Yes another Newbie question

i like your idea of a 'thirty day challenge' Do you mean to set up a business and get it all up and running within 30 days?

Hey Jay - welcome to the mad house, good to have you here

If you looking to build a niche site then the key is to drill down into the sub niche and sub-sub-niche of whatever area your targeting. You see if you go after something like Weight Loss then you'll find it very hard to get any traffic to you site as there are sooooo many more established competitors in the market.

You need to be specific and find your own slant on it if you will. I'm no expert on how many competing pages but I wouldn't go after anything Huge as you'll find it very hard to rank a new site....

You are in the right mindset because Building a List is KEY to you seeing results in the fastest time possible. Get on this from the start and get building asap.

Wordpress is well regarded for building your sites from. I use it on all my sites. Makes everything so easy and the interface is foolproof Great for beginners and more advanced users a like.

I'm sure a few more Warriors will be able to add more detail to what I've said. Best of luck with it and remember to browse the forum and learn as much as you can - Noel.

No Kange, he means the Thirty Day (Internet Marketing) Challenge . Google for it as I can't post links yet (less than 15 posts )

@Jay: I've found that 30.000 competitor-pages is good to start of with if you're not experienced in SEO. 80 visitors to your site is pretty much the least amount you should be able to get if your aim is 1 sale per day. Usual conversion rates are 1-2%, so 1 in every 100 visitors will buy something (your milage may vary ).

About the free sites: you can start a free blog at Wordpress.com, but it will not give you as much freedom as having your own website (Which can run on the free CMS Wordpress, you'd only need to pay hosting costs). If you're just starting out a Wordpress.com site will do just fine.

Cheers,
Stealth

ooo right, thank you for letting me know ill have a look

To me it makes absolutely no difference at all.

The number of pages with my keyword simply isn't relevant to me at all, and isn't relevant to many people.

I'm really surprised they're still teaching this. :rolleyes:

What matters is "whether I can outrank the top 5", not "how many there are".

I don't care if the top 5 pages ranked are the top 5 followed by 4,995 others or by 4,999,995 others. What difference does it make? :confused:

All that matters to me in this context is the SEO quality of those top 5 sites.

Look at it this way: for which would you rather compete - a keyword with 5,000 "competitors" of which the whole of the front page comprises age-old authority sites each with 50 decent backlinks from other age-old authority sites (very difficult to beat), or a keyword with 100,000 "competitors" of which the top few have used something like Xrumer or SENuke for their backlinks (thousands of them but all crap directories and forum profiles and mass garbage links on sites not relevant to the site linked to, trivially easy to overtake in a week or two)? Not a very difficult decision, is it?

Generally their terms of service and the lack of security (your site can literally "disappear in the night" if they decide it's "too commercial").

It's not about whether they're free - it's just about how safe they are to use and whether you own and control the site or they do.

The ones to avoid, in this regard, are wordpress.com (not to be confused with wordpress.org software), blogger/blogspot, squidoo and hubpages.

This thread explains the gist (it applies to all of those, really): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...y-website.html

Good free ones to look at where you don't have all those problems are weebly, blinkweb, yola (those three have site-builders built in), 000webhost and byethost (those two are for whatever sort of site you want to host, own and control, such as a self-hosted wordpress blog).

Alexa, in case you've never seen the specifics on it, the goal of the 30DC is to teach people how to make their first dollar online (at least that was the goal back when I went through it in 2007). The assumptions are that the people know nothing, so they built their plan around the path of least resistance.

It's not the best plan long term, but for finding initial "success," it works.

Jay, feel free to plan for more long term success. Much of what they teach works. Some of what they teach has become more of a lead-in to other products they promote. However, you won't go wrong by using the best of their ideas to build out an authority site centered on something you're passionate about.

When I went through the 30DC, I built 3 sites.

Site "A" was built around an interest/hobby of mine. It's never gained traction, but pulls in +/- $60 per month and has for the last four years. I hardly touch it anymore.

Site "B" was centered on an area I knew a little about, but wanted to learn more. This site is becoming an authority site, and at the same time, I've become an authority on the subject (pen name). It's doing very well. I initially targeted a keyword phrase that matched their criteria. Now individual pages or posts each target other keywords within the niche. They teach this same concept later in the course (or at least did). However, this site really started exploding when I stopped focusing on the SEO and started focusing on truly helping my visitors. They don't teach that in the 30DC.

Site "C" was in the skateboarding niche. It was a suggestion from my son. It had a tiny bit of success early on, but I really had zero interest in the subject, so that site is long gone.

If I were doing it again, I'd put 100% of my effort into either site "A" or site "B" from the beginning with the goal of creating an authority.

And yes... build a list from the start.

Jay, I went through the 30DC a couple years ago when I was first starting out and it was a good way to learn some of the basics. However, from the start I found that I had to modify a few things. For example, I found Wordpress Direct to be awkward and restrictive. It's all centered around building hundreds of little niche sites that all earn a tiny amount. Even Ed said at one point that he didn't think that business model was viable anymore unless you have a good outsourcing team behind you.

Now called The Challenge, Ed's program is indeed focused on earning your first $1 online. It's more about learning the basics. However, he encourages people to become 'market leaders' in their field. The content he teaches around monitoring your market, sharing quality information, and doing your upfront market research are all extremely relevant and useful for any business.

As for Market Samurai, the recommended numbers are now 100,000 pages for a main keyword and 30,000 for longtail ones. I find the tool very useful, but I don't follow those rules exactly. I look more at the strength of the competition rather than the number of competing pages. When you look at their SEOC page, which shows the details of each of the top ten competing sites, you'll see just how strong they are. I find that to be one of the most useful features of MS.

I suggest you use the Challenge to learn some basics around research and link building, but focus on one area where you see yourself wanting to be a market leader with some authority. And definitely set up a list from day 1.

On the topic of free sites, I'd say that if you are planning to build a business then do it properly. Getting a domain name and hosting is cheap. For $10/month hosting and $10/year name, you get the security, flexibility and professionalism of your own site. Wordpress.com can't be monetized and they can close your account at any time if they think you're violating their terms. Blogger is owned by Google and you're at their mercy.

One last piece of advice. Focus on one business model to start with and stick to it. If the business model of the Challenge doesn't ring true with you, then look around the Warrior Forum at some of the other models and see what does. There are certainly enough of them.

Best of luck!

- Sharyn

Hello,

Depending on your keywords, you can turn your niche site into an authority site or at least a mini authority site. So you don't necessarily have to commit to a niche site. Although authority sites and mini-authority sites generally are broader in subject and keyword targeting, really you could build your niche site into something similar.

I agree with you though to not be inclined to focus on a niche site. Their thinness and intention may be on the way out over the coming years (it's already happening).

As for authority sites, my personal practice is to choose a wider KW base/niche, like say car racing and build a number of mini-authority sites around maybe 10 KWs that fit under/into that main niche. If they are successful sites, I will then build a big daddy authority sites and each site will help feed the main site.

One simple piece of advice not related directly to site building: Just do it. Don't over think it. Follow the method and the process. There is no 'right' answer of what you should do until you know it from experience - which you don't - so just do it and you'll learn! Good Luck!