Archive for 2010 Challenge
Module 1 – Using Market Samurai – Days 4 To 6
Posted by: | CommentsDays 4 to 6 of module 1 are all about using Market Samurai to evaluate your niche and carry out keyword research. You can sign up for a free trial copy of the software by clicking on the link.
The most important thing about this part of The 2010 Challenge is to keep going until you find a niche that meets the criteria. Don’t be tempted to give up or settle for less than the minimum’s described. You’re be very thankful you did later on.
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Day 4 – Finding Theme and Category Keywords
Learn the difference between theme and category keywords and that for both types of you are looking for good levels of traffic and acceptable levels of competition.
Successful evaluation of your potential niches requires you to follow The Challenge filter criteria.
They are as follows:
- SEO Traffic should be >80
- Phrase to Broad Match should be >15%
- SEO Competition should be <30,000.
Targetting keywords that meet or exceed the above criteria which greatly increase you chances of success.
Day 5 – Understanding SEO Competition
Day 5 is an introduction to the concept of SEO competition and how to use the Market Samurai competition module to assess it. Both amount and strength of competition are important. The amount relates to how many other people are trying to rank for your keyword (covered on day 3) and the strength relates to how much authority your competitors’ sites have, in the eyes of Google.
Even though a keyword phrase may get lots of traffic, if the competition is strong you will struggle to rank. Therefore, you should only go after keywords where you not only do have a good chance of ranking well but also where the SEO competition is not too strong.
The Market Samurai Competition Module allows you to carry out real time SEO analysis of the top websites on the first page of Google that are already ranking for the keyword phrase you’re investigating. This results in an “SEO matrix” which is explained more in future lessons (see below).
The five key factors that you can use to assess your competition are:
- Page Rank (PR)
- Number of Backlinks to the page (BLP)
- Whether or not there is a Yahoo Directory listing (YAH)
- Does your Keyword appear in the Title?
- Does your Keyword appear in the URL?
and you will using the “SEO matrix” produced by the Market Samurai competition module to do this.
Day 6 - SEO Matrix Analysis
There are a number of factors covered in the SEO Matrix so it can seem a bit overwhelming at first. Like anything else, the more you use it the easier it will get to make good choices.
The day 6 lessons goes into detail about what each of the columns in the matrix mean and how to use the data to assess the strength of your SEO competition. The more weak competitors you can find in the top 10 results the better. But for now, finding one is sufficient.
For the purposes of The Ed Dale Challenge, the rule of thumb for a weak competitor is finding a complete row of green in the SEO Matrix. In order to do this the PR must be <3, the BLP will need to be <200, the YAH listing will be “No”, and the Title and URL will not be optimized for your keyword phrase.
Once you’re more experienced with this you will look at the numbers rather than the colours and you’ll be looking for results in your top 10 competitors that have a low PR, a low number BLP, no YAH listing and no keyword phrase in the Title or URL.
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The most important thing to remember when you’re doing your keyword, market and competitor research is not to get discouraged when the results that don’t meet The Challenge’s minimum criteria. Just keep plugging away until you find something that does.
It’s much better to keep checking new niche ideas than go with one that’s not quite right, only to discover that it doesn’t make you any money further down the road. Be patient and you will find a good niche/keyword phrase.
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Even once The Challenge is over (October 2010) you can still give Market Samurai a go for free. I’ve been using this software since if first came out and can’t recommend it enough! Just click on the link to sign up.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
Too Nervous To Think Up A Title
Posted by: | CommentsI got up this morning wearing my internet marketing coach hat, primed and ready (or so I thought) to offer coaching during Ed Dale’s 2010 challenge. I went to the computer and, next thing I know, I look up and an hour has passed. And since then 2 more hours!
This is a classic example of fear and procrastination working their evil and stopping me before I even start.
At times like these, I’m not even able to notice the thoughts that are operating but I know they are there because I feel nauseous and my hands are shaking slightly – classic symptoms of fear.
Blimey, you may be thinking, what an earth is she preparing to offer that has her in such a tizzy?
- – - Nothing that I haven’t done in other forms, hundreds of times before.
- – - Nothing that isn’t a great love of mine.
But that’s the thing about fear of course, it’s not rational!
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My intention had been to write a blog post about preparing to fail the 2010 challenge but I was stopped in my tracks.
So, being a believer in the old adage to “practice what you preach” I have taken myself off to a more productive environment. And I’m writing this in my favourite cafe armed with a capucchino and panini.
But, even the lure of those treats was not enough to move me initially so I had to resort to another favourite tactic of mine – dipping into my “inspiration file”.
Today I chose to rewatch Jonathan Fields’s video ‘Turning Fear Into Fuel‘ and that finally got me moving.
