So today is the first day of my new challenge. I've spent the last 31 posts going into the process of the Thirty Day Challenge with the help of Ed and Dan. I started two niches and put them through the 30DC process and ended up making only one sale. I've all but given up on one of the niches and am still working on the other one with the home of building upon it over time.
But today it's all about the new niche and starting to put it through the 30DC process. This is likely to happen a bit faster than the previous niches, as I am much more familiar with the process in general - and I only have one niche to work on. I'll be keeping this niche to myself, at least until I actually make a sale (touch wood). So in the interest of simplicity when it comes to explaining what I'm doing, I'll simply be referring to my niche as "stamp collecting". I know, it's not very inventive, and doesn't have much to do with a real niche, but it works for the purposes I'll be describing later on.
As I mentioned, I will be going through a large portion of the challenge process in a faster time than the first time around. In fact, in one day alone I've already reached Day 10 of the challenge. To know what I've already done to that point feel free to read over my original 30DC blog posts. The information I have discovered for my new niche are as follows:
Initial Searches
"Stamp Collecting" has 2873 searches per day in the free Wordtracker tool
The drop off from "Stamp Collecting" to "Rare Stamp Collecting" is 2873 - 719.
Competition Analysis
Through the Thirty Day Challenge Toolbar, the first site to come up for the broad match of "Stamp Collecting" was ranked at #8 in Google. That equates to good optimization prospects for my site(s). There were only 3 sponsored links that showed up in Google through the 30DC toolbar also. Also, plenty of sites charge for "Stamp Collecting" materials, so definitely potential for sales.
Through the Google search bar, it was the #6 site to be the first to use "Stamp Collecting" as a broad match - and that was actually a subpage of another site. Only 2 sponsored links showed up and again, plenty of sites that charge for "Stamp Collecting". Clearly a mature market and great potential.
Affiliate Prospects
There are a number of affiliate options for various "Stamp Collecting" sites. Sponsored links also have general affiliate websites but none that are "Stamp" specific. Actually, I already went into Clickbank and found a product with great stats that I'll be using. I know that's going a little against the teachings of Ed but I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a look once the other stats started to shape up. Mind you, the above section is more about seeing if people are offering affiliate schemes, which equates to a niche that people pay money for, rather than seeing if there is an affiliate product for me to promote.
Google Trends
No news articles. Search trend has steadily grown since the beginning of 2004. It peaked in August 2007 and has declined slightly since but not significantly. Doesn't seem to have any major trends other than the search volume rising slightly during the US summer period. Understandable. Having just missed the US summer that will mean I won't get the traffic of a couple of months ago but it's not enough of a decline to keep me away from the niche. Search volume is still quite high throughout the year. By next summer I could have developed a great site and catch the extra traffic with it (fingers crossed).
Checking Umbrella Phrase
Apart from "Stamp Collecting" I had thought of targeting other phrases relating to my main keywords. After checking out other phrases under my keywords of "Stamp Collecting" I found that there weren't enough searches to warrant the extra work. In GTrends, "Stamp Collecting" has 1724 searches a day against a competition volume of 193,000 websites. The Thirty Day Challenge process taught us to stick to searches over 100 a day and competition of less than 30,000 pages. It is my understanding that the criteria was only for use at the beginning, and that as we became more confident with our handling of the lessons we could tackle larger niches. Well that's what I'm doing and if you look at the above stats I've got a pretty good chance if I do the work.
As I mentioned, the original criteria was 100 searches per day against no more than 30,000 sites. Here I have 193,000 competing sites which is a little over 6 times the amount I'm supposed to have. In comparison, my niche is getting 1724 searches per day which is 17 times the amount necessary. With those two put together my ration is actually much better than if I was sticking with just 100 searches a day and 30,000 competing pages. Obviously I will have my work cut out for me, but I'll also be tapping into a much larger traffic stream so the chance for success is greater.
Web 2.0 Properties
So I'm up to Day 10 of the challenge process, just like that. Day 10 is to have a look through Google after doing an exact phrase match search for my niche, and to check for results in the "Web 2.0" categories. This means sites such as Squidoo and StumbleUpon returning results in my niche. What that can mean is that someone is already optimizing their stuff for the keywords I have chosen. That could mean extra hard competition, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I should steer clear of it. If I found I wasn't getting as large amount of traffic as I expected then it could be attributed to this part of the process. Still, according to the market research I've done I should still be able to get a fair whack of the traffic if I work hard enough. After doing the exact match phrase for my keyword in Google I found that the first Web 2.0 property to appear was an Ezine article, at #17, and not for my exact phrase match anyway ("Rare Stamp Collecting" instead of just "Stamp Collecting"). So all indicators look good.
