For those of you who don’t know, Jeremy over at Shoemoney.com has had a contest going for some time now where he is giving away a free Macbook or Macbook Air to a lucky reader.

The rules are simple. If you visit his blog everyday and comment on his posts, you enter yourself for a chance to win. One winner will be picked each day to win a Free Shoemoney t-shirt, and be entered as a final contestant for a chance to win one of the Macbooks.

I’ve been commenting on Jeremy’s blog since before the contest, and I’ll continue to comment after the contest, but I’ve been working especially hard to make sure I comment every single day on one of his posts to try to at least win a t-shirt.

It’s taken many many comments, but about a week ago I was finally selected as a daily winner. I got an email, responded back, and was notified that my FREE Shoemoney shirt was on its way. I was pretty excited. There’s very few things I love more than free t-shirts.

I checked my mailbox this past Friday, hoping my shirt would be there, and… all I found was an envelope saying I had to pay $1.70 and they would deliver my shirt the following day.

Reluctantly, I paid.

So what the contest should have said was, a daily winner will be chosen to get a Shoemoney shirt at a discounted price.

Never-the-less, I’m happy to have gotten it. Happy enough that I took a picture of me wearing it, and this is how it turned out. I like to think I’m fairly photogenic.

To move forward, sometime you’ve got to take two steps backward.

Shoemoney wrote a post today asking, “Have you ever lost it all?“  Where he talks about the financial situation of today and the stings some are facing with their own financial situations.  He also talks about hitting rock bottom and how it’s helped him to work harder, manage his money better, and eventually succeed.

I wrote a comment to his post that was pretty lengthy and I thought I would share it in a post to let you know where I’m coming from.

I never hit rock bottom the way he has, but I’ve been pretty close to losing everything I have, and being as close to rock bottom as I ever want to get.

My wife and I met in college, we moved in together about a year before we got married. The rent was difficult to pay, and so I quit school and my part-time job to help pay for things.

I started working at a factory 10 hours a day 6 days a week, spending almost no time with her, but to sleep. The pay was minimum wage so I wasn’t making a whole lot. We still had trouble paying for rent and food and such, but we managed.

About 3 months after I took the factory job, I got a phone call. I had been in the military at that time for about 4 years already (National Guard). The person on the other end asked me if I was interested in working full-time for the special events team and it eventually lead into a full-time recruiting position for the guard. My wife and I bought a nice two-story house on the lake, and had a great time, spending money left and right, dragging ourselves deeper into debt. It didn’t matter, I was making good money.

Then came a call for deployment. When a soldier gets deployed for war, by law his civilian employer is required to give his job back when he returns. But the government and the military isn’t. So I was put on deployment orders, and taken from my job that paid for all of these nice things we had.

Long story short, when I got off deployment, I had nothing. Bills were still due, the giant mortgage we had was still due, and we still needed to eat. We got to the point where we were contemplating bankruptcy and losing everything. I was looking for a job, but I was picky about what I wanted to do. I refused anything that wasn’t a certain thing or didn’t pay a certain amount of money.

Then I got off my high horse, I let myself be humbled, and I started looking for any job I could get. I was on the verge of taking one, having to move my family far away from anyone we ever knew, and starting in a place we had never been before.

Until God finally said, “You’ve learned your lesson.” The week before we were to move (house still unsold), I got a phone call from a new company 20 min from my house. The following monday, they hired me.

When I stopped turning my nose up at offers I felt too good for, and started to let myself be humble, God provided me with the job I had always desired.  He also taught me to value family more, and to be thankful for what I do have, because not everyone is so lucky.

I appreciate money more, and my situation changed me in a way that I now want to help everyone I can in the same situations I was facing.

You’ll never see me driving a bad ass sports car. Every bit of extra money I get will go to helping others or in a savings account for whenever that situation may come again.

What situations have you been in, that has helped you to be the person you are today?

Unless you are an Australian, you probably don’t know this.

The Australian dollar has dropped dramatically, from 95 cents US a few months ago, to about 68 cents US as I type this.

Why this matters to you is that Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind, charges admission in Australian dollars.

