Day 16 - WOOO HOOO!!!!!

Posted my new site at 9:30 pm
posted on Stumble and Digg
ranked 11th by 10:30 pm
Went to bed happy, happy!

__________________
Subscribe to my 30 Day Challenge Blog Here:

http://firstonedollar.blogspot.com/

Danie

Day 15 - The Why - I Think I Get It

Why are we here?

To learn how to make money on the web.

Is this process different?

Yes and No. The basics are always the same. Whether you are selling through direct mail, the internet, or at a roadside fruit stand, there are four things that will never change.

• market research
• traffic
• conversion and
• product

We are trying to get listed in Google. Why? Because they are the place to be. Everybody googles. It has 60% of the market. We want to be in the "Google Club".

How do we do that? By getting great content to the people who are searching for it. Period. This is just the process to do that. No underhanded, backdoor, black hat marketing - just plain old market research and quality content.

Now go write 6 more articles (blurbs).

Day 14 - The New Flycatcher...Affiliates

In the olden days ( last year) we used flycatchers to estimate our traffic and figure out if people really wanted to buy what we had to sell.

This year we will use affiliates. Get on over to clickbank and sign up. Search your keywords into the marketplace and sign up to be an affiliate of someone in your niche. If you can't find someone here, then go to Amazon or any number of affiliate sites.

Day 13 - Gathering Information

Today we gather information for small articles. How?

First go to Google News (you can add other news feeds too) and put your phrase in the search line. When you click on the Feed button in your address bar it will bring the feed into Bloglines, where you will browse daily and "clip" notes with your Google Notebook. You can go to your Google Notebook page, click on tools and import your notes directly into Google docs and spread sheets.

When you have gathered enough information to write a very short article - start writing.
Ttile like this:

You want to know what is ?

Has it bugged you that no-one tells you what is ?

Finally, the truth on what is

Solutions to what is

Learn more about what is

I've discovered the key to what is

How to find

Where to buy

Who do you know that has

What is

When is the best time to buy

Tip

OK, I've got articles to write today......

Days 11 & 12 - Weekend Ketsup

I'm going to need this. All of my great ideas tanked when I rated them on the Web 2.0 criteria. Starting from scratch on Day 11!

Day 10 - Checking for Web 2.0

Gary Halbert.

I saw him speak - or grump and grumble his way through . . . he wanted to give his knowledge..you could tell. . but he wasn't sure we were bright enough to get it. He didn't want to waste his time - maybe he knew there wasn't that much left. But I learned. I learned to find the "Golden Nuggets" - I learned to get to the heart of it - I learned one tiny millionth of what this man had in his brain and it will serve me well. Read the Boron letters. I hope they will stay up now that he is gone.

I'm going to steal - oops I mean borrow parts of a great post by Caro explaining the Web 2.0 stuff. Now use recreating a perfectly good wheel.


SO THE SUPER SIMPLE METHOD IS:

Stage One

1. Focus on the first 10 listings of your search returns on the left hand side.

2. Look at the url's/domains. How many of the following do you see already there? How many out of 10, have a domain name that includes any of these words:

a) Squidoo
b) Hubpages
c) Tumblr
d) Netscape
e) Ezinearticles
f) Myspace
g) Youtube
h) Ehow
j) USfreeads
k) Zimbio

3. Where are they on the page? Are they in the first 5 even?


Stage Two - Are Those Web 2.0 Sites Optimized for the Same keyword as yours that you will be seeking to be ranked for?

If the answer to this is YES - then suggest it's a no go - someone's got their first and are doing a great job.

BUT

They may be there, and not optimized.

1. Is the keyword phrase in the title?
2. Is the keyword phrase in the body of the listing?
3. Is the keyword phrase the Url/Domain?

If yes to all three - on a basic level it's optimized in our terms - so it's probably not the phrase to use.

What is an easy way to tell if the keyword phrase is in any or all of these three places?

It appears bolded.

If its a no in any of these areas then there might be a good chance for your phrase.

