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?

The place where everyone knows your name. (photo by Caitlinator/Flickr)

I must say, although I am still new to the world of blogging and internet marketing, I am very impressed with the blogging community, particularly with some well-established bloggers. And from what I can tell, the type of generosity they have displayed recently is more the norm rather than the exception among the community.

Two blogs that I often read, The Writers Manifesto and ProBlogger, recently included a list of links to pages of some of their readers. On The Writers Manifesto blog, Monika Mundell compiled a list herself of various posts from her readers in her own post titled “Success Principles As Seen By My Readers.” Then earlier this week, Darren Rowse ran an interesting experiment of sorts with his ProBlogger Social Media Love-In. He basically asked his readers if they were active on various social media sites, and if they wanted to network with other bloggers, told them to feel free to include links to their profiles.

I was pleasantly surprised to find my opening post included on Monika’s list, and all of us on it were very grateful to her. It was a very nice show of appreciation on her part to introduce us all to each other. After reading Darren’s post and seeing that a few people had decided to list their pages in the comments section, I decided why not and put links to my Twitter, Facebook and MySpace pages. I didn’t think much of it at the time, seemed like a nice gesture on Darren’s part, and yet little did I know what was in store…

It turns out the Twitter links were very popular as almost immediately my email was turning up Twitter follow notifications like there was no tomorrow! And the notifications are still coming in today! I hadn’t used Twitter very much before (it was still on my “to learn” list) and now I went from six followers to over 100 in a matter of a few days. You can find the complete list of ProBlogger’s 538 twitter users that blog here (I’m no. 175 on there).

What have these two acts of kindness done for my blog? Well a lot more in terms of bringing in visitors than I had been doing, that’s for sure! Admittedly I haven’t gotten around to doing much promoting of my website yet (shame Kevin!). Prior to these two listings, I only had a few visitors here and there from a few friends who I have talked to about it and a few others who I either contacted directly or may have seen me comment on another site.

And while my traffic numbers are still very modest, compared to what they were before they have skyrocketed (relatively speaking, of course). I even got a few encouraging messages from some of my new Twitter friends saying they checked out my blog and enjoyed it! All this has gotten me very excited. Being an athlete, I compare seeing this first wave of visitors and comments to scoring your first goal or winning your first match. I actually do remember the emotions from my first soccer goal from when I was six very vividly.

On a similar note, I would be remissed if I didn’t give thanks to a couple other bloggers, Penelope Trunk and Caroline Middlebrook, who recently took the time to answer an email I sent, in a very timely manner I must add. I’m sure they are very busy so I appreciate that they took the time out of their day to respond. It may be a simple act, and yet it has helped me with my blogging in these early stages. Little things like that do go a long way.

These acts of generosity have opened my eyes more to the culture of the blogging world while introducing me to many other fascinating bloggers of various topics, of which I may not have found otherwise. It makes sense, in order to succeed in blogging (or business for that matter), that one must provide value to their readers (or customers). I get the impression that this sort of collaboration and interdependence has been picking up steam among those on the cutting edge for some time now, which is a nice trend to see.

I mentioned Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book in an earlier post, and I bring it up again as interdependence was a big theme of his. His seven habits are meant to guide people from dependence, to independence, to interdependence. What does that mean exactly? Dictionary.com defines the term interdependent as “mutually dependent; depending on each other”, while Wikipedia states that interdependence “can also be defined as the interconnectedness and the reliance on one another socially, economically, environmentally and politically.”.

I think it is important to note that like it or not, we are all interdependent of one another, and life itself is interdependent. Even more so these days with globalization and the power of the internet and other communication technologies. It’s comforting to see that more and more people, especially those who are in a position of influence, are embracing this concept.

Cheers, mates! (photo by gamma.amore/flickr)

Mentioning these folks on this blog will likely not have the same sort of impact on them as they have had on me and my blog. I simply don’t possess the same amount of influence at this time. This charitable attitude is something I intend to keep paying forward though as I go along. Generosity begets generosity, and that is a VERY good thing. Who knows, I could always buy them a drink should our paths ever cross in person! It would be the least I could do.

On that note, to Monika, Darren, Penelope, Caroline and all my fellow bloggers and readers out there; thank you, and here’s to all our success and happiness. Cheers!

The second bit of news that I wanted to share this weekend is that I decided to go on a bit of a domain shopping spree the other night after the .me domains went on sale to the general public. I admit, it was sort of an impulse purchase for me since I had actually just found out about it that day through TechCrunch (I guess I have been living under a rock for the past few months). I had gotten in on this later on that night so I never ran into any of the issues that a lot of people in that post’s comments seemed to be having.

So what is a .me domain anyway? Well, it’s not every day that new countries are created, so this is sort of a once in a blue moon event. To make a long story short, .me is the internet country code assigned for Montenegro, which recently became an independent nation. Each country has its own extension, often loosely based on the native spelling of its name (e.g. Australia is .au, Germany (Deutschland) is .de).

Flag of Montenegro (Courtesy of www.mysona.dk)

Montenegro used to be part of the former Yugoslavia, which then split up. It actually remained a part of a smaller Yugoslavia for a little while, along with Serbia, which would then later become known as “Serbia and Montenegro”. Montenegro then formally declared its independence in 2006.

Anyway, it seemed like a good opportunity to get some good names in some topics that I am interested in anyway, so I figured why not. And .me seems to have a unique branding potential (I did get kevinhassett.me for instance, how cool is that!). I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with them all just yet so right now they are just sitting empty and doing nothing. Maybe I’ll sell some, or maybe I’ll use them for some niche pages that I have in mind.

Who knows what sort of success I’ll end up having with this… nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Maybe there is some value to these .me domains or perhaps they may just be hype and end up being a waste of time and money for me. Time will tell. In the meantime, I am keeping an open and positive mindset about it and will focus on its potential benefits rather than any downside there may be. Oftentimes the downsides are just our minds playing tricks on us anyways.