Everyone is raving about this program.  If you don’t believe me, just do a search on Google for “Blog Mastermind Reviews” to see what other people are saying.

It’s the only program of it’s kind that teaches you how to make a full time living from blogging only part  time, and is led by one of the best blog teachers I know of.

Already over a 1,000 people have taken part in the program, with many satisfied graduates earning good money from their blogs.

YOU CAN SAVE IF YOU ACT BEFORE MONDAY

If you paid for entry into the program right now with a credit card that is in US dollars, you would save roughly 32% off the entry fee, because the course fees are in Australian dollars.

If you ordered the $97 month for six months plan, your credit card statement would show about $66 as long as the Aussie dollar remained where it is now.

For the $497 AUD prepaid package, where you get the entire program up front, the cost on your US card  would show roughly $338.

Note of course these prices are subject to change based on the current exchange rates, but it doesn’t look like the Australian dollar will climb back up any time soon (but who knows!).

It really doesn’t matter though, because Yaro is changing his pricing structure Monday and will be charging in American dollars then. So you only have until Monday to save.

When you go to the payment page you will see prices of $97 or $497 depending on what you choose.

Those prices are in Australian dollars, so the discount will show up if you pay with a US dollar credit card, assuming the Aussie dollar was still weaker when you ordered.

THE $97 MONTH PAYMENT PLAN IS GOING TOO

On Monday Yaro is also eliminating the $97 a month pricing plan. He said he does have plans to bring it back, but because of his bank and online shopping cart system, he can’t charge in USD for recurring subscriptions.

Until he changes his system or they upgrade the features, there won’t be a $97 a month option, only a $497 prepaid course option.

To put it in simple terms – If you want to join Blog Mastermind, the cheaper price deadline is Monday, so you better decide soon.

Good luck with your blog and make sure you tell me what you think of Yaro’s course if you join.

Don’t forget, Yaro has a 30 day money back policy, so you can sample it without worrying about losing your money.

Even if you are not 100% sure, you should give his coaching program a try now so you can lock in the Australian dollar pricing and if you decide it’s not for you, just ask for your money back within 30 days.

I’m not new to internet marketing, search engine optimization, or anything of that nature, but I am new to blogging.  Many of you don’t know that because you’re even newer than me, or you just assumed I’ve always been here, you’ve just never been able to find me until now.

But that’s just not the case.  From day one of creating this blog I’ve worked hard, and just when I thought I was working as hard as I could, I amped up my work 200%.  And this hard work in the single month’s time that I’ve been blogging, has shown dramatic increases in traffic, search engine listing, alexa rankings, and dollars made.

- In just one month, I’ve seen my blog move from 0 visits to now over 4700 per month.

- I’ve moved my initial Alexa ranking from approximately 12 million down to around 490 thousand.  If you know anything about Alexa at all, that is a tremendous undertaking.

- I’m already showing almost 10,000 links pointing back towards my blog between the three major search engines.

- I’ve been recommended reading to fellow bloggers by some top bloggers in the industry

- I’ve already started seeing income pouring in from different sources.

- My blog is already worth over $3500.

All these things that could normally take bloggers a year or two to accomplish, I’ve done in one month.

I’m not telling you all of this to impress you, but to impress upon you the importance of not only putting good content out there, but also marketing like crazy and using social media to make friends and build your community.

I want this to be motivation for you to move forward, and never look back.  Don’t give up your hope and one day you will achieve you dreams and goals.  Don’t blame lack of time or experience.  Instead, make time, and learn all you can.  There was a point in my life when I didn’t know a thing about the internet.  But I wanted something bad enough, that I was willing to sit down and learn.

I’m looking forward to what next month brings, and eventually next year.  I’ve set my goals at bringing in $5,000 each month from my blog, of attending blog conferences like IzeaFest and Blogworld, and of doing this within one year of starting my blog, as well as helping as many others as I can along the way.

I realize I’ve still got a long way to go, but with my experience in internet marketing, and my drive to succeed, I know I will reach my goal.

You can too!

Tell me what goals you’ve put in place and what you’re doing to achieve them.