Time and time again, I read make money online gurus state that the make money online niche is a terrible niche and that people should not waste their time creating make money online blogs.  In many ways these make money online gurus are right.  But, they are not telling you the complete truth.

The first thing that the gurus complain about is the number of people you have to compete with.  This is very true.  There are currently over 12 million competing pages indexed by google for “make money online.”

The second biggest complaint is that the market is not that big.  Well, this is half true.  The market is pretty big.  According to Wordtracker, 953 searches are done a day for “make money online”.  953 searches a day is nothing to shake a stick at.

The third complaint is that those who are competing in this niche are all really good at SEO.  This too is true.  If you want to rank for “make money online” you will need to compete with a lot of great Internet marketers who know a lot about search engine optimization.

But, does the make money online niche suck?

If making money online is a terrible niche, why do so many Internet marketers try to rank for the “make money online” keyword?

Hungry buyers is the answer!!

While the market is not huge, people who are looking to make money online are hungry buyers.  They are the best type of traffic that you want to your site.  They are desperate to learn how to make money online.  And, they are willing to pay a lot to learn how to do it.

That is the secret that the make money online gurus are not telling you about.  While it is a difficult niche to compete in, the make money online niche is great.  So if you want to make money online, find a micro niche within the make money online market and you might be able to tap into a less competitive market and still make lots of money.

As I have been progressing through the Thirty Day Challenge 2008 and updating the Thirty Day Challenge Action List, I came to day 4. In Day 4’s lessons, Dan Raine has shared a great video on how to write articles that sell.

Learning how to write articles that sell is an often overlooked skill by beginning Internet marketers. We spend a lot of time how to find niches, how to find keywords and how to set up websites, but we forget that without good sales copy we will never be able to reach the maximum sales for our niche.

I have found in my Internet marketing journey that the number one thing you must do to succeed in Internet marketing is to create lots of content. The more content you create, the more products you promote, the more sales you will make. You need to have tons of hooks out on the Internet to increase your chances of catching sales.

However, the second most important lessons is learning how to write articles that sell. If you really want to learn how to make money online, you need this skill. Watch the following video to get a glimpse into the sales copy creating process of one of the best Internet marketers.

Twelve months ago Newest on the Net was born in large part out of my experience with Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge.  And for this, I am very thankful for Ed Dale and his team at the Thirty Day Challenge.  Prior to the 2007 Thirty Day Challenge, I had a blog that focused on massively multiplayer online role playing games, MMOExplorer.com.  But, after participating in the Thirty Day Challenge, I fell in love with Internet marketing, social media, and blogging.

When I first heard about the Thirty Day Challenge, I had never really thought about Internet Marketing.  However, as I continued through Ed Dale’s Internet marketing course, I became obsessed.  This obsession led me to create the Thirty Day Challenge Action List 2007.  Originally this action list was posted on my MMO Explorer blog.  Since then I moved it to Newest on the Net where it really belongs.  Here is the link to the Thirty Day Challenge Action List 2008.

While I would like to tell you that I earned $1 during August 2007 from the Thirty Day Challenge course, I can’t.  While a tried very hard to earn my first dollar online, I wasn’t able to do it in August of that year.  I was kind of disappointed and decided to turn away from Internet Marketing and focus on learning how to blog.

In the meantime, without me knowing it, my sites that I created during the 2007 Thirty Day Challenge were working for me without me doing anything.  In November or December, I happened to check my Clickbank account and saw that I had made 4 sales totaling over $100.  I couldn’t believe it.  The work that I had done during the Thirty Day Challenge actually made me money.  From this point on, I became obsessed with Internet Marketing again.

Since December 2007, I have made thousands of dollars online.  I owe my start to Ed Dale, Dan Raine and the rest of the 30 Day Challenge team.  I can’t wait to follow this year’s challenge.  Please subscribe to Newest on the Net, so that you know when updates are made to the 2008 Thirty Day Challenge Action List.

Welcome to the Thirty Day Challenge Action List 2008. This Thirty Day Challenge Action List 2008 is designed to give you a step-by-step guide to completing Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge Internet marketing program. This is the second year for this action list. Here is where you can find the Thirty Day Challenge Action List 2007.

