Archive for July, 2010
Module 1 – Keywords and Market Research – Days 1 To 3
Posted by: | CommentsKey Points:
It takes the same amount of time to build an unsuccessful business online as it does to build a successful one.
The biggest factors that determine whether you succeed or fail are the market you choose and the keywords you target.
~~~~~~
An explanation of the market, niche and micro-niche hierarchy, and keywords and their importance.
Market – A community of people who share a common interest in a particular subject or activity which often has its own language made up of terms and acronyms.
Example – brides to be market who are interested in weddings and use acronyms such as MOH = maid of honor and FH = future husband.
Niches - subset of market which the community would be interested in. So in the above example niches might include wedding cakes, wedding flowers, wedding dresses etc.
Micro-Niches – these are niches within niches. For example within the wedding dress niches you would find vintage wedding dresses or wedding dress hire. The 2010 Challenge targets mciro-niches since they are generally easier to get a first page ranking on Google with.
Keywords – the words or phrases which members of a market type into a search engine in order to explore a particular niche. Searchers use different phrases to access the results and, as a result, the number of people using any one phrase varies considerably. The higher the number of searches for any particular keyword, the higher the potential value to you.
~~~~~~
By the end of this day you need to have identified 7 market or niche ideas that you can investigate further.
Suggestions for where to look include Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool and the magazine section of Amazon.com.
~~~~~~
Day 3 – Traffic and Competition
Traffic Estimates
When someone carries out a search in Google the search engine records the keyword phrase they used and, over time, develops estimates of how may times a day people search using that specific word or phrase. The result is 3 different traffic estimates.
For the purposes of this example let’s assume that you’re searching for an internet marketing coach. The 3 different estimates would be:
1. Exact Match – the number of people who type the phrase internet marketing coach exactly as written.
2. Phrase Match – an estimate of the number of people who are searching for a phrase which contains the words internet marketing coach, in that order, but also has other words (or numbers in it). e.g. find an internet marketing coach . . . or . . . internet marketing coach recommendations.
3. Broad Match – this refers to any phrase which contains all 3 words internet, marketing and coach but not in that order and with additional words included. e.g. hire a coach for internet marketing success.
The distinction between these types of traffic estimates is important because Google tends to rank your pages for keyword terms in a certain order. Usually you’ll be ranked for exact match first then as you add content and obtain links you get phrase match rankings. Then, as you site develops authority you obtain broad match rakings.
Aside ——
This hasn’t been my experience. Exact match usually comes last for me so I’ll be interested to see what happens with the site I put up for this Challenge.
—— end aside
Because of the different time frames associated with the different traffic estimates you can use this key to map out the traffic potential of any particular keyword phrase:
- Exact Match = short term traffic potential
- Phrase Match = medium term traffic potential
- Broad match = long term traffic potential
This means that when you’re trying to decide which keywords to target in your online business you should use Broad match data. This is because it’s the long term traffic potential of a keyword phrase that is most relevant at this stage of the process.
Competition
The second important concept introduced on Day 3 is that of competition.
When you type a keyword in Google search and the results are returned you will also see an estimate of the number of web pages that broadly match that keyword. This is the figure that appears at the top of the page any says About xxxxxx results (x seconds). If you put your term between inverted commas, e.g. “internet marketing coach” you will notice the number of results is reduced. This is because this is the phrase match competition estimate, i.e. the number of times this phrase has been searched with the words in the specific order, plus additional words.
When creating a new website you should start by focusing on your most specific competition, i.e. those returned when you do a phrase match search. Then, once you analyse and outrank your specific competition, you will often see an improvement in your broad match rankings as well.
This means that when it comes to competition you should be looking at the results of the phrase match search, rather than the broad match.
So, to recap – for traffic research you want to use broad match data. For competition research you need to use phrase match data.
~~~~~~
For more in-depth information on these ideas and videos illustrating them, please visit the Day 1, 2 or 3 links above, sign up for The 2010 Challenge, and watch the full training. Actually don’t watch it DO IT !!!!!!
