Online Beginner Level Blogging Workshop for Small Businesses

Blogging Workshop

Blogging Workshop, date to be announced. If you cannot make the specific dates, once announced, you can still access all of the content and recordings whenever you have the time, and from whatever location, and I will show you how to do that.

Although this is a beginning level blogging workshop, once you have completed it, you will know a lot more information than your average blogger.

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What we will cover and what you will achieve throughout the workshop:

• Basic SEO (search engine optimization) knowledge
• Register a domain name
• Create a WordPress blog
• Customize your WordPress blog
• Understand how to use and manage a WordPress blog
• Write SEO content
• Know the makeup of a good blog post
• Create a blogging publishing schedule
• Create a basic plan on how to incorporate your blog into your website
• Create a basic plan on how to use other social media to promote your blog or website

Testimonial

“If you have a small business and you don’t yet have a blog, let my good friend Emelina Minero help you! She has done work for me and has always gone way beyond for what I have asked her to do. She will give you the personalized attention you need to get started with blogging, I can’t recommend her highly enough!” – Mikko Kemppe

Workshop Layout

Through this workshop, it is my goal to create a community of individuals with the same goal in mind, creating a blog for their business.

We will be using Google Groups as a discussion forum. Upon registration, you will receive an invite into the Beginner Level blogging Workshop group. In this forum, you will be able to introduce yourself to the other members (if you want), you will be able to share your experience, what you’re finding out, and you’ll be able to ask me questions.

Upon registration, you will also receive a questionnaire to fill out before we get started so I can better understand what your goals are and how I can help you.

We’ll be using Skype, which is free, and I will show you how to download it if you do not have it. With Skype we will hold group video conferences where I will teach you how to create and use WordPress. We will have three 1 hour group video Skype sessions.

You will receive the Beginner Level Blogging Workshop e-book, breaking down the workshop into sections for you to read and follow on your own time.

You’ll also have access to the video tutorials of each section of the workshop. You’ll have access to all of the information if you want to go over it at an accelerated pace, but I’ll also be moderating each section on a schedule that you can follow.

Included in the workshop you’ll get a one hour video Skype session with me or phone call, to help guide you through the process and to help answer any questions for you.

You will be receiving at least $450 dollars of services for the price of $100, which I am able to do with the group workshops with a group consisting of at least 5 people. You can invite your friends and colleagues to join, if I don’t get at least 5 people, you will be refunded.

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Why do you want to take this Blogging workshop with me?

This blog that you are looking at, New Marketing Spot, I created it within a day. If I can create this within a day, I can show you how to create a blog to promote your business at your own pace.

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What else have I done?

In 2 two hour sessions, I met with one client, Pauline Laurent, and I helped her create a WordPress blog, Spiritual Life Coaching, and showed her how she can manage it and post herself. Within those two sessions, I also helped her create a LinkedIn profile, which we linked her blog to, so whenever she makes a new post, it gets posted to her LinkedIn profile. I also helped her create a Facebook Fan page. I then gave her suggestions to further promote her social media and to help make her websites more interactive. I emailed code to her that she could forward to her web designer, which put a live stream of her Facebook Fan page onto both of her websites, she also put a Facebook “like” button on both of her websites. Whenever anybody clicks on those like buttons, it puts a link of her website onto their Facebook profile for all of their friends to see, and potentially click on. I also told her that she could add a link of her blog onto both of her websites. And we added links to her websites onto the home page of her blog. We also created a separate blog page dedicated to her life coaching. I also suggested that she include her blog and Facebook into the newsletters she sent out to her subscribers, and she has. 🙂 We got all of that accomplished in two 2 hour sessions.

Other blogs I have created

Self Love Warrior
Creative Writing Ideas

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My New Marketing Journal: Jumping the Nest

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 7

It’s 10:22am, Friday, 3/25/11. I’m leaving for the East Coast in 3 days, on the 28th. I bought a one way ticket, and hope to stay there for two months, until the end of May.

Why is this significant?

This will be my test run for living on my own and supporting myself financially. This will be my test run that will show me that social media and web design can become my livelihood. This will show me that through this line of work I can travel, work remotely, and live wherever I want to, when I want to.

I’m taking a huge chance with only buying a one way ticket. This will force me to develop a stronger, more consistent work ethic. This wil force me to take my business more seriously. If I can’t support myself, I won’t be able to do much or travel around the East Coast. If I can’t support myself, how will I get back home? 🙂

I’m excited. I’m scared. I’m nervous, but I know I’m ready and that I’ll make things happen.

With 40 dollars in my checking account, an 80 dollar check hopefully coming my way tomorrow for one of the new websites I started, and if I work a lot today and Sunday, then a much larger check coming to me the day before I leave – I’ll be heading to the East Coast, with currently two clients, and two potential clients that I contacted yesterday to support myself.

