By Gail Brenner of A Flourishing Life

Blogging isn’t that scary, is it? If the forums are any indication, there is a lot of fear out there. In the new Mind Tools project of the A-List Blogger Club, we offer practical guidance to help you move through your inner obstacles and balance blogging with the rest of your life. What better place to start than with the number one problem – fear.

Maybe these sound familiar to you:

• Fear of failing, of doing it wrong
• Fear of losing your creative juice
• Fear of negative feedback
• Fear of public humiliation
• Fear of not keeping up with your posting schedule
• Fear of starting your blog
• Fear of success – what if your subscriber numbers actually skyrocket?

Fear can stop us dead in our tracks. It fuels procrastination, and drains our energy. When we’re afraid, we feel unsafe and unhappy. Confusion reigns, and our focus falls by the wayside.

Yet, fear is normal. Rather than fight with it or wish it would go away, we can learn to work with it to our advantage. When we understand fear and practice some tools to deal with it, we gain confidence that we can reclaim our sense of control – and our sanity. We find that the monster under the bed was just a dust ball.

Deconstructing Fear

Fear is both physical and psychological. It shows up in our bodies and in our minds.

The scientists call it fight or flight. When faced with a potentially threatening situation, our nervous systems bolt into action. The heart races, the stomach turns upside down, and our muscle fibers start firing like crazy so we are ready to protect, defend, or get the hell out of there.

This reaction is all about survival. The perceived threat might be another item added to our already full to-do list, but we react as if a hungry lion just crossed our path.

At the same time, our minds work overtime trying to figure it all out. We reel with self-doubt, worry obsessively, get stuck in “omigod!” and come up with a whole host of “what if’s.” The vast majority of these thoughts are distortions of the truth or projections about an imagined future. In an effort to prepare ourselves, we think of every possible (usually negative) outcome, then react as if they have already come to pass.

We’re loaded with tension, and we aren’t thinking clearly.

The Most Effective Strategies

“The best way out is always through.” ~Robert Frost

Enter the toolbox. These elements of fear – physical symptoms, spinning thoughts – can be a signal to pull out our arsenal of tools and start putting them into use. When we actually address the fear rather than letting it run us, we work our way through to a place of ease and clarity.

Here are some of the most useful tools. Choose the ones that work for you, and let the rest go. But most importantly, use them. Fear can be an ally, a friend even. But don’t let fear run you. Take your life back – this is your life we’re talking about.

Tools for the Body

Since the physical fear response is about an overactive nervous system, these tools focus on calming the body.

• Deep breathing. Our breathing becomes shallow and tense when we are stressed. Take a deep breath and sigh audibly as you exhale. Do this two or three times, then let go of the sigh. Take some deep inhales and exhales with your mouth closed. Your lungs fill completely and your chest expands, then contracts. Simple as it is, just paying attention to your breathing can relax your body and clear your mind.
• Visualization. Close your eyes. Start with the soles of your feet and imagine a warm flow of calming energy entering your body. Slowly bring the flow up to touch all parts of your body, from the inside out. Take your time, and watch the tension begin to melt away.
• Progressive muscle relaxation. Starting again with the soles of your feet, slowly move your attention through your body, relaxing every muscle as you go.
• Movement. Stand up, swing your arms, stretch, go for a walk or run, get your energy moving. Consider incorporating a regular practice of yoga or tai chi.

Tools for the Mind

Fear-based thoughts leave you caught in a maze, not knowing what to do. Working with them clears the path to efficient, unambiguous, and joyful action.

