danr62

I've decided to jump into this challenge. I haven't made much money online yet so I'm ready to jump in, go all out, and achieve some real results for the first time.

My biggest problem is staying focused, taking action, and building backlinks and traffic. Also, I have to do a better job of getting my wife to give me time to work. The problem is I feel bad about her having to deal with the kids all day while I work, so when she hands me the infant and he doesn't let me put him down so I can do some writing it gets difficult.

Ok, so enough of my rambling and making excuses. I already bought a domain for this niche some time ago. The domain isn't really keyword rich, it's more of a brandable domain.

Unfortunately, keyword research for a lot of the terms looks really competitive, aged domains, high PR, tons of backlinks to the domain and quite hundreds of backlinks to the ranking pages. I'm wondering if this is a hopeless cause for a newbie. I'll keep digging around for more keywords but I'm wondering if I should make this more of a long term project and focus on something else for this challenge.

Thomas-West

@danr62,

I know what you are going through, similar problems here with my grand daughter. She is quite sick at the moment, a result of some chemo treatment, her imune system still has some way to go.

If I was reading the same as you have quoted I would be looking for something else. I assume you are refering to the first page of Google? They are the only competition I worry about.

@angiedc
Good news with the tech stuff, good one you, will help you in the future as well, you have learned something. Keep going.

danr62

Yes, a lot of the search terms have first pages with authority sites filled with articles on the subject. Usually the articles are not submitted by users, but by staff of the website (as far as I can tell anyway).

WriterWahm

Thanks Thomas-West...you're partially right. I am sitting tapping away on my laptop except for the distraction part. I am sooo distracted right now. But I'm making progress. Thanks for your post on the hungry market...helped me


DAY 1

My niche is home businesses specifically targeted to moms who want to work at home. I already receive a lot of questions about this anyway, so might as well make some money from it.

I have done my keyword research and it seems like a highly competitive niche. Still I found a little subniche which might work.

I'm still trying to decide if I should start a new blogger blog or use one of my old dormant domains.

I have a report on Twitter which I just finished a few weeks ago; it's about 30 pages long. I'm thinking of expanding it a bit and making it my product to sell.

I already have PLR auto-responder messages on the Work at home niche which I can tweak a bit to suit my purposes.

I have set up a free account with getresponse.

My 2nd day would involve setting up the blog with 5 posts, embedding the responder form and working on my products.

My blogging approach is also going to be a bit personal (like Shay's) because this is a life I've lived and AM living. It is one I know something of and any additional research will benefit me personally.

So that's it. I'll keep updating. Unfortunately I can't dedicate so much time to this; I don't think my clients would understand why I couldn't turn in their articles on time. But I will take little steps each day.

PM me if you want a romantic fiction ghostwriter.

povchef

Day 7: Wrote some more articles. I'm targeting 3 keywords - one primary (in domain name) and two supporting keywords. I wrote 5 primary keyword articles and 4 for the other two keywords. All articles are set up for posting one a day

Day 8: Have setup a twitter account for the website, using the primary keyword for the account name. Started working on a facebook fan page as well.

Day 9: Finished the fan page added my aweber form to both the website and a reveal page on my fan page. Will begin working on my Backlinking for the next few days. the domain is about a month old so I don't have to worry to much about over doing it with backlinks. Though as I'm using only free methods I doubt I'll be able to spam my site with links.

bellsong

Thank you, Uruguayan, for morguefile. I did not know about that. Can really use it!

bellsong

Does anyone know how to wade through PLR? I am new at this. The few PLR items I have bought are worthless, and you have no idea what you are getting before you buy it.

The Herm

You can find some free plr if you just do a search for it. One website that I found that seems to have free plr on pretty much any subject is plrarticledirectory.com (not an aff link)

The thing I've found with plr, at least the free kind, is that you will need to do some rewriting. You're right, alot of the free stuff that you find is pretty crappy, and you'll need to correct some grammar, beef it up and add your keywords.

On the upside to that though, having the basis of your article and most of it already written will cut down on some time for you, most of the research is already done AND you'll have a totally unique article to work with.

I might suggest using the free plr stuff that you rewrite for your article marketing and put your own unique, researched content on your site.