I am a little worried, which is why I decided that I need another form of income, my blogs. I have a writing blog, Creative Writing Ideas, and this blog, New Marketing Spot, which I just set up last night.

How would I make money from blogs?

One, through key words and targeted traffic. I’m targeting two key phrases for my creative writing blog, creative writing ideas and narrative prompts. What does this mean? Key words have a value, some have close to no value, and some have a great value. By value, I mean that key words can bring in a certain number of traffic, as well as money. For example, there are x amount of people who type in “creative writing ideas” and “narrative prompts” daily looking for that content, and those keywords have a market value, a certain amount of money that is spent on products that targets those specific key words.

Key Words and Phrases

The value of key words change, as the desires of people change. Right now the daily market value for the key phrase “creative writing ideas” is $80.20, and the daily market value for the key phrase, “narrative prompts” is $17.90. This means if I were ranked number 1 in Google for both of those key phrases, and had quality products that were related to those  terms, then I could potentially make $100 a day  of passive income with my creative writing blog. I would have to put in work to create the blog and keep it up, but that’s it, which is why it is called passive income.

Market Samurai

I use a program called Market Samurai to help me to the research on strong key words to target. Market samurai also tells me the total daily traffic that these key phrases bring in, as well as portion of that traffic you are likely to get if you are ranked number one in Google for those terms. I can compare my blog or website to my competition, the top 10 sites that are ranked for those key phrases. And I can dissect what areas they are strong in and what areas they are weak in so I know what aspects of my blog I need to work on, like on-site optimization, off-site optimization, etc.

One of the other things I could do is see where my site ranks. For the term narrative prompts, I rank number 13, so I’m on the top of the 2nd page of Google. For the term creative writing ideas I rank 29, so I’m a the bottom of the 3rd page of Google. I used to rank number 11 for narrative prompts, but I’ve stopped posting consistently and working on internet marketing techniques to bring traffic towards my blog and to increase its PR. But I know that it will be relatively easy to bring that blog to the first page of Google for both of those terms if I worked consistently on the blog, and then I’d see a spike in my traffic, and some sales.

But How Would I Make Money?

One way is through affiliate programs. I signed up for the Amazon affiliate program. I can put up their banners are select specific products to put on my site, if someone clicks on the ad and buys the product, I make a certain percentage of that sale, ranging from 4% to 13%. You start off at 4%, and as you sell more you move up to 13%.

There are many affiliate programs out there, and you can also contact specific businesses that don’t have an affiliate program set up and create one with them.

You can also create and sell your own products, e-books, workshops, videos, cds, whatever.

Or you can promote and/or sell tickets to offline events, or products.

Through my creative writing blog I just have Amazon affiliate set up, and I think I’ll stick to that for now.

For this blog, New Marketing Spot, I will also set up an Amazon affiliate program so I can sell items that helped me and that I use, like Market Samurai, or certain books that I’ve devoured, like Twitter Power 2.0 and Head First: HTML with CSS and XHTML.

I will also sell my own products: such as ebooks and online workshops. I’m hosting a beginner level blogging workshop for small businesses soon.

Travel and Work

I haven’t started my trip yet, but I have already started to take my business more seriously. I met with my uncle who does taxes and owns his own business and asked him how I can best prepare and organize myself. I’ve begun to create a system which organizes all of my clients, my information, my receipts, etc. I’ve developed a stronger more organized work ethic. On the school front, I’ve gotten ahead in all of my classes so I can focus more on work and enjoying myself while I travel. And last night when I realized how low on money I was for my trip (when I called 4 potential web design and social media clients and two said they no longer needed my services, and the other two said they would love to work with me when I got back from the East Coast) I created this blog.

Why I Am Creating This Blog

I wanted to create this blog for awhile. On my Christmas wish list I put that I wanted the domain names newmarketingspot.com and newmarketingspot.net, which I got from my brother, but the password to access my account was lost, and I didn’t feel in any rush to recover it, until last night. So for now, I have a sub-domain with wordpress.com added at the end.

I’ve been planning this blog for awhile, so I had some of the content written, most of my New Marketing Journal posts. I kept two different types of journals, the ones that are organized into posts, and another one that I updated in-the-moment; it takes on a more free association style.

These past few weeks it has been on my mind more and more to create this blog. One, I love social media and the internet and I love to constantly learn more about it. The idea of being able to share my knowledge with others excites me. I’m truly passionate about and love social media.

Also, in one of my classes we had an internet marketing lesson. We had a guest speaker come in and show us the information on her website. I realized that I knew more than the guest speaker and that if I created my blog, I could offer more. We also had a forum where everybody could post about their social media/internet marketing experience, and everybody’s posts were from the basic SEO articles they read that were offered from the class website. This reinforced my belief that there are so many people who don’t know this information, but want to learn it for their small businesses or for the work they do for others.

