The Money is in the List, the money is not in our websites, the money is not in our keywords, the Money is in the List. You need traffic to your blog to build a list, traffic comes before the list. Traffic, traffic and more traffic is the key to success, especially organic traffic. I have long been anticipating this module of Alex Jeffreys Marketing with Alex Internet Marketing Course for the obvious reasons, as we all know, without traffic there is no business on the internet. Our focus is always on list building. I must make this statement my mantra. 

Unfortunately, I was on vacation with my entire family for Traffic Tornados and did not have an internet connection available, so I am getting this critical information from the recording of the session. I do not understand organic traffic, my websites or blogs have never been graced by the prescence of any organic traffic, I have created a few blogs, written and published a couple of articles, I desperately tried to write entertaining and informative material. I added wordpress plugins to my blogs for SEO optimizing (?), still no traffic, so after several months of writing my blogs and articles, I am, by definition, an Organic Traffic Virgin. I really do need this module to lift me out of the depths at the bottom of my oil rig.

It is going to take me some time to organize my thoughts and implement what Alex covered in the Traffic Tornados module. First I must absorb what he covered and then figure out exactly how and what traffic generating methods I am going to implement of the many options he described in the Traffic Tornados module.

I see my plan of attack as threefold;

(1) Article Marketing and Press Releases; I have already written several articles all around three thousand words each and I may have already made a misstep in this area. Ezine Articles is the largest and most popular article publisher on the internet and they do not accept duplicate copy, in other words, if I already submitted it to another article publisher and I have, they will not accept it. Actually it is probably a good idea to rewrite these articles so that they are keyword oriented anyway, so nothing lost 

(2) Video Marketing, the newest and biggest traffic capture method on the internet. I know I will have a greater learning curve in video production, but I expect the time I invest will be paid back 10 fold. I am serious enough about this marketing venue to have invested $3500 to purchase an Apple Mac Pro for the video capabilities and to cut down on my learning curve. I plan on video being my highest performing advertising method.  I must not forget that Alex Jeffreys provided an exclusive interview with the ‘Video Marketing Queen’, Maria Andros and I have that recorded interview for reference.

(3)  Forum Posting, I have to admit I don’t enjoy mucking about in forums, I see it as a gigantic waste of time and energy. Forum surfing eats my time like nothing else and for this reason I have been unwilling to spend the time that I should spend to build career long relationships using the forums as a means of introduction and sharing. Alex Jeffreys started in forums, learning and building relationships, so I know it does work and that I need to invest whatever time it takes toi get the job done.

Obviously, I did not include blogging in the three points of my Trident, because it needs no validation or special initiative. It is the foundation on which I will build my internet business.

If your ‘Focus’ is affiliate marketing, my business structure may not look much like yours, my primary focus is a neutraceutical company named ‘TriVita’, which has a business structure known as ‘Cooperative Marketing’. This will force me to lean in other directions when building my list. My focus will be on building a list of prospective business partners as well as a list of potential customers. I am expecting the video marketing arm of my marketing efforts to be the point of my Marketing Trident.

 When it comes to generating traffic, Alex covered everything from soup to nuts in the Traffic Tornados module and he gave us some handy tips on keyword research, tips on finding sites for article submission, and finding high ranking blogs in our niche for establish backlinks.

My sole purpose in enrolling in an Inhenternet Marketing Course was to promote my primary business, TriVita, a neutraceutical company dedicated to healthy and wealthy lifestyle. After all, what sense would it make to be the wealthiest person in the cemetery? When I selected Alex Jeffreys as my internet marketing coach, I had no idea where that choice would lead me, however I didn’t have to worry about the money, If I felt like it wasn’t for me, or the course wasn’t what I expected, Alex guaranteed me a full refund any time during the course.  I wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger and ask for a refund, I had already done that with one other coaching program.

I want an inexpensive way to a to drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to my websites. I need massive amounts of traffic in order to generate enough quality leads to develop a huge customer base as well as a throng of possible business partners interested in building the same residual income that I was building. Clueless is a pretty descriptive verb for my depth of knowledge when it came to understanding what would be required to make my expectations a reality. I needed more help than I knew, how does it go, I didn’t know, what I didn’t know, truer than true. To my disappointment, I soon found out there was much more involved then I had anticipated to accomplish my end goals.

During our first conference call I was filled with anticipation, Alex described the coming weeks and lessons we would learn, I got excited, in my own way of course, I am kind of a low key guy, some people have called me a little on the dark side, I disagree, the ones who see it that way are usually the giddy, bubbly types, I see myself as a realist, right is right, wrong is wrong, black is black and white is white, so simple. Just because I am not grinning from ear to ear, jumping up and down, doesn’t mean I am not happy or excited.