WriterWahm

So sorry to hear about what your granddaughter is going through. My prayers are with her.

@danr62... I can so relate to what you're going through right now. Thank goodness it's bedtime for my 17 month old

PM me if you want a romantic fiction ghostwriter.

WriterWahm

The Herm has said it all. But just to add...You should NEVER buy PLR if you cannot get a free sample so that you know the quality of what you're paying for. Don't ever buy PLR blindly. There IS a lot of rubbish out there.

PM me if you want a romantic fiction ghostwriter.

bellsong

Shay, I appreciate this series so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

bellsong

O, Ensemble, so sorry to hear about your stepson. Prayers going up for him. Twenty years old is too young to have this happen!

bellsong

Thank you, Herm. I will do that. You gave me some good information.

bellsong

Praying for your granddaughter, Thomas.

ShayB

Just checking in for a sec.

Feeling worse today. Been in bed a lot today.

I'll be back later tonight to post an update if I feel up to it.

*hugs*

Tiptopcat

My 30 Day Challenge - Day 10

Today the task was short and sweet. I edited my first article which links back to my main site and submitted it to the most popular article directory, ezinearticles. Once it gets accepted and approved this should hopefully bring a couple of people to my blogger blog sign up page.

Using a great website that someone from this forum suggested, I have created a great ebook cover (for free) for my complimentary ebook by using eCover Design.

All you have to do is choose the book shape that you like, upload your jpeg image and in a couple of clicks your new ebook cover is complete.

I have a question about creating a Facebook page

Is it possible to do this without it being linked to my personal Facebook account? Would I have to set up a fake account? I would prefer not to but I am not sure how to go about tihs.

Shay,
I am sorry you still feel under the weather. Take care, wrap up warm and drink lots of fluids.

Take care

Tiptopcat

povchef

You don't need to make new account just for a fan page, although the fan page is linked to your facebook account when you post or do anything on a fan page it is as the fan page admin so there is not direct link back to your profile - Unless you add your profile as the public admin.
I have around 100 fan pages and none of the fans have a clue who I am beyond being the fan page.

Tiptopcat

Povchef,
Thank you so much. I was a little confused how people could create a different page for their different niches without creating unwanted links between them.

Tiptopcat

The Herm

Thank you TipTopCat, for asking this question as I was also wondering the same thing. I don't want all of my FB friends knowing that I'm marketing weight loss or snoring or whatever. It's good to know that I don't have to be sneaky about it, but won't be bombarding freinds and family with my marketing efforts either.

And thank you for your answer too, POVchef.

Day 2

Today I wrote and posted articles 3 and 4 to my site. Using some free PLR makes the job a little faster as it gives me ideas of what to write about.

I also started writing my Ebook last night. I'm planning on just doing a short little quickie of about 7-10 pages. Not sure yet if I'm going to follow Shay's lead and sell it for a song or give it away as incentive for signing up on the list.

I already have a few affiliate products in mind that I can link to in the book as well for a little extra $. We'll see, this is my first time creating a product, but so far so good.

Trying to get as much done tonight as I can since I'll be out of town for a wedding this weekend :p

tyrone2601

i accept the challenge but do we need links a produck what does it take because i'am up for it so lead the way

tyrone2601

yes i accept the challenge the thing is i don't know what going on are that to do are how do we find out like do we need some links are a produck


Yours Turely
tyorne2601

RickAllen

Was only able to work a while this evening on this. I have my autoresponder emails ready to up. I ended up taking an ebook with 10 chapters and breaking each chapter into a responder message. I'll offer it as a mini course. This was much easier (after going through a bunch of saved PLR to find a suitable one) then trying to write my own as originally planned. So far I'm pretty much on track and can see where the next project will go faster, having learned a ton from this one.

Dennis Becker in his "5 Bucks a Day" ebook suggests doing a project a week, I thought originally that was a lot to expect, but this is showing me that with a system in place it is possible to do. Not sure I'm that ambitious yet however.

"I can get you more sales without spending a dime more on advertising!" http://ThePRexpert.com Free video course, whitepapers and more.

ShayB

DAY TEN

Not as far along as I would like to be, but I'll be starting to market my site in a few days.

Content is pretty much set. Working on the autoresponder series still. Paid product nearly done.