Bloglines
So now is the time for setting up my Bloglines account to receive "Stamp Collecting" news and blogs. From here I'll start gathering information to place in my blogs, Squidoo lenses, etc.
That also means the hard grind of writing frequently about a new niche phrase, which I've had trouble with in the past. Still, after getting through the previous two niches I worked on relatively well I think I'll be okay. It's good that "Stamp Collecting" also happens to be a subject that interests me.
Showing posts with label niche. Show all posts
Showing posts with label niche. Show all posts
Monday, October 1, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
To Proceed Or Not Proceed
Day 24 of the challenge was a bit of a rehash with a side order of extra stuff. Ed started by talking about traffic, and said that now was the time to look at our niches and if they weren't getting the sort of traffic necessary for a successful start-up then we should probably cut them loose. The amount of traffic necessary isn't necessarily based on the stats we got from Gtrends, either, as that was really only showing what you could be looking at once you are in the #1 or #2 position for your keyword phrase on Google. Most of us, of course, are not at that point. We are, afterall, after 200 visitors to our blog each and every day, with a hope that a certain percentage of those clicking through to our product/sales page. I thought this was a little strange, since not all the SEO tactics had been discussed, so alot of people (myself included) were not ranking as high as we could be, as we probably would be, once all the tactics were put into place. Still, I did have to concede that even with the extra tactics to come over the last 6 days, my WiFi blog was possibly up for getting the chop. The only thing was, of course, that I hadn't given it the link love that it needed, as I wanted to concentrate on the best Wii games blog first. I'm actually contemplating making a post on the 30DC forum, asking for a team of around 5 or 6 people to become a "link love" team, and just work on helping each other out when necessary. I guess it can't hurt and who knows, I might get some interest.
It was interesting to note that if Gtrends is saying you should be getting 200 visits for a #1 or #2 rank in Google, that it will drop to about 60 visits for #3, and around 30-40 for #4, etc. Most people have their Google search results set to default, which is 10 results per page, and most people do not click onto the 2nd page of results. They will refine their search before they do that if what they want can't be found on page 1. So it's important to get to a ranking of at least 10 to really see results.SEO
Ed then went on to talk about clusters. A cluster is where you create content on a bunch of different platform and have it all pointing to your product. These platforms all work on your main keyword phrase, and you should be looking at 4 or 5 in each cluster. Clusters can include, by are not exclusive to, Blogger blog, wordpress blog, Squidoo lens, Hubpage, Ezine article. They should all have at least one link each that points to your product, as well as possibly having links to each other along the way, just to increase your authority/backlinks. Backlinks will be a topic that is discussed at a later date.
As you build up a cluster for your keyword phrase (sausage making tips), you can then create another cluster that centers around another keyword phrase in that same niche (sausage making recipes) and another (sausage making supplies) until you have several clusters, all in the same niche, all pointing to the same products, but using different keywords to capture different search traffic, increasing your chances of getting that illusive 200 visits per day.
It was interesting to note that if Gtrends is saying you should be getting 200 visits for a #1 or #2 rank in Google, that it will drop to about 60 visits for #3, and around 30-40 for #4, etc. Most people have their Google search results set to default, which is 10 results per page, and most people do not click onto the 2nd page of results. They will refine their search before they do that if what they want can't be found on page 1. So it's important to get to a ranking of at least 10 to really see results.SEO
Ed then went on to talk about clusters. A cluster is where you create content on a bunch of different platform and have it all pointing to your product. These platforms all work on your main keyword phrase, and you should be looking at 4 or 5 in each cluster. Clusters can include, by are not exclusive to, Blogger blog, wordpress blog, Squidoo lens, Hubpage, Ezine article. They should all have at least one link each that points to your product, as well as possibly having links to each other along the way, just to increase your authority/backlinks. Backlinks will be a topic that is discussed at a later date.
As you build up a cluster for your keyword phrase (sausage making tips), you can then create another cluster that centers around another keyword phrase in that same niche (sausage making recipes) and another (sausage making supplies) until you have several clusters, all in the same niche, all pointing to the same products, but using different keywords to capture different search traffic, increasing your chances of getting that illusive 200 visits per day.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Ed Says I'm Ugly
Day 15 was just one video, on the WHY of doing all this stuff - social bookmarking, blog posts with affiliate links, etc). It is, as Ed would say, Marketing the Way The Internet Works (or more importantly, Marketing The Way Google Wants, because as we all know it's Google in whom we are targeting for traffic).