What I never realized is just how much I would be expected to do, I just figured what I cannot do in two hours a day, I would outsource, right, isn’t that what all the gurus do. Technically, that’s true, but you have to understand what it takes to complete the tasks involved and what to expect if you do hire someone to do these tasks for you. You don’t want to appear uninformed or ‘clueless’, you may end up paying too much money and getting a substandard product. You do need to at least understand what is necessary to accomplish the end results you seek, a valuable lesson learned in of itself.

Week two arrived and it was like a bolt of lightening right out of the blue. Everything seemed to be casual and Alex was describing what we would be doing and how he was giving us his Profit Pulling Platform, what I didn’t know was that I would have to do everything to get this website up and running. I would never have attempted to do something like this on my own, but with the excellent training videos, gracefully provided by Gary Parkes, I was actually able to accomplish the task at hand and within a few days time , I had my money making website up and fully functioning, ready for traffic and paying customers. Wow, a major breakthrough for me. Of course, I did not write the HTML code for the website, I did however, take the website from files and upload the entire site to a hosted site, configure the necessary technical attributes for the site, and I was open for business on the world wide web, it is a giant step for me.

Little did I realize the fun had just begun, the following week Alex piled it on, we were going to build our own blog. Now, I had several blogs already, but I didn’t build any of them, I just supplied the content, I didn’t even know how to post to a blog.  I wasn’t sure I was up for the challenge, and it was going to be a challenge, I had to build a blog! Which includes; Wordpress template selection, a task that turned out to take hours, configuring the blog for Categories, Pages (?), a Blogroll, Archines, Plugins and all technical jargon that I am unfamiliar with, a much bigger challenge than the Profit Pulling Platform from Alex. Another former student stepped up,, Tommy McLaughlin provided us with a series of blog setup  video tutorials, without which I would have been totally lost. As it was I found it difficult and am sure I fell far behind many of my fellow Marketing with Alex students. It has taken me three weeks to set my blog up and get enough content on my blog that it was worth promoting, you can’t expect traffic to appreciate an almost empty blog. I picked a template that suited me, it fit my personality, and I write more or less how I speak. It won’t meet everyone’s approval and that is really not the expectation, hopefully, it will attract more people than it doesn’t, and it will supply value and entertainment to the people it attracts.

In summary, I have to give myself a C+, I would like to have given myself a B+, but it has taken me a little too long to get to my blog setup and to the point it may have some value. I am enjoying the marketing course and I am glad I decided to have Alex Jeffreys be my mentor. If I can measure up to the standards that Alex has set, I expect to be able to leave my day job in the next year and be a full time internet marketing entrepreneur, with a huge TriVita business as my base income.

The MONEY IS IN THE LIST, the money is not in our websites or blogs, the money is in the list, without building our list, we cannot generate CASH, BUILD A LIST.

To call this a bonus call really takes a lot of nerve, Alex, I think your great, but, I think Maria ROCKS. This was certainly the best Bonus I have ever gotten from anything I have ever purchased on or off line. This young woman really has it all together; you can hear it in her voice, a genuine openness and desire to help people less gifted then herself to achieve their life’s desires. She gave us some ‘golden nuggets’ in her presentation that cannot have a price tag attached. Bonus is an inadequate word to describe the brain dump we got for and hour and a half from Maria. For someone who has only been marketing online for a few years, I was mesmerized; actually she would be amazing regardless of how long she has been in her business. She was totally open and sharing her expertise with us, without reservation. It just goes to show she comes from a mindset of abundance.  wasn’t able to attend the live call and frankly I didn’t think it would be an earth shattering, life changing event for me, was I ever wrong! If you haven’t seen or heard Maria Andros before, don’t waste another minute, her YouTube channel is amazinglifenow . She is, truly unique and her self proclaimed title of Video Marketing Queen does not miss the mark. Alex, your next guest has a tough act to follow.

The MONEY IS IN THE LIST, the money is not in our websites or blogs, the money is in the list, without building our list, we cannot generate CASH without building a list, we cannot build a successful business on the internet . Alex Jeffreys again stressed the importance of stepping up and taking action.

 The rules of the competition were announced and basically, the person who drives the most traffic to his Profit Pulling Platform will collect the one thousand dollar prize money. Alex is all about driving traffic and building your list, it is obvious to anyone paying attention that this is exactly the way he built his business. I am currently stuck on installing Google Analytics on my blog, this will enable me to determine how much and where my traffic is coming from, without a tool like this I would be operating blind.   