So you have done Stage One and Two

1. How many Web 2.0 properties are there?
2. How optimized is it based on the 3 criteria above?

Now - you may still want to go ahead - that's your call. This is a basic version of the process a more experienced IMer would take to assess the viability of this keyword, that you are ideally seeking to be well listed for.

Stage Three
You can stop at Stages One & Two, in the most basic terms you have enough to go on.

If you want to venture a bit further. . .ON your Firefox browser, click tools, options, SEO, and make sure everything is turned on. Click on SEO in status bar.

We are still focused on the first 1-10 listings on your page view.

1. Look at the Page rank section (PR) is there a number or a blank?

If there is a number - that means simplistically (very) that it will be harder job to get good listings (aiming for the top 10 - position 1-2 ideally) as they have page rank, and you wont as yet.

2. Look at Y!Page Links (8 along) - does it have any back links? If so how many?

(these page links are called back-links)

Again this gives you an idea of how much they are working this keyword. If it has none - that's great for you. If it has 100's or 1000's not so.

Now this is not a section where you ask - well it has 5 or X backlinks, so is that good or bad?

I want to keep it simple and you only go to this level to observe and assess it as simply as I am doing above.

What this is telling you is how many back-links it has - so again how much they are working this keyword.

So what do I mean by Optimized?

That they are doing a fair, good to great job already with leveraging the keyword to please Google and get good page placement ie: on the first page - aiming for Number One position.

As YOU want to get onto the first page and aim for number One.

So YOU need to find out what challenges you might face to achieve that.

-----------Here's How It Would Look In Your Spreadsheet__________

"find the best golf swing teachers"

Words in Phrase 6
Trends 130
Total Pages 69,700,000
Competing Pages 576
All in Title 186
Affiliates Yes
Adword Ads Yes

Web 2.0:

These are the stats from the first and last site listed
on the 1st page of Google results

Google PR Range 1st= 0 Last=0
Google index 1st= 4 Last=4560
Google links 1st= 27 Last=0
Yahoo index 1st= n/a Last=n/a
Yahoo links 1st= 1610 Last=1
Yahoo dir 1st= No Last=No
MSN index 1st= 5 Last=65
MSN links 1st= n/a Last=n/a
Dmoz 1st= No Last=No
Alexa rank 1st= 1069483 Last=138120
Delicious index 1st= 5 Last=0
Digg index 1st= 2 Last=0

The first page of Google results

Phrase in title: all sites except first & last two
Phrase in body: all sites except first
Phrase in Url: only the 4th listed site

NOTES
Top site is a fee site not yet actived but created in May
3rd site is a Wikihow 2 links one to 1st site
4th site is an article linking to the top listing
5th site ehow article 2005
6th site exact copy of the same article at 4th site

---------------------------------------

Day 9 - Ahhhh...

One of, if not the best part of the 30DC is how helpful everyone is. There are people who are blogging their help, others help through the forum, team mates are a great support system and programmers build neat little tools that make our life easier.

This reminds me of the pioneer days (no I was NOT alive then - I just look like it), when people came together to build a community. The blacksmith made the baking pans, the farmer produced the corn, the miller ground it, the homemaker baked it and everyone ate it at the barn raising party.

Garrett Valdivia (our blacksmith) just released a toolbar which will create a split screen which will perform both the Google Search and the Google Trends search simultaneously. Click here to download it.

Thanks Garrett

Day 8 - Verify Traffic

Been a little behind in posting. Trying to travel in my RV to see the family, while trying to keep up with the 30DC - broken finger and all! (That's a story for another time. . .)

So on Day 8

Object: From the list of phrases, narrow down your list to two by comparing it with a known baseline.

Using the phrase "male yeast infection" as a baseline measure of 500 searches per day, compare it with one of your umbrella phrases in Google Trends. The search should have no quotes for male yeast infection, but quotes around your umbrella phrase.

The graph should look like this, but there is too much traffic on this phrase - narrow down your umbrella phrase.