Ed’s Magnificent Symphony Of Four Parts
Posted by: | CommentsHaving a massive catch up with regard the 2010 challenge since my focus has been on other things. But I’d like to have a complete record here. If you’re doing The Challenge or are up to date there won’t be much in this post of interest for you. Just saying! :-)
The pre-module ended with:
Day 5 – The Challenge disclaimer, primarily for legal reasons, I should imagine.
Basically, we can’t guarantee you will make money and we will make a commission on some advertisements etc. etc.
Day 6 – The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts
This is an essential lesson for anyone thinking of starting an internet marketing business (or anyone who already has one), irrespective of The Challenge. In fact the success of any commercial endeavour comes down to these four things and the order is just as critical as the parts themselves.
Typically, when anyone starts a business they start with an idea for a product and go ahead and make it without first discovering if there is a market for the product. This is a high risk strategy and one that isn’t necessary, especially online. Even with good research, you can’t guarantee that you will pick a winner but you can mitigate your risk and not waste you time in markets that are never going to sell if you apply the four parts.
1. Market Research
This phase is commonly rushed through or not done at all, but if you make the effort to do this bit properly you will eliminate much of the risk right here. With all the tools and information available online there’s really no excuse not to do it. You just need to be patient and not rush forward before it’s done. In Ed’s experience, 95% of all the problems that turn up later could have be identified in advance if the market research had been done effectively. So skimp on this step at you peril!
2. Traffic
Even with the best product in the world, if no-one is visiting your offer, you’re not going to sell anything. So you need to determine upfront if there is enough traffic to sustain your business in the market place.
3. Conversion
This refers to how well your page produces the desired action from you visitors. Typically this is buying your product but it could also be other things such as signing up to a mailing list, clicking on an ad, completing a survey etc. Once you have the traffic it’s easy to test different options to improve your conversion rates and income.
4. Product
Once you have visitors they will tell you what they want to buy, or you can find out from market research, so there’s no need to know this in advance. you don’t even have to have your own produce although you will make more if you do.
Outsourcing Round Up – Back To One Task At A Time
Posted by: | CommentsThe biggest lesson relating to my internet marketing outsourcing project was that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded when I watched John Reese’s videos. I remember wondering, at the time, why anyone would buy his course since he appeared to have given us pretty much all we needed to know. There’s obviously more to it than I thought.
Looking back, I simply wasn’t ready for a full-time outsourcer since I still don’t have the strategy for my internet business clearly defined enough. So, even if the people I took on hadn’t disappeared without a trace I think it would have been hard going to manage.
So now, I’m going back to outsourcing tasks and will build from there. Maybe even find someone full-time eventually as a result.
The tasks I’ve least enjoyed doing these past couple of months have been writing and spinning content. I’m actually able to write a good article in about 30 minutes when I’m in the right frame of mind. But, since most of the time, I’m resenting doing it and feeding myself negative thoughts about it, it can take me the best part of 2 hours to complete.
I’ve tried to be positive about it and link the task to my long-term goals but I always seem to default to my moaning, complaining stance so it makes sense to outsource this first.
There are a number of places you can get articles written for $5 so I’ve started trying them out and will budget for that in my 4 week plan.
If you want to read the full story of my outsourcing experience so far just click on the link on the right of this page and you will find all the posts I’ve made on the subject in date order.
Internet Marketing Memberships Sites Reviews
Posted by: | CommentsSince starting this website and my mentoring with Ed Dale I have tried 3 different internet marketing membership sites.
The first was Michelle McPherson’s Crowd Mountain
I joined this membership site after downloading a couple of Michelle’s free tools that were made available joing the launch. My primary interest was to try out her promotion tools but once inside I discovered, that despite the sales pitch saying otherwise, not all the tools were available before the trail period ran out which defeated the object somewhat.
That, together with pretty confusing website usability led me to ditch that subscription. There are different levels of membership and since I was on the basic level I kept clicking on links to end up on a page that said I didn’t have permission to visit that part of the site. I found that very frustrating since it was like have a carrot dangled in front of you and then snatched away again.
However, her training is very comprehensive and, if you’re a newbie looking for clear and easy to follow training, then Michelle McPherson is worth checking out. She certainly knows her stuff and it’s refreshing to have a woman at the helm for a change and a rest from the surfer dude hype that permeates a number of internet marketing products.
