Entries from November 2007 ↓

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I have been a big fan of Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge Internet marketing program. This 2007 action list is a step-by-step guide to get started in Internet marketing and making money blogging.  Here is the 2008 Thirty Day Challenge action list.

Previously I had this 30 Day Challenge Action List on MMO Explorer, but have recently decided to move it to Newest on the Net where it is more in line with topics covered.

If you have not heard of the 30 Day Challenge, I highly encourage you to take a look at the Thirty Day Challenge and consider joining yourselves. It is an unbelievable beginners’ Internet marketing program.

One thing that I have been having trouble with is turning Ed’s lessons into actions. Therefore I have been using Mike Mindel’s blog to help me keep on track. Despite Mike’s great notes, I still needed an action list to keep me on track. Here is my action list. I will keep updating it as I continue my journey. I would like to thank Ed and Mike for their unbelievable work.

In addition to Ed and Dan’s Thirty Day Challenge, they run another unbelievable Internet marketing course called The Immediate Edge.  If you like what you are learning in the 30 Day Challenge, please check out The Immediate Edge.  The Immediate Edge website has lots of great information explaining the course.

For those Thirty Day Challenge participants who have subscribed to MMO Explorer, please subscribe to Newest on the Net. I promise to keep following the 30 Day Challenge.

Thirty Day Challenge Action List

STEP 1 - Setting Up Firefox: Download and Install the Following

1. Firefox
2. Del.icio.us Toolbar
3. SEO for Firefox
4. FoxyTunes
5. Google Notebook
6. Firebug
7. Fleck
8. ScribeFire
9. SearchStatus
10. Session Manager
11. StumbleUpon
12. Twitterbar
13. Video Downloader

Check out Mike Mindel’s blog for descriptions of each Firefox extension.

STEP 2 – Join the Following Social Sites

1. Facebook
2. 30 Day Challenge Forum
3. Bloglines
4. Twitter

STEP 3 – Setup Skype

1. Skype
2. Pamela for Skype

STEP 4 - Leverage the Power of Social Networking - Start Using the Tools Ed has Shared

1. Stumble Sites that you like using your StumbleUpon Toolbar. For example you could Stumble this site or any of the following pages
   http://mmoexplorer.com/62/does-your-wife-hate-your-mmorpg/
   http://mmoexplorer.com/59/wow-the-mmorpg-killer/
   http://mmoexplorer.com/51/the-agency-just-another-mmo/
   http://mmoexplorer.com/40/top-10-world-of-warcraft-podcasts/
   http://mmoexplorer.com/28/top-6-everquest-ii-podcasts/ I digress
2. Add RSS Feeds that you want to read using Bloglines
3. Bookmark sites you want to read again using Del.icio.us
4. Post notes about the page using ScribeFire
5. Sign up for Skitch
6. Sign up for Flickr
7. Upload images to mySkitch or Flickr
8. Download Snagit
9. Download Camtasia
10. Sign up for Jing

STEP 5 - Install the Thirty Day Challenge Toolbar

Thirty Day Challenge Toolbar - By the way I can’t install this for some reason

STEP 6 - Day 1 Action Items

1. Write down niche market ideas (not product ideas)

Think about sub-niches - Mike’s Examples: Niche: How to Trout Fish Sub-niche: How to Trout Fish Using a Spinner in a Stream

Mike Mindel defines a niche market as,

“The ideal niche market is one where there is an interest from a small but sizable group of individuals (niche market) and no one is fulfilling their needs”

STEP 7 - Day 2 Action Items - Find 7 sub-niches

Use the following sites to brainstorm niche markets and sub-niche ideas,

1. Ebay Pulse
2. Technorati
3. Google Groups
4. Yahoo Groups
5. Google Trends
6. Google Hot Trends Report
7. Yahoo Answers

STEP 8 - Day 3 Action Items

1. Use Wordtracker and type in each of your 7 sub-niches.
2. Copy and paste the wordtracker results into a text document for each of your 7 sub-niches.
3. Perform google competition analysis by typing each niche market into google. Are there other people advertising products in this sub-niche?