FRAMEWORK FOR PHRASE RESEARCH:

1. Find phrases that will give you 80 to 100 searches per day.
2. Compare against make yeast infection (not all phrases will show in chart)
3. Compare the English bar line, unless specifically another country product.
4. Default on the side of bad numbers

***Magic number is 200 people to your site per day.

GOAL: 2 phrases. 2 different markets that meet this criteria:

Searches Per Day: 80 - 100
Competing pages: 25,000 to 30,000
Number of Adwords Ads: (Is someone actually selling something)
Number of Affiliates: (Will you be able to use them for market research?)

Day 7 - August 7 Tuesday- Competition Research

OK - here's what you need to do now. Find an umbrella phrase (keyword phrase) with the following process, that meets the certain criteria:

FIRST:

a) You go into Wordtracker and type your keyword and see what else lists underneath it.

So like with Speed-reading - you take the keyword at the top of the list initially.

b) You then type that keyword into Google Search in Phrase match - Phrase match means you put quotation marks around it.

So you type "Speed Reading"

c) You see how much competition there is - which you assess in the top bar towards the right, so it will say 1-100 of whatever number for "keywords" (84mill for speed reading).

d) Our desired figure we want to see is under 25,000 - 30,000 results (competing pages)

e) If it is above 25-30K you go back to Wordtracker and look at the list again

f) You take the keyword underneath it

g) You want the Word-tracker traffic figure to ideally be between 80-100 daily searches or more for any keyword phrase that you are researching.

It is the keyword phrase underneath the main keyword phrase that is called the Umbrella Phrase.

So in this example Robert checked "speed reading free" and as he said ideally you would want more than 62 searches daily - he is using it for the point of the exercise.

h) You then type in the "umbrella keyword" - which in this example was "speed reading free" and you want to see if it has under 25-30K competing pages (the results).

OK - so remember you are looking at this stage to see:

a) between 80-100 + daily searches in Wordtracker - first tick

b) Does it have less than 25-30K competing pages? (IMPERATIVE)

And add these results to your spreadsheet accordingly.

Keep working through the keyword lists for a niche idea if the first couple are over 80-100 searches, but have way too many competing pages.

If you don't have over 80-100 searches per day to begin with - put onto the reserve bench* & move onto your second niche idea.

August 6 Monday

Check out twitterific!

Thanks to Mike Mindell for the following post (no need for me to rewrite a perfect write-up).

-Danie

More Market Research

We’re still in the noticing phase. We’ll go to judgment soon.

It’s so easy to get traffic in the web 2.0 era which is great - can’t complain. But if you do your market research properly you won’t have a problem with traffic or a problem coming up with a product. Traffic has been so hard for so many people and we will make it so easy for you.

However there is a caveat. That is, you have to do your market research properly. A lot of you ask for checklists but it won’t help you. You just go after more checklists. I wan’t you to be smart about this.

You can use a notepad, Google notebook (which travels with you wherever you log in), Google spreadsheet to capture your information.

You must notice, not judge. It’s not your fault. We are taught to judge! It’s a genetic impulse.

From an education perspective we are either being judged or constantly judging. Which is a sham because the best writers don’t judge, people who create content, professionals never judge.

Once you understand this it will change your life.

You learn so much more if you just notice. Judging stops a part of your brain from being activated. You start filtering, you throw things out, you miss things.

In noticing things your brain is really good at picking up little trends, little factoids and bits and pieces.

The money is in those little bits and pieces.

Speed Reading Affiliate

Go to Google and type in ‘Speed Reading Affiliate’:

Now notice what has come up.

First on the left hand side notice the number of affiliate programs:

• Speed Reading Software Best Reader. Become an affiliate.
• RocketReader Affiliate Program - Banners and Text Links

This is a mature program as there are dozens of programs. Often you’ll go to a market and there will be no programs.

