Nomad Challenge

Photo by Parksy1964

I’ve been a little quiet on this blog for the past couple weeks, although I am happy to report I’ve been making some good progress with my Thirty Day Challenge lessons!

In my previous post, I mentioned that I had to catch up with the first week of the 30DC due to my cross-country move.  It seems there were a lot of people in the same boat and everyone seems to be doing just fine, so no worries.  The lessons will still be available long after the end of the challenge so if anyone is still interested in signing up, I highly recommend it.

I haven’t exactly caught back up to today’s date, which is okay.  They say just go with whatever pace you feel comfortable.  For me, the first couple of days were the toughest to get past, and yet now it seems to be getting easier to go through multiple lessons in one day.  I have also been distracted quite a bit by the Olympics too, but they only come once every four years (two if you count the Winter Games), so why not eh?  It has been a very compelling Olympics.

Anyways, what can I share with you about my 30DC experience?  I admit, I did take a bit of time on deciding what niche market I was going to target.  The Market Samurai program I mentioned last time really does a good job of narrowing topics down though.  I tested about 5-6 different keyword ideas with Market Samurai.  The program then takes data from multiple sources to analyze total traffic, competition and the likelyhood of whether or not people searching that phrase would be interested in buying something.

Although we are all on a 40-day trial of the Market Samurai program, this keyword research functionality will always be free.  It’s a lot easier than just manually using the Google Keyword Tool, although they did offer a lesson in this as well (sort of the “old-school” way of doing things).

The next lesson went into using Market Samurai to do an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) competition analysis.  This was really cool!  It took your keyword that you selected and gave a listing of the top pages that come up on a Google search of that phrase, along with all of their on-page and off-page SEO attributes that Google thinks are important (basically all the reasons why these pages are showing up ahead of others).  There are other ways to go about doing this as well, such as the SEO for Firefox add-on, which was also demonstrated.

So with this knowledge, I then went ahead and selected the keyword phrase that I thought had the most favorable traffic numbers and the best chance to get ranked highly by Google.

Next, we went ahead and found affiliate programs that we could use that matched our keyword phrase.  Now, the idea isn’t to just make money using affiliate programs.  This is merely a free way to get a more accurate test of whether people visiting our webpages would be willing to purchase something.  I believe the idea is we would create our own product later on, based on what visitors are interested in.

After finding the affiliate program, we then set about creating content to post on our webpage.  In order to come up with ideas, we found news sources to keep up with the latest trends, analyzed other articles which held some sort of authority on the subject, and learned about an attribution method that is sort of like commenting or giving your own take on another story and linking to that page.

Now with all this information, we had to find a place to house the content and affiliate links.  This is where WordPress Direct comes in.  Since the main promise of the challenge is to make your first dollar online without spending a dime, there are free options for hosting and domain creations.  I decided to shell out a few bucks for my own hosting while using one of the .ME domain names I had already purchased last month to create my niche blog (WordPress Direct requires hosting with CPanel, which my host of this blog, 1&1, while a great hosting provider, does not offer).

WordPress Direct is pretty cool as well.  I am already familar with using WordPress, but as a participant of the 30DC, you get three free blogs to use WPD with, and they all come SEO optimized by the 30DC gurus, so I went with it.  It is a really fast way to get an optimized blog up and running in just a matter of minutes.

The next day was all about setting up stat tracking with Google Analytics, along with a special 30DC affiliate tracker.  This was pretty easy, and yet definitely important.  WPD is already set up for Google Analytics so all you need to do is enter your own tracking code.  Simple!

The next few days were all about introducing your new blog to the neighborhood.  One day featured a website called Social Marker (created by former 30DC participants), which is sort of a one-stop shop for submitting your posts in just a few quick steps to an assortment of social media and bookmarking type sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Twitter.  Seeing the affect Twitter and StumbleUpon recently had on this website (see Drinks On Me and The Interdependence of Blogging: Cheers Mates!), I knew this lesson would be huge!

The next lesson discussed the proper way to go about contributing to your chosen topic’s community through commenting (while not spamming) on other authority sites to get more backlinks for your own blog.  Of course, this must be done in a manner which creates a worthy contribution to the site’s discussions.  I personally feel this is part of what makes the blogging community great.