Also, my main clientele is people in my mom’s age bracket, people in their 50’s and 60’s who have established businesses, want to market them on the internet, but don’t know how to.

With this blog, instead of taking on a few clients and doing the work for them, I can share my knowledge – with you, and help you create these things for yourself, for others, or give you the knowledge to pass this information on to others who are interested in social media and internet marketing.

If I can create this blog within one day, including all of the page and article content, the design, and layout, then I can teach you how to create a blog at your own pace.

What social media do you use? And what do you want to learn how to use?

– Emelina Minero

My New Marketing Journal: Helping Others

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 6

One of the things I love about helping people create social media or creating social media campaigns and websites for others is that I get to help people, and not just those individuals, but I get to help a larger pool of people through the work that they do.

Helping People Cope with Grief

Margo Gallagher, author of A Seven Year Goodbye lost her oldest son, her husband, and her mom within a span of two years. Her book focuses mainly on the loss of her son, the grief she went through, and how she was able to cope. It’s a dark book, but written with humor. It is her goal that through her book she can provide support to others who have lost their children, or a loved one. She’s joining with one of her friends, Pam DeMarco, who lost her youngest daughter to cancer in the 8th grade. I knew and played soccer with her daughter, Rosie. It is their goal to change the website and make it more interactive and focused on helping parents deal with the loss of their children. They want their website to become a place where people can share their stories, read others’ stories, and belong to a community so they know they are not alone in this experience.

Helping People Take Charge of Their Life

The social media I created for Life Coach Pauline Laurent is helping her reach out to more people, and she has incorporated her blog and Facebook Fan page into her newsletters, making it more interactive. I was also able to connect her blog to her LinkedIn account, and helped give her tips about how to spread word about her new blog, Spiritual Life Coaching which is meant to drive interest and traffic towards her websites, one about her life coaching, and the other about a book she wrote, Grief Denied. Grief Denied is about the healing journey she went through after her husband died. It makes me happy to know that I can not only help people promote and increase their business, but I can help make their dreams come true, and I can help them help others.

Helping People Love Themselves and Others

My favorite website and social media campaign that I created was for my mom. She wants to promote her upcoming book, Self-Love: The Only Diet That Works, but she wants to promote more than a book; she wants to promote the message of self-love, energy, and healing.

One of the best aspects about working with my mom is that she trusts me. I have 100% creative license when it comes to designing her website, her social media campaigns, etc. My goal from the beginning was to not just create a website, but to create a community.

Website Makeup

Her Self-Love website is made up of a lot of components. In the navigation bar on the home page you’ll find:  About the Author, Book, Blog, SoulCollage, Events, Media, Newsletter, Contests, Resources, Downloads, Contact, Twitter, Facebook, Self-Love Store, and Become a Self-Love Warrior. And once you click on Become a Self-Love Warrior, it takes you into a sub-site, the Love Warrior Community. The Love Warrior community uses art and creative expression as a means to heal and work towards self-love. There is a writing, music, video, photography, and art section, and the cool thing about it is that the website visitors can submit to each section and express themselves to the community, share their knowledge, their creativity, and gain energy and wisdom from the stories and art that others share.

People have submitted to every category. The one category that we’re working on making submissions easier is the writing category. The writing section is broken into poetry, short fiction, quotes, journaling, body love letters, and body forgiveness letters. Within this next month, we’ll have a submission feature directly on the site where visitors will be able to write in their submission, and directly submit it to the writing page that they want, instead of sending their writing via email.

Self-Love Social Media

Outside of my mom’s website, I also created her two blogs, a Twitter profile, a Facebook Fan page, a Facebook Profile, a LinkedIn profile, a YouTube channel, and a Flickr Photostream. One of the blogs is a group blog that focuses on self-love journaling. Any body can post to the blog by emailing lovewarrior@posterous.com. Each post is getting 130 to 540 views. We’re soon going to run a self-love journaling contest (via her website) to get more people journaling on the group blog. And we use Posterous for the group blog, which also allows you to autopost your content to other social media platforms. So when she makes a Posterous post, it posts to her Facebook, her Twitter profile, and to her main WordPress blog.

Then she as her main blog, which includes the self-love journal posts, as well as other posts relating to self-love, body-love, eating disorders, healing, body image, and anything in that realm. Both of her blogs have a link in the side bar to her website, and in most of the blog posts, we include a link to her website to drive traffic.

She also has her LinkedIn account, which also has her main blog attached to it. So whenever she makes a post, it gets published on her LinkedIn profile.

The Results

Through her social media, she has already seen results. Through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Profile she has had people confirm to presentations she has promoted, or SoulCollage workshops.

My mom is a therapist who specializes in treating eating disorders, and she has shown potential clients her website to show them the kind of work she focuses on. The website gave them a sense of who she is and how she works, which led to them beginning their work with her.

