Not Quite To Plan

Well, as it turns out the phone company I am with only does relocations between the hours of 8am and 5pm...and I called them up to relocate my phone line at, you guessed it, 5:05pm...so now I can't initiate the relocation until Monday morning, which could mean that I don't get internet at my new digs until the following Monday, August 6th, five whole days after the 30DC starts! It's not the end of the earth, of course...there are internet cafes that I can still keep up with the 30DC, and there's every possibility that the connection will come through a lot quicker than 7 days anyway. So now I have a bit more time to go on with what has been happening at the 30DC this past week.

For those who have just stumbled on this blog and don't know what the hell I'm talking about when I say the 30DC, it is my slack way of writing the Thirty Day Challenge. And what is the Thirty Day Challenge? Well, I'm glad you asked. The Thirty Day Challenge (30DC) is a project created by Ed Dale and his team of Internet Marketing misfits (I use 'misfits' in the most endearing way). It was, I believe, started in 2005 and has been running each year since then. This is my first 30DC so what I say about previous 30DCs is just my understanding of what went on and not necessarily the actual facts as they stand. Feel free to correct me if you know more about them.

The idea of the 30DC in the past was to create an online business from scratch and within 30 days have it make it's first $1. There was a small budget of around $150 that was allowed to be spent on getting the business running and getting traffic flowing. This was normally spent through PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising in Google, and I believe a prize was given to the person who first made a dollar on their business. The idea after that was of course to replicate what you had learned through the 30DC to make more money. This year, however, it's a little different.

The plan for this years 30DC is to create a business from scratch and have it make $10 by the end of the challenge. Also, this year there will be no budget on the table. Everything that is taught and actioned will be done completely free. No PPC on this one. It's all about creating traffic from natural SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Also, this year Ed has enlisted the help of Dan Raine, who started The Immediate Edge site. I can vouch that Dan knows his stuff, after being a member at the Immediate Edge for around 6 months (I had to defer my membership temporarily due to not having the time to put Dan's methods into action). He is a master of creating traffic to your site through natural means - no hype and no PPC!

So apparently there are now around 3000 people registered for the 30DC. That's incredible! The first 30DC started with 927 participants. 27 of those made their first $1 by the end of the 30 days, which isn't a bad start. Many of those first 30DC participants have gone on to do amazing things in Internet Marketing and business in general.

So Ed started things off last week with the announcement of the 30DC Pre-season, where he would go through a number of things to get everyone ready for when the challenge started. First off he talked to us about teams, and the value in creating one for the 30DC, to help brainstorm and motivate you through. It's not only about having the extra brain power to guide you through, but its making a start on networking with people, and building up those lines of communication. My team consists of 5 guys (myself included) ranging in experience from very little up to quite a bit, so everyone will be able to pitch in along the way. We'll all be working on our own separate projects, but using the team mentality if problems arise, or to help with ideas perhaps. And like I said, after the challenge is said and done, perhaps a friendship or lasting connection has resulted from all this.

After that Ed suggested we register to the sites digg.com and www.stumbleupon.com. In a later video he explains a little about stumbleupon.com and it's uses. Since being shown stumbleupon.com I've spent many an hour browsing through the suggested sites and have found some amazing stuff. Some of just for fun, others an incredible insight into what is to come in the way of technology. I definitely recommend you head over to stumbleupon.com, set yourself up and account, check your preferences and start surfing. Be prepared to be amazed. Mind you, I also came across a gallery of kittens on one stumble, so it's not all gold (well, kittens may be gold to others I guess heh).

Ed then followed with a video going through the various add-ons one will need to install through Firefox (the Thirty Day Challenge Browser of choice) to get the most out of their 30DC experience, and he will go into more detail on using these as the challenge progresses. He did explain, though, the use of the Session Manager plug-in, and I've found it very useful in recalling my preferred websites each day.

His next video was about RSS (Really Simple Syndication), and it opened my eyes a lot to how to best go about capturing feeds. Ed suggests using Bloglines and so I signed up and have to admit I find it an incredibly simple system to use. These days, the feed subscription icon now appears in the browser address bar so it's a simple click of that and the feeds are automatically saved to my Bloglines account. This makes things so easy, especially for a newbie like me. One of the threads on the 30DC forum has a list of people who will be blogging their experiences during the 30DC, so I have subscribed to all the blogs listed there so far, which I also think will be a big help in understanding the processes along the way, and getting a different perspective. Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to find the time to read them all hehe.

Next Ed went through the right way of capturing his podcasts and videos through iTunes. Again, this has made things very simple for me. I almost don't even need to visit the 30DC blog page anymore, now that I have the blog text coming into my Bloglines account, and the audio and video coming into my iTunes. Ed has a very easy going way about him that makes learning this stuff super simple.

He followed the iTunes vids up with a closer examination of stumbleupon.com (be sure to watch Part 2 as well), and then how to maximise and personalise the forum to suit your needs (Watch Part 2 here).

And that's about it, up to date. A hell of a lot of information for one week, but clearly explained and simply delivered through video and audio that even a neophyte like me can work it all out. I'm really looking forward to getting started, and to posting my experiences along the way.

This WILL be my last post before the big move across the sea and interstate, so have a good weekend everyone and I'll see you on the other side!