Ed broke it down like this:
Imagine each niche phrase as a nightclub, and Google is kind of like the bouncer (door man) for each and every club there is. Actually, Ed started by saying that Google was the nightclub, but I think the analogy works better with Google as the bouncer. So anyway, niches such as "Viagra", or "Diet Pills" are like the Viper Room nightclub in Los Angeles - notoriously hard to get into. You might as well save yourself the time and humiliation at this point. There are far too many other, much cooler, hipper and better looking people already trying to get into that club for you to even bother. However a term such as "Free Speed Reading" was, as Ed put it, more like a Blue Light Disco. Or perhaps for the purposes of those of us too old to go to Blue Light Discos these days, it's like a boutique pub. Much easier to get into but still it pays to have help. You see, Google your new little blog site and thinks, damn you is ugly! Pig ugly if you're going by the pics Ed uses on his video. So Google doesn't want to let you in, certainly not the Viper Room, but not even the boutique pub either...well, not on your own anyway. New sites generally look dodgy, with their sales letter and opt-in page, it's pretty obvious to Google that you're only interested in parting people from their money. So the trick is to have influential friends to help get you into those smaller clubs and boutique pubs. Influential friends come in the form of authority sites. There are basically two types of influential friends - the gorgeous intelligent friend, and the attention seeking friend. Partner up with both of these and you're practically a shoe-in to get into your desired club.
First up there is the gorgeous intelligent friend - also known as sites that allow you to post content, such as blog sites. Google likes them because there is usually plenty of backlinks to them (backlinks are kind of like other sites putting a good word in, as far as the Google bouncer is concerned). They may have been a round a while and so are well-known to Google - but best of all (for you) they are happy to associate with you (post content and tags). This is a real help and alone can definitely get you through the door, although you'll probably be waiting a while to get to the bar if you only go in with the gorgeous intelligent friend. That's where the attention seeking friend comes in handy.
Attention seeking friends are your social bookmarking sites, such as digg, stumbleupon.com, etc. These sites already have a high page ranking with Google and they get noticed. So when they say you're good, then Google is not only much more inclined to let you in, but you're getting a drinks card and a path cleared to the bar. The problem is, like with life, if you continue to only hang out with the party people (attention seekers) you'll crash and burn, and wear saddle bags under your eyes and be deaf from the constant dance music, and be coughing and wheezing from the smoke and other ingestants. The Google will see you as a washed-up party doofus and bump you from the V.I.P list altogether, never to be heard from again. You'll be pawning off your 6 inch disco platforms and selling the gold in your teeth before you can say "Paris Hilton is going to jail".
So that was it...a painless day of theory, but very important and worthwhile going through. I'm really liking Ed's analogies. They certainly make digesting the theory that much easier.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that another 3 pieces of content have been requested. I think this is going to be a daily thing and I think I know why, but I'll expand on that more if it turns out I'm right.
Ed broke it down like this:
Imagine each niche phrase as a nightclub, and Google is kind of like the bouncer (door man) for each and every club there is. Actually, Ed started by saying that Google was the nightclub, but I think the analogy works better with Google as the bouncer. So anyway, niches such as "Viagra", or "Diet Pills" are like the Viper Room nightclub in Los Angeles - notoriously hard to get into. You might as well save yourself the time and humiliation at this point. There are far too many other, much cooler, hipper and better looking people already trying to get into that club for you to even bother. However a term such as "Free Speed Reading" was, as Ed put it, more like a Blue Light Disco. Or perhaps for the purposes of those of us too old to go to Blue Light Discos these days, it's like a boutique pub. Much easier to get into but still it pays to have help. You see, Google your new little blog site and thinks, damn you is ugly! Pig ugly if you're going by the pics Ed uses on his video. So Google doesn't want to let you in, certainly not the Viper Room, but not even the boutique pub either...well, not on your own anyway. New sites generally look dodgy, with their sales letter and opt-in page, it's pretty obvious to Google that you're only interested in parting people from their money. So the trick is to have influential friends to help get you into those smaller clubs and boutique pubs. Influential friends come in the form of authority sites. There are basically two types of influential friends - the gorgeous intelligent friend, and the attention seeking friend. Partner up with both of these and you're practically a shoe-in to get into your desired club.
First up there is the gorgeous intelligent friend - also known as sites that allow you to post content, such as blog sites. Google likes them because there is usually plenty of backlinks to them (backlinks are kind of like other sites putting a good word in, as far as the Google bouncer is concerned). They may have been a round a while and so are well-known to Google - but best of all (for you) they are happy to associate with you (post content and tags). This is a real help and alone can definitely get you through the door, although you'll probably be waiting a while to get to the bar if you only go in with the gorgeous intelligent friend. That's where the attention seeking friend comes in handy.