~~~~~~
The Immediate Edge
This is Dan Raine’s and Ed Dale’s membership site. I took advantage of the $1, 7 days trial offered earlier this month and was very impressed with what I saw inside. I simply don’t have time at the moment to take advantage of all that was in there but I would definitely consider signing up again, once I have more of a regular system going.
This is cutting edge stuff most suited, in my opinion, to marketers with some experience and success who want to take their business to the next level.
~~~~~~
Jason Katzenback and Jason Potash are the people behind this one. They were offering a $1, 14 day trial which I signed up to because I’ve had dealings with them in the past and like their products and their customer service. My intention was a sneak peak inside to see what they were doing with the possibility of signing up again once I was making more money from the internet marketing business.
However, I was so impressed with the way their training is organised and the very fast and excellent reponses you get to questions in the forum that I decided to stay in for another month. Also, there was a promise of the 5 Day Traffic Blitz which is a fast way to familiarise yourself with the promotion tools and, hopefully, a way to make some quick cash.
I decided a while back not to join any more monthly subscription sites until I had the money upfront to do so but I thought it was worth the risk with this one since I might make the money back through the traffic blitz. Alas, that was not to be. At least not so far anyway. But I did win $25 for a forum post so it’s not all bad.
Not to mention I was inspired to get all poetic. Since my win was announced in rhyme I thought I should respond in kind. You can read my efforts in my next post.
Bet you can hardly contain your excitement in anticipation . . .
Taking Stock and Remembering Market Leadership
Posted by: | CommentsMuch of the time, since starting this site, it’s felt like I was fumbling around in a kind of fog. Sometimes I seemed to be clearly following a process, such as when I was looking for an outsourcer or doing the 5cft challenge. But much of the time it’s felt like I was over complicating things by signing up for new courses or products whilst trying to get my Critical Focus Time blocks done.
Yesterday, I completed the 5 Day Traffic Blitz and felt pretty exhausted after sending in my report and after a full on couple of weeks. So I was happy to go to the cafe, with no work to finish, and just do a couple of crossword and soduku puzzles.
Now, it feels like time to stand back, take a couple of days break and plan for the next phase.
~~~~~~
Having dabbled with a few different approaches since March I’ve now reached a point where I feel I can blend them together and I’ve come up with a system which I hope will work for me. I’m much clearer on the way I want to go about things and what I do/don’t enjoy doing.
I have a plan which I want to start on Monday and follow for the next 4 weeks but first I thought it would be useful to take stock of what I’ve discovered so far and where I stand on the various products/approaches I’ve tried out and I’ll be posting about these over the next few days.
~~~~~~
With regard this Internet Marketing Coaching site . . .
. . . I had a 1:1 mentoring session with Ed today and, beforehand, was a bit stumped as to what I would talk to him about. When I checked my stats I was particularly pleased to see that I was now at positions 2 and 4 for my main keywords so was happy that I had something positive to report.
However, Ed wasn’t particularly impressed since this is a Market Leadership site and I was reminded again, that it’s not position that’s important but traffic. It’s easy to forget that. So, most of the mentoring was around the Market Leadership stuff.
Not thinking about Search Engine Optimization on a site is quite difficult for me because I’ve been following the SEO approach for a number of years. I will continue to do that elsewhere in my business of course, just not here.
Given that, I need to be posting more frequently about what’s important to me and worrying less about keywords etc.
To illustrate the point, despite doing well in Google I am still only getting an average of 13 unique visitors a day and, if this wasn’t a Market Leadership type site, I’d be ditching it at this point since the traffic potential from an SEO approach is way too small.
So, one part of my 4 week plan will be to post here, each week day. I’ve done that before on my previous blog and found it to be quite a challenge so I shall be experimenting with the best way to achieve this. Also, I’m not sure how much personal stuff to include without turning people off.
But there’s only one way to find out so here’s another opportunity to fail in the field and not in my head!
If there’s anything you’re curious about or would like me to write about just ask. (Note to self – check if contact form works!)
Since this site, is a Market Leadership one it should be all about expressing my opinions in the market. So ask away . . .
