For someone just starting out, it is easy to be carried away and buy all the courses and books that are offered to you, because you are told that it is easy to make from a few hundred to thousands of dollars overnight. Sadly after spending, sometimes many thousands of dollars, they come to the realization that it is not easy and the only one that has made money is the person who sold them the material in the first place.

Unfortunately, this could be my story and part of it is. I was the gullible newbie who wanted so desperately to make money that I was shelling out money for video courses and books until I realized that there had to be an easier way. I was a bit like a ship without a rudder. Yes I was in the water but certainly not going any where and maybe even ready to drown.If there was an easier way – I was determined to find it.

Now what I really needed was a coach, a teacher and someone who would mentor me. Now there is a Chinese proverb that says “When the student is ready the teacher will come”. I had studied Chin,se philosophy and found a lot of wisdom in it. So, it was no surprise,that one day I found this email in my inbox from someone I certainly did not know and it was a free gift from a person called Mark Terrell. I now know that it was an adswap, but I did know that then. My curiosity was aroused because when I clicked on the link inside the email this is what I saw.

So I decided to investigate who was this guy Mark Terrell and and what did he mean by ‘Helping Newbies”? Well the rest is history – after contacting Mark I enrolled in his coaching program for Newbies. Now, if you have read some of my previous posts, you will know that I was invited back to go through the course for a second time. Mark had so much demand for the course that he decided to do the Newbies course again before we could progress on to the Advanced.  The Advanced course should be starting in a few weeks and I know that is just going to be the most interesting time learning how to create multiple streams of income and becoming the success that I believe that I can be.

So this is Sue McDonald telling you – “If it is going to be – it is up to me” but it is up to YOU.

What you ideally want, is to get subscribers that you can eventually send a product and they will buy it from you. So many people on lists are freebie seekers only, and it is not until they are offered a product to buy will they unsubscribe. Mark says don’t worry about the unsubscribers and I accept that now but in the beginning I was always disappointed to see my lists start going down.

Then we went onto Twitter. Now I find that with Twitter – you can either love it or hate it. Personally for me, I will ban someone who uses an automated delivery service. I had some people who were sending me Tweets every few minutes on an automated system. I knew them personally but banned them anyway.

Now the last part of the webinar was devoted to creating a squeeze page for the product that we have all been creating. I am still not revealing the title of my book but I guess in week 8, I will let you all know. It has been a lot of  fun writing this book and I hope you will all enjoying reading it and learning from it. I have got some of my graphics and they are good – or at least I think so. They will give the book a more professional look and as this is the first thing you see – it has to get people to want to buy your product. There is a saying “You can’t judge a book by the cover” but in internet marketing the cover is a big draw card along with a well created sales page.

So this is Sue McDonald returning to my homework and my new book. It is nearly completed just on the last read for any errors.

If anyone want to join the adswap group I recommend this is the link – Safe Swaps.

Hi guys I wanted to write a quick post here to offer you a really great product, because this product will tell you how to be a successful affiliate.  My coach/mentor Mark Terrell has given me this product. Normally selling at $47 – he has allowed me to discount it to $9.

It is packed full of information that you need to know to be successful. Here are some of the important points that you will discover.

So if you think that this book will help you achieve great success – then I urge you to grab a copy now. I am not sure how long he will let me sell it at this low rate.

This is Sue McDonald saying just click on this link and get it now - Operation Affiliate Cash.

This week, we have to pick two or three PLR (Private Label Rights) books and make them into a 7-10 email course and combine the material to create one book. This is both exciting and daunting at the same time. You had to pick you niche last week, but I imagine some people may have changed their minds when they saw what books were available. I have stuck with my original idea but I don’t want to tell you what it is here. I want to show you when I have finished it. It may take 7-10 days because I tend to be a little over the top when it comes to rewrites.  I don’t know whether that is a good or bad trait.

We also have to register a new domain name for the product. I am still tossing around a few names and think I will check with Mark before I make my final decision.