Another advantage of the website is that it offers a sense of professionalism that has resulted in higher paying clients.

Not only has she benefited in that way, but it’s benefiting her personal self-love practices and that of many other people, within or outside of the eating disorder community. I have heard many responses from people in the eating disorder community who think this is just what they need, a place for people to go to where they feel safe, supported, are able to express themselves in a healthy and loving way, and can hear the message of body love and self-love, which you don’t get in our culture. I have heard from multiple people that the website or the blog posts have moved them to tears and brought happiness to their day.

I have heard from my friends via Facebook that they love reading my and my mom’s self-love posts because I also post to the group blog.

It’s heart warming and exciting to hear positive feedback from people that I don’t know.

It’s such a cool thing to know that this creation has brought joy and love into many people’s lives. And it’s such a cool thing that I not only created a website, but an arena where I too can express myself and act on daily self-love practices. It’s nice to take on a project, like building a website, and have it greatly change and affect my life for the positive because of the content and the goal of that website.

It’s such an amazing feeling to be able to choose projects that help people, that bring joy into the world, that help realize people’s dreams, and to use SEO, social media, internet marketing, and web design to make that happen. It’s all about a creative vision and making that happen, and it’s wonderful when it all comes together.

This self-love project is a project that I’m excited to continue to work with and I’m excited to expand it and watch it grow into something that will change a lot of lives and affect the world.

What in life brings you joy? How do you want to impact the world?

– Emelina Minero

My New Marketing Journal – Freelance Beginnings

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 5

Confidence

The biggest thing about starting a freelance career and your own business is confidence. I was taking my HTML and CSS classes, and was having a blast with them. I went above and beyond for each assignment and taught myself things outside of class that I incorporated into my weekly assignments. I wanted to get my hands on everything.

When I first began teaching myself XHTML and CSS, and when I first began classes, I wasn’t confident in creating websites for people from scratch, by hand coding them, but I was confident in my social media and internet marketing abilities.

My First Client

One day I was just roaming around the house when one of my mom’s colleagues came over to discuss SoulCollage workshops. She was talking about her varying websites and how she wanted to start using social media to build her web presence. She didn’t know that I was doing the internet marketing internship, or taking web design classes, but she knew that I was really into the internet, and that I was a young, tech savvy girl who probably knew about social media, and she was right. She asked me if I wanted to help her with her social media, and I said yes.

I charged her $15 an hour. I learned a lot from working with her. When working with a client you should create a contract, and money should be discussed from the very beginning, otherwise you can find yourself working a lot of hours, and not getting paid. This happened to me, and I became frustrated that I was doing so much work, and not getting compensated.

It was a great experience that helped me see how I should interact with future clients, and what kind of things my clients may ask me, or what kind of things they may want. It helped show me the process of how to work with someone on brain storming, and coming up with a social media campaign and it taught me that a lot of people have different working styles. This experience also taught me that clear and consistent communication is very important when working with a client, and having structure and a system set up, like having a contract and a way of working can help with that.

One Failure led to Future Success

Our working relationship didn’t work out, but after that my mom decided that she wanted me to build her a new website, and she wanted me to create her a social media campaign, which has been going great. She is writing a book, Self-Love: The Only Diet That Works. I created her a website to promote her book, but it’s not only about her book. I created her a website that fosters a community, an interactive community that promotes self-love.

I felt bad charging my mom, so I was charging her $10 an hour, and I was doing a lot of free work, but I was doing it willingly because my mom already gives me so much. I owed my parents $500 dollars from traveling right after I graduated, so I worked that off at $10 an hour, and once I finished, my mom wanted to pay me more (and for me not to do free work for her), so I began to charge her $20 an hour, which became my new fee.

One of her friends who she met through a writing workshop also wrote a book, and she wanted a website to help promote and sell her book, A Seven Year Goodbye. So I created her website, created her a blog, and set up the very beginnings of a Twitter Profile for her. Every once in a while she’ll have me make updates, and is now thinking of revamping her website because she wants to incorporate a changed mission, other than her book.

For another client, a life coach, I helped create her a WordPress blog and showed her how to manage it. I also helped her create a Facebook Fan page and a LinkedIn profile. Here’s her blog: Spiritual Life Coaching

During this period, I also created a website for free for my aunt, a stretch therapist: stretch-trainer.com.

I’m taking two new web design classes this semester, CSS and Business of Web Development. In Business of Web Development, we are working on building a website for a Spanish/English bilingual newspaper, La Voz. We’re working in groups. I’m in a group of 5. I’m the head content developer, working with one other content developer. We also have a project manager, a designer, and an interactive media developer.

I just took on another client, one of my cousins, who is developing a clothing line. This will be my first e-commerce site.