ShayB

Once you get things rolling, one project a week is VERY doable.

Start with one every month, then one every two weeks, then one a week.

Once you have some projects going, you can simply add an extra item or something to an existing project instead of starting something from scratch each week.

For example, a weekly project for me might be to add 5 product reviews to one of my older blogs with Amazon links. Or add a new product to one of my sites.

ShayB

Someone asked a question, so I'll clarify it here, in case anyone else is confused.

I DO have a site in the weight loss niche already. One that's active and has made sales.

I'm NOT using that site for this project, nor am I using that list, nor am I using any of the products I've already developed and made sales from.

For this project, it's a brand new site, list, product, etc.

Maybe with the cold meds I'm not being clear.

Aljiro

I just found this today and I'm looking to follow along(i.e. I accept! ). I'm a professional website solutions provider but I'm looking to set up a second income stream by going back to my old friend Internet Marketing.

Anyways, I've read the day 1 post and I have decided that it's gonna be in the Self Defense niche and it will be a product I will create from good quality PLR content. I would have liked to write the content myself but I'm afraid I don't have the training or experience. I am however very interested in the niche.

Looking forward to getting somewhere.

Janis Miller

Don't know how I missed this earlier, Shay, but I accept the challenge!

Thank you for so generously offering this content.

Gotta run...lots of catching up to do.

Janis

WriterWahm

Quick update!

Day 2

I've set up the blog on blogger, loaded 5 posts. Created the fan page and that's it.

This is really short due to one-handed typing


Hope you're better Shay.

@Ensemble
How's your stepson doing?

PM me if you want a romantic fiction ghostwriter.

ShayB

DAY ELEVEN

Okay, the site is pretty much ready for traffic.

What I'd like to do is take each day from here on out and talk about how I'm going to drive traffic to it.

Today is the day I'll set up my Twitter account and start networking. I'll post the details in a bit.

I'll also work on submitting the site to StumbleUpon, etc.

Edited to add: I'll be working on screenshots and such to show soon.

bellsong

Oh, Shay, I am sorry your kids are sick. I know when that happens there is precious little time for anything else, so please tend to them and don't worry. We appreciate you!

bellsong

Thanks, Povchef. I have a lot of questions about FB fan pages. There is a lot I don't understand. I think I need to take off some of the information so I will not appear to b spamming my friends.

bellsong

Thanks for asking, Tyrone. I would be interested to know, too.

Tiptopcat

My 30 Day Challenge - Day 11

Yesterday I received an email to confirm that my first article has been accepted in the Ezinearticles directory. This should bring the first couple of visitors to my site. I will now copy this article to a few other directories to give it further exposure.

I have drafted 8 short articles that will be used as part of the email series that I will set up in my auto responder series.

Don’t Forget To Add Web Tracker
I have also added Statcounter, the free web traffic program so that I can monitor the traffic amount and sources. I almost forgot this. It is one of the most important things to add to your blog so that you can tell which method of traffic is the most effective and where your visitors are coming from.

I am looking forward to learning from Shay and others about how to use traffic sources properly and effectively.


Tiptopcat

RickAllen

Good tip, Thanks, I have the sales page covered with Analitics but didn't think about the blog itself.

"I can get you more sales without spending a dime more on advertising!" http://ThePRexpert.com Free video course, whitepapers and more.

ShayB

Oh! Forgot to mention about stats!

Blogger has stats available, but I've used sitemeter.com on non-blogger sites.

If anyone is using Freewebs.com for their sites, they have free stats available for 90 days.

RickAllen

Today's update. Well this will be short and sweet. Spent most of the day on the go. Tomorrow and the weekend will be the same. I did manage to complete and upload three autoresponder messages and during some wait time today I jotted down what I still need to finish up... just a couple little details and the free report needs to be cleaned up and formatted. Shooting for Monday to be up to speed and ready to start getting signups.

"I can get you more sales without spending a dime more on advertising!" http://ThePRexpert.com Free video course, whitepapers and more.

Staktdex

Signups? Is this for the email list or is yours a member site?

Aspiring Marketer.

workingtofreedom

Well, I'm pretty late with the challenge--but I think this is a great place to start my internet marketing journey--so I'm in.

