Hello All,

Welcome to Week 2 of John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Training Masterclass Coaching Program.

Firstly I would like to say thank you to YOU my readers for following my journey regarding my online business training in creating a business online. I do hope that my writing about me learning is helping you create your own business online also.

So lets begin…….

Internet Marketing Masterclass Week 2: Initial Blog Creation

This week we were sent our welcome letter for the week, our checklist and we had 7 videos to download and watch to learn what tasks we needed to do for the week.

According to John the next 4 weeks of the training program are all about blog creation and how to set up a blog from scratch. The reason why we are setting up a blog instead of a traditional website is because a blog is very easy to set up and easy to maintain.

The intention is to use our blogs as a way for us to learn how to create content and to start to generate subscribers for our mailing lists as soon as possible. According to John mailing lists are a key to success when you are developing an online business.

(Truthfully I haven’t really focused on the mailing list side of things yet. So far I have mastered the blog creation and product creation side of things. List building is a whole other series for later on as I really learn what I am meant to do. At the moment list building is still mumble jumble to me! The most I have done is set up the sign in form on the front page here!)

Video 1: Register With Clickbank

The first thing John wants us to do this week is to register a free account with Clickbank. Clickbank is a online digital market place where people sell their digital products to the public. Clickbank also gives people the opportunity to act as an affiliate and sell other people’s products for a commission. (You can read more about and sign up for Clickbank by clicking here. Clickbank.)

In this video we are shown step by step:

1. How to create an account with Clickbank
2. How to pick a nickname
3. And how to fill in the application form correctly

The process was really easy to do and only took around 10 minutes.

After filling in the application for our Clickbank accounts we were then sent a confirmation email and our Clickbank account was activated.

Video 2: Initial Website Preparation

In this video John introduces us to a program called File Zilla. File Zilla is a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program that helps you upload, edit and download files to and from your computer to your website space. It is a free program and is very easy to use and install. (You can read more and download File Zilla from clicking here. File Zilla)

We are shown step by step:

1. How to download the File Zilla program
2. How to set the program up on our computer
3. How to launch the program
4. And how to login and access our websites webspace from within the program

In order for us to install our blog onto the main directory of our website we need to delete the index page from the “WWW” file on our webspace. We are shown step by step how to do this.

Video 3: Create Your Blog

In this video John shows us how to install a wordpress blog onto our website.

We are shown step by step:

1. How to login to our website via our websites control panel
2. How to login to the “Fantastico” icon in our control panel
3. How to find the wordpress installation icon
4. And then how to actually install the wordpress content management platform software onto the root directory of our blog.

There is a form we have to fill in for the administration side of the program and connecting your webspace to wordpress. Once this is done correctly John then showed us how to finish the installation process.

The big test next was to enter our domain names and fingers crossed we saw a basic wordpress blog website that says “Hello World”

(This actually process was not that hard to do if you do the steps slowly. Since first learning how to do this I now have 3 blogs. The one I very first started with John’s basic coaching program www.jacintasblog.com. I haven’t done much with it since but it was good to initial learn on. This blog www.creatingmybusinessonline.com. I started this blog when I signed up as an advanced student and joined the masterclass program. and also my spray tanning blog www.spraytanningtips.com. All I have done at this stage is start that blog. It is meant as a dedicated site for my actual spray tanning training program www.spraytanningsuccess.com.)

Video 4: Create Blog Categories

In this video John shows us hot to access the wordpress admin panel of our blogs where we will actually create our posts, upload files, edit and manage our content.

We were shown:

1. How to delete the default links that wordpress has installed
2. And then how to add link categories (You can see these in the sidebar eg Internet Marketing, Personal Development etc)

Video 5: Create Blog Links

In this video John shows us how to add links to the link categories.

We are shown:

1. How to create a normal link (Eg; to another person’s blog)
2. How to find an affiliate product from Clickbank that we can recommend
3. How to create the affiliate link
4. And how to add that affiliate link into our links category  (Eg; Under the Category “Good Stuff” are links to some affiliate products I really like and recommend)

Video 6: Final Blog Preparations

In this video John teaches us how to change our permalink settings so when we write a post the post name will appear after our website name instead of a bunch of numbers. (For example yesterdays post permalink is http://creatingmybusinessonline.com/john-thornhills-internet-marketing-masterclass-week-1/)

We are also shown:

1. How to install a plugin to our blog called “Akismet” (“Akizmet” helps to avoid people from spamming our blog comments)
2. How to create a wordpress.org account
3. How to apply for an API key (This is needed to set up “Akizmet”)
4. How to complete the “Akizmet” plugin installation

Video 7: Start Posting To Your Blog

In this video John showed us step by step how to write our first ever post to our blogs. (This is like second nature now but was scary way back then! )

According to John most people are very confused when they first begin their blogs because they have no idea what to write about . It is suggested that we be ourselves and write about our hobbies, what interests us, what we are learning about, things we have done online, websites we visit, products and marketers we like etc etc.

Basically the important point he was trying to make to us is that we need to get used to the idea of writing original content in our own words no matter how silly we may think it sounds. It is vital that we get used to writing original content on a regular basis if our websites are going to be successful. Apparently the search engines love original regular content.

We are advised to make our posts at least 200-500 words long similar to length of an article. (I don’t think I have ever written an article under 200 words so far on this blog except for the one on writing smilies! )

The steps we are shown are:

1. How to access the posts category
2. How to set up to add a new post
3. How to add a hyperlink (a link to a website) into our post
4. And how to publish our post

Week 2 Checklist:

Our checklist tasks for week 2 were:

1. Register with Clickbank for a free affiliate account
2. Download and install File Zilla
3. Delete our index page prior to installing our blog
4. Install our wordpress blog onto our webspace
5. Add links and categories to our blogs
6. And spend some time visiting other marketers blogs, read their content, look at their style, their presentation and what they write about.

OK so that is week 2 wrapped up.

So until next time……..

Enjoy Your Learning!

P.S If you want to read more posts on my master class training, you will find them all listed on my masterclass training page. Click on the following link to get to that page: My Masterclass Training

P.P.S John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Masterclass Coaching may be closed at the moment. He has just started the new 2010 program and he only ever takes a limited amount of students at a time so as to dedicate himself to our learning, basically it is a first in first served situation.

Update 10/4/2010: John has just released a one month $4.95 trial to Masterclass meaning you can sign up for $4.95 and trial the training. As far as I know he is limiting these places. If you see a sold out sign, then do sign up to be notified when there are new places available again.

This training program was the best decision I ever made. I would not be doing what I am today if it wasn’t for John. I can not recommend this program enough!

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