Attention seeking friends are your social bookmarking sites, such as digg, stumbleupon.com, etc. These sites already have a high page ranking with Google and they get noticed. So when they say you're good, then Google is not only much more inclined to let you in, but you're getting a drinks card and a path cleared to the bar. The problem is, like with life, if you continue to only hang out with the party people (attention seekers) you'll crash and burn, and wear saddle bags under your eyes and be deaf from the constant dance music, and be coughing and wheezing from the smoke and other ingestants. The Google will see you as a washed-up party doofus and bump you from the V.I.P list altogether, never to be heard from again. You'll be pawning off your 6 inch disco platforms and selling the gold in your teeth before you can say "Paris Hilton is going to jail".
So that was it...a painless day of theory, but very important and worthwhile going through. I'm really liking Ed's analogies. They certainly make digesting the theory that much easier.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that another 3 pieces of content have been requested. I think this is going to be a daily thing and I think I know why, but I'll expand on that more if it turns out I'm right.
Monday, August 13, 2007
And Then There Were Three
Day 8 of the challenge has come and gone and I am now down to just 3 niches, which is okay since I didn't care for most of the others anyway...Of the 3 that are left, one is a subject I am really interested in already, one is something I know absolutely nothing about, and one is something I know a bit about but very little. Both the last two are subjects that I am interested in knowing more about, which certainly would help when it come to gathering information down the track. I know Ed and Dan find the thrill on Internet Marketing in learning about new niches they had previously known nothing about, and I certainly hope that down the track I can find that sort of enthusiasm for anything due to the marketing prospects...but at the moment I know myself well enough to know that I find it hard to get enthusiastic about a subject that doesn't interest me...so I'm glad that the subjects that do remain after all the market research testing are ones that do hold my interest.
So, anyway, I should probably explain how it came to be that my niches have been narrowed by one since yesterday. Ed's lessons for today revolved around getting some sort of confirmation that the number of searches per day that were coming up for my niches in Wordtracker was accurate, or not. It's all well and good for Wordtracker to tell you that you're getting 200 searches a day for your keywords, but apparently there have been a lot of cases where people have used that information to produce a sales site, only to find that they go no traffic whatsoever. As we know, Wordtracker is only an educated "guesstamite" of the searches for a day, and uses a couple of sites to gather this information. Unfortunately, one of these sites is not Google, as that would pretty much clear everything up (as it's Google rankings that we are going after here). Google are pretty tight lipped about the actual number of searches a particular keyword phrase can get in a day so it's was up to Ed and his "lab" - Rob Sommerville, to try and find a way of being able to double check the Wordtracker results. They feel they have managed to do this through Google Trends.
Google Trends is a place where you can see in graph form, just how your search terms have been going. Unfortunately, there are no actual numbers on the graph to tell you how many searches the graph is showing at any particular point, but thankfully the big brains of Ed, Rob and Dan managed to figure out a way that you can get a rough indication. By using a search term with a known about of searches per day as a baseline, we are then able to enter our search term alongside that one for comparison. So using one of Dan's keyword phrases, that of "Male Yeast Infection", where he knew that he was getting 500 page hits per day due to his statistic counter, we are able to see if our keywords get enough traffic to warrant going further with them.
Now, this is by no means an exact science. As I mentioned the graph shows search results, while Dan is only able to gather stats for people who have clicked through to his site. He is in the #2 position in Google for that term so it's safe to say that a majority of the searchers who do click on a link will be clicking on his, but obviously not all of them will. The idea behind this is not about getting exact results anyway, it's simply a test to confirm that there is enough traffic on your keyword phrase to go ahead with the next phase. If Wordtracker was displaying 1000 results a day but Google Trends didn't have anything show up then you would know that, for that keyword, Wordtracker wasn't accurate. Then, to add to the confusion, we find out that Google doesn't usually display results on their graph for search terms that get lass than about 250 searches a day. That seems to throw a spanner in the works as, according to Wordtracker, most of my terms are only getting around 100-150 searches a day. Never fear, says Ed, for below the graph is another section that includes searches by region, by city and by language. It just so happens that "Male Yeast Infection" is only searched for through the English language, so therefore we know that the blue bar that represents the English number of searches is the full amount for Dan's click through stats...that being 500-550 a day. So if the blue bar is 500 searches, and our red bar comparison is only half the length, then we know that there are roughly 250 searches a day. As I mentioned before, this is far from being an exact science. It is merely a tool to double check the worth of your key word phrases.
