Blog Mastermind Program

As many of you are aware, I have been a member of Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Program for several months. And I’ve been using it to build and develop Scraps of Mind to become the Scrapbooking Website I envisioned.

I received an email from a reader in Western Australia this morning asking for my views on the program, whether I thought it was worthwhile and would I do it all over again. Here is her email:

Hello Karen! and, greetings from WA State.

I do hope that you respond as I’m rather anxioius to begin my own process of ‘blogging’ … I found your testimonial on Yaro’s pages for purchasing his Mastermind Blogging Program, so I sincerely hope that you don’t consider this an intrusion. If so, please, simply ignore me and hit delete … although I hope you don’t! : – )

I love your pages! Well, actually I love scrapbooking as a hobby of sorts. So, I was absolutely pleased at what I saw and spent so much time reading your pages and articles that I almost forgot my purpose in writing to you.

Anyhow here goes ~~~ baseline questions:
1. Are you completely satisfied with the program you use of Yaro’s?
if not, why, if you would be willing to share privately with me …
2. What features did you find the best as far as being helpful in promoting your Blog, in Advertizing and Marketing it?
3. What are the monthly benefits of being signed up / on with Yaro on a monthly basis, as far as you’re concerned?
4. What elements / benefits / products do you receive each month that justifies the monthly fee?
5. Lastly, (for this moment} … would you do it all over again?

P. S. I see that you are using CSS Templates Pages, just wondering if one has to be website techno savvy to utilize their services, or are they more like WordPress?

Karen, I can’t thank you enough for answering. I’m not doing this for any other purpose than to try and satisfy my curiosity so that I might make a decision one way or the other in joining Yaro. Would like some real answers from real people before I make that jump.

I thought her questions were very good and I’ve decided to share my answer to her with the rest of Scraps of Mind Readers in case there may be others who are contemplating joining the program. So here is my response:

I’ve been in the BMM for 5 months now. It is a six month course so I’m nearing the end. And when I do I will still have access to all the on-line material that I received during the course and to the forums.

Would I do it again? The answer would be Yes. Technically speaking all the basic information that you get is out there on the internet. But BMM takes all the relevant stuff, sorts it into logical sequential chunks and presents it in an understandable way each week. It’s a bit like saying that you don’t need to go to school to learn anything because all the information is already out there on the Internet. What you take a course for, though is to get that information presented in a useful way so that it can mean something to you.

What you get? Well Yaro is a pretty credible blogger who has walked the walk not just talked the talk. BMM takes you through the steps he has learned through trial and error to build his blog income. Each week you get an eClass in written and audio format which builds your knowledge step by step. At the end of the eClass there are a number of actions you need to take which build to the next class. This course assumes you start with nothing and tells you what you need to do to start your blog and set it up for optimal performance. It does not focus on technical issues and Yaro recommends that if you are not technical you pay someone a small fee to do the required technical functions for you. He recommends that you should be spending your productive time on things you are good at not things you are not.

There’s also a lot of help in the BMM forums as a number of people there are techos. The forums are great places to share problems and advice and give each other support. And Yaro and his senior mentors are available to answer any sticky questions. As well as the weekly eClasses and the forums, there are also bonus videos, audio interviews with key blogging personalities, extra tips, periodic teleconferences via Skype (so it’s free) and student blog reviews where Yaro, on request, will do a video review of your blog to give specific suggestions on how you might improve on what you’re doing.

I have improved Scraps of Mind enormously over the last 5 months. And I’m very pleased with the results. BMM is about building an ‘authority’ blog which develops long term regular readership rather than just search engine surfies. This is based on a concept of pillar articles which are substantial posts providing good value to readers.

This is not a silver bullet. Although Yaro’s goal is to build a blog that generates substantial income and can be maintained on 2 hours work a day, getting to that point can be quite a bit of work. Building a bank of valuable content and a regular readership takes time. Having said that, I have found it a whole lot of fun. And I’m starting to generate income from Scraps of Mind now as well. BMM focuses on building your blog and readership first before getting into monetisation.

Selecting your niche topic is very important. When you have decided on that, I would suggest that you try to name your blog and your blog domain using the description of your niche topic. That way you will also pick up search engine traffic that you can hopefully convert to long term readers. That’s my one regret. I already had Scraps of Mind started when I went into this but as a searchable name it is not the best.

Fundamentally you need to love the topic you are blogging about, or it will all seem too hard. You need to be prepared to post at least once a day, so unless you choose a topic you know something about and truly love you will find it a hard slog and will probably give up. Keep that in mind if you decide to go ahead.

And then in one of those coincidences that happen out of the blue, less than five minutes after I had sent my reply I received an email from Yaro.

He is doing an overhaul of his site and moving to a new system. So, although BMM Members will still be able to continue to access their resources, he’s closing the door to new members from December 10. And he can’t say when new members will be able to join after that date.

So if anyone is contemplating joining the Blog Mastermind Program they will need to decide pretty quick.

And just to give you a feel for what you can expect, here is a sample of one of the weekly eLessons from the program. Go and have a look and see what you think, totally free of all obligations.