quickly when you’ve made a purchase and need some quick cash for repairs, “impulse” purchases, and other miscellaneous items, establish a line of credit with your preferred bank. You can use this line of credit to make quick purchases and it gives you a leg up on getting hold of preforeclosure properties before a bank possesses. Keep in mind, if you plan on flipping, that there are new anti-flipping laws which make it mandatory for investors to hold onto a property for 6 months before it’s possible to sell or refinance for a higher value – confirm this with a local expert.

Yet another source of funding can be your retirement account, if you’ve been diligently funding it. If you have a Solo 401(k) or Solo Roth 401(k), you can utilize funds from these accounts for investing in real estate, as long as you return income from your investment properties to these accounts.

Worst case scenario, let’s say you’re reading this article, you’re excited about investing but there’s one big problem: You have no money and you have no way of getting any in the near future! Obviously right now is a perfect time to invest in properties, but even if you don’t have the capital to do so right now, you can still pick up some great properties a couple of years down the line when you’ve saved up enough cash or you’ve raised your income or credit score. There are always great deals out there, no matter the market, as long as you perform your due diligence by doing a financial analysis of all prospective properties. Always remember there is no greater investment than investing in yourself, so use your time wisely! Constantly read and feed your mind with reading material about real estate investing, subscribing to real estate blog RSS feeds, following real estate twitterers, listening to audiobooks, and subscribing to real estate podcasts.

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