The Hard Yard

The Day 13 lesson was that content is king! Great...just when I was doing so well and having such a hoot compiling stats for my niches (thanks even more so to Mike Mindel for his amazing Google Trends/Wordtracker tool), Ed comes along and says we're going to need to start working for our gravy! Who woulda thought! Well, I knew making money online couldn't be all ice cream and pancakes. The reason I feel like reality has hit me in the face with a wet fish is because I'm a downright dud (if I do say so myself) when it comes to writing content. Now, I know Ed's lesson was to keep it short and keep it light and I have no problem with that when it comes to writing blogs (ok, the keeping it short part I may get a little stuck on), but for some reason (I think I know what) when it comes to writing about "things", such as niche ideas, I just clam up...my fingers seem to repel away from the keyboard, my brain seems dryer and more desolate than and old west ghost town, complete with tumbling tumbleweeds and eerie wind howl sound effects. Truly, it's like someone switches a light off the moment I have to "write for work". I think I know why this is...it's partly due to the pressure I put on myself. I know in part that it's crunch time, or at least I'm beginning to feel that, and so, being the perfectionist that I am, I feel like not attempting is easier than making the effort and hating it. It's why I generally have such a hard time starting things in general. The funny thing is, I know once I start I'll get over the anxiety and just push on and do my best...but I delay delay delay as much as possible and get knotted up inside over it. Even writing this blog now is just to delay the work I'm supposed to be doing. In that case, I might as well get on with telling how Ed went through it.

In the good old pioneer days of internet marketing, content was not as important as making people think you had what they wanted, only to push them into something else entirely. Well, thanks to Google (and really, speaking as a consumer I sincerely say thanks) and their goal of making the customers experience of searching through their site a pleasurable one and one where they get what they're searching for (which, of course, makes sense for them) the game has changed significantly...not that I ever got to play the easier version of the game. Now it is absolutely crucial to actually deliver what the customer is searching for, or you will simply be allocated to the Google sandbox (that's a term I heard, I know what it means but have no idea where it comes from) - in short, you'll get the Google bitch slap and your site will be relegated to the minor leagues on Page 25 of the search results, where you might as well pack it up and take it home for all the good it will do you. The brainiacs at Google are so with it and hip to the groove that they have got their little spiders out combing sites for relevancy in terms of chosen search terms. So if you type in "Sausage Making" into Google, the mother of all search engines will actual favor sites that talk about actually making sausages, rather than sites that just mention sausage making in order to try and get you to buy their product (which may not have anything to do with sausage making). Clever, huh? That's not all, of course, but it's enough for today. So, as Ed says, "Content is King". So we need to gather up all those bits of information that we scraped together from the Day 10 lesson, and make something of it.

The way Ed tells it, we need to create 3 articles for each keyword phrase. These articles are to be short, only one or two paragraphs - to ease us into the process. One day, when we're actually making money with Internet Marketing, we would probably outsource this part of the process - get someone else to write our copy - and I tell you, for a while I seriously considered doing that very thing as part of this challenge, but that would kind of defeat the whole "make money for nothing" part of the whole thing. So I went through Ed's video and he does make it sound oh so easy...which I know it actually is once you just pull your finger out and get started. Even when I was working 9 to 5, getting paid to write copy for newsletters and product descriptions for the company I used to work for, it was always the job I left until last because I found starting it to be such a hump, such an obstacle. Once I actually did get started I didn't find it that difficult at all, and in some cases actually liked what I wrote, but more importantly my boss liked what I wrote. I therefore, don't really have a clue what it is fundamentally speaking, that causes me to hesitate...

I only needed to spend a short time in the afternoon looking over my niches to see three different angles for one and two for the other. I've still gotta find one more angle for the second niche but hey, until I actually start writing that's really not my major concern.

Ed's tips for this lesson were to keep it light, write it conversationally, like you were sending an email to a friend about this topic - and I've noticed a few people on the forum suggested ways to get started, which I thank them for. He (Ed) also said that using a quote from a reputable source can be a good way to pad out your mini-article, and to include your niche keywords in the heading, and in the first line of the content. Now, this could be a little difficult for me to do for all 3 articles of my first niche, as it's a question, and the other 2 angles I'm looking at are also questions regarding the umbrella topic but not exactly the same as the first question (obviously). So lets say my niche was "sausage making" and the keywords I'd found that work for Google Trends and Wordtracker was "what is sausage making?", and the other angles I was looking to write about were "how does sausage making work", and "sausage making equipment", well I couldn't really use my initial "what is sausage making" as a heading for each of those questions...unless it was posed like "What is sausage making and how does sausage making work?"...Hmmm, a bit of a stretch but it might get me by for now.

Ed also talked a little about using Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and I will be giving that a go. Even though I'm quite happy using Word and Notepad to do my writing, I've had cause along this 30DC path and before it, to put a lot of stock in Ed Dale's suggestions. He hasn't steered me wrong as yet so I don't feel there is any reason to doubt him on this one. It's really just that as I get older I tend to have a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude getting more and more ingrained in my psyche...and there's nothing really wrong with that, other than it can often (especially in the Web 2.0 realm) mean that you miss out on better things, things that you had no idea about and actually make things easier, combine things into a simpler, more organised package. Thanks to Ed and his trusty team for putting me onto such stuff so many times.

Anyway, I've put this whole writing thing off long enough...