Now, experts amongst you, don’t go running off to the Warrior Forum and complaining that The Thirty Day Challenge is an affiliate program. It’s not. So sit down, button your mouth & focus.

What Does Lots Of Affiliate Programs Tell You?

It tells you that ’speed reading’ has been a good market. A mature market. People make money selling these products. That’s important stuff to notice.

Look At The Paid Ads

Look on the right hand side and see who is advertising on the paid Google adwords:

There are a couple of speed reading ones, general affiliate program people too.

Time For Your Seven Niches

So your task is to note specific affiliate programs for your niche e.g. ’sausage making affiliate’.

Notice and write down your results!

Google Trends

Type in Speed Reading into Google Trends:

and here are the results:

Note: you can actually compare two topics but we’re not doing this yet.

The blue line is speed reading but you can’t tell what the numbers are. However you do have plenty of information.

Notice how Speed Reading is pretty consistent. It spikes in the new year and then slows down towards christmas. This is a typical self improvementy (is that word?) type of topic so you would expect January to show a peak.

What is most important is that it is not a seasonal topic.

See the A, B, C, D? They correspond to news articles:

And also see the bottom section:

which shows the news volume. You can see where the spikes occur in news sites.

You can also see the regions

but this is relative as almost always we are targeting the United States. That is where we have the highest disposable income.

You can see cities and languages which is interesting. But we are predominately looking at US English.

In one niche a couple of years ago there was such a difference between the US and a South American country that it made sense to do a whole campaign targeted to a particular country (outside scope of 30 DC).

So look at our time of the year now:

As you can see the traffic looks pretty good. We want to know there’s some traffic there.

Tool Examples

Lets have a look at ‘trout fishing’:

Look at this. See the peaks and troughs and how they repeat year after year after year.

You don’t want to be launching here:

That would be most bad. You’d get no sales until May the following year. In the Northern Hemisphere trout fishing has a season.

So some of your niches might have seasonality. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing - you just need to be aware of it.

You’ll have big sales in one part of the year and low sales in the later part. It’s just the nature of it.

Compare Trout Fishing to Bass Fishing

It’s amazing how you can compare the two side by side. In the US you’d probably want to spend your time with bass fishing as it gets more search volume than trout fishing.

The peaks are higher than trout fishing and the dips are higher than trout fishing too. But you see the same seasonality effect applies in both.

What About The News Volume?

Also a seasonal sport - the spring season in the US - in the run up to summer. It’s an ok market and good for the thirty day challenge as its out of season.

Notice the news volume. It spikes.

If you’d entered the market at that point without knowing the seasonality this would not have worked out well.

See how Google tells you why that news spike was there:

The Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested was huge in the US but not necessarily so in UK or Belgium.

This is not marketable traffic. It’s just a lot of people interested in the news story about ‘Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested’.

If you look through to the resolution of the story in 2007 when the charges were dropped:

you’ll see it spike again.

So Google trends saves a huge amount of time because of the information presented. The best part is that it’s totally free!

Action Points

Pop your niches in to Google trends (perhaps add a couple of comparison points). No judging yet!

Day Three - Keyword Tracker Tool

This is the first stage of testing. You can do huge amounts of research on a marketplace.

What is a keyword?

People use different words when they search for your products online.

If you use these 'keywords' in your website copy, people will find your site when they search on thay word or phrase.

For example:

Enter the words, speed reading, in the search box on Word Tracker , you will see how popular that phrase is. The number by the phrase is about 400. Meaning 400 people (potential customers) type that phrase into their search box every day.

By researching your keywords, you can optimize your website content by using the most popular keywords for your product and service; generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and PPC search campaigns;and research online markets, find niche opportunities and exploit them before your competitors

Day 2 - Find A Market

According to Ed Dale - NINETY-FIVE percent of internet marketing problems are caused by initial poor or lack of, market research!

Today we are to use tools such as Technorati, Ebay Pulse, Google Trends and Google groups, to find some general markets. Not product research, but MARKET research.

Collect 7 niche market ideas for Monday.

