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Today at the New Year’s edition of MyTropicalEscape we have the fourth installment of the weekly ‘Ten Questions With’ interview series and I am pleased to have the amazingly talented Yaro Starak, of Entrepreneur’s Journey, as my guest. If you missed the first three installments in this series you might also find my interviews with Leo Babauta, Cameron Low, and Skellie interesting.

Yaro Starak is an intelligent, creative, and tireless entrepreneur who runs the incredibly successful BlogMastermind.com mentoring program, which is aimed at those interested in Internet business and Blogging. Recently, Yaro sold one of his websites, Betteredit.com for a reported six figures while also trying to purchase a new home and buy a car. After reading the interview if you would like to learn a little more about what he is about then I strongly recommend that you grab his free report - The Blog Profits Blueprint, where he outlines the most important points about how to make money from blogging. You can download it from http://www.blogmastermind.com/blueprint/.

1. As someone who coaches and trains people, do you think successful entrepreneurs are created (business school), born (right out the womb), or conditioned (life circumstances)? Other than fear, what do you think holds most people back from becoming an entrepreneur?

2. As the owner of the successful, Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program, who were your mentors growing up? (sorry cliché but I have to ask)

3. Sum up your entrepreneurial philosophy in three words and explain how you utilize those terms to achieve your vision?

4. What has been your greatest failure as an entrepreneur?

5. What is one blog post that really had an impact on you either negatively, or positively, and who wrote it?

6. With a semi-saturated blog market (I seriously just saw a post about a cats bellybutton lint) where do you see online publishing, the web, and internet marketing heading in the next five to ten years?

7. What is it about Australia that creates so many phenomenal bloggers like you, Darren Rowse, Skellie, etc?

8. As a general rule do you think the “pay for blog content” model can work for small to medium sized sites?

9. How can bloggers from Australia, the US, and Europe tap into the Chinese and Japanese markets?

10. Entrepreneurs-Journey.com is filled with such a tremendous amount of applicable and practical information and your Business Timeline alone is a great inspiration. However, for someone who has not been to your site yet what is one tip you that would give a beginning blogger who would like to make money, and you cannot use the terms niche or content?

Question 1: As someone who coaches and trains people, do you think successful entrepreneurs are created (business school), born (right out the womb), or conditioned (life circumstances)? Other than fear, what do you think holds most people back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Yaro’s answer: That’s a tough question. I think anyone can become a successful entrepreneur with the right training, however there are certain innate drives that entrepreneurs possess that other people don’t. Without that drive people won’t stick at something long enough to reach success, they won’t have the natural tolerance to ambiguity that entrepreneurs have and well, they will probably find the whole experience of running a business rather unpleasant - they just aren’t built for it.

Conditioning and education can be an advantage, but I think the right personality type is the most critical ingredient.

Fear is definitely the number one reason that holds people back and you can throw in a lack of persistence as another big one. Action is the key to results, fear stops people from doing things, but sometimes it’s pure laziness or incongruent motivation that can hold people back. If you can’t see the path, it’s hard to know where to take the first step.

Question 2: As the owner of the successful, Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program, who were your mentors growing up? (sorry cliché but I have to ask)

Yaro’s answer: I’m asked this question often and today I can definitely say that other Internet marketers such as Rich Schefren and Mike Filsaime certainly are mentors to me. I model a lot of what I do on what they have done. The Internet marketing industry is fantastic at sharing information, so I really have a lot of people to thank from this industry.

Growing up I was fairly aimless in terms of direction, especially during my teenage years. I’ve always admired people who work in humanitarian roles, teachers, doctors and nurses and activists who stand up for a cause they believe in.

Question 3: Sum up your entrepreneurial philosophy in three words and explain how you utilize those terms to achieve your vision?

Yaro’s answer: Freedom - The ability to choose what you do, how you do it and when you do it.

Action - The ability to take steps to realize opportunities that you create.

Persistence - Isolate what you are good at and where you provide value and then continue to leverage that skill or talent for long enough to realize the rewards you are seeking.

Question 4: What has been your greatest failure as an entrepreneur?

Yaro’s answer: There are times where I lose track of the big picture and spend too much time thinking of what I don’t have and what I want. Materialistic goals can swamp the senses sometimes - you need to bring yourself back.

Entrepreneurs need to balance the drive for success with a clear awareness that there will always be another mountain to climb. If you don’t take stock of what you have done and find satisfaction in that, you will forever be working towards another goal. If you feel a void inside that you think you can fill with business success you are wrong - you can only fill that void through raising your awareness.

I could tell you the story of the failed English school, or the graveyard of websites I have created that went nowhere, but ultimately the most important lesson is about awareness.

Question 5: What is one blog post that really had an impact on you either negatively, or positively, and who wrote it?

Yaro’s answer: Early on in my blogging career Steve Pavlina had a strong influence on me from a consciousness awareness stand point.