• Detach from your thoughts. When we are afraid, our thoughts rush in like a flash flood. Take some breaths (see above) and shift your attention away from the thoughts. Put some space around them so they don’t consume you.
• Remind yourself to relax. In the throes of fear, we forget the option of relaxing. Use your mind to tell yourself calming, soothing, empowering thoughts – “It’s going to be OK,” “I can manage this.”
• Question your thoughts. Notice the thoughts that you are thinking. They are unlikely to be completely true. They overgeneralize (“I’ll never figure this out”), underestimate (“I can’t cope”), and jump to conclusions. If you believe them, you are basing your actions on a distorted view of reality, which is unwise. Move beyond the thoughts to see what is actually true. This tool can take some time to master. For additional support, check out Byron Katie‘s process and an article I wrote called “Don’t Believe It!.” Please don’t be afraid to ask for help, if this is a problem for you.
• Recognize what you don’t know. Often, fear-based thoughts clamp down on future outcomes. We limit ourselves by acting as if we know what is going to happen. If your thoughts include assumptions about the future, acknowledge that you don’t actually know. Stay open so that creative solutions can emerge.
• Realize that your thoughts are fueled by fear. If you find yourself caught in unproductive thinking gone wild, move your attention directly into the fear that is driving the thoughts. Breathe into the sensations, and bring great kindness and compassion to that fearful part of yourself. When you make friends with fear, it begins to lose its power over you.
• Embody your role models. Think of someone you admire, and channel their insight and maturity. What would Buddha (or Jesus or Aunt Mary) do?
• Listen carefully. Once you realize the inefficacy of most of these thoughts, you can put them aside and tune into your inner wise one. He or she is in there, I promise. Reflect on how to solve the problem or dilemma you are faced with, then watch the clarity come.

Now bring to mind your worst fear about blogging – getting feedback on the forums, taking a controversial stand. Whatever it is, rather than freaking out, turn toward the fear. Take control, as your toolbox is now jam-packed with useful strategies. Reconnect with why you decided to start blogging in the first place, and take your next step with confidence and ease.

Gail Brenner is a psychologist and blogger. Read more of her articles at A Flourishing Life.

Note: The Mind Tools project of the A-List Blogger Club is designed to help members move through fears, doubts, and obstacles and live a sustainable blogging lifestyle. You can find our resources here (click on Mind Tools), and we will be adding to them regularly. If there are any topics you would like us to address, please post them on the Mind Tools thread of the forum or send me an email at Gail[at]AFlourishingLife.com.

By Leo Babauta

The most important element of blogging is content. Answers questions on: proper length of a post, posting frequency, writing essays vs. lists, making a personal connection with readers, and more.

Password: antihype

Blogging 101 Podcast 6 – creating content from A-List Blogging Bootcamps on Vimeo.

Welcome to our Bootcamp Create Courses that Sell!

In the next 5 days we’re going to give you just about everything you need to know in order to create courses and build membership programs.

Leo has asked me to take lead in this Bootcamp as it’s my special area of expertise. However, you’ll be able to read Leo’s case study, and he’ll take the Masterclass on Day 4.

Please don’t worry whether your blog is big enough in order to sustain a course. We’ve got two inspiring case studies from members of the A-List Blogger Club, artist Amelia Critchlow and scrapbooker Shimelle Laine. They both started courses successfully when their blogs were still quite small.

We’ve got a lot of material for you. You won’t be able to get through it in just five days. This time, I’ve indicated which of the articles give an overview (read these first!), which ones have in-depth information, and which ones are detailed how-to articles. I hope that this will help you to use your time wisely.

Each day we run a live Masterclass at 5pm Eastern.

Welcome to our Bootcamp: Ramp up Your Blog: Create Courses that Sell!

Below you will see the array of material for this Bootcamp. As each day comes on stream, you will find live links below.

Depending on your time and interest, you can choose to just read the Introduction to each topic, or go deeper with In-depth Information. In order to implement the material, you will need to work through the Detailed How-To sections.

The material of Day 1 will give you both the inspiration and the planning tool in order to create courses on your blog. The workbook “From Passion to Product” is a must for everyone. You won’t be able to go right through it within the time-frame of this Bootcamp, but make sure that you download it and start working your way through it -whether you are still at the beginning of your blogging journey, or are already a seasoned professional blogger.

Masterclass Day 1 video and audio

01 Introduction to Create Courses that Sell

02 How a Passionate Artist Fulfilled Her Dream of Teaching An E-Course [CASE STUDY]

03 The Accidental Entrepreneur: Mary’s Story [CASE STUDY]

04 How Going from Blogging to Bootcamps Changed My Life: Leo’s Story [CASE STUDY]

05 From Passion to Product [WORKBOOK]

The material of Day 2 will show you how to create an asset through building an email list. You’ll learn why that’s crucial if you want to make money from blogging.

