Day One on Day 7

So I finally got to start Day One of the challenge today, on day 7 of the challenge. I'm sure I have a lot to catch up on but I figure if I can manage 3 days of the challenge each day then I will be caught up by the end of Friday, just in time to hopefully have some time over the weekend to focus on what I've gone through. I'm looking forward to just having one day of learning each day, as there is so much stuff contained in these videos and podcasts that I'm sure to have my work cut out for me over the next couple of day.

I realize that most of the people writing blogs of the thirty day challenge will be going through the same stuff I am, and seeing as I'm a newbie in the world of blogging it's doubtful that I'll have a particularly original slant on what's going on. It will take some time to get comfortable with all this documentation so excuse me if I start doing things by merely going through the facts of the day. To be honest, I'm sure this blog will really only be used for me down the track to keep track of what I've done so I can continue to run the processes and hopefully make more money from Internet Marketing, so it's unlikely at all that I'll be offering anything new to people reading this who have read other blogs on the thirty day challenge.

So Day One was running through the Internet Marketing symphony in 4 parts. I'd seen Ed do a video on this some time ago, either on the Undies website or through the Immediate Edge, I forget, but it helps to have a refresher on the important aspects of Internet Marketing...especially since I'd forgotten the order of the four parts (and actually forgotten one of the parts entirely), so here they are again, forever etched in 1's and 0's.

1) Market Research - The most important of the four aspects of Internet Marketing. As Ed put it, imagine if you wanted to open a coffee shop and could find out not only exactly how many people would walk past your shop in a day, but also how many would come in to your shop for a look-see. This stage is all about testing to see if your idea/niche is up to snuff, so to speak. Does it have enough searchers per day to justify the time you're about to take on promoting it? Even if there is enough interest, how is your competition? Will you be fighting for a Google ranking amongst millions of other hungry competitors, all perhaps most gifted than you in Internet Marketing, as well as being far more established? There are many many ways to make money online and pretty much everything out there is a potential niche. If your eyes and ears are open to it you can find niches anywhere...at the moment I'm still working on my eyes and ears but I have faith in Ed's word. I know what it's like when you open your mind to something. I know how when you're interested in buying a particular brand of car all of a sudden, wherever you go you'll see that make of car. So it's all about just writing down ideas from every-which-where...magazines, internet, TV, markets, going for a walk...seeing what appears to be selling and then going through the process of market research to see if it's a viable niche to be putting your time and effort into. Ed says the smallest niches are usually the most successful in the 30 day challenge game, and it makes sense, so the larger ones have a great deal of competition, as I stated above, that have been working at it far longer than myself. And lets not forget that within a particular niche there are often sub-niches. Ed used the example of Trout Fishing being a niche, and Trout fishing with a spinner in a stream being a more focused sub-niche. If people are searching for this stuff then there is a dollar to be made, and Market Research is all about finding out if there are people searching.

2) Traffic - Of course this makes sense as being the second most important aspect of Internet Marketing. Sure, you've found a niche that people are interested in and has a small amount of competition, but without getting people to your product/service, how do you ever expect to sell anything? You could have the greatest coffee in the world but if people are not going into your shop then you won't sell a drop. No traffic = no sales, it's a no-brainer. Developing a steady flow of traffic will take time and effort and that what it's all about on the 30 day challenge. I expect this aspect to have the most time spent on it, as some of the pre-season videos have shown the ways in which traffic can be developed. A lot of the Web 2.0 applications will come into force, no doubt, and will hopefully help channel the people you saw in your market researching, who were interested in your product/service, through your virtual shop door. This year the 30DC'ers are going down the free road for traffic. In the past, the 30 Day challengers would pay a small amount of money to places such as Google Adwords, in order to increase their ranking in searches...this year, as the entire 30 day challenge is being run free as a bird, it means that traffic must be generated differently. This will take more time and effort on my part, than if I was using PPC (Pay Per Click), but in the long run I thing it will be much better for me, both in a financial sense as well as an experience one.

3) Conversion - This is the sales part of Internet Marketing. Getting someone from being interested in the product/service you are offering, to actually throwing down their hard-earned bucks and paying for it. This section Ed and the gang will be, for the first time in a 30 day challenge, be showing us how to test what works in the ways of converting people into sales. This is obviously the trickiest aspect of the entire process, and can be the most frustrating. In the past it was often done with a sales letter, and had a lot to do with razzle-dazzle and good copy writing. Nowadays there are plenty of other tools at our disposal as Web 2.0 incorporates video and audio tools into the mix. Ed says that those who are able to work with these tools will have a better chance of making their first $10 in time. Thankfully, it's not necessarily about standing infront of the camera and talking, or else I might as well drop out of the challenge right now. I'm definitely not comfortable infront of the camera and I dare say looking comfortable when making a video is probably quite important when it comes to having a person buy your product/service. But as we've seen with the 30 Day Challenge Film Festival, it's not always about putting your mug on screen. Plenty of people have made videos with just images or footage of other things. I'd like to think I'm creative enough to come up with a few ideas in that area when the time comes...This year it's going to be about making a list (of email recipients) and then having a special "launch" to promote your product/service, and I assume, continuing to lavish great deals on them as you go, while gathering more names for your list. I remember Dan Raine saying when I first started the Immediate Edge program, that lists were the most important part of making a conversion.

4) Product - Finally we get to the last (but by no means least) of the 4 aspects, the product. Obviously without a product there is no sale but the product is the last in terms of importance as there are so many markets and niches out there it's more about finding the product to fit the market, rather than the other way round. In the past Ed and the gang have usually gone down the route of E-Books, either affiliate products or generating their own, and that is still quite a viable way of going about things (and one that I still plan to get into after the challenge has run it's course), but now, again using the latest audio and video tools that Web 2.0 has for us, we are able to offer a whole new range of products and services. I'm not exactly sure what they are at the moment...although for some reason belly dancing lessons comes to mind as a possible idea that could be sold through video...and some may say I have the belly for it, I'm sure. Again, it's about starting in small niches, staying away from the big guns like health foods and supplements, and picking away at the lesser known products and services that have a variety of interest levels available through the long-tail phrases. I'm sure Ed and Dan will talk more about long-tail phrases later, but it's one that I find really interesting and am planning on exploring in greater depth down the track.

So for the most part that was Day one of the challenge. I watched the video, listened to the podcasts, checked out some niche ideas from ehow.com, random niche generator (don't install the tool bar), trendhunter, and made a preliminary list of niche ideas that I will then go to market research work on as Ed takes me through the process. Most, if not all people on the challenge, will naturally have already gone through that so I'd better quite dribbling and get onto Day Two...