So it appears now I am two weeks behind on the Challenge. Well done Ed Dale for suggesting weeks off in between the modules – you are a star.

My delay has been with reconditioning almost a hundred old domains and bringing them back. About forty hours of setting up WordPress, headers, templates and analysis on them.

… And I had to do it MANUALLY!!!

The thing that really hurt me though was that I have recreated all these sites almost totally manually – and for me who has been so used to writing scripts for site creation in the past it has been a shock of immense proportions and needing quite a bit of stamina to complete.

I decided I wanted to keep everything as manageable as possible and stick to familiar code and templates. I don’t want everything to look exactly the same but if I use the TwentyTen template built for WordPress 3 and make children of them then I can work on making them look unique later easily and quickly. So the first thing to do was to make headers for each of them.

With the help of Xheader I managed to do this in under 8 hours. I was pretty impressed with that but I kept thinking what scripting I would add to the program while going through each one. I must stop thinking script…

As an aid to keeping my mind of scripting I listened to Seth Godin’s Tribes and lots of Tony Robbins stuff that has been loitering on my hard drive for ages.

I decided that I must get Dragon Naturally Speaking or similar and catch ideas or content on the fly while I do any manual work. Then I will feel at least a little productive.

Back to the modules – Ed introduces the fact that you need to create content and gives a few techniques as to how to fuel up on the information you need to fill your niche. This is a section that can catch many people out, the content needed for a niche is one of the most important stock you can have but it is difficult – unless you do it many times over.

Ed talks of the WOW facts from the late Gary Halbert, a resource that I can recommend that has this and more is at the archive at http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/.

The idea behind todays’ lesson is gathering together the information using a few of the tools like EverNote. I have for years been using OneNote because it ties in with all the other Microsoft Office apps so nicely and it works very well for this. Again I am stuck with this technology because I know I can script it whenever I need too.

Another tool in the arsenal is Web Content Studio by Dr. Andy Williams. Another person I trust in the SEO world, especially when it comes down to keyword optimised content.  I found out for myself that having the right phrases and words in a web page helps place it higher in the search engines with less effort on the backlinking – every bit helps. The LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) principles behind this have been around for a long time and it is definitely in the Google algorithm in one form or another.

The Web Content Studio now that I have got used to using it, which did take a while is now one of the fastest ways of getting ideas and writing content – it is right up there in my mind with Market Samurai and I now cannot give it enough praise. Just for ideas and seeing what is related to a niche the keyword spider is great for pulling them out from the top of Google.

The Twitter Search is new to me, in the sense of using it for gathering content. I will see how this works over time but it was an interesting one to add.

The Google Alerts sending to Google Reader is one of the most effective ways of keeping on top of changes in a niche too. Always worth the time setting this up and following it. I just wish I could script it a bit better…

Kenny Goodman of Domain Face explains domain names and why it is important of getting an SEO friendly domain name.

Then gives info on how to acquire them. Nice to see the feature covered in Market Samurai and the domains module. Every little helps. I wonder when the .co will be added to the mix?

Hostgator is suggested by the Challenge but most of my domains I use Dreamhost, they are the best host I have ever had, but there is always the worry of having too many eggs in a basket. For the sake of the Challenge I do have a Hostgator account which I will do some testing with.

10 domains are going forward for the Challenge, though two I already bought before this season started.

Tried a mix of e-prefixed .coms and .orgs. I thought a lot about the actual choice of domain names and really tried to find clever versions of my keywords with the phrase match in there if I couldn’t get an exact match. However, it seems there are cleverer people out there who have already had a jump on buying the names I thought were cool. Never mind. I ended up thinking that I should not waste any time thinking too much about it and tried in the end for going for maximum keyword density.

It is sad that loads of good .com domains are just being sat on without any work being done to them – what a complete waste. I guess the domains will have increased in value but a little work over time would make them really valuable.

Big resistance in the back of my mind to entertaining WordPress Direct – some objective reasons but mostly subjective. This is one service I wish I could get in and give it a good shake – loads of opportunities for saving work to both newbies and veterans.

The commercial indicators covered are through looking at each of the following areas and seeing what products exist.

