30 day challenge preseason starts
June 3, 2008
I did the 30 day challenge last year and the pre-season is just starting up again now. I learnt a lot about online marketing and has really helped me with my websites.
If you are an experienced marketer looking for something new or totally new to internet marketing, I strongly suggest you take part. It is a lot of fun, a good opportunity for networking and you might learn a thing or two.
The 30 day challenge (30DC) site is here: www.thirtydaychallenge.com. It is free to take the course and there is no pressure to buy any of their other information/courses.
One thing I learnt from the 30 Day Challenge
September 16, 2007
Once thing which really got me thinking about the 30 Day Challenge is that if you have a new idea for a website, you don’t necessarily have to go out and purchase a new domain for it. There are services like Squidoo that allow you to set up your own one page website.
I have been working on a couple of pages the past couple of days to sell affiliate products on and to promote/build links to some of my other websites. Squidoo already has traffic and ranking, so it is possible to quickly get some good keyword rankings rather than creating a whole new website.
If your lens does well you can then consider starting up a new website. It’s a great cost-free way of testing a new market. Creating a site like this could take around 1-2 hours or even less. Create a couple of links to the site, make sure you have some affiliate links in your new web page and you can then forget about it.
You aren’t likely to get super rich from doing this, but I would be fairly confident that without doing any further work to your page you should be able to generate a couple of sales a year from your site. Hubpages is another Squidoo type clone that has been getting a bit of press recently.
I you don’t have any money to invest in your new internet business Squidoo and Hubpages are a great way to get started. Also if you have zero technical skills, these sites are very user friendly and are a great way to enter the world of affiliate marketing.
By building lots of websites, pages on these networks, blogs you are building up your “Internet Arsenal”. Sometimes blogs will work and sometimes a squidoo site will work. The important thing is to test all of these different methods.
It might seem like a lot of work, but I generally spend a few hours setting something up, put some affiliate links in and include some way to analyze traffic. Get a couple of links to the site and then forget about it. If I make some affiliate sales, I then go back and check where I was getting traffic from, add some more content and research any new affiliate programs.
You could summarize the process like this:
Idea -> Create -> Monetize -> Analyze -> Improve -> Repeat
Thailand lifts ban on Youtube
August 31, 2007
Just after the 30 day challenge comes to an end Thailand’s military government decides to lift the ban on the site. Going through a proxy was always an alternative, but it was frustrating and most of the time I gave up trying.
The official reason was that there were some videos that mocked Thailand’s monarchy. The unofficial reason was that former Prime Minister Thaksin who is currently living abroad while his arrest is being sought, was that he was using the service for political purposes.
Link building in the 30DC
August 29, 2007
It is interesting how the 30 day challenge is turning to more traditional methods of building traffic. The video I watched today was on getting links by posting on forums and blogs. It would have been nice to see something a little more original. Although the challenge is primarily for beginners.
I usually don’t spend much time trying to build links, but I have realized that I really need a lot more links to one of my sites that I am currently working on for it to be more successful. I have even been emailing webmasters today who I believe might link to my site.
The kinds of sites I look for are .edu sites and non-commercial sites that have some authority. Commercial sites are very unlikely to even read your email for a link exchange request. I try to write an individual email rather than just a copy and paste job. I also try to think of an interesting email subject. Emails with “Link exchange request” will get deleted by most webmasters.
I submit to a couple of free directories, I definitely try and get into dmoz and Yahoo. I don’t bother with paid directories.
To quote SEO expert Dave Naylor in an interview with Aaron Wall from SEO book, “If it’s really hard to get one link from a site then it’s worth getting… if all you have to do it click a button to add your URL then don’t you think it’s pretty worthless (eg. Blogs, guestbooks, directories etc..)”
I think it is a great quote and one that webmasters need to consider more. I know from my experience a couple of really good natural links brings in more traffic and link juice than a bunch of junk links.
Niches uncovered
August 26, 2007
Just as I previously wrote not to use that great niche right now, 45n5 has compiled a list of all of the niches people are working on in the challenge.
My niche is also in the list! Perhaps the idea to use tumblr was a bit of a mistake, but at least people could see how quickly you could get into Google and start ranking for keywords. I do feel a little sorry for the people who spent time doing research to find that great undiscovered niche and put up a tumblr blog.
I have taken a bit of time off the past week so I need to spend some time trying to catch up on the thirty day challenge and some of my other projects I am currently working on.
I recently purchased a new website and currently working on the transfer now. It’s a nice looking site and I should be able to better monetize and market it better than it currently is.
Don’t use that great undiscovered niche now
August 18, 2007
I found quite a few different niches using the free keyword tracker and Google trends tool provided in the 30 day challenge.
Surprisingly sudoku had quite a few keyword phrases that fit the required number of searches and competitive search phrases. I tried registering “sudoku tips” at tumblr and found someone had already taken it! I know that there are other sites, I could have used, but I decided on targeting the phrase “free online sudoku“. There is another reason why I am targeting sudoku, which I will be revealing later.
Search phrase Competing sites Number of searches
free sudoku games 869 110
free online sudoku 30000 260
sudoku tips 21,700 365
If you are wondering why I am writing about my niche, well if you have discovered a fantastic niche using the keyword tools I would suggest not going through with it now. Everyone is following Ed’s teachings, so it is fairly easy to see what other niches people are working on. The less popular social networking sites have all of these tumblr blogs being submitted, obviously people from the 30DC. “How to grow tomatos”, “Ballroom dancing shoes” etc.
So if you do find a great niche, wait until the 30DC challenge is over before you start working on it.
Update: Amazing but I am now ranked 13th for “free online sudoku”. If you had any doubts about the 30DC, everything I have done so far has worked as they have taught.
