Archive for ed dale mentoring
Moving Forward
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I experimented with doing only what I wanted to do, in the moment, rather than things I felt I “should” do because it would bring me a certain result in the future. It was hard, not least because the critic in my head kept telling me I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t knuckle down and focus and I’d just gone back to my old, bad habits, and I was just avoiding things.
But, surprisingly I did actually get a lot of things done and, a lot of time I worked in a more balanced way. As soon as I found myself staring at the computer screen or trawling through email or forums I made myself get up and went and did something physical. Then I came back to the computer and did the next thing.
When I wrote my earlier post, I’d got to the point of questioning whether or not I should continue with the internet business because I was not enjoying my life writing and spinning articles. That’s what it felt it had been reduced to, so narrow had my view become.
But, after a week of experimenting, I confirmed for myself exactly what it is I enjoy doing in this business and what I don’t. I feel a new determination to find a way to make this work without spending so much time on tasks I really dislike.
In addition to this I also discovered some other things that had been buried by the daily grind. One was that I really, really want to do an apprenticeship with Michael Neill and the other was that I’d been allocating no time to my coaching business.
In order to do the apprenticeship I need to create a big chunk of money by the end of December. Previously, the only way I could see to do this was to force myself to ramp up the internet marketing, doing stuff I don’t want to do and I now know that that just isn’t going to happen.
As soon as I began experimenting with the “want to” and let go of the “how to” I started to notice other options.
One is an autoblogging course being piloted by Web2Mayhem (more about that in future posts) and the other was an old site of mine from which I sell an ebook I wrote a while back.
The ebook and site is about depression recovery and has been languishing away in cyberland untouched for years. It’s an obvious place to step up my income but I tend to ignore it for a number of personal reasons.
If I put those aside I ought to be able to increase visitors and sales. However, I don’t want to handle the customer service or spend a lot of time updating it and then maintaining it, so I put it to the back of my mind again.
A couple of days later I realised a better idea would be to make the improvements needed and then sell it. Then I wouldn’t need to manage customer service or keep the site updated. And, since buying and selling websites is one of Ed’s special areas of expertise I’m in the perfect place to do this.
Finally, I attended a call that was given by John Jonas of Replace Myself. He’s the owner of the site I used previously to try to find an outsourcer. An encouraging thing he said was that it is common for workers to disappear overnight (as happened with both my attempts) and it was usually due to their feeling embarrased about not being able to do something. That fits with my experience. I was probably expecting too much from them, too soon.
So, armed with that knowledge I now feel ready to give my internet marketing outsourcing project another go. This time I will have a more precise plan of exactly what I need them to do. Starting with something simple and building up from there.
I’ll let you know how it goes . . .
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.
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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.
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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 . . .
Hoorah, hoorah, I’ve Something To Say
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been 2 weeks since my last post and for a moment there I thought I might never have anything interesting to report again! There’s been a bit of a lull in the mentoring, so no 1 on 1′s with Ed or webinars to write about.
My outsourcing project has also ground to a halt so, for the most part, I’ve been plodding on, head down. After trying out 2 different outsource workers and having them both disappear on me I decided to take a break and rethink my strategy as I was spending huge amounts of energy on it without positive results. I’ve been trying out 2 automatic submission tools and, once I decide which one I’m going to go with, I’ll probably, outsource that work, one piece at a time and build from there.
I’ve made a change to how I organise my CFT blocks, after doing the exercise I mentioned in my “critical focus time backwards” post . Putting pen to paper I realised that working at the pace I was, with the time I have available, I was already at full capacity both in terms of sites and tasks. So I reduced my CFT block length from 45 to 30 minutes which gave me more available work slots. This also had the added bonus of speeding up my work. So now I’m getting more done in less time and with more time to do it! The result is I now have 4 sites in my work rotation.
I feel I’m making real progess now in putting together a system that works for me and the discipline of keeping on, keeping on, is paying off.
The brilliant news is my plugging away is bringing measurable results.
Fan fare of trumpets please . . .