• Google Adwords – Are there more than just one or two ads displayed on the side of Google when you search for the keyword?
• Products related to Microniche in Ebay – Are there a number of products in the auctions at eBay? Showing that even if the product isn’t new that some interest sustains it.
• Products related to Microniche in Amazon – Searching both for products and/or books is helpful to gauge commercial viability.
• E-Stores or Online Shopping sites for related products – Often specialist shops become important when the interest is niche and not commonly sold in the major online sources.
• Information products – No matter whether your microniche is just a product, there are sometimes some great related courses or ebooks sold within the microniche area of interest. You would just search for your keyword and add the word ebook to pull out any of interest.
• Affiliate Programs – Major suppliers like Amazon may not be the best method of selling niche products or information, the creators, manufacturers or suppliers  may in fact give you a higher commission or more range to interest your browsers. Easily found by typing in your keyword and the phrase “affiliate program” into Google and seeing what is returned. Often I find it surprising the number of affiliate programs out there that exist for the most obscure things.

Personally, I must admit this part of the process has always been a weakness of mine and looking back on previous efforts I see that a lot of lost opportunities have occurred by not selling enough on the web sites. I know you can go overboard with this but by placing the right product in the right place in your content has got to be useful for anyone who is interested enough to read it – hasn’t it? People are becoming more and more switched off to seeing advertisements on pages but that has been mostly due to irrelevance of the information.

My own personal enlightenment on this subject was gained when I looked back at previous attempts of website creation and seeing that I had never looked properly at the bottom line. If the site has cost me time to create then why was I either producing just information pages on one extreme or on the other simply plastering it lazily with hugely irrelevant ads. I personally need to think more about adding both value and revenue to the work produced.

This essentially completes module one of The Challenge 2010 and I know I spent more time on it than planned – but I am so glad I did. I am looking at this whole process now as something that can be tested, more efficient of my own time and more effective in positioning a site in the current state of the Internet.

I have 10 Challenge niches that complete the commercial test and many more (increasing all the time) that are going to be useful in testing the amount of work needed for variations of the process. Module one will be a constant effort from time to time when an idea is formed or a newly discovered niche tested. When the golden eggs appear I will be in like a shot!!

Related Challenge Journal Blog Entries
including any reference to work done during the week off.

• Day 13: Commercial Indicators
• End of week 1, slightly delayed.
• Week off update
• SEO Matrix Makes Me Ask Why
• Now this makes more sense. . . but still.
• Ready For Module 2 ~ Video #tc10
• Day 7 – Commercial indicators
• Goals for the First Challenge Off Week
• Module 1 / Day 7 Commercial Indicators
• The First Break Week
• #TC10 New Format Is Good
• Module One – Day Seven – Commercial Indicators
• Module 1 Done…. In part….
• The Challenge 2010: Module 1/Day 7 – Commercial Indicators
• Ok, I’m Back!
• 7 Things To Do On These Days Off
• My Challenge M1D7 #tc10
• The Challenge 2010 – Day 7
• Reviewing Week One Content
• An easy way to search for commercial indicators

How deep does the competition hole go?

Loads of important points to consider here as you research your niche enough to make a decision on whether it is worth the time. The main goal is to find at least one little kid to beat up. This poor kid will have a PR less than 3, a BLP less than 200, no YAH listing and no Title and URL optimisation.

Of course it goes a bit beyond just having a green line. It is an indicator of the possible effort you need to put into getting onto the Top 10, or better even getting to position 1 and benefitting from ~42% o the traffic.

A green line using the following criteria is the rule of thumb for this complex calculation of competition.

Off page factors

PR – PageRank- PR Less than 3

A lot of high PR pages in the top 10 means that a lot of high authority web sites, alternatively a lot of low ones means that the keyword is a lot more accessible.

BLP – Backlinks to the page – Less than 200 links

If there are only a few links pointing to sites on the top 10 then again this makes it easier to dominate.

YAH – Listed in Yahoo – No Listing

Listed pages are about $300 a year. A useful boost if the page is producing revenue.

On page factors

Title – Keyword in the Title – Not used

Seen in the top of the browser when you go to that page

URL – Keyword in the address – Not used

Either as a part of the domain or as part of the path and filename to the page.

Remember this is really only a rough way of finding the little kids to beat up. It can be surprising when you see that at times you can have a site come up against a load of reds, or disappointed when you struggle against a load of greens and yellow. I would be extremely surprised if you couldn’t rank against a load of greens for a theme keyword.

There is a Noble Samurai video for a bit of advanced SEO competition analysis. Concentrating on comparing

Between things like the page authority, domain authority and the strength of the link networks behind them.

Content and links I am sure can overcome all at the moment, however listening to Ryan Deiss more recently he suggests that traffic is also something to consider. The feeling I get is go for it now while the information from The Challenge guys is still good, I am sure it’ll be a different landscape this time next year.