Questions from the Day 2 Masterclass: Recordings

06 Why Building a List is Crucial For Future Income

07 Jeff Walker: Why an Email List is an Asset [VIDEO]

08 Why Email Lists Are Powerful: Interview with Dave Navarro [PODCAST]

09 How to Set Up a List on Aweber [VIDEO]

10 The Good Karma List Machine

11 Good Karma List Machine: Installation [VIDEO]

12 Good Karma List Machine – Admin Setup [VIDEO]

In the material of Day 3, you’ll learn about the importance of launches – and exactly how to do them. Don’t miss the Unit 13 video – it’s inspiring!

MASTERCLASS Day 3 recording

13 How a Broke Guy Stumbled Upon Launch Secrets and Got Rich [VIDEO]

14 How to Create a Launch with Heart: 5 Tips that Increased Membership by 470% in 4 Days

15 How to Create a Short Sales Page (PDF)

16 A-List Blogging: The Launch Swipefile PDF

17 The 4 Day Cash Machine Launch E-mail Swipe File

Setting up and running successful courses is easier than you think. The Day 4 material will show you how to set up courses quickly and simply.

Recorded MASTERCLASS with Leo Babauta

18 The Three Essentials for Creating Successful Courses [VIDEO]

19 The Three Crucial Ingredients of Successful Courses [TRANSCRIPT]

20 How a Scrapbooker Created Successful Courses With Small Numbers and Organic Growth [CASE STUDY]

21 How to Start Making Real Money With Your Products in 3 Days [PDF]

22 How to Structure a Module – Part 1 [TIPSHEET]

23 How to Structure Modules – Part 2 [CASE STUDY

24 Camtasia: the Magic Software for Creating Training Videos [ARTICLE PLUS 4 HOW-TO VIDEOS]

25 Camtasia In Action – How to Grow a Killer Blog [VIDEO]

26 How to Create a Podcast – Part 1 [VIDEO]

27 How to Create Podcasts – Part 2 [VIDEO]

28 Amazon S3: How to Rent Cheap Online Storage Space for Media

In this module, you’ll learn about Membership Programs. Why to create them, how to set them up, and how to run them.

Recording of Mary’s Masterclass

29 Why Membership Programs Rock

30 Membership Programs: Challenges and Joys

31 Introduction to Membership Software

32 Toolkit for Creating Courses and Membership Programs

33 How to Use Wishlist Member – Part 1: Modular Model [VIDEO]

34 How to Use Wishlist – Part 2: The Publisher Model [VIDEO]

35 Creating a Forum: How to Use the Simple:Press Plugin

36 Boost Your Success with Affiliate Programs

Conclusion

38 What you can take away from this Bootcamp

Unfortunately there was a problem with recording the Masterclass. Below is a partial audio recording (10 minutes into the Masterclass), as well as a video of the question and answers.

Below is Part 2 of the Masterclass of August 8, 2010 with Mary Jaksch: Questions and Answers

Untitled from A-List Blogging Bootcamps on Vimeo.

Download the Chat of the Day 1 Masterclass here.DAY 1 CHAT Creating Courses

There were some technical hitches during the Masterclass today due to fluctuating Broadband speeds. My apologies! So instead you’ll find below a video and podcasts in answer to questions.

Video Question: Why is Aweber the autoresponder of choice?

Below are short podcasts with answer to questions:

Podcast #1

Download it here or listen to it below

• The Good Karma List Machine stats look fantastic! What’s your sense of it?

Podcast #2

Download it here or listen to it below.

• Does the Good Karma List Machine work with Mailchimp?

Podcast #3

Download it here or listen to it below.

• Should we send out newsletters? How often?
• If you started again, would you collect email addresses or subscribers.

Podcast #4

Download it here or listen to it below.

