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.

This weekend I will post a couple quick updates on some things that I have going on that I am excited about.

Today I want to discuss the Thirty Day Challenge. I had vaguely remember seeing something about this a while back, and then as I was starting to create this blog and I got into following various other blogs, I found others who had taken up the challenge before. It seems as though it has helped a lot of people who were getting started with internet marketing and such, so I decided to give it a shot.

This is the fourth year that Ed Dale and Dan Raine are running the challenge. The goal of the 30DC is to help people make their first $10 online. Appearantly a few people who have gone through the challenge have gone on to make well into the six and seven figure range. Right now I’ll just be excited to see that first $10!

Currently the challenge is in “preseason” mode, and will officially kick off on August 1, so there is still time to get involved if you are interested. The entire program and training is completely free. It seems as though it is not just for beginners, but veterans can also benefit from the course as well.

I found Caroline Middlebrook’s posts about her experiences with last year’s challenge to be very helpful. Click here for a link to her post about this year’s challenge. You can also go to her archives as many of her early posts discus the 30DC.

This should be a great experience for me, and it comes at a good time as I am just starting out. Also with no job at the moment, I should have plenty of time over the next month. I guess in that regard, I am in a similar circumstance that Caroline was in at this point last year, so it is encouraging to see how far she has come in 12 months.

I’ll be sure to blog about the 30DC and let you know my thoughts as I’m going through the program. Have any of you ever taken part in the 30DC or are planning to do so this year? Let me know what you think about it.

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(Disclaimer: Yes, I do get a “point” if you sign up through those Thirty Day Challenge links above, which could lead to winning prizes. I’m really not too concerned about trying to win any prizes with it, so you can just go to http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com if you like. I am simply writing about this as it is part of my plan to achieve my nomading dreams, and perhaps others will find it beneficial as well.)

First off, Happy Independence Day to all the readers out there from the USA!

Ahh, Providence… No, not the nice city pictured above that’s situated on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, home of the prestigious Ivy League school Brown University as well as a famous big blue bug alongside the highway! Gotta love that critter!

The Big Blue Bug “Nibbles Woodaway” Photo by: Jonathan Baker
Taken from I-95 N-bound in Providence, RI

The sort of Providence I am talking about is illustrated in one of my all-time favorite quotes, which comes from W.H. Murray when he refers to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951):

“Until one is committed
There is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,
Always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),
There is one elementary truth,
The ignorance of which kills countless ideas
And splendid plans:
That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
Then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
That would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision
Raising in one’s favor all manner
Of unforeseen incidents and meetings
And material assistance,
Which no man could have dreamt
Would have come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it’”

Absolutely Powerful! Perhaps it sounds a bit too wishy-washy for you, I understand. And yet I believe that no matter what your beliefs are about the universe, religion or life in general, that this advice is golden. Experience has shown me, and I am sure every person can relate, that life sometimes has a funny, seemingly magical way making things happen. This is why I think it is important that when you are planning to reach a certain goal, rather than keeping to a strict course of action, it’s best to leave some room for the unknown to happen.

If you have a real big proper goal, and by that I mean something that you really have to reach and grow for, something that is a true challenge that you have not accomplished yet, then you shouldn’t already know what the absolute best course of action is. If you did, you’d probably have already done it, and it probably isn’t going to help you grow that much. That, or you wouldn’t do it at all because it wouldn’t push you enough. Sure, having some idea of what to do is helpful, but just get started already!!! The rest will come to you as you go along, I promise!

In my previous post, I mentioned that just getting started was a huge step for me, one that unfortunately many people never get past. And committing to my goal on such a public forum just magnifies everything many fold. It strengthens the force of Providence, if you will, as well as my motivation. I’ve crossed the line of no return, there is no “chance to draw back.” Heck, if I draw back now, that will make me look bad in front of all of you!

Leo Babauta, who writes an an excellent blog called Zen Habits, referenced committing publicly in a recent post called The Ultimate Guide to Motivation – How to Achieve Any Goal. Leo gave eight beginning motivation suggestions, and number five was:

“Commit publicly. None of us likes to look bad in front of others. We will go the extra mile to do something we’ve said publicly. For example, when I wanted to run my first marathon, I started writing a column about it in my local daily newspaper. The entire island of Guam (pop. 160K) knew about my goal. I couldn’t back down, and even though my motivation came and went, I stuck with it and completed it. Now, you don’t have to commit to your goal in your daily newspaper, but you can do it with friends and family and co-workers, and you can do it on your blog if you have one. And hold yourself accountable — don’t just commit once, but commit to giving progress updates to everyone every week or so.”

Awesome! A great example of what Goethe said, “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

What have you always wanted to accomplish that you have been putting off for a rainy day, or for when you have more time, or out of fear? Leave a comment and let us know. Perhaps by stating publicly, you too will take actions toward that goal which will start the chain of events in your favor.

The unknown is nothing to fear, and the perfect time will never come. Get started now!!! I’ve always wanted to have the freedom to set out and see the world, and I knew if I didn’t start to do something about it now, I may regret it for the rest of my life. Two things, you must be clear about what you want, and you must take action. C’mon already! Now let’s get started!!!