If you are not familiar with the Thirty Day Challenge, you are in for a real treat. You can sign up for this incredible free Internet marketing course here. It is the best Internet marketing program I have ever seen. And, it is FREE!!

Now back to discussing this 2008 Thirty Day Challenge Action List. One of the problems that I have with the Thirty Day Challenge is turning Ed’s excellent videos into actions. I watch the videos, learn a lot, but in the end don’t really know what to do. This action list is designed to help you to always know what you need to accomplish each day of the course.

For those Thirty Day Challenge participants who are not subscribers to Newest on the Net, please subscribe to my RSS feed so that you always know when I have updated this Thirty Day Challenge Action List 2008. Without further adieu, let’s get started.

2008 Thirty Day Challenge Action List

STEP 1 – Setting Up Flock: Download, install and setup Flock Internet Browser

1. Download Flock
2. Setup the Flock Preferences as shown here
3. Setup a Google Reader account
4. Speed up Flock by following the instruction here
5. Install the Google Global Flock extension
6. Install the Google Notebook Flock extension
7. Install the SEO for Flock extension
8. Install the SearchStatus extension
9. Install the StumbleUpon toolbar (please note – If you are interested in learning more about StumbleUpon, read 65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles)
10. Install the Thirty Day Challenge Toolbar

STEP 2 – Sign up to Twitter

Follow me on Twitter
Follow Ed Dale on Twitter
Follow Dan Raine on Twitter

STEP 3 – Learn to Use Twitter in Flock and Install Twirl

1. Read instructions on how to use Twitter in Flock
2. Install Twirl

STEP 4 – Learn How To Set Up Google Reader and Google Alerts

1. Read these instructions for setting up Google Reader and Google Alerts
2. Subscribe to Newest on the Net so that you know when this action list is updated.

STEP 5 – Learn How To Use StumbleUpon

1. Read these instructions for using StumbleUpon
2. Add me as a friend on StumbleUpon

STEP 6 – Subscribe to Ed Dale’s YouTube Channel

STEP 7 – Join FriendFeed

1. Join FriendFeed
2. Add me as your friend in FriendFeed
3. Add Ed Dale as your friend in FriendFeed
4. Join the FriendFeed Thirty Day Challenge Room

STEP 8 – Day 1: Start Brainstorming Niche Ideas

1. Come up with 5-10 niches that interest you
2. Use Amazon.com’s magazine and newspapers section to come up with niche ideas
3. Remember the “small is better”
4. Subscribe to the Google Alerts for your chosen niches

STEP 9 – Day 2: Market Samurai

1. Download Market Samurai
2. Realize that for Internet marketing a niche markets and keywords are the same thing
3. Find keywords that are used by a lot of people, who are looking to buy something, and not a lot of competing pages for that keyword
4. Find keywords with the following attributes:
   a. SEO Traffic (SEOT) > 80 searches a day
   b. SEO Competition < 30,000 competing pages
   c. Adwords CTR > 2.00% (this means that it is a buying keyword). Adwords CTR is just used to prioritize your keywords.
   d. Look at the keyword’s OCI percentage. The higher the percentage the more likely that the keyword is a buying keyword. OCI is just used to prioritize your keywords.
5. Narrow down your niches to a few keywords meeting the above criteria.

STEP 10 – Day 3: Determine the SEO Competition

1. Determine SEO Competition of your keywords
2. Find a keyword that you believe that the SEO competition is low enough that you can compete for the number 1 ranking in Google

STEP 11 – DAY 4: Finding your affiliates products

1. Find 2 affiliate products within your niche that you can promote
2. Learn how to write articles that sell by following Dan Raine’s Writing Your First Copy guide
3. Learn how to create Amazon affiliate links
4. Join Picnik
5. Learn how to resize images and edit images with Picnik

STEP 12 – Day 5: Research your niche

1. Research your niche. Find articles about your keyword using sites like Ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, google blog search, and google news.
2. Find enough content so that you can write 5-10 300-500 word articles about you niche.
3. Write a few of your 300-500 articles. You will be using this content throughout the Thirty Day Challenge.

