I haven’t posted to this blog for a while. There’s a good reason why, which I’m going to tell you about in a moment. But first…

Last Thursday and Friday evening were two webinars hosted by my coach Alex. The webinar on Thursday was about using video to market yourself and was presented by Maria Andross who’s called the ‘Video Marketing Queen’.

Her enthusiasm is quite infectious so she’s very easy to listen to. It was reassuring to hear that the few videos that I’ve already loaded to YouTube and other video sites already conform to the tips and guidelines that she suggested. These included adding your website URL both within the video presentation and the video description, to drive traffic to your site.

Friday’s session was a different story though!

Now I signed up with Alex with one specific objective in mind; I needed to learn more about driving traffic. I can create great products and build converting websites till the cows come home, but I absolutely suck at generating traffic to my sites. The session was titled ‘Traffic Tornadoes’. So I was like a coiled spring. This was what I was waiting for; something to get my teeth into. Then I waited…

One hour in and I was still waiting. Now normally I would have been quite patient, but it was already gone 12 and I had to be up for work in the morning. Now Alex comes across as a great bloke and I bet he’s great company in person, but getting to the point doesn’t seem to be one of his strong points.

Anyway to cut a long story short ‘Traffic Tornadoes’ should have been called ‘Traffic Farts’! LOL. To put it simply I was expecting a little more than I got and felt a bit short changed.

Perhaps I’m being a bit paranoid, but I also detected a more sinister intent for Alex starting this coaching. It was when he was talking about using Twitter. Now I can’t remember his exact words, but it went along the lines that he would only reply or make a tweet if there was some business advantage in it for him. Perhaps I misinterpreted? But it got me thinking about his business advantage in running the program?

At the end of the session Alex announced two new competitions; one to do with video marketing and the other to do with blog positioning.

The first is to create a video on YouTube, but it must include Alex’s name and website as well as your own. The second is to position your blog as high in the Google listings as you can using Alex’s name as the keyword term. Get where I’m coming from?

Now I said at the start I was going to tell you why I haven’t posted. It’s because I couldn’t make my mind up whether to post about this and my concerns in public or not. I mean chances are that if any of the ‘Fortunate 500′ see this they’ll call me a heretic for criticising Alex or questioning his motives and I’ll be thrown to the wolves. But the simple fact is I’m here to build my own business, not somebody else’s.

So I won’t be entering the blog positioning competition, because my blog is here to build my own rapport and reputation with people not someone else’s. I will however be recording a video as I have some great new content you’re going to find super useful when building a list. Watch out for that one!

Am I sorry that I started this coaching thing with Alex? Absolutely and one hundred percent NOT! Here are the reasons why:

1)  I wouldn’t be as productive as I am now (gotta love my kitchen timer).
2)  I probably wouldn’t have posted as much to this blog as I have.
3)  I wouldn’t have got my new project to launch stage – it should have been completed 12 months ago.
4)  And I wouldn’t be as highly motivated and focused as I am right now. Probably more positive and focused than I’ve ever been since I started my online business all those years ago.

I guess it’s quite normal for ups and downs in any relationship, including one with your coach. If I have the wrong end of the stick here then I apologise. But I’m putting this behind me and moving forward with the intention of getting as much out of the deal as I can to build MY business.

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: business building, business coach, business coaching, paranoia, video marketing

Well the second session with my new business coach Alex Jeffreys was on Tuesday evening. He outlined the products and system provided – that he calls the “platform” - to get me up and running building my mega responsive email list. I had a definite spring in my step the next day – life is good!

Installing the “platform” was very straightforward and I had my new website operational on Wednesday. I deliberated long and hard over what domain name to get as I’d created a long list of available names. But eventually decided on ListBuildingTruths.com. I thought it was a good domain name that’s easy to remember and relevant to the product.

So what else have I been doing this week?

Well I knocked up a very quick cover graphic for the free report. That’s it over in the sidebar on the right. Not bad for about 30 minutes work eh? Of course I placed the ad in the blog sidebar as you can see. I’ve also started promoting the report in a number of high profile places.

Today I wrote 3 articles about list building with a link to the report and placed them in 4 article directories.  They’ll take a couple of days to get approved, but then they’ll be listed in Google pretty quickly. I’m hoping at least one will get taken up by an ezine author or blogger. I also placed an online classified ad, which only took a few minutes to do.

I just checked my stats and as of 9pm GMT this evening I have exactly 7 sign-ups to my new list. According to Aweber my unique conversion rate is 60%. If it stays that high I’ll be well happy. No sales as yet, but I know where the traffic’s coming from and the guys on that forum are a cynical bunch.

Heard by email from Alex this morning that tonight’s coaching session is postponed until next week. I must say I was disappointed because I was looking forward to soldiering on over the weekend. But I guess I’ll just carry on promoting the site and this blog until then.

That’s it for now. Expect another coaching update from me next week.

Be successful.

Technorati Tags: Alex Jeffreys, business coaching, mentoring