 Alex explained his philosophy for getting traffic to your blog and subsequently adding people to your list from the practice of visiting other peoples’ blogs and posting comments, useful meaning comments on their blog. Other people read your comments and if they find them to be of some value, they will eventually visit your blog and opt-in to your list.

 Alex uses the analogy of oil rigs positioned on the ocean, he compares oil rigs to blogs, where oil rigs attract sea life and finally fish to eat the sea life and finally bigger and bigger fish. Fish are only attracted to the oil rigs because that is where the ocean life grows, algae, barnacles, mussels and clams, in other words, small fish food. Small fish which are big fish food, attract the big fish. If your blog has no value, which is content that informs, educates and entertains, you will not attract the little fish, need I say more on this subject? Your blog becomes the essence of yourself, you don’t want to appear shallow and worthless, do you? Don’t make your blog a shallow marketing pitch, give something of value, something of yourself. First impressions are lasting impressions.

 When Alex explains the purpose and benefits of blogging you realize if you don’t use blogs as the foundation of your internet marketing empire, you have to have your head somewhere, where it is very dark and very quiet. If you don’t see the benefits of blogging after listening to Alex and Gary Parkes, you are obviously on a much longer road to success than those of us who pay attention to people who have already done what we want to accomplish. You must be receptive and open minded to our teachers, have you done what they have?

 My primary business objective is to build my TriVita business, creating a stable residual income. From that stable platform I intended to launch my next stream of income , which will be in affiliate marketing. But, after attending only a few weeks of coaching with Alex Jeffreys, I realize that the system I am learning now, will serve me handsomely in building my TriVita business faster than I ever imagined, as well as allow me to build an affiliate marketing income simultaneously.

 Alex goes on to explain how to build links to other peoples’ blogs by posting comments on their blogs, adding value to their blogs and in return, building value and getting traffic to your blog as well.  He also tells us how to create a business system, that will allow us to build our blogs value day by day, understanding that this daily activity is the basis of the system used to create ‘FREE’ traffic. We all want this kind of traffic for reasons I don’t even have to explain, and its’ not all about the money, ‘Free Traffic’ is highly targeted traffic. These people visited your website because they wanted to see what you have to offer, there was no other incentive involved.

Once again the lesson is, Don’t chase the money, let the money chase you. Give value and show a genuine interest in providing educational and entertaining content and you will be perceived as someone of substance, someone to be watched and returned to time and again.

 If you help people first and provide value without a hook, without asking for money, the people you help will want to give you money when they feel you are honest and trustworthy.

 This week Alex Jeffreys threw down the gauntlet and challenged us with an offer of a one thousand dollar prize to the student who is the most successful business owner of his own Profit Pulling Platform. To tell the truth, that’s great, but I am less concerned with being the most successful Profit Pulling Platform business owner as I am of being satisfied with my performance in successfully completing this course and gaining the basic understanding of internet marketing and being comfortable with the basic building blocks that will enable me to continue moving forward and building a successful internet marketing business. I am sure this is what Alex wants for all of us and the thousand dollars is just for fun.

 The meat of this week was about blogging. I already have a couple of blogs for my primary business, which is TriVita; you can visit my other blogs and my website through the links under My Blog Roll. My other sites were created for me; I just write the content and give it to someone else to post, tag and develop the necessary links. Alex went into detail, stressing the value and necessity of building your blog, writing your own content and posting that content to your blog. Content is king in the online marketing world. Page rank and search engine placement is largely determined through content, and let’s not forget about your keyword percentage in a blog post or an article. I am truly negligent when it comes to keywords, I write the way I speak, and I have to learn to speak in Google Keyword, a language I have not yet mastered.

The mechanics or technical mastery of blogging is still an enigma for me. I was struggling with setting up my blog, finally got it, sort of, I still review the processes to do the more technical aspects. Posting to my blog is easy, I own that process, so I no longer need help with that. I am currently learning to do plugins for my blog, the process to add plugins for the later Wordpress releases is simple, the question arises as to which plugins, will I get the most benefit from and how many is too many. Too many plugins will slow my blog down when loading and paging through posts, so you do not want to over do the plugins. Funny thing, two weeks ago I never heard of a plugin.

Fortunately for me, another former student of Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program, Tommy McLaughlin put together a series of detailed videos, backed up by a 91 page ebook. This product covers all the nuts and bolts of creating, maintaining and monetizing your own blogs. Alex said we could have a blog up on the internet within minutes and have your first post up 10 minutes after that. This is true, if you’re technically competent, I am not, if you have a clear picture of what it is you want to do online, I do not, so it is taking me considerably longer, but it is happening.

