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20 Questions With Paul Piotrowski From InspiredMoneyMaker.com

It’s time for the 2nd “20 Questions” interview, as promised I have lined up some great one on one Q & A’s with a few of the Internets well known bloggers and money makers – on that note, I managed to get a hold of Paul Piotrowski from InspiredMoneyMaker.com to grace us with his knowledge.

For those of you who don’t know Paul, he is the owner and force behind InspiredMoneyMaker.com, and more recently, InspiredAffiliate.com. I’ve been a follower of his since I began my quest online, and I’ve witnessed his growth as he has evolved into a well respected authority in the blogosphere. “Make money doing what you love” is something he stands by and teaches through various methods and mindsets, one of his specialties being the law of attraction and how to find your passions.

Paul’s been kicking ass with affiliate contests and establishing his new site, InspiredAffiliate.com, but was kind enough to take out some time to get down and dirty Elijah style – so without further ado I give you 20 Questions With Paul Piotrowski From InspiredMoneyMaker.com:

1. Who are you and what do you do?

I’m just a regular dude, with a lot of ambition. I won’t settle for mediocrity, and the thought of working at a 9-5 job I hate until age 65 makes me want to vomit. When I was younger, we didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My biggest ambition was to be rich. People who think that there is some redeeming quality in poverty are nuts. I truly believe that if we are blessed with the ability to build wealth and help the world with it, it’s our duty to do so.

Once I got a little bit older and built a bit of wealth, I realized that it was no longer just about the money for me. I realized that what I was really seeking is to make money doing what I love, and so my quest to become an Inspired Money Maker began.

One of my biggest passions in life is personal development. When I graduated from high school (13 years ago), I realized that 95% of people in life live in mediocrity and in order to go past that I would have to do what 95% of people are not willing to do. So, I began my 13+ journey of intense personal development and growth. I’ve lost count, but I would estimate that I’ve read over 1,000 books on personal development in that period of time on everything from entrepreneurship, to time management to spiritual development.

Presently I run a Blog at InspiredMoneyMaker.com which focuses on helping people to Make Money Doing What They Love. A few weeks ago, I also started another Blog at InspiredAffiliate.com which will document my journey to becoming a “Super Affiliate”. Inspired Money Maker is mostly about the philosophy and mental game of learning how to make money by doing what you love, whereas Inspired Affiliate is more just an example of me applying my philosophies to a very competitive industry. This way people can watch my
journey right from the beginning.

2. In 7037 words or less describe how you made your first profit on the Internet.

In 1995 I started a little web site project where I had very simple, one-page business card type web pages created for businesses looking to get themselves onto the Internet. I can’t specifically remember the exact one that paid me first, but I believe it may have been a horse ranch up in northern British Columbia.

I created a one page site for them, which I believe they paid me $10 or $20 for. The project never did end up going anywhere because back in 1995, most businesses had no clue how the Internet worked and trying to sell them on a “Website” was not easy. I think my idea was probably a few years ahead of its time, but I did end up learning how to develop HTML pages and stuff which helped me to make a pile of money later on in various jobs and companies I’ve worked with.

3. Were you born in Canada, or do you just live here like everyone else?

Nope. I was born in Poland and have been living in Canada since 1986. I was just a kid when I came here. I love living in Canada, and more specifically in the Greater Vancouver region of British Columbia. Even if I was a Billionaire, I don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else.

4. I’ve been hearing a lot of stories about young kids in high school making cash with Affiliate Marketing. If I email them death threats and momma jokes does that make me an e-bully?

Absolutely. 🙂 A lot of people feel threatened by the younger generation, much the same way the people before us felt threatened by our generation. I’m 31 right now, and it doesn’t really “bug” me that some 15 year old out there is making cash from Blogging or Affiliate Marketing. I say good for them.

That’s a much better thing for them to be doing than breaking into cars or loitering at the local 7/11. Don’t forget that just because someone at the age of 15 has found a market they can make some good cash with, that doesn’t mean they have life figured out. There are a lot of other moving parts to life than just making money. Kids have a lot of time on their hands and typically very few responsibilities at that age since their parents usually pay for their living expenses. It’s not surprising that they are able to be “profitable” online.