I’ve hit the top 5 on page one of Google and, although my main keyword only has average traffic potential, I am expecting that traffic to pick up from here on in. So more people should be finding me through the search engines who are looking for coaching. This means it’s now time to turn my mind to what internet marketing coaching packages I’d like to offer.
Ed has suggested that any mentees taking the 2010 Challenge should lead a group so that’s one possibility. I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m most interested in coaching people who, although not newbies, are having very little success so I could form a group around that. Hmmmm. Wonder if I could set up a forum we could use on this site . . .
Long term, I would like some local clients so I could do some face-to-face group coaching.
If you have any thoughts about what coaching packages you would like to see or what has worked for you in the past, please leave a comment below. I’m all ears! 
Critical Focus Time Backwards
Posted by: | CommentsJust had a 1:1 session with Ed Dale as part of the mentoring program. As far as this site is concerned I was a little concerned since I’ve been pretty much stuck at the bottom of page 1/top of page 2 for my main keywords, since April. However, Ed thinks I’m doing well, since I’m not going to get much traction from the search engines without a lot of time and effort as my main keyword terms are so competitive. So that’s encouraging.
I’m building this site for the long haul so, whilst more traffic and “conversation” would be great, I’m happy to keep at it and tell the tale whilst building the money-making part of the business elsewhere (for the time-being). One of my biggest challenges at the moment is not being able to get all the work done.
I’m much better at following a system and keeping to my CFTs but it’s still not enough to do it all. I’m still in the process of getting my outsourcing project sorted but that is taking longer than I anticipated. If I keep building sites the way I’m doing I’m just going to end up with a bigger log jam. Not to mention the other sites that I already had, before the start of the mentoring, that I’m not working on at all.
Ed was a great help with this by giving me a different way to look at the problem. I’ve always recognised getting a change of prospective to be one of the great benefits of working with a life coach and now I see that internet marketing coaching is no different.
I’ve built 2 sites so far, following the 5 CFT Challenge parameters, and, whilst I built the second one faster than the first, I’m struggling to keep up with the link building stuff necessary to keep them ticking over. The recommendation in the Challenge is to write, spin and syndicate one article a week and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. But I’m pretty much working at full capacity so there’s no room to build more sites and test new markets or to implement other sorts of promotion.
Ed’s suggestion was this. Instead of starting with the method first (in this case article promotion once a week) and trying to make it fit the CFT available, start with the CFT and allocate specific blocks to each of the sites, keeping some clear for new sites or development of old ones. This means that I won’t be able to write, spin and syndicate one article per site per week but I will be able to keep all my sites ticking over. So my next move is a plain sheet of paper, lots of coloured pens and a trip to my favourite cafe to sketch out the new plan.
5 CFT Challenge – Session 5 and Wrap Up
Posted by: | CommentsFinally arrived at the last block of the 5 CFT Challenge:
1. Do some by hand backlinking from authority blogs, forums and sites
Started with the Market Samurai competition module to do this. It wasn’t particularly successful in terms of finding sites to create links on – only managed 2 and one of those is waiting for moderation, but it did give me a better idea of the competition. I.E. I could see that a number of the top 10 sites are obviously owned by the same person due to the interlinking and that a major part of their strategy is buying links.
I also used the Market Samurai promotion module, looking specifically at the non gov/edu blogs but wasn’t able to get any links there.
Since I’m still testing this site and market I’m not sure if I will keep doing this at this phase of the process. I might wait until the site is a bit more established. I’ll try it a couple more times though and see what it’s like in other markets.
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So, my total for the 5 CFT Challenge is 8 CFT blocks which, in my case, equals 6 hours.
Not bad for a first attempt!
Overall it was an enjoyable experience. I lost a bit of momentum by having my mind on the outsourcing project but there’s always going to be something else going on so I just better get used to it.
I’m going to rearrange the tasks a bit for my next attempt and will use the articles/posts a bit differently. Stay tuned for the next challenge.
5 CFT Challenge – Blocks 3 and 4
Posted by: | CommentsMy report on critical focus time – Blocks 3 and 4 of Ed Dale’s 5 CFT Challenge . . .