Tiptopcat

My 30 Day Challenge - Day 12

Today was spent editing my emails posts and uploading each one to my auto responder series. I just need to decide at what intervals they should be sent out at.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I have loaded up 8 emails so far. Do I need more before I offer my paid product? Should an email be sent every day or every other day?

I also did some work on another product that I want to add into the mix. I hope to be able to sell this on its own as well as part of the offer for this particular 30 day challenge.

I have also added an article to a couple of other article directories. To give further exposure to the website, I have added it to Stumbleupon too.

That’s all for today.

Tiptopcat

RickAllen

Well just got back in, it's almost 10pm, been on the go since 7am and will repeat Saturday & Sun. So I will not get much if anything done for a couple days.

As far as the autoresponder messages, for me the first two only mention with a link the blogger site, I'm calling my online newsletter. The third and remaining (10 messages in all) will all have the offer and a direct link to the web sales page.

I'm sending one each day for this, because I hope to have sales within 30 days, however I think if I was not driving for fast sales I would space them out to every two or three days and then once a week, based on something I read on IM marketing.

Of course a lot depends on the offer, the intended prospect and the like. Some marketers send numerous emails a day. Personally I never cared for that, but it's the same debate over long or short copy in copywriting... I think the bottom line is, it depends.

"I can get you more sales without spending a dime more on advertising!" http://ThePRexpert.com Free video course, whitepapers and more.

Tiptopcat

I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to highlight the offer so early on but I can see how this could be effective, depending on the type of product you are offering. I think this would work for mine - although I haven't completely finished it yet.

Sending daily emails might be the option as we do want to make a sale within this short period of time.

Thanks Rick for the feedback.

Tiptopcat

The Herm

Day 3 and 4

So I've been out of town for the past two days for a wedding, so getting stuff done has been a challenge.

I posted article 5 and scheduled #6 to post today. I've also installed google analytics to the blog for stat tracking.

Currently also working on the ebook and auto responder emails.

ShayB

Kids are feeling better. Me, not so much, but I feel somewhat human today. Somewhat.

Day Twelve

Day Thirteen

I'm using Twitter to drive traffic, but it's a new account so it's not driving much at this point.

My blog is in my profile, and I'm also networking with other people in the same niche.

I've decided I am going to make a freebie to give away that has a link to my blog in it. I'll see if I can get people to gve it away to their lists/followers.

ShayB

As far as the autoresponder series and the sales pitch -

I usually wait until around email 5 or so before I pitch - but that's just me. Nothing wrong with doing it sooner.

Most (not all) sales take anywhere from 5-11 exposures before they convert, so starting the sales pitch earlier isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I do have daily emails set up for the first seven days. After that, every other day.

olamilekan2

I am Just coming i accross this now and I say

I Accept The challenge

Morando Stores

bellsong

Shay, sure appreciate all your advice. Ready to look at day 8 now. Slow but steady wins the race.

Tiptopcat

Hi Shay,
I haven't really used Twitter so not sure what I am supposed to do with it. Could you give me a few pointers about what I should be looking for and what I should be tweeting.
Thanks
Tiptopcat
(ps - glad to hear your children are feeling better - hope you follow on soon.)

ShayB

Thank you. *hugs* I am trying to record an audio for a product - not working well! *sighs* Hopefully I'll be sounding (and feeling) better soon.

I'll post about Twitter in a bit. I have a few posts I can C & P here from other projects, and I can post about this project as it goes along.

Basically, I use twitter as a networking tool - to connect with others in my niches. I don't try to get a huge follower count. I try to connect with people who are centers of influence in a particular niche.

ShayB

Twitter

(This is a post I've made elsewhere about a previous project. I'm posting it here to help show the process I use for Twitter. This is obviously for a different niche than what I'm using this time.)

---------
As I have said many times before, I love Twitter. I have found it to be excellent networking tool and a fantastic way to meet others online that share the same interests that I have.

I also use Twitter for information - most of the time even before I hit Google. Why? Because I can send a question out to my followers and get personal suggestions for a solution almost as quickly as I can do a Google search. That is how twitter is supposed to work - people network and exchange ideas and information. Or I can do a search and find people with answers that I need.