5. Coffee or tea?

Tea, all the way. I can’t stand Coffee. I get my caffeine from Tea and Coke, although I’m trying to cut back on both. To me, coffee tastes like someone mixed some black tar with some water and tried to pass it as something humans are supposed to consume. I’ll probably get a lot of slack for saying this, but one of the places that I absolutely try to avoid going near at all cost is Starbucks. Every time I go into one of them, it just seems like everyone inside is on a big Ego trip for who can order the drink with the longest name.

Starbucks has definitely got it figured out. People want to be unique. Give them a fancy, unique sounding drink with a name like “Grande Mocha Triple Berry Frapuccino Al-Pacino Poo Poo Extra Hot No Whip Cream Extra Caramel Shaken Not Stirred” and they’ll gladly pay $4.50 for it. You’re paying $1.50 for the coffee, and $3.00 for the name (smiles)

6. If you could have 15 minutes with any successful businessman or woman, who would it be and why?

Since I’m only allowed 15 minutes, I think my best bet would be 15 minutes alone with Angelina Jolie. I would ask her about her charity work (smiles)

7. I really feel that the internet contributes to Insomnia, do you ever dream of blogging?

I don’t remember any dreams about Blogging specifically, but last night I had a dream about AdWords, LOL. I think I was tweaking one of my Affiliate campaigns in my dream, hehehe.

8. Name the artist and title of the last full song you listened to.

Cypress Hill, (Rock) Superstar.

9. In your opinion, name 3 tools or services that are necessary to run a successful business online, and briefly explain why?

It’s hard to just narrow it down to three as there is a lot of interdependency between tools. Just off the top of my head, I would say WordPress to run a Blog, AWeber to build an email list, and the Photoshop for graphics. You can do a lot of damage with just those three tools. However, that already assumes that I’ve got a computer, with Internet connection, a mouse, Firefox and notepad at my disposal.

Of course, if you get into PPC Affiliate Marketing, things change. It would be hard to succeed in that without AdWords for example. So it’s kind of a hard question to answer unless I know what kind of online business you’re referring to. But in general, WordPress / AWeber / Photoshop are mandatory in my books for any online business.

10. You’ve shared with me that your attending your first ever Blog World Expo in Vegas this month, If I showed up dressed as a woman in her late 70’s, would you have any problems introducing me as your Aunt Estelle?

Only if you promised to bake me some cookies.

11. Do you watch TV, if so, name one of your favortie programs and explain why?

I try to watch less and less. Lately, the two shows that I’ve been watching regularly are “Paranormal State”, the documentary style show about some students from Penn State University that explore paranormal activity, and A&E’s “Mad Men”. Prior to that I was addicted to 24, LOST and Soprano’s. However, I typically don’t watch them on TV, instead I wait for the full season on DVD and do a weekend marathon. It’s way more fun!

“Paranormal State” I watch because I find psychic phenomena very interesting and I find watching the show much more freaky than the crappy “horror” movies out there right now where human bodies are being mutilated to get a reaction from the crowd. The show kind of reminds me of X-Files which I really liked as well.

“Mad Men” I like because it’s set in the 60’s and it portrays just how different the world was back then, even though it was only 40 years ago. I think the show is made by the same people who made Soprano’s which really liked as well.

12. People know you for InspiredMoneyMaker.com and you recently announced the launch of your InspiredAffiliate.com blog. How long did it take you to think of the name for your new blog?

As soon as I decided to launch a Blog about Affiliate Marketing, the idea for that name popped into my head instantly. Took about 8 more seconds to check if it was taken, so a grand total of 8 seconds.

13. Christopher Reeves, George Reeves, or Dean Cain?

Christopher Reeves. For me, he was the real Superman.

14. I recently saw the results for Yaro Staraks Blog Mastermind Contest and you placed in the top 15, congrats! How was the experience for you, and what were some methods you used to generate traffic for this offer?

I actually just promoted it on my Blog, telling people about it. In my opinion, the program is by far the best Blog mentoring program on the market. Yaro did a really good job on it, so it wasn’t hard for me to say good things about it.

Looking back, I wish I started my Affiliate Marketing path a bit sooner. I could have used what I’m learning about PPC traffic to promote the product even more for the competition.

