On Day 21 of the challenge Ed had a problem with his video so instead we got a 25 minute audio presentation and a PDF with the slides that would have been used in the video had it worked. I, of course, didn't get clued into that until I was about 20 minutes into the audio - realizing then that I could have been looking at the PDF as Ed went along. No matter, I took a quick look through the PDF until I had caught up. Minor problem for me was that some of the images that Ed had placed in the PDF weren't showing up for me. Normally, with Ed doing an accompanying video with the PDF supplied as well, this problem didn't matter, as I could see the images Ed was using in his video presentation. For this one, I had to just guess. I think I did okay.
Basically, today was a sort of "rinse and repeat" of yesterday. Ed reiterated that we are still in the testing phase, and not to get too hung up on the affiliate product too much, as this was only being used to test our market. Some people have been lucky enough to make money while testing, and why not, but the ultimate goal here was to produce our own product down the track so that no only can we reap all the rewards from sales ourselves (instead of only receiving a commission), but we would then have an asset which we could possibly use to buy and sell. With our own product we can feed it out to affiliate marketers (like we are NOT hehe) and get them to do the work while we get a slice of everything they sell. Maybe our product will be so good that someone will offer us big bucks to buy it (our product being a website perhaps). But Ed was clear that this was something of a possibility only and definitely a far way down the track. I wasn't fussed - I'm just concentrating on making my first dollar through this affiliate sales part, the thought of selling my own product is, at this point, a dream.
He asked everyone to head on over to Mike Mendel's blog and check out his piece on Quality Content. A damn good read made up of a lot of common sense. He pointed out something that I could relate to - that quality is something that you know of, yet you have a hard time defining. You are aware of quality when it's around you, yet when asked to describe what is quality, you become tongue tied...well I do anyway. It's just one of those things in life that is there - you have a feel for it - but it hasn't really been until now that I've had to analyze what it is all about. Where does this quality come from. How can I produce it? For me, it comes down to a feeling I get when writing content, and that's the best I can do to describe it. I'm definitely one of those people/writers who is never satisfied with their work, but I can still tell when I have written something that would be helpful to someone else. Something that has merit, has meat, and is geared to serving the purpose for which it was created. On a creative level I may think it stinks, but I'm not writing a novel here, so it just needs to be interesting instead of truly captivating. I'm sure that will sound weird to people but I know what I mean ;o)
I did pick up some pointers from Mike, such as the use of sub headings in my blog pieces (which I have implemented over at my best Wii games blog), as well as cutting back on the use of affiliate links. I was never spammy with them anyway, but my last best Wii games blog post did have 4 links to the one game in it, so I cut that back to two. The use of pictures to space out your content was something else that Mike mentioned, but I feel I have that under control.
So the benefits of our Market research are now starting to show, as the sites we've put up should be receiving a certain amount of traffic. Obviously, that doesn't mean to say that we are getting as many visits as were in Gtrends for our niche, as our sites are still climbing up the Google page ranking, but we should be seeing results nonetheless. I certainly am for best Wii games. I placed tracking code from Statcounter.com several days ago and have seen, due mostly to social bookmarking, that I'm getting around 50 visits to my site per day. That number does include my visits, so it's probably more like 40 outsiders having a look. Plus, with Statcounter, I get to see where they came from, and I'm seeing that more and more people are finding my site based on their Google search term. For some terms I'm actually in the top position, others I'm no 2. Most I'm around no 5-10 but the point is people are clicking through to my site. In my Amazon.com affiliate stats I've seen around 60 people click through to products from links I have on my site (that includes my 2nd niche as well). All in all I'm pretty happy with the way it's going. It's still very early days but as long as I keep putting out content every 2-3 days and chip away at the social bookmarking then things will progress.
The next stage for me is to increase my profile by using another hosting platform for more content relating to my niche keywords. The goal, as Ed puts it, is to try and gather 200+ people a day to your product, so the more reels you have in the water the more chances you're going to have of catching more fish. So the plan is to start work on a Squidoo lens revolving around best Wii games. I notice there is actually a lens up there already, but I think mine will be better. In the lens I can link directly to the Amazon products also, as well as host Adsense ads on the page. I can discuss a variety of topics relating to best Wii games, but unlike a blog I'm not heaping content upon content. I make up the one page and can just tweak it every so often to keep it fresh. It's about creating a cluster of sites that all feel back to your niche. My niche lends itself to having a number of products available, and I think that will give me more chance of getting sales.