STEP 9 - Day 6 Action Items

1. Go to Google and type in your sub-niche + Affiliate.
2. Look for whether your sub-niche has affiliate programs
3. Look at right side of Google to see who is advertising for this phrase
4. write down affiliate programs for your sub-niche
5. Go to Google Trends and type in you sub-niches. Just observe the traffic

STEP 10 - Day 7 Let the Judgment Begin

1. Find Umbrella Phrases for each sub-niche.
2. Find a phrase match with below 25,000 - 30,000 competing pages
3. Find a phrase with 80 or more searches per day

STEP 11 - Day 8 The Judgment Continues

1. Using Google Trends, compare your umbrella phrase with male yeast infection.
2. Select an umbrella phrase with at least 80 daily searches and page competition below 30,000

STEP 12 - Day 9 Google Trends Redux

1. Using the steps above, go from 7 niches to 2 niches

STEP 13 - Day 10 Down to Two

1. Type your exact phrase match into google and make sure that there are no Web 2.0 properties.
2. Research your two topics using google news and google blog search
3. Take notes on your topics to gain knowledge of these areas
4. Join related groups in Facebook, Google Groups, Myspace, Yahoo.

STEP 14 - Golden Nuggets

1. Google you keyword phrase.
2. Take notes from 10 - 20 of the sites that google presents in the search results
3. Joining the mailing lists for those sites
4. Subscribe to the RSS Feeds
5. Join the groups on Google Groups, Yahoo, Facebook, Myspace, etc.

STEP 15 - Day 13 Content, Content, Content

1. Create three articles for each of your keywords (6 articles total)
2. Put your keywords in the title and first sentence of each article

STEP 16 - Day 14 Affiliate Time

1. Write another three article for each of your keywords (6 articles total)
2. Join Clickbank affiliate program
3. Join Amazon’s affiliate program
4. Find and join other affiliate programs (See Mike Mindel’s List of Affiliate Programs)

STEP 17 - Day 15

1. Write another three article for each of your keywords (6 articles total)

STEP 18 - Day 16 It’s Traffic Time…

1. Create Tumblr blog (tell a story and link to you affiliate product) [NOTE: TUMBLR HAS BEEN DELETING 30DC BLOGS. I SUGGEST USING A DIFFERENT BLOGGING PLATFORM]
2. Write another three article for each of your keywords (6 articles total)
3. Don’t post all of your articles on your blog.
4. Save some of the articles to post on new blogs that you create for your keyword.

STEP 19 - Day 17 Share Your Blogs and Articles with the World

1. Install Social Poster.
2. Place Social Poster Bookmarklet onto your Firefox bookmark toolbar. This makes it easy to social post a website that you like.
3. Social Poster your blog and blog articles using Social Poster. Bookmarking your content helps you to get listed in Google and helps your ranking within Google.
4. Register with each of the 40 social sites that Social Poster lists.
5. Write another three article for each of your keywords (6 articles total)
6. Create an Ezine Article relevant to your keyword.

Day 18/19 Weekend No Lessons

• So Catchup!!

Step 20 - Day 20 Ethical Social Bookmarking

1. Always practice ethical social bookmarking.
2. Continue to explore social bookmarking sites. Check out Socializer 2.0.
3. Don’t worry about hosting your own sites at this stage. This stage is for testing!!
4. Don’t put the same article on more than one site. Google will give you a duplicate content penalty.
5. When writing your articles, put your exact umbrella phrase in the article title, first sentence and last paragraph. This is very important to get ranked in google.

Step 21 - Day 21 The Big Picture

Today Ed gave an overview of what we are trying to do here. While this does not hit into the action list format, I think that it is important that I give a brief summary of the most important points of the big picture.

• Product is not that important at this stage.
• This is a testing phase.
• Main goal is to set up various website using umbrella phrases to drive around 200 visitors per day to our affiliate page. With 200 visitors to our affiliate product, you can expect a sale a day.
• Eventually we will substitue the affiliate product with one of our own.
• Once you know your conversion rate, then ppc advertising becomes a great way to make money.

1. Create three more articles.
2. Add another Web2.0 property to your arsenal of content sites. Check out Mike Mindel’s list of Content Sites.
3. Only post content that you haven’t used before.
4. Social poster your sites and your team members’ sites (if the content is good)

Step 22 - Day 22 Let’s Test; Let’s Track

1. Track the number of visits to each of your websites by installing Google Analytics and/or Statcounter.
2. Use the TDC Stats Tracker to track the number of people clicking your affiliate links on your websites.
3. Test different affiliate products in your niche to see which sells better.

Step 23 - Day 23 Conversion Time

1. Keep using different blogging platforms until you reach 200 visits to your money page a day.
2. Therefore, today add one more platform.
3. Work on creating good copy for your blogs.