STEP 13 – Day 6: Publishing a Blog

1. Find an available domain name with your keywords in the name. You can use nameboy.com or namecheap.com.
2. Consider signing up for web hosting with Host Gator
3. Check out WordPress Direct for creating a WordPress site
4. Create a self-hosted WordPress site. Consider using WordPress Direct, Fantastico or Simple Scripts to help with the installation of WordPress.

STEP 14 – Day 7: Learn how to track traffic and click throughs on your blog

1. Install Google Analytics on your Blog
2. Create trackable affiliate links using TDC Statcounter
3. Insert your trackable affiliate links into your blog content

STEP 15 – Day 8: Social bookmaking increases your web presence and Google search engine results pages positioning

1. Use socialmarker to bookmark your content. I actually like SocialPoster.com better so try that one out too.

STEP 16 – Day 9: Get more backlinks to your website

1. Find relevant groups at Google Groups
2. Find relevant forums that you can leave your link in your signature
3. Find relevant Squidoo pages for your keyword by typing the following into Google – your keyword site:squidoo.com
4. Make good comments with your anchored text link in each of these websites. Become part of the community at each of these sites. Do not spam them!! ADD VALUE!!
5. Get a few links a day
6. Find out if your site is ranked by Google by typing the following into Google – site:yourdomain.com

STEP 17 – Day 10: Thirty Day Challenge Free RSS Submission Service

1. Submit your site’s RSS feed to RSS feed directories using the Thirty Day Challenge Free RSS Submission Service

STEP 18 – Day 11: Promote your site using Squidoo

1. Create a Squidoo lens about your site
2. Socialmarker your Squidoo lens

STEP 19 – Day 12:  Promote your site using Hubpages

1. Create a Hubpage page about your site
2. Socialmarker your Hubpage page

STEP 20 – Day 13:  Analyze you traffic using Google Analytics

1. Focus on what keywords your traffic is coming from
2. Understand who is referring traffic to you

Day 14 Note: Deleted due to Tumblr deleting 30DC sites

STEP 21 – Day 15:  Promote your site using Weebly

1. Create a Weebly page about your site
2. Socialmarker you Weebly page

There are three software applications that I use most on my computer: Windows XP, MS Word, and Firefox. By far my favorite application is Firefox.

Yesterday, I was talking to some friends about how I think that we are living in the most exciting times. I used to envy my grandparents who saw the first cars, airplanes, and rockets. But now, I think that the creation of the Internet has trumped these prior innovations. Okay, I am sure that I will not get universal consensus on this, but you have to admit that the Internet is pretty darn great.

Since one of my favorite past times is surfing the Internet, I am always looking for Firefox tips and tricks. Here are 10 great firefox tips. For you power users I hope there is at least one in this list that you did not know about before. If there is, then I am going to consider this article a success.

• Customize your firefox toolbars – If you right click next to the Help menu, you can select customize. From this screen you can totally customize your toolbars. You can add items to toolbars and move items from one toolbar to another. This is a great way to regain valuable real estate with Firefox by getting rid of buttons you never use. You can consolidate two or more toolbars into one.

• FoxMarks Extension – If you work on more than one computer, this firefox extension is awesome. FoxMarks allows you to sync you firefox bookmarks on multiple computers. I hate when I bookmark something during the day at my work computer, and then go to read it at night on my home computer.

• Restore Closed Tabs – Have you even closed a tab by accident?  I am sure you have.  We all do it.  I usually swear a few times.  Well, now I won’t get yelled at by my wife for swearing.  If you hit Ctrl + Shft + T you can restore your closed tabs.

• Use Pipeline – Increase your page load speeds by turning on Firefox’s pipeline function.  You turn pipeline on by going into Firefox’s about:config screen.  To do that just type in about:config into the address bar.  From this screen enter true for network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining.  Then set the network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8.  This will allow you to open up to 8 pages at one time.

• Delete the Go Button – Who uses the Go Button?  I don’t.  In fact it ticks me off that it is even there.  Well, I figured out how to delete it.  Again, go into the about:config screen and set the browser.urlbar.hideGoButton to true.

I hope that at least one of these tips was new for you.  The one that has significantly increased my love for Firefox is FoxMarks.  Maybe I will do a separate post just on this.  I hope you enjoy these firefox tips.  If you have any favorite firefox tips, share them in the comments.