• Can you collect an email list without newsletters?
• What’s easier for the technically challenged, Aweber or mailchimp?
• Why did so few people reach the reward with the GKLM

Podcast #5

Download it here, or listen to it below.

• Should we give away a free ebook?
• Do you have to have pictures to lighten up an ebook?
• If you have more than one blog, do you use one email lists or two?

Podcast #6

Download the podcast here or listen to it below.

• Can we collect emails for later use without putting out a newsletter?
• What’s technically easier Aweber or mailchimp?
• Why did so few people reach the reward with the GKLM

Podcast #7

Download it here or listen to it below.

• Do you own Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula” and how much did it help you?

Podcast #8

Download it here or listen to it below.

• How often do you have to contact you list to keep it ‘warm’?

By Mary Jaksch

In this course we’ve given you a lot of information.You may feel overwhelmed and unsure of what to implement next. That’s quite normal. It’s like eating a big meal: you need time to digest it.

A key piece of this Bootcamp is the workbook “From Passion to Product”. That is something you can put to good use wherever you are on your journey as a blogger. If you are still trying to find a direction for your blog, you can use the workbook to narrow your blog focus. If you are further along on your journey, you can use the workbook as a planning tool for each potential product.

The one thing to take away.

The most important thing to take away is that this is achievable. It’s achievable for you if you are willing to put in time and effort. Here are the steps:

1. Create a blog and focus on growing your subscriber base. Tip: Use Feedburner and focus on email subscribers, rather than on RSS.
2. When you get to about 200 subscribers, start a monthly newsletter in order to grow an email list. Use Mailchimp or aWeber to collect them. (If you’re still unclear about the difference between blog subscribers and email subscribers, read this Bootcamp article.)
3. When you start your email list, begin to plan a possible product. (Read the case studies by Amelia and Shimelle to see how they both started successful courses on the back of small blogs)
4. When your product is ready, focus on the launch. Use the launch swipefiles we’ve given you as a blueprint.
5. Don’t worry if you only have a small number of course participants to start off with. Organic growth is good, as it allow you to grow into your new tasks.
6. Keep on launching. Either launch new products, or relaunch updated versions of previous products. Each time you create a launch, your email list will grow.

Now you’ve done the Bootcamp, what’s next?

If you’ve joined the Bootcamp, you still have another four weeks to study the material and enjoy the community in the forums. I’ll be happy to answer questions during that time.

Ideally, you’ll want to be part of the A-List Blogger Club as you will then have unlimited access to ALL our material, including the material of this Bootcamp. I’d like to help Cub members to work through this material until they’ve got a product out in the marketplace.

Many of you who joined us for the Bootcamp have taken advantage of the $1 trial membership of the A-List Blogger Club. If you are keen but missed the deadline, talk to our Administrator Deb Moran at alistblogging[at]gmail[dot]com. We’ll definitely close this option off completely this Friday, August 12 at midnight. (Remember that you get all future Bootcamps for free!)

The next Bootcamp – yeah!

How to Write Like an A-List Blogger

November 7-11, 2010 with Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch

Leo and I are very excited about the theme. It’s going to be awesome…!

Thanks to all of you who contributed to this Bootcamp: Amelia and Shimelle with their inspiring case studies, Lodewijk for his helpful video about Simple:Press, and Barrie who helped in the preparation phase. Thanks also to our guest experts, Dave Navarro and Charly Leatham.

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful participation and your patience when the gremlins attacked us.

P.S. Some of you have asked us to offer some very basic training, something like Blogging for Dummies. It’s a great idea. I have a plan… watch this space!

By Mary Jaksch

Affiliate Programs can increase your range of marketing through enlisting others to help sell your products. This means that others get a commission whenever someone uses their affiliate link in order to buy your product.