The following day, we submitted our blogs to an RSS feed with the 30DC RSS submitter.  Again, something I could probably have done on my own, but it was just a couple easy clicks.

So that is where I am at right now… What are the results thus far?  Well, over the weekend while I was searching for forums to contribute to (search: “my keyword phrase” forums), I found my niche blog as the eighth link on the first page of the Google search!  Just a few days after signing up for the affiliate program, I’ve had 11 clicks on the link, although no sales yet.  All still encouraging though!

Basically, once I got past figuring out the Market Samuari program, things began to flow a bit easier and I am getting more and more into this challenge.  Now with the Olympics over, I will be less distracted I am sure.  There are still a lot of lessons I have not gotten to yet, so I am excited to put more of this 30DC stuff into practice.  They really are giving away a lot of useful info for anyone interested in internet marketing.

YAAARRR! Meself and a pirate I came across on a rainy day in St. Augustine, America's oldest city.

After a week on the road I have finally arrived back home and now I have a LOT of work to do between unpacking, cleaning and catching up with the Thirty Day Challenge!

I didn’t originally plan to take all that time to drive here, although I’m glad I did. Before I left, a couple friends of mine invited me to stay with them along the way, so I spent some time with each of them. Remarkably (and also unplanned) I never ended up staying at any hotels during the trip, so I am very thankful that my friends let me crash at their places for a little bit.

I made one other stop just a little bit out of way to visit a friend of mine at her new cupcake store she just opened last month along with a friend of her’s in Wilmington, North Carolina. I brought along a box of their cupcakes for the ride, and both myself along with my friends whom I stayed with afterward agree that those were by far the best ones we had ever had! Yea, I may be a little biased, and yet my friend says she’s been getting a lot of high praise on her cupcakes. So, a bit of shameless promotion, if you ever find yourself in Wilmington, head on over to Coastal Cupcakes, they are REALLY GOOD!

As I mentioned before, I have a LOT of catching up to do regarding the Thirty Day Challenge. Between all the traveling, I am still only on Day 2’s lessons and the challenge is already up to Day 8! Ooops! I will spend a lot of time tonight and this weekend catching up on the lessons.

I am excited from what I have seen thus far. They have given all of us 40 days free access to a new software program called Market Samurai which looks amazing! It is a tool which basically automates a lot of keyword research for use in determining whether or not a particular keyword would make for a profitable niche site.

More to come once I have put in my overtime in catching up!

Exit sign for the Likelike Highway from my visit to Hawaii a few years ago.

Quick update. After days of packing and cleaning, I have left my apartment and am now on the second day of my 1,500-mile road trip back to my parent’s house. Normally I could do this trip in a couple of days, but I am not in a rush and will be stopping by to visit some friends here and there.

I have mixed thoughts of moving back in with my folks. First, I am grateful for the opportunity. After living on my own for the past five years though, I am sure there will be quite an adjustment. I think some people I know may be placing bets on what happens first, me getting sick of the cold up north or sick of living with my parents! They are great folks though so I’m sure all will be fine. Of course I will miss all my friends that I have made here over the past five years, although I’m sure I will be back to visit every now and then.

The timing isn’t great with the start of the Thirty Day Challenge today. At least I have my USB modem and I can get online pretty much anywhere along the way. My lease was up yesterday at the apartment and it just made sense since who knows where my next job will be (I will be a very happy man when I get to the point of not relying the dreaded J.O.B.). At least I can search now back home without having to worry about rent for a little bit.

Now, some people may look at the thought of moving back home for a little bit as not ideal, freeloading and as a step backwards. I think there is nothing wrong with this though. Sometimes you just need to step aside to get a better look at the bigger picture. The way I see it, this is taking one step back to take two steps forward. This will help me launch into something bigger and better.

This road trip is a bit of a metaphor of my current situation. On the highway of life, there are many exits (choices) along the way. Which one am I going to choose? I seem to remember something similar to that being a tag line to a car commercial once. Anyone remember what it was?