Hello All,

Welcome to Week 4 of John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Training Masterclass Coaching Program. and my  journey of learning internet marketing and creating a business online around a 2 year old!

I think I have done really well this week by the end of this post I will have summarized  4 Weeks of our training program. Only 32 to go so far   (I think I set my self one big task! Nothing like giving yourself a goal and a challenge! )

So lets begin with this weeks tasks…….

Marketing Masterclass Week 4: Integrate Aweber With Your Blog

This week we were sent our welcome letter for the week, our checklist and we had 8 videos to download and watch to learn what tasks we needed to do for the week.

This week was all about setting up an auto responder service and adding in an optin form onto our blogs. Setting this system up enables us to start creating a mailing list. According to John, there is nothing more important than building our own mailing lists and building a relationship with our subscribers.

Video 1: Register With Aweber

Aweber is the recommended auto responder service for our training program as it has a double optin feature, plus all of the training videos have been done according to Aweber. You don’t have to go with Aweber, there are plenty of other auto responder services out there, however at this stage I did sign up with Aweber to make it easy for my learning. (If you want to know more about Aweber click here. Aweber.)

John recommend Aweber for a few reasons, mainly because of the double optin feature but also because they have excellent training tools, there customer service and support is very prompt and friendly and the system is really easy to navigate around.

In this video we are shown:

1. How to apply for and Aweber account
2. How to fill in the form correctly
3. And how to activate our account

Video 2: Create Your First List

In this video John shows us step by step how to create our first optin list.

We are shown:

1. How to access our accounts control panel once our account has been confirmed
2. How to find the Aweber tutorials and help section
3. How to use the set up wizard
4. How to choose a list name
5. How to fill in the “create a new list” form correctly
6. And how to save and activate the new lists settings

Video 3: Edit Confirmation Settings

After we set up our first list (the one for our blogs) it was now time to set up the confirmation email settings. this is the double optin process. When someone signs up through your optin form they are then sent a confirmation email where they need to confirm that they did sign up and do want to be on your list.

With spam on the rise it is important to make sure you comply with the international spam laws regarding collecting email addresses and make sure the people that sign up for your list do want to be on your list!

In this video we were shown:

1. How to access the confirmation email settings
2. How to edit the email
3. How to change the title and personalize it
4. How to edit the text body
5. And how to change the settings

Video 4: Set Up Welcome Email

Once the confirmation email is set up we then have to set up a “Welcome Email”. This is the email that our subscribers will get after they have confirmed their application to be on our lists.

In this video we are shown:

1. How to create the email form
2. How to edit the title, body text and personalize it
3. How to save the settings
4. And how to sequence the email so they receive the email straight after confirmation of their sign up to our lists

Video 5: Get Aweber Optin Code

In this video John show us how to create a optin web form to access our Aweber code.

We are shown:

1. How to set up the “create a web form” tab
2. How to fill in the details needed and save the form
3. How to access the html code needed for our websites
4. How to copy the “raw html code”
5. And how to save it to a text file on our computers in a folder called “Aweber Code”

Video 6: Get Optin Blog Code

In this video John shows us the optin form bog code we need to use to add our sign up form to our blog page. We are given access to the code that John uses on his planetsmsblog.

We are shown:

1. How and where to access the code (optin sign up form) that we need from John’s website
2. How to copy the code from John’s website
3. How to save the code to text file on our computer to a file called “Blog Code”

Video 7: Edit Optin Blog Code

Now we need to edit our “Aweber Optin Code” and our “Blog Optin Code” to create the right html code that we need to upload to our blogs to add a sign up form to our front page.

In this video John shows us:

1. How to open both code text files
2. The values that we need to edit
3. How to copy and paste the “Meta Web Form Id” from the “Aweber Optin Code” to the “Blog Optin Code”
4. How to copy and paste the “Unit Value” from the “Aweber Optin Code” to the “Blog Optin Code”
5. And how to save the code ready for uploading

There is another part of the “Blog Optin Code” that we can change which is the default redirect page that Aweber supplies after someone signs up through our optin form. As this page is pretty standard and boring john has given us access to use his confirmation page as our redirect page.

Johns page has instructions on what email our subscribers should expect and how to confirm their sign up application.

Video 8: Add Blog Optin Code To Our Blogs

After we have edited the “Blog Optin Code” file that we need, it is now time to upload the code to our websites to install our first sign up form.

In this video John shows us:

1. How to access and edit our theme files from with in our blog administration control panel
2. How to find the ‘Main Index Template’ that needs to be edited
3. How to save the ‘Main Index Template’ code to a separate file ready for just in case we have any problems
4. How to edit the ‘Main Index Template’ and add in our ‘Optin Code’
5. How to save the settings
6. How to fix the settings if we have a problem
7. And how to test that the settings worked

Once we have added in our optin form to our websites, we are then required to sign up to our own mailing list in order to test the sending of the emails, the spelling, grammar etc and to read the emails as if in the eyes of our potential subscribers.

Week 4 Checklist:

Our checklist tasks for week 4 were:

1. Register with Aweber
2. Create our first optin list
3. Edit our confirmation settings for our list
4. Edit our sign up settings for our list
5. Copy our Aweber list code
6. Copy the blog code John supplies us
7. Edit our Aweber code with the Blog code
8. Add our edited “Blog Optin Code” to our blogs
9. Test everything is working
10. Keep visiting other marketers blogs and learn from them
11. Keep posting on our blogs 2-3 times a week

OK so that is week 4 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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