Future Clients

When I told Pauline Laurent, the life coach, Margo Gallagher, the author of A Seven Year Goodbye, and my cousin who is creating the clothing line that I charge $20 an hour, they all told me “That’s it?”.

I have wanted to raise my prices and I’ve realized that all I have to do is ask. I could have told them that I charged more and they would have been fine with it, but it’s all about confidence. When I first began, I felt like I had to work my way up the price scale, and I still believe that, but $50 an hour is low scale for web design and social media, so $20 is way under the low-end price.

I have a list of 5, possibly 6 potential clients that I will be charging $30 an hour, and shortly after, I am going to move up to $40 an hour, and I know I’m worth it. 🙂

Ask and You’ll Receive

That’s what it comes down to, knowing your worth it, and having confidence. When doing business and interacting with others, you have to be clear and ask for what you want. Soon you’ll realize that you’ll usually get what you ask for. That’s what I’m starting to realize. That if I ask, I’ll receive.

When I started out charging, I felt like $15 an hour was so much, then $20 an hour. It’s a lot more than I made at a coffee shop, a book store, or a grocery store. Initially, I felt awkward asking for more, although I knew that the industry I’m in charges a lot more from their clients. $15 to $20 an hour felt like so much money, but as I started to think about my freelance work through the lens of running my own business, I realized that it’s not that much. Once I move out, I’ll need to pay for my rent. I pay for my classes and text books, which add up. I’ll soon need to start paying for my student loans, which is a lot. Then there’s all of the business fees, gas, online subscriptions, programs, etc – it all adds up, and then $20 to $15 an hour doesn’t seem like that much.

I’ve realized that there are a lot of people who want the services that I offer, and I know that this can and will become the thing that gives me financial freedom and the ability to support myself. I’m not there yet, but I know that day will come, and I know it will come sooner than later.

– Emelina Minero

My New Marketing Journal: Head First Into Web Design and Back To School

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 4

I had been intrigued by web design for a while. My first year, second semester in college, I met one of my best friends, Bree Benesh. She was a senior when I was a first year. She double majored in Art History and Museum Studies. Right after college, she started working at the National Museum of Women in the Arts as the Library Assistant and in 2009 was made the Digital Media Coordinator. She’s now in her last year at CDIABU for Web Development Certification.

Whenever I had web design questions, I asked her. She showed me a few websites that had html tutorials, which was where I started. I liked the idea that I could create anything I wanted to from scratch, but I felt like the tutorials weren’t enough, like there were holes in my knowledge, and I knew it, but I didn’t know what they were. I decided to buy myself a book.

Head First: HTML with CSS and XHTML

On June 20th 2010, I bought a book that would show me a new found passion, web design. I knew it intrigued me, but I didn’t know that it would be another aspect of new marketing and that internet that I would fall in love with. I bought Head First: HTML with CSS and XHTML.

It was just my style. It was written with personality, with humor. It was quirky; it was creative. There were numerous hands-on exercises, and I created web pages from the beginning, seeing results often. It was satisfying and exciting. My main focuses had become this book, and The Challenge.

Santa Rosa Junior College

After awhile, I wanted to learn web design at a more accelerated pace. I would read Head First often, but I wanted more of a push to increase my motivation and focus. So I signed up for classes at my local junior college, HTML and CSS 1, HTML and CSS 2, and InDesign.

I had bought CS 5 Design, and wanted to begin my journey in what it had to offer. We used InDesign to layout The Sundial, my college newspaper, so it always intrigued me. After finishing the class, I realized it wasn’t for me. It is most definitely useful, and somewhat exciting. I may use it from time to time, but I’m not passionate about it, like web design or new marketing. The HTML and CSS classes were definitely beneficial and motivating. They were just what I needed.

The text used for the HTML and CSS class ended up being the book I had already purchased, Head First: HTML with CSS and XHTML, but through the class we covered more ground than the book covered, and we took a slightly different learning approach than the book took. I learned a lot, and it was nice to have the feedback of a professor. I’m now signed up for HTML and CSS 3 and a group Web Design class for this upcoming January, 2011.

Learning Turning Into Business

The cool thing about The Challenge, Head First: HTML with CSS and XHTML, and the web design classes that I took was that I was able to use that knowledge, acquired over a short period of time, to take on clients and make money. I realized that I didn’t need to be employed by others. I can be my own boss. I can make money from doing what I’m passionate about, and I can work from any location. I can be my own business owner, which was what I always had dreamed.

My journey through acquiring clients was both easy and rough, draining, and exciting. I was diving into the new marketing world head first and realizing what I had to offer.

Do you remember when you first took on clients for your business? What was it like for you?

– Emelina Minero

My New Marketing Journal: The Challenge

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 3

On July 21st, I clicked on a link from one of the Craigslist postings. It directed me here, to a Marketing Crazy blog post. I signed up, or so I thought, to be part of this paid training/Marketing Crazy internship. Why not learn about internet marketing and starting an online business, two things I had interest in, and get paid? Why not do it and have a chance at winning an iPod or an iPad? What did I have to lose? Nothing. It sounded great.