1. Edit article written previously for spinning and add to Article Marketing Automation (AMA)
Oops! Forgot to finish this when tackling the CFT 2 session. Got distracted by the blasted plug-ins. Took a full session to finish the writing. I know, I know. Not fast enough.
I need to work on drastically lowering my standards for writing these initial pieces and for the level of spinning since the spinning and submission to AMA took another full CFT.
2. Set up Google Reader to monitor niche
Didn’t do this as I’m not familiar with it and didn’t want to spend the time at this point. There’s plenty of information about my market available to keep me busy writing for a while.
3. Draft an article to spin and submit to AMA next week
Hmmm. Not sure how I managed it but I’ve already done this. The only explanation is I’ve been so distracted by my general life and internet marketing overwhelm and the steep learning curve of my outsourcing project that I didn’t notice I’d completed something. I’m not complaining though because I’m now all set to move onto CFT block 5 and I can mark on my calendar to spin and submit this article to AMA in a week’s time.
Running Total so far – 7 CFT blocks.
Enjoyment rating – good. I’ve done more than I thought I had. Yippee!
5 CFT Challenge – Critical Focus Time Session 2
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s how I got on with CFT session 2 of Ed Dale’s 5 CFT Challenge:
1.Write draft article suitable for spinning for article directories
Started this while I was waiting for the blog, plug-ins and theme to load.
2. Create blog
The blog is uploaded. As are plug-ins and a theme.
I don’t like the theme I’ve chosen but I’m going to stick with it as I hear Ed Dale’s voice ringing in my ears “don’t be fussy – you don’t have the time”.
I didn’t have time to change plug-in settings or set up categories. In fact it took another CFT block to get this done and then some!
3. Set up and Add Google Analytics
4. Edit earlier draft post and upload to blog
5. Do basic bookmarking of post for indexing purposes
Done. All together this took another 3 blocks of CFT.
So, the running total so far is 5 CT blocks.
Enjoyment rating – medium. Bit frustrated with myself for taking so long over plug-in settings but need to remember this is a learning process!
Onwards and upwards
5 CFT Challenge – Critical Focus Time Block 1
Posted by: | CommentsHere are the components of Critical Focus Time Block 1 of Ed Dales’s 5 CFT Challenge, and my experience of actually doing it.
1. Pick Market
2 Find a keyword that works
3. Pick some category keywords
I did these 3 fairly easily within the 45 mins, since I’d already done some Market Samauri research for other projects that I hadn’t used.
I found Ed Dale’s words REALLY helped keep me on track, e.g.
“When you’re not sure just run with it”.
“You’re just following a process. Don’t go overboard thinking about this stuff”.
“The action point is really, really simple:
- Think up a fresh topic
- Don’t get your knickers in a twist
- Just pick something and
- GET THE SITE UP!
GO AND MAKE MISTAKES AND GET IT OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM
4. Register a Domain Name
This is where it all began to unravel. As my thirteen old son would say . . . “Fail”!
I ran out of time for this and ended up playing around with options whilst watching TV. It was midnight before I knew it and I still hadn’t found a good enough domain.
Moral of the story – don’t attempt this without the clock ticking in the background. It’s just too easy to allow time to expand.
I ended up shifting this task into CFT 2 and ended up going for a domain that I found whilst I was trawling in front of the TV, so all that extra time wasn’t completely wasted after all. Not necessary though. The domain doesn’t meet the visitor numbers criteria but I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. But I’m not happy about it.
5. Write classic beginner draft for first blog post
Again, I found it very hard to follow instructions here, to just whack out some content. In the end I spent what remained of this CFT block, after registering the domain, completing this task.
So the running total so far is 2 CFT blocks. And my enjoyment rating is high.
The 5 CFT Challenge
Posted by: | CommentsLast week Ed Dale challenged his motorees to research, build and initially promote a website, with an eye to selling it 3 to 6 months down the road. No big deal you may be thinking but the twist is that this has to be done within the space of 5 Critical Focus Time sessions.