I won’t go into the blogging videos one by one there are 20+ detailed videos and they deal with the basics to the very advanced features available for Wordpress templates. I want to thank Tommy and would recommend that anyone reading this and planning to build and maintain their own blogs get these videos, at this writing they are a $97 dollar product from Tommy. Believe me, a real lifesaver and a real bargain!

I struggled through this part of the course and it took me one week to get my blog up and functioning and three weeks to get to this point, right here where I am writing. Week Four came and went with a blur, still mired in blog technicalities, I am currently figuring out how to post banner, pictures, etc. on my blog in an attempt to turn it into an income stream. I skipped the live event during week four in order to spend more time on my blog. We had a special guest speaker while Alex was off on his bachelor foray into Greece with 40 of his best chums. I guess when you live in Great Britain; Greece is just a regular holiday. For us in the US that’s’ a major, very expensive vacation. I will catch week four from the recorded sessions, all our training sessions are recorded and available the day after the live session, very convenient.

When I started to think about writing this post for My Internet Journey, I thought it was going to be overpoweringly too long and would end up boring my reader before making an end of it self, I was mistaken. I am not claiming it will be enthralling and keep you on the edge of your seat, get real, it’s not a novella, just a technical report concerned with keeping my readers attention long enough to read it to the end.

To get to my point in week two Alex exposed his students to the mechanics and technical requirements in taking a series of ‘files’ and loading this series of files to a hosting site thereby creating a functioning website. I had never even seen this done before, let alone do it myself. We were able to accomplish this through a series of tutorial videos that made it really simple and totally easy to understand, even for a novice internet newbie like me.

I will however, say just a small bit about each video that was necessary to create this fully functioning marketing website, ready for you to buy and download your product, but not before you opt-in and get your free report. Just like the big boys (Gurus’) do it. By the way I don’t want to forget to mention that these videos were produced by the one and only Gary Parkes that I mentioned in week one.

The Videos:

Video One, the Overview. This video gives the viewer and overall idea of what will be involved in the week ahead in our homework assignment which is building our own first Profit Pulling Platform. It explains how we will be expected to build our very own website where we get to keep 100% of the profit received from selling Alex Jeffreys very successful List Building Program. Alex has already made hundreds of thousands of dollars from this very website and there is always buyers wanting to learn how to build their own profitable list. 

Video Two, Download The Product.  In this video we are instructed how to download the zipped product file. Very short and to the point. If you don’t know how to do this, it is explained very plainly for you.

Video Three, Domain Name and Hosting. Short and precise explanation of buying your first domain name and acquiring a hosting account for your soon to be Alex Jeffreys Profit Pulling Platform, or in other words your very own cash machine.  

Video Four, Personalize Your EBook. This short video explains what is involved in rebranding the EBook that Alex has provided as our opt-in content incentive. Very easy takes about one minute to actually complete.

Video Five, Get the File Transfer Software. Where to go and how to download FileZilla. So easy….

Video Six, Upload a Test Installation. Here is where we learn to actually take our collection of files and by using some FTP software, in our case Filezilla, and create a real website. If you follow the instructions carefully, you get it right the first time.

Video Seven, Set up Aweber Opt-in Form. This for me was the biggest issue, I got a little confused when generating the website after I inserted the html code in the program. I was not really aware that I needed to refresh the html program and was continually executing the same code that was cached and I could not figure out why my Aweber code was not working when I thought I had followed the video instructions to the letter.

Video Eight, Set up Payment Processing, a very important part of the equation, especially if you want to eventually get paid. Since we are using Paypal as our method of payment, this includes the major credit cards. Not difficult when you have Gary Parkes to guide you through the process. Paypal has this down to a science. Basically you fill in the Paypal form with your website names for the customer to receive his payment confirmation and be able to retrieve his digital products from the correct Alex Jeffreys List Building website.

Video Nine, Upload Configured Product and Test. This is the last video in the series of videos building your Profit Pulling Platform, that means we are back to FileZilla and reloading the same files we previously loaded after they have been personalized and reconfigured to point to ourown cas generating  private websites and we are in the list building business with a proven product and proven website.

 In Summary, I certainly explored territory that I never thought I would and feel that I got a basic understanding of the process and would not hesitate to jump right in and do it again. I now realize it is not rocket science and with a little training it can be easily understand and executed. I had fun learning this and I have to say, it was a trip!