From there, I was led here: The Challenge. I watched the video, signed up for it, and went to the training page. At first I was confused with the The Challenge and Marketing Crazy being two separate things, and I thought I wasn’t going to get paid to do it, but I still chose to do it, and I became engulfed.

For two weeks I didn’t sleep. I slept, but only an average of 2 hours every night. I became addicted to learning about new marketing and the internet. I fell in love. When I was done with the training videos, I would do google searches to learn more, to get my hands on everything and anything I could to expand my knowledge and build upon my newly acquired skills. I was too excited to sleep. I would be by the computer almost 24 hours out of the day, and I had to wait until the point of exhaustion, until sleep kidnapped me. My body would be dead, but my mind was racing. I’d wake up after a couple of hours of sleep, completely awake, newly excited to continue learning. I knew it wasn’t healthy, to not sleep, not shower consistently, to rarely go outside, to forget to eat. So I applied for a part-time at Starbucks, and a local junior college bookstore so I could go out and mingle with people outside of my home on a consistent basis, and gasp, make new friends.

I allowed myself to get consistent sleep, to shower, leave the house, and still continue The Challenge and learning, but not to an extreme level. Balance is something I’m continuously working towards.

I was behind when I started The Challenge. It started July 1st, and I started on July 21st. The Challenge is broken down into 7 modules and a pre-module. Each module is a week long, and there is something to learn each day. You get a week of learning, a week off, a week of learning, etc, until you complete The Challenge. Since I was 3 weeks behind, I wanted to catch up and completed the modules within a day or 3.

The Challenge Highlights

Day 2 and 3 of the Pre-Module: Day two showed me some of the benefits that Ed Dale and Marketing Crazy got from creating The Challenge, which could translate to future projects I work on. Through this free training, not only are they branding themselves, setting themselves up as leaders in the field, and gaining our trust (to perhaps buy everything or a few of the things they suggest), but I learned how to gain more Twitter followers, and more back links (which increase your sites page rank, ie, more traffic).

In Day 2 of the Pre-Module, Ed Dale shows us how to create a Twitter account, and how to roam our way around it. We practice friending someone: The Challenge, Ed Dale, and other people who are part of The Challenge. We learn how to communicate to people via Twitter with the @ sign, by mentioning The Challenge, which then showcases The Challenge to whoever is on my list of friends. We also learn to use the hash tag, The Challenge’s hash tag. We’re encouraged to talk with them via Twitter, which is great. All of these things benefit us, and there is reason and benefit for us creating the Twitter account and/or following them, but it also helps their business. It helps broaden their audience. It helps promote The Challenge. It helps them go viral. Also, you have an option of including one link in your Twitter Profile, this could be used to put a link to The Challenge’s website, giving them a back link. You could carry out a similar idea with blogs, or other social media platforms where people join your training, or whatever it is you have to offer, and other people create Twitter accounts, Blogs, You Tube accounts, etc, and include a back link to your site (there would have to be good reason for it, which isn’t hard to find). This means that other people are gladly doing work for you and spreading your presence, are helping to brand you, and are giving you a back link; of course they are doing it because it has some benefit to them to do so.

Day 3 of the Pre-Module, I was shown Google Chrome apps that I could download for free. If you’re delving into this world of new marketing via the internet, these apps are very useful. With one of them you could find the keyword density of any web page you were visiting, or creating, which is beneficial if you’re aiming for a certain keyword density with your key phrases. It also helps when analyzing other sites. Another app let you search as if you were getting results as another country. If you’re in the UK or Canada or Japan, and you type in “new marketing” you will most likely get different search results than if you were to type the same words and are in the US. Different countries have different preferences, and therefore different search results. There’s a Google Chrome Twitter app that let’s you check, post, and shorten links via your Google Chrome bar. There’s an app that lets you see the page rank of any page you’re visiting. There’s an SEO app that let’s you see how many pages a website has indexed, how many back links it has, its traffic and page rank, whether it’s bookmarked and where. There are a lot of useful Google Chrome apps that Day 3 of the Pre-Module shows you.

The Challenge showed me that I could learn and create anything from the internet. I could start my own business with my computer and live anywhere I want. This excited me, and this motivates me. With the economy how it is, I’m surprised at how easy it has been for me to find work and projects to do about new marketing ever since I took The Challenge.

The Challenge gave me knowledge, it gave me confidence, and it gave me excitement. I hope I can do the same for you.

What in life drives you? How much time do you give to your passions and dreams? If not a lot, what’s stopping you?

– Emelina Minero

My New Marketing Journal: Post-Grad Transition

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 2

Where does my new marketing and current, but new perspective on life begin? We’ll start with right after college graduation, and travel. Travel plays a big part in where I want my life to go, in how I see myself living and working, and how I envision myself growing.