5 Day Traffic Blitz
Posted by: | CommentsAs if I didn’t have enough on my plate with managing this website, bringing back to life a couple of old sites, doing the 2010 Challenge, taking part in the mentoring and starting to do more internet marketing coaching I started another mini challenge yesterday called the 5 day traffic blitz. But, although there’s a danger of creating some internet marketing overwhelm again I not too worried about it as it’s only 5 days and it is related to what I’m already doing. It’s more of a strategy experiment than a wandering off in a new direction.
All my sites need traffic and I’m still working on nailing down the approach that works best for me. I have my article marketing ticking over nicely and my bookmarking by hand so now I’m looking for other things to add to the mix.
My taking part in the blitz came about because Jasons Katzenback and Potash opened up their Web 2 Mayhem membership for a 14 day $1 trial. I joined because I was curious to see what their strategy is, fully expecting to leave after 14 days. It’s a monthly subscription and I didn’t want to take on another one of those but I was so impressed with their product, support and expertise and with the community in general, that I decided to stay on for another month. Especially as the 5 Day Traffic Blitz was looming.
Apparently, when Jason K asked the people who were not renewing after the 14 days why they weren’t doing so, the number one reason given was that they wanted faster results. Nothing new there then! 
As a result they put together a “quick-start training designed specifically to get results within a few short days”. Since I was already using the tools and was very impressed with them I decided it was worth risking one month’s membership to see what I could achieve with the blitz.
Yesterday we got an introduction video which brought out 2 key points:
- You need to already have a web site or page such as a Hub page, Squidoo lens, or Ezine article to promote. So it’s not for total newbies.
- You need to allow 2 hours a day to work on this.
After watching the video I did some keyword and market research to determine which site/page I would be promoting, as from past results, the choice isn’t obvious.
I have chosen to promote a new affiliate product within a niche that I’ve had some success with in the past but I don’t, as yet, have a page up for it. So that will be the next thing to get done before the blitz proper begins later today. And, yes, before you ask I’ve already done my CFT blocks for today so this isn’t a diversion.
I will have to fit in today’s 2010 challenge lesson though.
Preparing To Fail the 2010 Challenge
Posted by: | CommentsIn Day 4 of “Ed Dales The Challenge” Ed talks about setting expectations and making a commitment to completing the challenge. But saying you’re committed and actually making a commitment are 2 very different things. When my internet marketing coaching clients tell me they’ve made a commitment to something I ask them how they know that for certain. For example, if they haven’t blocked out time on their calendar, it usually shows me that the commitment has not been fully made. You never really know you are committed to something unless you take action that demonstrates that and continue taking action. A good first step, after allocating time on your calendar is to complete the “preparing to fail” exercise.
This exercise starts from the premise that most of the time we know in advance what is likely to trip us up and prevent us from being successful. We make our excuses and prepare our stories, in advance, even if only at the back of our minds.
Getting those excuses out of your head and onto paper gives you the opportunity to confront them and decide whether or not, this time, you’d like to do things differently.
In the case of the 2010 Challenge ask yourself:
If I fail to complete the 2010 Challenge what will be the reason?
What else?
What else?
Keep asking yourself “What Else”? until you have come up with all the possibilities you can think of.
Here are some 7 common excuses that people use when starting something new:
- I don’t have the money – Ed has pretty much ruined this one since the Challenge is free.
- I don’t have the time – Again, the fact that it’s only 30 minutes a day makes this one hard to sustain.
- I don’t know enough – Well, that’s the point of the Challenge – to teach you how.
- Other people will stop me.
- I don’t have enough energy, don’t feel well, feel too stressed.
- I’m not clever enough.
- I don’t want it enough.
If you’ve been reading my blog I bet you can guess what my personal favourite is. Yep. That’s right. ”It’s too boring”, closely followed by number 7. But knowing that in advance meant I was forearmed and when I truly made the commitment to growing an internet marketing business (remember I’ve been playing around in this arena for years) I followed a strategy that would minimise their effect on me. Namely, joining Ed’s mentoring program and taking on a personal coach, paid for upfront.