At first sight this may seem like Ed has joined the “get rick quick/throw it against the wall and see what sticks” brigade but there’s some masterful cunning behind his plan.
Apparently, many of us have been moaning about life in the grind (well, there’s a surprise) so this is one way to add a bit of variety away from our core sites, thus helping us stay motivated.
Secondly, it gives those mentorees who are in full-time jobs, with time for only 1 CFT a day, something to get going quickly on.
Also, it gives us more opportunities to fail in the field and make useful mistakes rather than over thinking things.
But, most importantly, it gives us practice and training at taking action, which will ultimately lead to success.
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So, count me in.
I love the idea of making things happen fast. It’s way too easy for me to get hung up on the details and then stall. With this challenge the focus is on the race against the clock rather than on the end result. More of a “can I get it all done in the space of a CFT block?” rather than “can I get it done exactly right?”.
So “how long is a CFT block?”. Well, Ed works in 30 minute blocks – 25 minutes on and 5 off – but I prefer 1 hour blocks with 45 minutes on and 15 off so that’s what I’ll be sticking with.
Here’s how the challenge breaks down:
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CFT 1
1. Pick Market
2. Find a keyword that works
3. Pick some category keywords
4. Register domain name
5. Write classic beginner draft for first blog post
CFT 2
1. Write draft article suitable for spinning for article directories
2. Create blog
3. Add analytics
4. Edit earlier draft post and upload to blog
5. Do basic bookmarking of post for indexing purposes
CFT 3/4
1. Edit article written previously for spinning and add to Article Marketing Automation (AMA)
2. Set up Google Reader to monitor niche
3. Draft an article to spin and submit to AMA next week
CFT 5
1. Do some by hand backlinking from authority blogs, forums and sites
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Therafter, spin and submit one article per theme keyword, per week until you are ready to sell or develop the site.
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So, that’s it.
Sounds fun to me. I’ll write posts about my progress and add the links here for those who want to follow on. And, if anyone wants to give it ago themselves please leave a comment and let us know how it’s going. Or, if you need a bit of help getting started you can ask your questions here too.
Internet Marketing – My Personal Grist For The Mill
Posted by: | CommentsI am a great believer that whatever we need in life to progress is right there for the taking. Most of the time we simply don’t notice and other times, we choose not to.
I wrote about internet marketing overwhelm a couple of weeks ago and I have been in and out of that until today. There has been a lot of stuff swirling around my brain and I’ve taken a number of false steps to deal with it but, this morning, I feel I am back on track.
Last week I stalled around moving my outsourcing projects forward and, in true “who wants to be a millionaire” style, I phoned a friend. I thought the discussion was going to be about my next step regarding the outsourcing but I ended up realising, that more critical, was my need to do something about the overwhelm and muddled thinking. And right here is an example of a “choosing not to” situation. I’ve been “choosing not to” because I’ve been wanting my external situation to change, without having to change myself/mind.
I was doing well in the early days of the mentoring but, if you’ve followed this blog, you will know that things began to slip fairly rapidly. The last time I sent in a CFT report was 11th May and last time I did a full weeks worth of 5 consecutive days was . . . wait for it . . . week beginning 21st March!!!!!! And, truthfully, I’ve only completed 2 full weeks of CFTs since I started.
Blimey, I thought I was bad but I didn’t realise I was that bad!
But . . . and here’s the good bit . . . I’m learning. And that is why Internet Marketing is my personal grist for the mill. By committing to this year of mentoring and to building an online business I have created a framework within which I can work and learn and develop. Each day I discover more about how I operate, how I sabotage my efforts, which habits I need to replace with better ones, where I’m deceiving myself, what I do well, what I really enjoy etc. etc. And when I take the time to stand back and recognise this, I love it. It’s fun and worthwhile and I’m having a ball.
When I’m stuck in the overwhelm, or boredom, or questioning of why I’m doing this, it feels really naff! But that’s OK. I’m learning and, beginning to accept, that it’s just part of the process.
And today, with the sun streaming through the window and a wonderful weekend spent with family still fresh in my mind, I say “bring it on”!