Well, all in all, it hasn’t been too bad a week. I still have not finished all my commenting yet – but I will. I am excited to get on to the book but have to download the free PDF editor first.

Oh – I forgot to tell you my exciting news. We are going to the US for Christmas to stay with family. Just picked up the tickets today. From Australia it is a long flight but after having done it a few times, you know what to expect. Don’t panic – I am going to take my trusty laptop with me so I will be in touch. I have to complete the Advanced Course with Mark while I am there.

This is Sue McDonald saying – have a great week and hopefully I will be able to show you my completed product next week.

What did week 5 hold for all of us?  We had to:

• Install Google Analytics
• Find a Niche using Google Adwords Tool
• Research your niche
• Add RSS feeds
• and Backup your WordPress Blog

This was interesting. I had already installed Google Analytics on my site lasttime I went through the course. Google Analytics is a very good tool that gives lots of good information. Just let me show you some of my statistics.

The period shown is from the 20 July to 20 August. You can see as a result of my commenting on  peoples blogs and these people then coming to my blog to comment has helped  my traffic increase by 95.95% and total number of visitors was 339. The average page visited was 2.38 and the average time on site an amazing 7.31 minutes. There were 58.11% new visitors so that means that just over 41% were returning visitors. The bounce rate was 46.02% so that means people were staying for some time and not just clicking and leaving immediately otherwise the bounce rate would have been much higher.

If you go to “visitors” and click on “map overlay” it shows that these 339 people came from 30 countries around the world. Then click on “traffic sources” and then go down and click on “all traffic sources” – the total number of sources is 95. The total number of visitors that have come to my site since I installed Google Analytics is 1883 and they have come for 175 sources.

There is a lot we can learn from these statistics. You can drill down and know exactly how many people visit your site per day. I really enjoy examining the stats.

So this is Sue McDonald saying I must get back to commenting so I can complete all my tasks at hand because I know we are halfway through the course and Mark will introducing more homework next week.

There are many reasons and a main one could be they are trying to hold down a full time job and juggling a family and then find time to devote to the course. They begin to fall further and further behind and get despondent. Rather than have this feeling of sadness, why not concentrate on the other two and try again later – maybe with another coach and teacher. Sometimes, something has to give, and at this stage, it cannot be the day job that is producing an income, and it certainly cannot be the family, so that leave the last one – the course.

Some people never even wrote one post. They allowed themselves to be defeated before they started. Internet Marketing, like a lot of other things in life,requires the right mindset. I know I talk about this subject quite a lot but it is so important and people ignore it. You have to know what you want, believe in your ability and take the time to write down your goals. Affirmation and visualization are two of the most powerful tools that you can use.

I will give you an example of how it works. When you are young you started walking everywhere and you do not even know of the existence of a bicycle and you would not even know if you wanted to ride one. This stage of your development is called “unconscious incompetence” because you really don’t know, what you don’t know. Then for Christmas or birthday you get your first bicycle. You get to try to ride your bicycle and sometimes you fall off and sometimes you surprise yourself how hard you have to concentrate to stay on and ride. This stage is called “conscious incompetence” . This is because we really do not know how to ride but we are trying to learn. As time goes by, with all your concentration and focus you finally ride your bicycle. This is called “conscious competence”. Now you do not even think about balance and using peddles and all the rest so now you have mastered riding – you have reached the level of “unconscious competence”. It becomes an automatic thing, you can just get on the bicycle and ride it effortlessly.

The true success rate for Internet Marketing is between 2-3%. If, as a child, you could learn to master riding your bicycle just believe in yourself enough to master Internet Marketing. The thoughts we have and the images we visualize will determine the action we take. Positive thoughts will produce results.

So this is Sue McDonald saying I hope this doesn’t sound like a lecture – what I am trying to say that all things are possible.

That’s my explanation – do you agree?  This is a massive task but I am determined to get through it. Even though I want to get it completed, I can only do it for so many hours in the day. I am certainly in for a busy week completing last weeks homework and watching the videos and doing this weeks work. As the old saying goes – “no rest for the wicked and very little for the righteous” ( not sure these days where I fit, but I believe it is the righteous group ).