I’ve had some good experiences with affiliate programs – as well as some catastrophic ones. Below are some suggestions and tips:

Affiliate systems for simple products

• Clickbank
  If you have a simple product that is delivered in one hit, i.e. an ebook, or a self-study course where all the modules are delivered all at once, then you can use Clickbank. It’s a simple process to set up a Clickbank account. However, payout options are limited, especially for people living outside of the US. The great thing about Clickbank is that it takes care of paying your affiliates. You can join Clickbank for free. They take a percentage of your sales.If you want to deliver a sequence of modules through Aweber emails, you can integrate Clickbank with Aweber. However, you will have some problems with customers who forget to signup to your Aweber list, or don’t reconfirm.
• E-junkie
  For a one-time download delivery, E-junkie is the easiest affiliate program to use. I’ve tried it myself, and Leo uses it for his ebooks. You will still have to manually pay people their affiliate bonuses. If you’re starting out and delivering your product by download, or by directing people to a particular page, try using E-Junkie. It’s free to join. They take a percentage of your sales.

Affiliate systems for sequential delivery or membership programs

• Post Affiliate Pro ($199)

  This is an affiliate system for a more complex setup. You could use it for sequential courses or membership programs. Tip: choose Post Affiliate Pro if you really need a migraine! I paid them to set up our first affiliate program – and they set it up incorrectly. The guys who run Post Affiliate Pro are in Poland, and some of them only speak rudimentary English. I couldn’t get them to answer my frantic helpdesk emails. When I finally found their phone number and rang them, they couldn’t understand what the problem was (which was basically that their faulty setup had caused a total f***up!)

  In the end they refuse to refund me the cost of buying the product and having it set up. By the way, they offer “life-time customer support”! Yeah, right – you wouldn’t really want a life-time of that kind of support…

• iDev Affiliate ($99)

  This is a program that is similar in scope to Post affiliate Pro. We use it at A-list Blogging. It works well. Most importantly, iDev have excellent tutorials (that even I could get my head around). Idev integrates beautifully with Wishlist Member. I recommend it and I’ve used an affiliate link above because I’m happy to promote it. If you buy it and can’t find how to use it, I can help you.

Working with your affiliates

It’s important to keep your affiliates in the loop and to give them banners and so on to put up. You can also create prefab launch emails for them. In reality, only a few affiliates will be really active. Most won’t do much.

Tips

• Set up your affiliate system at least 2 months out from the start of your launch.
• If you haven’t got a lot of technical knowledge, get a techie to set up the system.
• You need to spend at least 2 weeks studying the affiliate system, once it’s installed.
• Test the system over and over! The way to do that is to set up a 10c payment for your product and to buy it over and over. I use gmail in order to set up lots of ‘play’ emails in order to test stuff.
• Spell out to your affiliates that they are not allowed to offer a discount.
• Encourage your affiliates to offer a bonus in order to make buying through their link attractive.
• It’s important to create attractive banners for your affiliates.

Is it worth setting up an affiliate program?

Setting up an affiliate program can be quite time-consuming, especially if you need something like iDev. I think it is worth it, because it helps your list to grow. It also helps you to promote and sell your products. But I wouldn’t suggest rushing into setting up an affiliate program. You can do that once your products are selling and you have a loyal customer base who are happy to support you.

If you want to add a forum to your blog – which you need to, if you’re creating a membership site, or want to add true interactivity to the programs you’re running – you have quite a few different forum software options.

One of the best forum software is vBulletin which costs $195 for a single license.I’ve tried vBulletin and it’s excellent forum software. However, it’s hard to tweak the design to be compatible with your website.

That’s why at A-List Blogging we use a free WP forum plugin, called Simple:Press. The look of your site is maintained – and with that the branding is strengthened. Simple:Press isn’t a sophisticated as vBulletin, but is easy to use. And it’s being developed consistently.

A-List Blogger Club member Lodewijk van den Broek has kindly created a video on how to set up and use Simple:Press.

Click here to watch it.

In this video, Charly Leatham, the Wishlist Member expert shows to how to set up Wishlist for Publisher Model.

If you need expert help for setting up Wishlist, I highly recommend Charly, she rocks. You can contact her here: http://askcharlyleetham.com/

The Publisher Model

The Publisher model is where you continually publish fresh new content on a regular basis. So when somebody joins your membership, they typically get access not only to the new content that you published this month, but also to the content that you published in previous months.

Watch the video below (it may take a moment to appear)