Towards the end of the video he addresses the audience and asks who’s sitting there, NOT doing something that has the opportunity to make them come alive and yet would do it if they were 100% certain they would not fail?
Well, that would be me then.
I love coaching.
It certainly makes me come alive.
My client’s love my coaching.
So what’s there’s to fear?
Well, this is Ed’s baby and he may be mad at me for offering coaching without asking his permission and this may be the one time when my coaching is crap and people might send me hate mail and I might get really, really bored with it and other people taking the challenge may resent my offer and question who the hell I think I am to step in here and I could be wildly successful and find that there is no way back and I might discover that internet marketing coaching is not as great as I think it might be and I’ll have spent all this time and energy on a website that is now redundant and way too personal to sell and then what the hell will I do for the rest of my year of mentoring with Ed and . . . and . . . and . . .
Well, I think you get the picture.
So, let’s cut to the chase here . . .
Do I want to do this?
. . . Yes!
So what’s the next step?
Create a Skype account solely for the 2010 challenge and tweet about this post . . .
. . . done!
Details of my 2010 Challenge coaching will follow. Unless, of course, Ed contacts me and tells me to remove this post and/or my inbox starts to fill with hate mail and . . . no . . . wait . . . hang on . . . done that. Been there.
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If you are reading this and NOT doing something that has the opportunity to make you come alive please Skype me on challenge.100 and let’s get you onto the next step.
Ed Dale’s 2010 Challenge
Posted by: | Comments(This post assumes you’re familiar with Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge. If you’re not please visit Rob Somerville‘s blog for an excellent history and explanation of what the 30DC is/was.)
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If you thought the 30 day challenge was good you’re going to love what Ed Dale has in store for us this year.
Back in April Ed posted that the 30DC was over. But . . . he went on to explain . . .
“There is no way I’m going to leave you hanging. What will replace the Thirty Day Challenge will be radical.
It will be state of the art.
It will be beautiful
It will be fun.
It will be easier.
I will make the same lame jokes…
Even Drummers will be able to do it.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY
It will be 100% free.
AND
It will be more EFFECTIVE.”
And now he’s finally announced the shape of what’s to come.
Gone are the thirty days. And in their place are 3 blocks of 7 working days with 7 days off in between.
The format has been changed because of Ed’s frustration, in the past, with how few people actually stuck it to the end of the 30 days. And yes. Mea Culpa. Again! I started the 30DC on 4 different occasions and never got to the end of the first week.
Ed’s take on why people don’t make it to the end, and my thoughts on that, are because of:
1. A lack of time – This has been addressed by limiting each day to just 30 minutes work which includes both watching the videos and completing the tasks that need to be done.
2. The Expectation that they will have a business after just 30 days. The focus of the original challenge was to make your first dollar that has now shifted to more of a business mindset - “the whole point of the challenge is to build the foundations of a business that will last. A business that will replace your 9-5 pay packet over time.”
3. Lack of Stickability – Keeping going for 30 days on the trot is a big ask for many of us so now all we have to do is make it to 7 days. Then take a break and make it to the end of another 7 days. I’m going to be really interested to see how this works out because the downside of having a break is loss of momentum. I’m going to stick my neck out here and predict that the same number of people will drop out after the initial 7 days as did in the past. (Sorry Ed). I think the key to this is to have a balance between the amount of work, which has been met by the 30 minutes a day change, and keeping momentum going.
4. We Hate Getting Left Behind – This is addressed by the 7 day break which will allow people to catch up if necessary. However, Ed feels “This is the number 1 reason anybody quits any challenge.” I disagree. I think it makes it harder but I don’t think it is the reason. I think it is just one of any number of excuses we use when we meet resistance. If this is my excuse of choice then no matter how long you give me to catch up, I won’t. It is a symptom but not the cause.
5. Lack of Results – This is most definitely a biggie when it comes to staying motivated. This is tackled by having a number of different outcomes, namely:
- You’ll have made your first dollar and built the foundation of your online empire!
- You’ll sell your website on Flippa.com and make some money back that way.
- You do all seven sections and you’ll be able to work as an SEO specialist
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So, that’s the new format and, although I disagree with Ed on some of his reasoning, I can’t wait to give it a go. It’s a brilliant opportunity to learn from a master and, if I don’t make it through to the end, it will not be due to lack of quality on the part of the materials!
As with the 5 CFT Challenge I’ll be reporting my progress here so you can follow along. But why not join me (and thousands of others) this time? Ed Dale’s 2010 Challenge is due to start on July 1st but you can sign up now and stay up to date with what’s happening. It’s free and now it’s only going to take 30 minutes a day there really is no excuse not to give it a go. Sign Up Here and I’ll see you on the inside.