I didn’t want to go back home right after graduation. I’m from California, and I went to school in Virginia. I wanted to experience as much of the East Coast before I left. I had my sights set on Salem and Provincetown Massachusetts, New York and DC. Salem, MA because of its associate to the witch trials and my love for Halloween. My brother had been twice before while I was in VA, but I never met up with him. It was a must before I returned home. In 2007 or ’08, I heard that Provincetown was a big place for lesbians, so that became a must if I was visiting Massachusetts, and I ended up staying with a friend who lived in Cape Cod, which was a relaxing place to be. DC was a must for many reasons. I wanted to go back to DC to really explore it. I visited it briefly a few times, but I never did all of the tourist things. I still haven’t done some of the tourist things. While I was there, I went to the Newseum twice (My favorite museum! About news and media). Also, a lot of my friends from college, who I consider family, live in the DC area. I want to make a trip back to DC and Lynchburg (my college town) soon. And New York, I always dreamed about going to New York. In 2006, when I set out to college on the East Coast I knew I was going to make the trip. So when my budget constraints made me realize that New York was a trip I would be making later in life, I was torn, but I know I’ll be going there soon.

Job Hunting

After East Coast Exploration, I flew back to California, to LA to visit more college friends, then I drove up to San Diego, met up with my sister and parents, and drove back home to Northern Cali. This is where my “job” hunt began.

I felt liked I needed to find a job quick. I love my family, and my parents, but I don’t want to live at home forever. I don’t want my parents to support me. I want to support myself, and I want to support my parents, and give back to them for raising me, for loving me unconditionally, and for helping shape me into the strong woman I am today.

After I got home, I felt responsible to give back right away, and since I couldn’t give back financially, it meant a lot of cleaning the house, over and over again, and it still does. 🙂 It also meant being more financially independent and responsible. These past 7 months I learned that it’s important to ask for help when you need it, but I feel like it’s my responsibility to buy my own things that my parents used to buy me, like shoes, etc, and not shoes for my “wardrobe”, but every day shoes. I just own one pair of tennis shoes, my favorite kind, and when I’m feeling more luxurious, I’ll buy myself a pair of fitted running shoes. I want my parents to use their money on things for themselves, not on things for me. I want them to come home to a clean house, not have to work a 9 to 5 job, then come home to a mess, and continue working. After 31 years of raising 4 kids, they deserve them time.

This put stress on me after graduating, the desire to be financially independent, the desire to not ask them for so much. I felt like I had to be constantly busy, constantly strive to achieve something, to become something. I realize now that was the wrong mind frame. Constant business does not equal success, nor does it necessarily equal achievement, but it can equal a lot of stress and unfulfilled desires, which drives one on the wrong direction of achieving happiness. I didn’t want that.

I arrived home late in the night on June 5th from my post-grad travels, and I count June 6th as my first day of productivity and of “being home”. From June 6th and on, I was applying to 5 jobs every week. I also delved into editing at home. My mom, Michelle Minero, is a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, and she is writing a book, Self-Love: The Only Diet That Works. When I got home, I asked her if I could edit a couple chapters of her book, just for fun. After I gave her back one chapter, she told me that she learned more from me than she did from the three previous professional editors she worked with. After that, I continued to edit chapters of her book. I knew I was a great editor, but when trying to make a name for yourself in the professional world, having your mom, professor, or newspaper advisor saying you’re great isn’t as heavily considered compared to non-school and non-family clients. So when another editing opportunity came about, I was determined to grab it, whether it was productive or not.

Craigslist

My main venue of job hunting was Craigslist. I wasn’t looking for a 9 to 5 or commitment. I was looking for paid internships, short term projects, and part time jobs. Seeing myself stuck in an office 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, was monotonous torture. Choosing that path would be choosing to murder my spirit. I was looking up anything related to writing, editing, social media managing, and internet marketing. I thought I got lucky when I got a response from a post about editing a fantasy novel. This would be my editing break! I was wrong.

I was tricked into buying the flakes first novel, Fawcetta, which was self-published (not that I have anything against self-publishing, but he should have run his book through an editor first). His book was full of grammatical errors, horribly written sentences were sparkled throughout, disrupting the flow of the story, and there were a couple of incongruences in the information he gave about the world. I knew this because not only did I read the book, but I took notes, and dissected it, thinking it would help me to edit the sequel. The story was engaging, but the sentence structure and grammar took away from its quality. I was told that after reading his first novel, I would edit the sequel. He responded to me via email, but he missed all of our phone appointments, and sometimes gave excuses why via email. I decided he was too much work and too draining to pursue. He was either horribly organized and terrible at communication, or he was scamming people to increase his sales on his first book.