I found the E1KaD forum because of Twitter. I did a search for making money with membership sites and found someone promoting the site via ClickBank.

So, when it came to marketing a product, my first thought in order to get quick results was to turn to Twitter. But not in the same sense that most marketers I have seen turn to Twitter.

Most marketers start an account, follow a whole bunch of people that they think are in the niche that they are promoting (in the hope that those people will follow them back), and then they start spamming the feed with a bunch of links (at least as far as I have seen, anyway).

The way I use Twitter isn't going to make you a Twitter superstar overnight, but it will help you to connect with other Twits and get some results quickly. if you keep doing this, you will end up with a fairly large number of followers that - and this is the important part - you actually have an interactive relationship with.

I am warning you now - it's long and boring. Maybe there's a better way to do it, but this works for me, and if it ain't broke, I'm not fixing it.

The first thing that you want to do is to start searching hashtags that are related to your niche.

I will use an example. ((from a previous project.))

I started off by searching #onlinedating. Then I took notice of the different hash tags that were often seen with the hash tag I was searching for. In my case, there was an extensive list of associated hash tags:

#dating
#relationships
#sex
#love
#moms
#singlemoms
#singledads
#GLBT
#plussizedating
#BBW

And a whole bunch of others.

Once I get a list of about 10 or 20 different aspects that are interrelated, I start doing some cross searches. I will not lie - this is the tedious part.

When you're doing your searches, you are looking for accounts that are not obviously run by a bot and that have some kind of interaction with the followers. You want to find accounts that have interesting tweets that you can retweet the old fashioned way (not just by hitting the RT button) and add some kind of comment.

Doing it this way will make sure that it shows up in their mentions, and it also lets the person know that you are a live human being and not a bot yourself.

Your next step is to wait to see who interacts with you, and then approach them about helping them promote their business or site or whatever they may have. I usually offer some type of interview, or I said they could use my free product as a gift or incentives for their followers. Use your imagination.

Then you are going to see who is interacting on those accounts and start following and interacting with them. It truly is a spider web effect. You will find that you will start with a search that leads you to another search that leads you to a certain account that leads you to more accounts.

As a side note - I am huge fan of putting interviews and even press releases from other people on my blogs. I always have some type of invitations on my blogs saying something to the effect of if someone has something noteworthy or newsworthy that they would like for me to promote on my blog to e-mail me with it. This type of thing is an excellent approach for Twitter.

Using this method with another account/blog that I have on Twitter, I was recently asked to help promote a new business in my area. It's a small business, with a work at home mom in charge of it. All I did was copy and paste what she sent me, and then sent her a link to a post on the blog.

Naturally, she promoted that post. She had it bookmarked with the social sites, she promotes it on her site, she sends out tweets with the link to it on her profile, etc. that one post more than doubled the visitors that were coming to my blog.

Okay, I got off on a tangent. That's one of the bad things about DNS.


Anyway, that is my big Twitter secret.

1. Search using your main niche hash tag.
2. Find the related hash tags. Search those.
3. Find interactive accounts - not necessarily the ones with the huge amount of followers
4. Do some retweets with commentary
5. Interact with those who respond to you
6. Start up a dialogue about how you can help their business or something that they can offer to their followers - but keep it social, not spamming.
7. Rinse and repeat.... and repeat...... and repeat

I think that I covered all the bases. If there's something that's not clear, please let me know and I'd be happy to clarify.

It's really not a huge marketing secret. It's just finding people that have similar interests to you and networking.

(I'll post my examples of what I do with this project when I make more progress.)

alwayswillingtolearn

Hi Shay,

My name is Chris and I'm part of your 30 day challenge. I haven't gotten too far with the challenge, but I see that you might be willing to share what you've done so far so I may have an idea on how to proceed with my blogger blog.

As a matter of fact, I have a few blogs that I have created and I was hoping you could take a look at one of them and give me some feedback.
Find Online Products On Sale Here


My hope is that you would be willing to review the links I sent you and let me know what you have done as well. I know that this is my year to make something happen in my life as my wife and I have a set of twins and another set on the way...so I NEED more money now!

Any help you could lend would be more than appreciated.

Thanks!

Chris

http://HowToMakeGirlsLaugh.com