15. I know you’re huge on the law of attraction. If I was to do the opposite of everything you’ve taught me, would it help me get rid of some people and things in my life?

If you want to “un-attract” something in your life, focus on attracting its opposite instead. You can’t become rich by “un-attracting” poverty. Don’t push against what you don’t want. Instead, turn around and go toward what you do want. If you try to focus on getting rid of someone or something in your life, you’ll just attract more of the same into your life.

16. Ham and cheese or tuna on rye?

Ham and cheese. Oh wait… Tuna on Rye….nope… uhhmm… You’re making me hungry. Either sounds good right about now.

17. In 357 words or less explain why most people fail to make a living doing what they are passionate about.

In one word: Fear.

In a few more words:

People are afraid of the power that dwells within them. Anthony Robbins calls it “Awakening the Giant Within”. I sometimes call it “Connecting to your True Self”.

If you can find that true self, and connect to it on a daily basis and begin to bring that to the surface, you have no choice but to be successful in life. Abundance is out natural state of being. The only thing that holds anyone back is ourselves. As soon as you stop looking “out there” for the reasons and excuses why you’re not able to make money doing what you love, the sooner you’ll be taking your first step to living a life as an Inspired Money Maker. It’s important to realize that it is a journey, and not something that happens instantly.

On my Blog, I wrote an article about making your first Inspired Dollar. That would be a good first step for everyone to take.

18. Where do you see yourself at this time next year? Long term goals?

A year from now I’ll be making a mid six-figure income from my Inspired Money Maker and Inspired Affiliate projects, and I will have inspired and helped hundreds of people to take the first steps towards becoming Inspired Money Makers themselves.

Long term my aim is to help people to awaken to their true potential.

19. Jurassic Park or South Park?

South Park hands down. The last Jurassic Park sucked so bad, I wanted to cry for wasting 2 hours of my life watching it. South Park is my kind of humor.

20. Why did you accept this interview?

1. My intuition said yes. 2. I like helping people. 3. It was fun.

Why Wayne Gretzky Would Make A Great Blogger

The Great One - Wayne Gretzky Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with a group of wonderful people via Lynn Terry’s weekly webinars – one of those people in particular is an SEO Expert by the name of Roy Montero – also known as The Twitter Guy. If you haven’t yet bumped into Roy somewhere online, you’re missing out! But be warned, although Roy is one of the most sincere and knowledgeable individuals you will ever encounter he is also strongly against get-rich-quick seekers and snake oil salesmen, as he likes to put it – so If you are planning to connect with him make sure you’re ready to step up to the plate. Roy hosts a weekly mastermind group on Skype, which I am a part of, and two weeks ago he shared a quote that stuck in my mind to this day and ultimately led to the title of this blog post. It went something like this:

Early in Wayne Gretzky’s hockey career he was coined as “The Great One“, and one night during an interview with the press he was asked “What’s the difference between a good hockey player, and a great hockey player?” and Wayne responded effortlessly, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

When Roy shared this quote with us I completely hit the floor. Preparation is the difference between good and great, and spiritually speaking, this Mantra can be applied to every aspect of our lives.

Now let’s insert this Mantra into the blogosphere – I know for a fact that there are thousands of people every day who make the decision to start a blog, and it’s usually for one reason – to make money online. Of those thousands, how many individuals take the time to prepare an in-depth business plan with research and marketing strategies? I think it would be safe to say very few, and taking this into consideration, how many of the “few” actually generate and adequate income from their efforts?

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

Now brace yourself – If you blog about how to make money from blogging, expecting to make money from your blog, you wont! One of my Mentors, Alan LeStourgeon from AffiliateConfession.com just laid this out in plain English recently on his blog. I strongly believe this is one of the primary reasons why most of us fail, and before you hit me with “but don’t you guys blog about how to make money?” let me explain. To be successful in any business you must follow some sort of formula, and ours is pretty simple:

A + B = C

or

Preparation + Opportunity = Success

Before Veronica and I decided to start this blog, I spent months upon end preparing myself by learning everything there is to know about Internet marketing, e-commerce, search engine optimization, domain names, web hosting, FTP, HTTP, CSS, WordPress, Blogger, link building, and keyword research. I got my feet wet using a multitude of techniques such as marketing through classified ads, article marketing, as well as using site builder scripts like Build A Niche Store to experiment in more specific areas. I’ve built made-for-adsense blogs, Squidoo lenses, and even attempted to spam forums so I could witness and document the outcome first hand. Are we millionaires yet? Not even close. Have we made money online?