After that, I became more cautious with using Craigslist, but I didn’t slow down in searching for creative paid projects. There was one post that repeatedly caught my attention, a paid internet marketing internship. I applied for it and didn’t hear back, but I found something else, which I later realized was basically the same thing. Ed Dale’s, The Challenge. Choosing to do this, which started out as free training, changed my life, and turned me into a new marketing addict.

Have you set an opportunity or job on a pedestal, and realized that it was draining you and not worth your time? I have multiple times. 🙂 Feel free to ask any questions.

– Emelina Minero

My New Marketing Journal

My New Marketing Journey and Experience — Post 1

It’s December 2010. Seven months ago, I graduated from Randolph–Macon Woman’s College, on May 16th, 2010. I was a Spanish Major and a Creative Writing Minor. By my senior year, my passions had become writing, editing, and the internet. My Communication major friends called me an unofficial Comm major. I read their Comm books; I did my Spanish Senior Sem paper on Citizen Journalism and its effect on Spanish media; I fell in love with the creative writing world that dwelled within Twitter; I studied how the internet and new media were affecting print journalism; I developed a puppy crush on Chinese media; and I used social media to promote my newspaper. A key influence in my Comm desires and queries was my position in The Sundial, the college newspaper. I was the Editor-in-Chief. Seven months ago, I didn’t know the role that new marketing would play in my life today.

Right out of college, one of my journalism friends got a job at a newspaper. Another friend, a Creative Writing major, recently got an editing job at a newspaper and got her own apartment. That was my dream. Well, ideally, I wanted to own my own newspaper, a niche newspaper, and I still do, but I have my eyes set on that down the road. But getting an editorial job at a newspaper or magazine right out of college, getting paid decently to where I can be financially independent, and having my own place, that was what I thought I wanted. Seven months after graduating, I realized that is not the job that I want.

Seven months ago, if I told myself that I would confidently hold the titles of editor, writer, social media manager, internet marketer, web designer, and entrepreneur, I would be pleased, but I would wonder how, and perhaps think it improbable to learn or build upon all those skills in such a short span of time.

Seven months ago, if someone told me that I would meet the Salsa World Champion or an internet millionaire, perhaps I would have laughed.

Seven months ago, I did not know that I was going to get involved in an internet marketing internship or meet my mentor, Mikko Kemppe, which would change the course of my life.

Seven months ago, I didn’t know that I would turn down what use to be my “ideal” job after college. Via LinkedIn, I was asked to apply for an assistant editing job for an online magazine. The office is located 2 miles from my house in a central location. I would have been paid 40 to 45 thousand dollars a year with benefits and health care. As a package, it sounded great. The job description sounded less exciting, but for 40 to 45 thousand a year, who cares? Right? I cared. I didn’t want to work 40 plus hours a week, doing an easy, but somewhat boring job, with 10 days of vacation a year, especially after discovering the life path that I wanted to take, and that job wasn’t it.

So where am I in life at this moment?

Today, Dec. 30th, I am 23 years old; I have 148 dollars and 45 cents in my checking account. I owe my parents 100 out of 500 dollars that I borrowed after graduation so I could travel around the East Coast before I came back to California. I owe the government around 84 thousand in student loans. I just quit my job at a bookstore, and no longer have that as a source of income, and I’m living at home with my parents. Does this sound like success? Do you think I’m crazy for not wanting the 40 to 45 thousand dollar editing job?

I’m happy. I’m excited about life. I’m excited about my passions, my goals, and achieving them. I’m excited about new marketing, new media, and the internet. I’m excited that I’m following my passions, instead of allowing myself to be pigeonholed into a soul sucking 9 to 5 job that society deems as successful.

I don’t need to worry. I know that everything will be okay. With 145 dollars in my bank account, I know that my 84 thousand dollar student loans will be paid off within the next few years. I know that soon, I will be financially independent. I know that I will be doing what I love, and spending my time how I want to because I’m already starting to do that. I know that I’ll be traveling more, and I know that I’ll be spending more time visiting those that I love. I know this won’t be super easy, but I’m willing to work, and I have been working hard these past 7 months. I’ve been visualizing and working for what I want, and these past 7 months, although I know I have been working hard, it almost seems like everything has been falling into my lap. When doing what you love, hard work is fun. Sometimes I lose focus, and sometimes my drive diminishes, but I keep this phrase in mind, Just Do It.

The internet has so much to offer. New marketing and new media are like Disneyland. Let yourself be excited. Your life can change with one thought, with one choice. You don’t have to live life unhappily. You can continue reading my New Marketing Journal if you want to see what initially sparked my passion for new media, if you want to see the 7 month journey I went through to become the person that I am today, and if you want to continue my new marketing journey with me.

Let me know about your experiences. Are you a recent grad, or going through a life transition?  If you have any questions, please ask. 🙂

– Emelina Minero