So for now I need to write another blog for each of my niches, and then start on the Squidoo lens, as well as get stuck into the Day 22 challenge content.
Showing posts with label market research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label market research. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
The best laid plans...
Well it had been my intention to plough through 3 days worth of 30 day challenge material each day in order to catch up after being offline for a week, but that hasn't exactly gone to plan so far - having only completed day one yesterday and here it is noon on my day two and I've only just completed watching and listening and writing stuff down. But here goes my summary for Day Two of the Thirty Day Challenge.
Today's lessons were all about the getting of ideas, and also what markets to avoid. It makes sense that a neophyte like myself would not attempt to try his hand at marketing products and services for highly competitive niches - a very small fish in a very big ocean. No, what is important is to learn how to make that $10 in the month, and once I've gone through the process once it will get easier and easier with each attempt, and perhaps then I can venture out of my little pond for deeper waters. So Ed wants me to come up with 7 ideas by the end of this day to take into day 3, and I must say that it's actually going to be hard to pick out only 7 ideas from the small mountain of niches I've already accumulated with a minimum of fuss. Ed's suggestions for looking for ideas include eBay Pulse, Technorati, Google Groups, Google Hot Trends and even Yahoo Answers. I will be having a look through those, but I spotted on the 30 Day challenge forums a thread where people such as me have listed sites they have used to scour for ideas - and there really is a sea of places out there to search for ideas, and once you start looking you really do begin racking up quite a list with not much effort. Now, whether the ideas I come up with are any good is another story, and one I'll obviously be finding out more about on upcoming training days, but the ideas are there and that's what's important.
As Ed put things (making very good sense to a newbie like me), the sites he suggests can be broken down thus:
eBay Pulse - Where you can find out what people are buying
Technorati - Where you can find out what people are writing about
Google Groups - Where you can find out what people are passionate about/interested in
Google Hot Trends - Where you can find out what people are searching for
Yahoo Answers - Where you can find out what people need help with
All are great avenues therefore, for developing products and/or services.
So far, however, I've only checked out the Random Niche Generator as well as various other blogs to get a list of around 60 niche ideas. I'm off now to search through Ed's suggestions, as well as eHow.com, MyGoals.com, NicheBrowser.com and TrendHunter.com, just for back up purposes. I intend to be doing this internet marketing gig for a long long time so too many ideas are surely never enough...
Today's lessons were all about the getting of ideas, and also what markets to avoid. It makes sense that a neophyte like myself would not attempt to try his hand at marketing products and services for highly competitive niches - a very small fish in a very big ocean. No, what is important is to learn how to make that $10 in the month, and once I've gone through the process once it will get easier and easier with each attempt, and perhaps then I can venture out of my little pond for deeper waters. So Ed wants me to come up with 7 ideas by the end of this day to take into day 3, and I must say that it's actually going to be hard to pick out only 7 ideas from the small mountain of niches I've already accumulated with a minimum of fuss. Ed's suggestions for looking for ideas include eBay Pulse, Technorati, Google Groups, Google Hot Trends and even Yahoo Answers. I will be having a look through those, but I spotted on the 30 Day challenge forums a thread where people such as me have listed sites they have used to scour for ideas - and there really is a sea of places out there to search for ideas, and once you start looking you really do begin racking up quite a list with not much effort. Now, whether the ideas I come up with are any good is another story, and one I'll obviously be finding out more about on upcoming training days, but the ideas are there and that's what's important.
As Ed put things (making very good sense to a newbie like me), the sites he suggests can be broken down thus:
eBay Pulse - Where you can find out what people are buying
Technorati - Where you can find out what people are writing about
Google Groups - Where you can find out what people are passionate about/interested in
Google Hot Trends - Where you can find out what people are searching for
Yahoo Answers - Where you can find out what people need help with
All are great avenues therefore, for developing products and/or services.
So far, however, I've only checked out the Random Niche Generator as well as various other blogs to get a list of around 60 niche ideas. I'm off now to search through Ed's suggestions, as well as eHow.com, MyGoals.com, NicheBrowser.com and TrendHunter.com, just for back up purposes. I intend to be doing this internet marketing gig for a long long time so too many ideas are surely never enough...
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
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...
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...
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