Sure, we’ve made a bit.

The point I’m trying to make is everything we’ve done up to this point has prepared us for the opportunities we’re currently being blessed with – this blog being one of them. If you don’t put yourself out there, scrape your knee’s and get back up, how do you expect to be successful teaching people what to do when they fall down?

If Wayne Gretzky were a blogger, he would blog about hockey because that’s his forte. My forte is my passion for social empowerment, technology and networking. Veronica’s passionate about travel, interior design and the idea of working from home – so that’s what we blog about. Wayne Gretzky was a great hockey player because he spent his entire life practicing, and making the necessary mistakes to insure when he finally made it to the NHL, he would be a well oiled machine. Think like The Great One. Put yourself where the puck is going to be. Get your feet wet and learn from your failures. You will soon realize that regardless of the niche or task at hand, if you’re passionate about what you do – opportunity will arise and success will follow.

Cheers,

Elijah

Submit To 1000 Social Bookmarking Sites In 30 Seconds

Yeah right. Actually it’s more like 100+ social bookmarking sites in about 15 minutes. How you ask? By using the free services of a great little site called SocialMarker.com and if you haven’t heard of this site before, and you own a blog or two, then you better hop on over and create an account before they start charging for their services.

I first read about SocialMarker.com back in late June on DatMoney.com, which was around the time Veronica and I were conceptualizing this blog, and I knew at some point I wanted to try out a mass bookmarking service of some kind because we all know how time consuming it is to keep up with all these toolbars, usernames and passwords all in the name of blog traffic. So over the last month I’ve been dabbling with SocialMarker.com and seeing whether or not half of these social bookmarking sites are worth my time, or just another means of feeding social addiction. So what do I think?

SocialMarker.com kicks some serious ass!

The most time riddling aspect of using a service like this is setting up the accounts – but who really needs to use all 100+ social bookmarking sites to benefit from the potential traffic and backlink juice? If you need some help getting started, or are a little overwhelmed by the whole shebang, follow these steps below and you should be on your way:

Go to SocialMarker.com and set up your account. If you have questions, click here to find your answers.
Decide which social bookmarking services you would like to use, aside from the ones you already belong to. I suggest starting off with 10-20 sites and work your way up as you become more comfortable with mass bookmarking.
Click and drag the button they provide into your browser toolbar. When you want to blast a site to all your bookmarking services, select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate and submit. Super easy!
If you looking for an all-in-one bookmarking plugin for WordPress, they’ve also taken care of that as well. Just copy and paste the code they provide into your WordPress template and you’re good to go.

TheAtHomeCouple.com has been up and active for roughly a month and we’ve already had over 500 unique visitors, 10 subscribers via RSS, and new friends passing by every single week. SocialMarker is one of the main reasons why we are doing so well so early on and if you’re really serious about your blog, and already use social bookmarking and social networking as means of promotion and traffic, than this is for you.

If any of you already use it, I’d love to hear some feedback.

Cheers,

Elijah

The Pressure Of Writing Unique Blog Content

The Pressures Of Writing Useful Content For those of you following us on Twitter, we were away at a wedding over the weekend for a friend of the family. We had a great time, despite the rain, and returned home feeling somewhat refreshed and ready for a new week – or so we thought. I had the most unproductive day today (well technically yesterday at the time of this post) and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get into the groove.

When we returned on Sunday I immediately went to my white board and jotted down my goals and priorities for this week of blogging, which is becoming normal as the weeks pass, and I felt completely ready to conquer another list of tasks. Man was I ever unprepared. I spent the majority of today working on a new RSS/email subscribe form – which is something I didn’t want to spend more than an hour on – and questioning whether or not I liked our new WordPress theme. I can’t even count how many times I changed the theme on this blog today, and I don’t even know why I was tripping out. I wanted to write 2 posts today on top of Veronica’s Groundhog Theory post, and at various points throughout the day attempted to focus and write a “killer” article – that was not happening. I starting thinking about what you guys want to read and began getting caught up in the cycle of jotting down post ideas and titles without committing to any of them or following through. I felt so indecisive that I started to get frustrated at myself for being completely useless and wasting time “thinking” rather than “implementing” and everything hit the fan from there.