Step 24 - Day 24 Are you getting traffic?

1. Monitor your stats. If you are getting 200 visits to your money page per day, then move to conversion.
2. If you are not gettign 200 visits to your money page, create another cluster to drive traffic to you money page, or decide to discontinue with that keyword.
3. You need 200 visitors per day to your money page (probably your affiliate program).

If you like this action list, please subscribe to Newest on the Net. I will continue to update this 30 Day Challenge Action List.

I am thankful for not being at the mall this black Friday.  Instead, I get to sit at my computer and read some great articles on social media.  Here are some great social media articles to keep you out of the malls.

• 10 Misconceptions Why SEO is Better Than SMO Refuted - Check out this great article from SEO 2.0.  Tad responds to Wayne Smallman’s article touting the advantags of seo over smo.
• Have Bloggers Become Social Media Abusers? - Monika has written a great guide for how to properly use social media.
• Social Media Marketing in A Nutshell - Maki has written a great overview of social media marketing.
• Del.icio.us: An Underrated Link Building Tool - Vandelay Website Design has written a great overview of my favorite social bookmarking site, del.icio.us.  It also provides some great information on how del.icio.us has helped Vandelay Website Design to build links and traffic.
• StumbleUpon Made This Blog’s Traffic Explode - a1-fan-fun has written a great account of his first experience with StumbleUpon.  For new bloggers, StumbleUpon makes it fun to blog.  No longer do new bloggers have to write knowing that no one will see their articles.
• Technorati - Now Completely Useless - I hope that Lars is wrong about Technorati (I love their authority ranking).  However, Lars raises some great points about Technorati’s decline.
• Digg Vs. StumbleUpon - And the Winner Is …. - Work N Play has written an interesting comparison of Digg versus stumbleupon.
• Nine Uses For Social Bookmarking - WebUpon has some great ideas for the uses of social bookmarking sites.
• 4 Types of Social Media Marketers and the 1 You Never Hear About - Tanya Ferrell has a great article hear analyzing the who are social media marketers.
• Don’t Want To Take the Dive Into Social Media?  That’s Ok, Just Get Your Feet Wet - Shana Albert has a great guide here for getting started with social media.
• 10 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Sucks.. - Andy Beard writing at Collective Thoughts has 10 tips for how to properly plan a social media marketing campaign.

I hope that you enjoy these articles.  Please tell me of other great articles about social media that you have read this past week.

Create favicon to add professionalism to your blog. A favicon is an image that is displayed in your browser’s address bar. Your favicon adds a nice touch by adding a visual to your url. Additionally, these free favicons make your website standout in your readers’ bookmarks folder.

Here is a step-by-step guide for how to create favicon:

1. Create our find an image that you would like to add be your favicon. My favicon is a derivative of my header image for Newest on the Net. From my header image, I created a smaller image that I use for my Gravatar image and any avatars for social sites. I created my header image and my avatar using photoshop. Alternatively, here is a favicon generator that you could use.
2. Once you have an image, use a favicon generator to create favicon. I used Favikon for my favicon maker, but you could also use the link in step one above. All that a favicon generator does is reduce the favicon into a 16 pixel square.
3. After you have created you favicon.ico file using the favicon generator, upload that file to your public_html folder on your wordpress server using an ftp application.
4. Next you have to add the following code to your header.php folder. Here is the code: <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico” />
5. Save your header.php folder
6. Refresh your browser
7. You should now have a favicon for your wordpress blog. Congratulations!!

If you know of another favicon generator, please tells us about it in the comments.

I hope you liked this tutorial for how to make a favicon.

After many years, Pandora Radio has finally added classical music to its catalog of music.  For lovers of Internet radio, this is a great addition.

You can now play great classical music by creating a station of your favorite composer or you can choose from one of the following pre-selected stations.

• Cello features
• Concerti
• Opera, Romantic Period
• Symphonic, Classical Period
• Trumpet and Horn Features
• Chamber, Baroque Period
•  Harpsichord features
• Organ feature

Well you get the picture.  There is a lot of classical music added to Pandora Radio!!

Facebook has finally decided to remove the “is” from its status update form.  No longer will people have to use butchered grammar when updating their status.

I am very glad the shackles are being removed.  But, I do find it amusing that the pesty “is” word is causing problems again.  I had flashbacks Clint/Lewinsky when I first read about Facebook’s decision.