As far as the 2010 Challenge is concerned you probably don’t need anything quite so dramatic but you DO need to do something to demonstrate to yourself that you are truly committed to this.
You could try the above exercise, join a team as recommended in the forum and make yourself accountable, make a public announcement by leaving a comment here, or whatever works for you. Doesn’t matter what it is but just saying you’re committed is not enough. You need to demonstrate that commitment.
Take action now and, if you start to falter, feel free to skype me on challenge.100 and I will help in whatever way I can.
Ed Dale’s The Challenge – Day 4
Posted by: | CommentsDay 4 of the pre-Challenge is all about setting expectations.
As we know, the focus of The Challenge is on building the foundations of a successful internet business and making your first dollar. In any business the people who are successful are those who do what is necessary on a daily basis.
In the 2010 Challenge that means “Testing a niche and looking for that right combination of factors that tell you to move forward. Testing your actions from each of the modules and measuring your results. . .
The most crucial thing to get from the entire Challenge is to just stick to it. To put in those thirty minutes a day, for those seven days, for those seven modules. Turn up and be prepared to work, spend that thirty minutes a day, take the action required each day. That momentum adds up to taking you a step closer each time to being successful online.”
Ed is convinced that, more than for any previous Challenge – effort will be rewarded.
And, having grappled with the “whole turning up and getting the work done” thing I can confirm that eventually, if you just keep at it, the right work habit will begin to form. My early days of applying critical focus time were tough and, if I hadn’t signed up for the mentoring, I wouldn’t have stuck at it. But now I get the work done much faster and with less moaning and I am transforming myself into a person who can run a successful business.
One thing I find very useful when I start a new venture is to complete a “preparing to fail” exercise which works on the assumption that most of the time we know, in advance, what’s likely to prevent us from being successful. Read my next post “Preparing to Fail the 2010 Challenge” for more details.
Ed Dale Challenge – Days 2, 3 and Optional
Posted by: | CommentsSince I don’t work at the weekends I had a few days of challenge to catch up but they were despatched pretty quickly since I’m familiar with most of this.
The second day was optional, aimed at those who were completely new to this and covered:
- An overview of Market Samurai
- An introdcution to the The Challenge Forum
- The importance of teams and how being in a team for The Challenge can be beneficial to your Challenge experience and details of some of the software and hardware tools that can help you get the best of your team experience – using Skype for conferencing and meetings, and Google Groups, Google Docs and Dropbox for sharing files
- Having meetups with people in your area and the value that doing so can bring to your Challenge experience
- Downloading Content
Day 2 – Getting familiar with Twitter
Day 3 – Introduing Google Chrome the browser recommendation for The Challenge in 2010 and the following extensions:
- Chromed Bird, which makes it very easy to interface with your Twitter account from within the browser from both a monitoring and tweeting perspective.
- Kuber Pagerank Checker
- Ultimate Chrome Flag which provides information about where a site is hosted geographically
- Google Global, which allows you to conduct Google searches as if you were doing so from another country. This will be very useful for me since I often want to see US search results but, because I live in the UK, they are not the default.
- RSS Subscription Extension, released by Google themselves, which allows for very easy one click subscriptions to blogs and sites with RSS
Ed Dale The Challenge – Day 1
Posted by: | CommentsThe early days of the challenge are about getting settled in and finding your way around the information and tools. So let’s jump straight in.
Day 1 – Action For The Day
Go to Ustream and sign up, connect it to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and spend some time getting familiar with the interface.
Should have taken about 15 minutes at most but I managed to lose an hour and a half faffing about trying to decide if I wanted “work” stuff on my Facebook profile and how it worked with Twitter etc. I found some instructions, in the Challenge forum, on how to stop work stuff showing up on your Facebook wall, but as I don’t use my FB account much I decided not to connect to it at all.
The reason you want to keep work stuff separate from your personal FB account is that, anything posted will show up on your friend’s walls and, I hazard a guess, that most of your friends and family are not interested in internet marketing info and pitches.
Later in the challenge there will be some instruction on using Facebook pages and at that point I will start addressing the business side of things at FB.
With regard Twitter, I connected my account with Ustream but have no idea what the result of that will be. I’m not so concerned about this as I already post work stuff there.