What is a niche market?
Niche market simply means a smaller subset of a large market that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.

Let's look at some examples:

Market **** Niche **** Micro-Niche
Reading **** Speed Reading
Reading **** Children's Books **** Children's Non-Fiction
Singles **** Internet Dating **** Jewish Internet Dating
Cars **** Car Racing **** American Muscle Car Racing
Cooking **** Sausage Making **** Polish Sausage Making
Pets **** Dog Training **** Clicker Training
Marketing **** Internet Marketing **** Affiliate Marketing

Topics to stay away from:

1. Getting fit or losing weight
2. Dog Training
3. Vitamins or Health related
4. Internet Marketing
5. How to Live Longer
6. Real Estate Market

It is easy to get overwhelmed or sidetracked by the forum. Do Daily training first and use the forum as a reward or when you get stuck.

There will also be bonus material that is entirely optional, like visiting the 30 day challenge room in Second Life.

-----------
So I have come up with a few markets. Here is the criteria which I used to choose them:

1. Is it a market that interested me
2. Is it a market in which people are passionate
3. Is it huge in other countries or in other area os the US, but not yet all over
4. Is it large enough to contain several niches, for a family of products
-----------
Here are more great idea resources:


1. Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

2. Yahoo! Buzz Index
http://buzz.yahoo.com/

3. Lycos 50
http://50.lycos.com/

4. AOL Search <>
http://hotsearches.aol.com/

5. Ask.com Top Searches
hotsearches.aol.com/

6. Amazon.com Hot New Releases
http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases

7. eBay What's Hot page
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html

8. Google News - Most Popular
http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&topic=po


9. http://pulse.ebay.com/
http://pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research/index.html


10. Google Zeitgeist:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

11. Barnes & Nobel
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bestse...everything.asp

12. Magazines
http://www.magazines.com

13. Nielsen
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/resources.jsp

14. eHow
http://ehow.com

15. My Goals
http://mygoals.com

16. http://digg.com/spy

17. http://www.spyfu.com

18. How To Info
http://www.nleindex.com

19. Viral video
http://www.viralvideochart.com

20.Google Groups sorted by HIGH Activity
http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?&sel=0,83986080

21. Technorati Popular
http://technorati.com/pop/

22. Yahoo! Answers
http://answers.yahoo.com/

23. My Simon
http://www.mysimon.com

24. Craigslist
http://www.craigslist.com

25. Trendwatching
http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/

26. Rob Taylor's 37 niche market finding sites

Don't forget the 'REAL WORLD' - get out and take a walk through the mall, stop at a magazine store, see what is in the windows....the best ideas come from outside the internet.

Day 1 - 7000 Registered!

Armed and ready. Except for the fact that I fell and broke my finger making typing a real (*^&%^&*!

First order of business was a conference call with my new team mates - we added a couple of new members and are now 6. We call ourselves THE SURFIN' SAFARI TEAM.

Our members are in 4 different time zones, but have agreed to be available to meet 4 days a week - at least at first. We're all excited about getting started and some already have their list of niche ideas.

Ed dedicated this year's challenge to the late and very great Gary Halbert. Then he put up a video and a podcast with basically the same content.

NOTES:

Internet Marketing is easy. Becoming a master can take a long time. Don't over complicate the process or you may lose track of the 4 things that are the basis of Ed's system:

1. Market Research
2. Traffic
3. Conversion
4. Product

There is NO selling involved. You are just trying to find the people who already want what you have.

My Entry Into The 30DC Video Promo Contest

Well, Murphy's Law went into effect while creating this video. The sound went out on my recorder, I "lost" the flash file on my computer, my family decided to have an outing - a hundred miles from the internet. . .

My best version of the dozen or so I created locked up and I had to use this earlier and rougher version.

I figure all of my technical difficulties are now out of the way and this challenge will be smooth sailin (I mean surfin') from now on out. .. .

The Surfin' Safari Team!

BEACH BOYS THE lyrics