It has been two weeks since the launch of the BlogMastermind blog mentoring program and today I thought I’d ask some of those that I referred to the program to review it for me. While I think it’s a great resource I wanted to give actual participants in the program the opportunity to have their say. Last week I emailed all of those that I’ve referred to BM and invited them to submit a short review.
What follows is the mini-reviews of those that responded. All have links, except one who preferred to remain anonymous. I’ve not edited or left out any responses and they’re in the order I received them – so I hope it gives some good insight.
Participant Reviews of BlogMastermind
“I thought that I knew something about blogging. Joining Blogmastermind has shown me I did know something . . . but little of it was useful. Blogmastermind is fantastic and I believe it will be worth every dollar—many times over.” – Mike Davenport
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“The Blog Mastermind coaching course is a jewel. Yaro Starak has managed to couple solid content with a simple and masterful teaching style in an information packed course that’s moving me step-by-step in a strategic fashion toward my goals as a blogger.
The content alone would’ve made me happy. The icing on the cake is that Yaro’s sincere desire for students to succeed bleeds through in his presentations and business systems.
He’s built a sustainable, highly profitable business, and most importantly, is teaching me to do the same. I’m elated with the program–my success is assured.” – Valerie Love
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“The first lesson received was on “Let’s Get Blogging” in which it contains a lot of blogging fundamentals. I get to know more on choosing a domain name all the way to setting up a blog. BlogMastermind provides very good video resources on how to optimize your blog’s setup such as the positioning of elements like opt in form. Audios on “Mastering your mindset” let me have a clearer goal in mind and fine tune my mindset with regards to blogging. BlogMastermind Forum is another channel in which I gain a lot of knowledge in both content and technical aspects.” – Wei Liang
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“I’ve just recently signed up for Yaro’s Blog Mastermind course and have already gotten a lot of value from it.
I’m a financial advisor and personal finance blogger in Atlanta, GA, USA, and I was interested in getting some help/mentoring about how to be a more effective writer while building my audience.
A couple of immediate things I’ve gotten from the course is the need to have a multi-pronged approach — for marketing, monetizing, etc. All too often, I see bloggers who have Google Adsense plastered all over their blog, but don’t have any other monetization strategies working for them. Similarly, I see many bloggers in the personal finance niche constantly commenting on each other’s blogs which in my opinion just creates a big echo chamber. And I’ve been guilty of this myself.
While I don’t plan to attempt to monetize my blog at this time, I do want to build my audience and build a large email list. At Yaro’s suggestion, I’ve begun using AWeber for my email and continue to use Feedburner for RSS. Also, I’m beginning to look outside the Personal Finance blogosphere for other interesting sites (like yours) where I can network and build relationships.
Yes, it’s very early in Yaro’s course, but I’ve already received tremendous value and am eager to get more and more info from Yaro in the coming days and weeks.” – Russ Thornton
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“I was tempted to join Blog Mastermind the first time it was offered but I procrastinated while reading the Blog Profits Blueprint. I realized after reading it there was lot’s I could learn and I saw Yaro was very truthful and helpful in his teachings. He never claimed to know everything but was willing to share what he had learned. He relied on others such as yourself, to add value to this course. I’m excited as I begin the lessons and I look forward to learning how to promote my blog and help others as I learn from Blog Mastermind.” – Patsy Stewart
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“My first impressions are positive. I already have a WordPress.org blog up and running – but my site is ripe for improvement and I get the impression that as the lessons roll onwards, it’s going to be a steep learning curve. The members-only forum is filled with relevant FAQs and helpful fellow members, and I am already drawing upon this useful resource.” – anonymous
I hope you’ve found these mini-reviews of the course helpful. Read more about BlogMastermind here.
Darren,
Thanks for including me in in the review. And for the link :)
Cheers,
Russ
I am looking to join Blogmastermind to improve my blog and my knowledge on blogging
Yaro is successful and has plenty of drive…
Do you folks know that one of his former students made more money today from his blog than Yaro himself?
He’s that guy with that Australian auto blog. Can’t remember his name now.
Are there any political bloggers out there who have signed up for this? Do the techniques work for political blogging? I know that certain techniques on this blog only seem partly applicable to me, so I’m a bit skeptical.
While this may be an excellent program (I am not going to judge it, since I am not part of it), the template yaro is using to advertise about his program is the same template used by many scammers and spammer selling you cheap ebooks and pyramid schemes.
Yaro might be a great guy teaching some valuable lessons to people who needs it. But, by using such a generic template; which is very common is blogosphere; only cheapens his “coaching program.”