Market research and search engine traffic
August 16, 2007
I took a six hour bus trip today from Koh Chang back to Bangkok and re-listened to some of the podcasts from the 30 day challenge. It got me thinking a bit about what Ed is teaching and how I have done my own market research up until now.
One of the main emphasis’s of the challenge is market research. Or more importantly, doing market research focused on search volume. Up until now, I have thought of an idea for a website, looked around for competing sites and thought of ideas of how I could come up with something better.
I haven’t placed much emphasis on researching keywords. This is probably one of the many reasons why the ebooks I have written have performed so badly. What you might think of as a good idea, might not be what people are looking for on the internet, no matter how great you think your book is. I wrote a guide to living in Japan and to date have only sold a couple of copies. It was something I wanted to write anyway and sometimes I think of just putting all of the content on my website and placing Adsense on it. The .net of the domain has a fairly active forum which I just discovered the other day.
If you are looking to making a quick buck, I think you need to do market research, just as Ed is teaching in the Thirty Day Challenge. Typical sales pages for information products will tend to rank only for a few targetted keywords, which is why it is so important to find searches that have a high volume and little competition.
If you want to build a website which has long lasting value, I think keywords are important, but I think you also need to see where you can create value in your website over your competition. If your site has good SEO and gets well indexed by Google, the site should perform well from long tail keyword searches.
If you have read the book on the subject, you will understand the value of the Long Tail. Building a website in a competitive niche can prove successful, if you are prepared to be patient and spend the time promoting and marketing the site.
Great tool available from the 30DC
August 14, 2007
Wordtracker have developed a great tool for uncovering niches for the thirty day challenge.
Even if you aren’t doing the challenge, you can still use the tool. The tool compares the data from Wordtracker with the results from Google trends.
The 30 day challenge team has already verified that the term “male yeast infection” gets around 500 searches a day. The results from wordtracker also take into account MSN and Yahoo searches. The 30DC is concentrating purely on ranking in Google, which is why they are trying to estimate the number of daily searches using Google trends.
The whole idea is finding a niche which has less than 30,000 competing sites. This is defined by doing a search with inverted commas around the phrase like “Tokyo hotels”. This is the first test. The next test is that the phrase gets at least 100 searches a day. Tokyo hotels passes on searches a day (270), but fails on competition (1.4 million pages).
The phrase also needs to has something which you could possibly create a product around or has affiliate programs which you could join and promote. It took a while but I found one such phrase just now. It goes against my principle of creating sites/content on what I am interested in, but I want to try and follow the 30 day challenge to the letter. It’s a bit of fun if you like games or challenges (better than doing a sudoku puzzle).
Another test is when you look in the top search results, how many web 2.0 type sites do you see. Presumably we will be using web 2.0 sites like Squidoo to promote or niche pages, so if all of the results are web 2.0 properties it is going to be hard to make the strategy work.
Even if you have just heard of the 30DC you could try out the above tool using various combinations of keywords. All of the videos so far have been leading up to this point, so you could possibly still skip all of them and just find a keyword combination that first passes the main test (keyword search versus competition) and then proceed to the affiliate programs/web 2.0 site test.
Keyword search tools - Day 3
August 6, 2007
I have made a list of some of the free keyword tools that I know of. Generally I don’t use these tools much myself. I know I should, but if I have an idea for site which I think could work, I usually just register a relevant domain anyway. If I am really keen on the site, I just start building it.
Perhaps this is the wrong way about researching a site, but it works for me. I do however, just do searches in Google and try to see what competition is out there. I looked up “grow wheatgrass” and saw some good free sites on growing your own wheatgrass. I searched on “mixi” (Japan’s version of myspace) and found a pretty good English mixi resource site.
I know that Ed in his videos explained that this doesn’t matter for his web 2.0 marketing techniques, so I suppose I am still thinking web 1.0 marketing.
Sometime ago, I when I was into finding niche markets, I found a search phrase which had a high number of searches but little competition. I registered a domain for it and started writing some content. I had no interest in the topic at all, and quickly gave up on it. So unless I am genuinely interested in the niche, I don’t even bother trying to uncover those hidden niches that many internet marketers search for.
I know that you can outsource everything, but you still have to put the thing together and then try promoting it. You could also promote someone else’s product as an affiliate, but again unless you are really into the niche I think you will quickly get bored of it.
It doesn’t hurt to build a site regardless of the number of searches that are done on the keywords, in my opinion.
You will soon see once you start getting some traffic what keywords people are finding to get to your site. You can also add a search box on your site and record the results, so you can see what people are interested in.
Just in my opinion and experience you need to initially go with what you are interested in and worry about the keywords later.
Interest + niche + work = profits
Brainstorming for ideas for the 30DC
August 4, 2007
I have been brainstorming for ideas for the thirty day challenge. I know we are suppose to come up with just seven “markets” but once I start thinking, I just can’t stop and everything I see becomes an idea for a website.
A couple of weeks ago I saw the movie Knocked Up. I enjoyed the first half of the movie, the second half got a bit too sentimental for me. The guys in the movie have an idea to create a website which documents all of the nude scenes in movies - fleshofthestars.com. They spend months planning the site. Ben Stone then tells someone else the idea for the site, and guy responds, “like Mrskin dot com”. It was a classic scene, especially if are into internet marketing.
I have felt this experience many times. Two years ago I wanted to create a travel guide to Tokyo. I started creating a site, but soon realized it would take me a long time to produce the content of a rival site. I ended up buying the rival site.
It seems like most of the ideas I have come up with the last couple of days, good free information that appears at the top of a search is already available.
Last year I wrote a guide to living in Japan which I have only sold a couple of copies, but to be honest I haven’t done anything to market it. I think I would prefer to use something I already have available than spending the time creating something from scratch, which most people seem to be doing.