So what was the content that we all waited around so eagerly to hear?

Well as always, Mark is teaching some little extra information and that is great. First task – to put a gravatar on our messages. This will display the picture that you choose. We increased our ping list also. Now for my favorite – squeeze page and download pages.

I must tell you that I typed in the webinar that I didn’t like one of Mark’s videos this week – as a student that is a pretty bold statement. It was a personal message to Mark only (or so I thought).  He asked me why and I said I would have to watch it again and let him know. But…. can you imagine my embarrassment when he asked me in front of the whole group why didn’t I like it? I think my face went every shade of red and I was glad no one could see me.

So now I am just about to watch it and see why I said what I did… So this is Sue McDonald saying come back next week and I hope I can explain why.

So now I really have to work to catch up and get all my homework done.  I will just go through last weeks videos one by one and follow all of Marks instructions. Fortunately for me, this is my second time going through the course but Mark has changed a few things along the way. That is the beauty of doing it the second time around. It reinforces what you have done before and there are a few extra things I have to do.

So you can see I really have to get stuck in and work. Well yes, it is work but I do enjoy it and I feel I am getting somewhere. I feel sorry for the students that are not enjoying the homework. Some said that in the poll last week.

The old saying “You have to crawl before you can walk” applies equally to internet marketing. We all want to be earning some money but we have to get the basics in place. Once we have all the basics I know that the money will follow. I have made a few dollars and look forward to making more. Can’t wait till we all get our own product and Mark shows us how to take a PLR and make it our own but hey I am jumping ahead.

So now guys this is Sue *Ozzie* McDonald going back to the videos to do my homework. I will let you know how it goes.

It is very exciting to see that this is working and I can honestly say – the previous courses never showed all the basic things that are required. You have to know all the basic lesson, just like Mark is teaching, that will enable you start to make some sales. I would equate one previous course like this – it was like throwing you into the ocean and they didn’t even know if you could swim.  They had no idea what you had done previously and they started talking about uploading files using FTP. A large percentage of the students didn’t even know how to do a blog.

Their idea was to get you to sell a product but there was no talk of how to build your list and how many ways there are for you to do this. This has been a very exciting part of my training here because I have gone ( don’t laugh) from a list of three to nearly 800. Now I know that is not great yet, but some of these people are the ones who have purchased from me.

I know some of my fellow students are finding it hard but we all have to learn the basics before we can really start seeing that regular income. There is a bit of a hard work at the beginning but when you start moving forward you will quickly gather pace through out this course. That is what we all want – just to give up the day job and get more time for yourself and your family.

So this is Sue McDonald saying just keep going and if you need help – don’t forget to ask.

I just love learning this subject but I wonder how many other students love it the way I do or they are looking at it as a hard slog.  Confucius one said  ” Find a job you love, and you will never work another day of your life.”  That is such a true statement. Although I spend hours on my computer doing internet marketing, I wouldn’t want it any other way at the moment. I know what I am doing  is building a strong foundation for my business.

What enables me to do this, is the right mindset. Yes – I am back to that subject again. It is one of the most important aspects of anything you do. If you approach any task you do with the “can do”, “will do” approach you will find things a lot easier. Have a look at what you have to do and make a plan to achieve it. Do not allow yourself to be side tracked and start going down the wrong path.

The reason why there is such a high percentage failure rate in internet marketing because some people cannot stay focused. They open their emails of a day and can spend hours just looking at some of the videos that have arrived. If you want to succeed – stop doing this. I am not saying don’t read your emails – what I am saying don’t waste a lot of time looking for the “quick fix and make money now system”. It does not exist.

Instead, write down the list of homework that you have been given and tick each section off as you do it. When you look at the page when you have completed each section,  you will have achieved your goals for the week but more importantly you know that great feeling of accomplishment.

So this is the real Sue McDonald saying can’t wait to learn more.