Today I got an email from Yaro Starak, an established pro-blogger, about his new blogging mentorship program called the Blog Mastermind.

In his email, he mentioned that he already posted the 1st video in the Blog Mastermind video series.

To those of you that don't know who Yaro Starak is, he is a young entrepreneur, a professional blogger from Australia. He's been blogging consistently since 2005 and has now become one of the few professional bloggers who earn their income full time from their blogs. His blog, entrepreneurs-journey.com, has a lot of valuable contents, especially on how to build a blog that will enable bloggers who are serious about making money from blogging full time, to be successful.

To complement his blog, he's created a blogging mentorship program, called the Blog Mastermind. He's posted the 1st video there.

I am a blogger myself. I agree with a lot of the things that Yaro's mentioned in his video. Let's go over some items from the video that I think worth to be highlighted.

A) What do you want in an internet business (i.e. blogging)?

1) Easy to get started
My opinion: When you're starting out blogging, you don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to install your blog, how to create a template or theme for your blog, how to create fancy banners to put on your blog. Your first focus must be on generating contents and bringing traffic to your blog. Yaro has also created a step by step video series if you want to learn how to become a blogger . These video series are focusing on the how to install your 1st blog, what theme/template to choose, etc.

2) It can be done part time while working full time
My opinion: If you're just starting out blogging and still have a full time job, don't think of quiting your job just yet! Making money online by blogging is possible, overtime NOT overnight, provided you have a long term plan on how to use your blog to bring in the revenue that will enable you to quit your job, should you choose to.

3) Makes a full time income
My opinion: You should only create a blog about a topic that will enable you to make money by blogging a full time gig. This will necessitate you to do a market research prior to creating a blog. Your market research can be simply typing in a specific keyword..say.." make money online" in the search engine and see how many adwords campaigns that appear on the right side of the search page results.

4)You enjoy the process
This should be the 1st criteria in determining whether you want to do blogging full time. If you don't find blogging enjoyable, blogging will be a dreadful thing for you - installing, choosing the theme, writing your posts or articles in it, building links with fellow bloggers etc. Sure, there are a lot of programs being offered that are being promoted as the next big thing in the blogging world, but without you actually enjoying doing the whole blogging process, you will drop the "blogging" ball immediately once you don't realize the instant revenue right away.

Now that we have looked at all the things that must consider before you start blogging, let's move on.

Yaro chose blogging because of the following:

1) Easy to begin
My opinion: Seriously...you can give this a try yourself! Go to blogger.com and follow the instructions over there on how to set up a free blog. It's literally a plug and play system!

2) A powerful traffic and relationship tool (if done right)
My opinion: Definitely! The Search Engine loves new relevant content! The more relevant and valuable information you put in your blog, the probability of your blog appearing as one of the top ranking sites on page 1 of the search engine is more likely. One of the component of getting the search engine to find your blog more frequent is the number of other websites or blogs that link back (i.e. back link)to your blog article. By having a significant number of back links, in a way, you've established a relationship with other bloggers or webmasters in your market. Writing valuable content for your blog visitors will also enable you to build a relationship with them, something that's really important if you want them to help you achieve your dream of being a professional blogger.

3) Gets you the attention of the right people
The more established you are as a blogger, you will attract other internet marketers that would love you to be their partner in their next big project.

4) A list building machine
According to Yaro, this is something that's often overlooked by most bloggers. A lot of internet marketers have said that the money is in the list...some even add it to the money is in the "targeted" list! I totally agree. I'm currently working on a blog in my niche market as well.
I meant to put a subscription/opt in form, but was still brainstorming on what to offer to my visitors for opting in. After watching Yaro's Blog Mastermind video 1, I got an idea on what I want to offer to my visitors. I then created a subscription form with an "on-target" offer that would FILTER visitors/readers into potential customers. How would it filter visitors/readers into potential customers? Because you know that they are interested to find out more about what you have to offer (i.e. content, product, service, etc) by giving you their private information i.e. their name and email. If you'd like to see how I implemented the change just by watching the 1st video , you can see the snapshots of my blog below.

5) Super profitable when you follow a system
My opinion: This is totally head on! Just like any other businesses, online or not, in blogging, there should be a roadmap to follow to prevent the business from getting lost in the sea of other competing blogs. The roadmap should have short term and long term plans, and contingency plans.

Just by watching the Blog Mastermind 1st video, I was able to get few pointers here and there about what to do with my blog. Onto the 2nd video...