I could point to several posts of his that I found quite profound, but since you asked for one I’ll recommend his levels of consciousness post here - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/levels-of-consciousness/

Question 6: With a semi-saturated blog market (I seriously just saw a post about a cats bellybutton lint) where do you see online publishing, the web, and internet marketing heading in the next five to ten years?Editor’s note: When I asked Yaro this question I had just written a guest post for ProBloggerLeveraging the Power of Blogs in an Overcrowded Market so the thought of an overcrowded market was on my mind.

Yaro’s answer: You have to be careful when you say something is saturated and clearly define the parameters of the marketplace you are assessing. Saturation usually pertains to markets for business or economic purposes. Most blogs exist for the enjoyment of the blog writer and they have no financial aspirations whatsoever. You could only say the market is saturated if every single person has a blog and obviously that is not going to happen.

If we were too look at the blogosphere in terms of markets that people could make money from, it is far from saturated. I believe that’s the case because there are not that many bloggers who know how to make money from a blog and most don’t even try or want to try.

I expect the future will see it become easier and easier for people to publish content online and thus even more junk will be published. As a result of information overload, people will actually consume less information and seek out only the trusted experts. Thus those people in leadership positions will enjoy the lion share of attention.

Question 7: What is it about Australia that creates so many phenomenal bloggers like you, Darren Rowse, Skellie, etc?

Yaro’s answer: Haha - good question - maybe it’s because of something in the water.

I suspect if you looked at the actual stats it’s probably not quite as Australian-centric as it might seem, but I am certainly in good company down here.

I think sometimes we tend to operate in an echo chamber and only experience a very small segment of what is going on online. Those with the loudest voices in that echo chamber tend to enjoy the most attention - although as a percentage of the entire market, that one chamber might be very small. It’s the big fish, small pond situation.

Most industries have a few leaders who are mentioned over and over again as the reference points of choice. In the blogging about blogging industry, there just happens to be a few Aussies who rose to the top.

Question 8: As a general rule do you think the “pay for blog content” model can work for small to medium sized sites?

Yaro’s answer: I’m not entirely sure what you are asking here, (Editors’ note: I meant can small to medium sized sites with few readers make money selling blog content or having a premium section) but I’ll answer based on how I interpret it at this moment.

I think paying for blog content is fine as a strategy if you find great writers who have the motivation to take your blog to the top. They have to want it as much as you do.

Alternatively, you can run off less than great content if your strategy is too dominate long tail keywords and attract search engine traffic. This plan is definitely easier and can literally make any blog a money maker.

You may not want to be viewed as the leader in your industry, but as long as you attract the right type of traffic for your strategy, you can definitely make other people’s content work. However, if you want to truly lead an industry, you need a high standard of writing produced by credible experts.

Question 9: How can bloggers from Australia, the US, and Europe tap into the Chinese and Japanese markets?

Yaro’s answer: Tough question - besides the obvious - publish content in Chinese and Japanese, I can’t really offer any qualified response. I don’t know enough about the blogging culture in those two countries or the state of their blog industries.

I suspect though, like with Internet marketing in general, that there is a lot of opportunity to dominate certain markets simply by stepping up and becoming the expert.

For example, in the Pay Per Click industry for English speakers, Perry Marshall is considered the expert. You could take his teachings, become an expert and then enter the Japanese market and start to make inroads to become the PPC expert for the Japanese, just replicating what Perry does.

You can look at markets in other countries and generally they will be at an earlier point on the development curve to their English counterparts. Take what has worked for people in the English speaking world, apply it to other country markets and you stand a very good chance of success, if you know how to effectively communicate in the language and culture of the other countries.

Question 10: Entrepreneurs-Journey.com is filled with such a tremendous amount of applicable and practical information and your Business Timeline alone is a great inspiration. However, for someone who has not been to your site yet what is one tip you that would give a beginning blogger who would like to make money, and you cannot use the terms niche or content?

Yaro’s answer: Focus on creating niche content - just kidding!

I’m going to give some slightly different advice to answer this question - specifically for people in a hurry to make money at blogging. Instead of trying to invent the wheel, go search for blogs that already cover topics you feel you could write about that appear to be marginally successful and ask if they would consider selling their blog to you.

Obviously this strategy requires you have investment money, but there are plenty of solid blogs out there that can be bought for a few hundred dollars. A blogger who has lost interest in writing will be open to your offers and you never know until you ask. It’s much easier to get started if you have the blog already set up with existing articles, search engine rankings and a small audience. If you have a few hundred dollars, you have enough to get started.

Happy New Year Yaro and THANK YOU for your time!!

Please come back for another installment of the ‘Ten Questions With’ interview series next Tuesday when I will be talking with the orginal ProBlogger, Darren Rowse. Or better yet, subscribe to the MyTropicalEscape RSS feed .

If you enjoyed this post you might also like to read - ‘ You Can’t Possibly Do That - My Personal 2008 Mission Statement‘.