Man… blogging can be stressful. Not from the pressures or demands of your audience – at least not in the early stages – but the pressures from yourself. I have a tendency to set my goals super high and strive for greatness, so therefor I find myself to be disappointed on a semi-regular basis. This is not always good. When it comes to the premature stages of developing unique, useful content for your blog or website it’s important to write as much and as often as you can – but on the same note it’s just as crucial not to burn yourself out or focus too much on what you should be writing about. Instead, just write and everything will work itself out just like I’m doing at this very moment.

With the pressure to be different always sitting on your shoulders, it’s easy to forget to just be yourself – because that’s what makes you unique in the first place, right? This make money online niche can be stressful, so don’t be too hard on yourself and fixate on writing “top ten” articles and pillar style content because you will lose hair. Just write about what you know, what your doing, and what you love. If it doesn’t fit into an existing category on your site, then create a new one. Simple. As much as we read about writing great content and how important useful content is to Google and the search engines don’t forget to remind yourself of this one point – there are no rules when writing content for your blog.

It’s your blog, containing your thoughts, and there will always be people who feel the same as you. I feel much better now.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings 🙂

Cheers,

Elijah

Choosing The Right Theme For Your Blog

Choosing The Right Theme For Your Blog I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve changed the WordPress theme for TheAtHomeCouple.com. While our previous theme was clean, easy to navigate through and user friendly it wasn’t very smooth in the back end – which is just as important. If you are looking to make an impact with your blog, whether it be socially or financially, it’s vital that your theme provides the necessary functionality and seamless integration of plugins, applications and multimedia – because that’s what web 2.0 is all about! Considering the niche we’re in, I had to force myself to sit back and analyze what our goals are individually, and as a couple, in order to provide the best experience for us and our community. (I’m sitting at a coffee shop writing this post as a parking officer is writing a ticket for a delivery van that just parked 3 minutes ago. This is why I don’t drive.) Enough spying.

Here are some points I jotted down while analyzing what this blogs “needs” are:

We are very earthy people (hippie children) so that vibe needs to be portrayed tastefully.
We want to help as many people as we can to make a living online, while helping ourselves, so the theme needs to have social bookmarking and networking functionality built-in so the word can spread in the click of a button.
At least 2 side bars with a dedicated header and footer section for advertising, plugins, linking, and branding elements.
Personally, I find icons to be extremely important to the user experience, especially the social bookmarking and RSS icons. Since we are using a template, rather than a custom theme, the icon scheme needs to be consistent and well placed for optimal interactivity.
We collectively agreed to having a photo gallery section because we want our readers to get to know us, as well as giving you guys and gals the option to upload your own pictures and albums so we can get to know you (still not sure how I’m going to accomplish this fully).
Knowing that we will eventually hire a professional designer to build us a custom theme with custom functionality, we need our current theme to last us at least 6 months to a year (hopefully less if things go as planned).

After going through our list of needs I realized that the old theme didn’t even come close to meeting our needs, so I spent about three hours yesterday downloading, uploading and testing various themes from some of my favorite sites like nattywp.com, premiumthemes.net, new-wordpress-themes.net, and dailyblogtips.com. After almost throwing our laptop across the room I eventually stumbled upon this wonderful new theme, Kayupress, and what a great theme it is (we think so at least).

It’s earthy, unique, and comes with full front and back end capabilities to meet all of our needs – and then some! The html is marked up beautifully, and it comes with the functionality of some of the more popular plugins built right in – all you have to do is download and activate. The only downside at this point is there are some grammar mistakes with the image files the author provided, which I’m sure you’ll find, but it’s nothing that a glass of scotch and a little Photoshop can’t fix, right?

I’m pretty much self taught when it comes to html, and haven’t even delved into the world of css just yet – so the next week or so should be interesting to say the least. Anyways, we’d love to know what you guys think of the new theme, and if you have any suggestions or applications you would like to see, let us know.

Cheers,

Elijah