Now, as so many people at the 30 Day Challenge were using "Male Yeast Infection" as their baseline, it meant that a spike occurred in the Google Trends search results. This then meant that the English blue bar was no longer reading 500 searches, but as Ed points out, if you still regard the bar as representing 500 searches, then you can't go wrong, as if the bar is actually representing more searches then your red bar by comparison is getting more than it would if the bar was only representing 500. Still with me? No, I thought not...
Suffice to say that as long as there is a little bit of red appearing, say 3mm at least, then all should be okay. Luckily for me, two of my phrases actually showed up on the graph as well, one of them being way higher than the baseline, while still only having around 30,000 page matches in Google...so I'm particularly chuffed about that. But, it did mean that one of my niches had to get the arse, so to speak, as it just didn't cut the mustard in comparison to the blue English bar, and when I tried to widen the niche by removing a keyword I found that there were far too many competing pages in Google for it...so it got the chop.
Thanks to Ed, Rob and Dan I'm feeling quietly confident about my last three niches as I move into Day 9 of the challenge.
So, anyway, I should probably explain how it came to be that my niches have been narrowed by one since yesterday. Ed's lessons for today revolved around getting some sort of confirmation that the number of searches per day that were coming up for my niches in Wordtracker was accurate, or not. It's all well and good for Wordtracker to tell you that you're getting 200 searches a day for your keywords, but apparently there have been a lot of cases where people have used that information to produce a sales site, only to find that they go no traffic whatsoever. As we know, Wordtracker is only an educated "guesstamite" of the searches for a day, and uses a couple of sites to gather this information. Unfortunately, one of these sites is not Google, as that would pretty much clear everything up (as it's Google rankings that we are going after here). Google are pretty tight lipped about the actual number of searches a particular keyword phrase can get in a day so it's was up to Ed and his "lab" - Rob Sommerville, to try and find a way of being able to double check the Wordtracker results. They feel they have managed to do this through Google Trends.
Google Trends is a place where you can see in graph form, just how your search terms have been going. Unfortunately, there are no actual numbers on the graph to tell you how many searches the graph is showing at any particular point, but thankfully the big brains of Ed, Rob and Dan managed to figure out a way that you can get a rough indication. By using a search term with a known about of searches per day as a baseline, we are then able to enter our search term alongside that one for comparison. So using one of Dan's keyword phrases, that of "Male Yeast Infection", where he knew that he was getting 500 page hits per day due to his statistic counter, we are able to see if our keywords get enough traffic to warrant going further with them.
Now, this is by no means an exact science. As I mentioned the graph shows search results, while Dan is only able to gather stats for people who have clicked through to his site. He is in the #2 position in Google for that term so it's safe to say that a majority of the searchers who do click on a link will be clicking on his, but obviously not all of them will. The idea behind this is not about getting exact results anyway, it's simply a test to confirm that there is enough traffic on your keyword phrase to go ahead with the next phase. If Wordtracker was displaying 1000 results a day but Google Trends didn't have anything show up then you would know that, for that keyword, Wordtracker wasn't accurate. Then, to add to the confusion, we find out that Google doesn't usually display results on their graph for search terms that get lass than about 250 searches a day. That seems to throw a spanner in the works as, according to Wordtracker, most of my terms are only getting around 100-150 searches a day. Never fear, says Ed, for below the graph is another section that includes searches by region, by city and by language. It just so happens that "Male Yeast Infection" is only searched for through the English language, so therefore we know that the blue bar that represents the English number of searches is the full amount for Dan's click through stats...that being 500-550 a day. So if the blue bar is 500 searches, and our red bar comparison is only half the length, then we know that there are roughly 250 searches a day. As I mentioned before, this is far from being an exact science. It is merely a tool to double check the worth of your key word phrases.
Now, as so many people at the 30 Day Challenge were using "Male Yeast Infection" as their baseline, it meant that a spike occurred in the Google Trends search results. This then meant that the English blue bar was no longer reading 500 searches, but as Ed points out, if you still regard the bar as representing 500 searches, then you can't go wrong, as if the bar is actually representing more searches then your red bar by comparison is getting more than it would if the bar was only representing 500. Still with me? No, I thought not...
Suffice to say that as long as there is a little bit of red appearing, say 3mm at least, then all should be okay. Luckily for me, two of my phrases actually showed up on the graph as well, one of them being way higher than the baseline, while still only having around 30,000 page matches in Google...so I'm particularly chuffed about that. But, it did mean that one of my niches had to get the arse, so to speak, as it just didn't cut the mustard in comparison to the blue English bar, and when I tried to widen the niche by removing a keyword I found that there were far too many competing pages in Google for it...so it got the chop.
Thanks to Ed, Rob and Dan I'm feeling quietly confident about my last three niches as I move into Day 9 of the challenge.
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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