Seriously yaro, if you are so successful and making so much money; atleast pay someone to make a decent non-spammy looking website.
While I have a lot of respect for darren, and it is totally reasonable for him to use affiliated links to blogmastermind coaching program; but seriously people still buys into the whole, “good reviews by cherry-picked customers” and than using it as a reason to join the program with an affiliated links?
I hope this comment doesn’t get deleted… :)
I’m very much turned off by the landing page — but the reviews so far seem very nice.
@David Leggett I really like your website design, I am working on a similar slider; I plan to use on my blog soon.
Hey Pavs – Can you tell me what template you are talking about?
All my websites are custom made, so I’m not sure what you are referring too.
If you mean that I’m using a “sales page” to promote course and that is what you consider a “template” then yes, guilty as charged.
I like my sales page, it provides all the information and if you don’t want to read it, watch the video instead, or just scan the bits you want.
It has performed really well too, I’ve even had comments that people like that my page doesn’t seem as “hypey” as the usual sales pages they see, which is something I was striving for.
Yeah, I agree.Help and assist from expert really important to newbie like me.This kind of coaching program should be continued in the future
http://syokbeb.com
Thanks darren for this info.U always write a useful article.
Yaro is successful and has plenty of drive
I am currently participating in the Blog Mastermind coaching program and have a couple of responses to several comments.
Pays made a point about the “spammy” quality of the Blog Mastermind site. That was my same impression. However, Yaro truly offers solid content in his coaching program and really “walks the walk” in regard to offering great advice and training.
Regarding Jeff Rosenberg’s question about whether this coaching would help a political blogger, it’s my sense that it would help. My blog, Global Investment Watch, is focused on business and human rights. So far, I’ve found snippets of useful information from the training and plan to continue with the coaching.
Darren:
As usual, thx for all the helpful advice. I do have to agree that Yaro’s download page does lean towards the ‘get rich quick schemes’ throughout the blogosphere. I am not sure I would go further on that page if Darren hadn’t recommended it. Having said that, my introduction to blogging was on a similar page so all is well that ends well. Maybe we shouldn’t be so skeptical about everything! Lastly, with Yaro’s success, who am I to judge!
Darren,
We’ve known eachother for a while.
If you honestly think that it would be worth for someone like me who has been blogging for a bit, I will do it…
Yaro is an expert in blogging. Will join his coaching soon.
Thanks for the review Darren. I think I should also join.
@pavs: Thank you. If you’re using WordPress, I could suggest looking into the FCS plugin to help you get started putting one together.
@Yaro: I think it explains everything quite well, but in that format and style, makes me question WHO exactly you are targeting. The text tells me it’s communicating with one audience, while the style tells me another. That’s just my take though.
David – I’ve written about this on my blog actually… The long sales page has a tendency to really anger a small group of people, for some of them to the extent that they will choose not to buy because of it.
However, based on testing, this group is small and made up of people who wouldn’t join regardless of how the program is sold. That’s not completely conclusive and I’m sure I lose a few potential customers because of the page, but I’m pretty confident I gain more than I would lose by not using it.
The page works well for the greater majority of people who are really interested.
Thankfully as well, for many people like I’m sure is the case with Darren’s readers – they just skip the page altogether, hit the order button and join based on the recommendation from someone they trust.
I believe the majority of my current members came through that way, but there will be many new people who come along after and join thanks to finding whatever point they needed to hear on the long page. If that point wasn’t there, they wouldn’t join.
The only downside with this as a marketer every time you release a product you have to expect a small vocal minority will tell you your page sucks and it is spammy.
They of course have good justification for doing this – there are lots of spammy long sales pages that they have probably seen, which has tainted their opinion of all such pages.
It’s an unfortunate circumstance, but that’s the nature of marketing. Once a small group start to abuse a technique, everyone suffers who continues to use that technique even if they are no abusing it.
As marketer, you have to look at the numbers if you want your business to survive and sometimes that means copping some flack. It’s the same with blogging – sometimes you cop flack from your readers in comments who don’t agree with something you wrote. That’s not going to stop you from blogging though.
Yaro
@Yaro: If it’s proven to work for you, that’s great :) Like I said, it certainly is informative, that was only my take. Conversions, or whatever unit you measure success in this kind of business is what really matters, so you’ve gotta go with what works.
My suggestions are offered as humbly as possible. It looks like you’ve got a great product based on the reviews, and that’s what really takes the cake.
Yaro,
I don’t think your web design has any problems or looks like the spammy sites. It’s up to the personal’s eye most of the time. Content is king and great content is what you are offering on the website. That’s what most appealing to the eye and the mind.