When I first tried Market Samurai the finding of niches seemed to be quite painful. I had used Micro Niche Finder before and found it quick and easy to home in on niches. However, I was determined to keep doing this process until I was comfortable at find them. Now I must say that I have niches everywhere, it was really only a matter of getting used to the interface and finding ways of homing in.

Now I am a great believer in testing. This is one principle that in my belief will help anyone steer through the rough waters of the Internet if you account for it. Now believing in it may seem great if you already know what you are going to test in the future but what if you don’t? Right now I don’t have any idea of what I will test against but I am going to make sure I prepare for it. You see I wish to work out for myself the effort required in producing a site that produces a stated revenue. There are so many factors right now that it would be impossible for me to even start, so to prepare I think what I will need later.

Good Documentation

It really is the cornerstone of any research. Simply you keep good records of what you can so that you can compare against them later. Obviously you may wish you kept data that later may seem important, that’s just a learning process, but for now it is imperative to keep everything that is available in a place that is accessible and ideally searchable.

I use OneNote religiously, for much of the research I have ever done over the past decade has relied, for the most of it on keeping good records in OneNote. There are certainly other applications out there that do this kind of thing but I have been seduced by the idea since it was made that it is integrated into my tasks, calendar, email and documents under the Microsoft banner. I would love to succumb to the passion I see for the Mac if I could have it all working together as it does in Microsoft Office but as I see it the Mac seems to be going through revolution and not settling down to any common and extensible means of accomplishing it. I am also lucky to know the scripting behind the scenes that allow me to do pretty much what I like with any of that information too so I can have powerful functions where I wish.

Back to niches and testing

A habit that is really useful for later is storing the information you gather on your niche research structured for easy finding later. The export on Market Samurai produces a CSV (comma delimited file) that can be read by a spreadsheet or database later on. Use it consistently now I am aware of the power of it. For quick browsing and comparing the modules of Market Samurai visually I just take screenshots of the information I get and store this all away in my notebook (OneNote). It has been great in comparing niches already and you find that when you do it enough you find patterns within certain niches (or markets) where sometimes one factor seems to be surprisingly dominant. I will blog more on this later when I have gathered enough information but I sometimes feel like the Google algorithm is nothing but a massively hard coded algorithm depending on actual words than sense.

The results of my niches found so far, I have 10 Challenge niches ready for the next stage out of 35 ideas that I have though of. I really tried to stick to things that I was interested in but it seems so easy to home in on them now I may get the confidence or acquire the skills to attack a load more. Market Samurai databases are easily accesses using a driver but I haven’t spent any time yet on automating it on Adobe AIR, I am not sure yet whether the effort is worth it or not.

Relevant Challenge Journal Blogs

• TC10 Mod 1.6
• TC10 Mod 1.6 – Revisiting the Matrix
• You ARE In The Matrix – Challenge Edition – #tc10
• Day 6 – SEO Matrix Analysis
• Why Sometimes a Competition Matrix Doesn’t Make Sense
• Module 1 / Day 6 SEO Matrix Analysis
• Diary of a Photoholic: Day 15
• Module 1 – Day 6 – SEO Matrix Analysis
• Eating Crow Goes Better With Page Rank
• My Challenge M1D6 #tc10
• The Challenge 2010 – Day 6
• Day 6 SEO Matrix Analysis
• You must re-test your theme keyword

For anyone who doesn’t know what the Challenge is but knows what I am talking then please go to The Challenge right now!!! This may be life changing news for you and you should leave my blog immediately to get in.

I had installed a cooker hood today and used that as inspiration, but I am pretty confident that once you get into the swing of things that you can find good traffic, low competition microniches very quickly in Market Samurai.

I recorded my video and put it up as a friendly challenge to anyone else who thinks they can beat that time. It would be interesting to see and of course useful to those who struggle with this essential step.

Here we go – here’s mine. Reply to it with your video if you can beat me?

Now in actual fact I have gone through the whole of module 1 as I write this, probably over 500 times, though I will explain more in a later blog, I just need to catch up with reporting back. I would say if you ever get bored in The Challenge and looking for something useful to do then this whole module is great to revisit. Learning and keeping up to date with it will never be a waste of time and it is always worth investigating the reasons why you are doing each part of the process.

The reference to the suspect title of beating up little kids was a term meant in a harmless way by Ed Dale in the introduction to this module, but the obvious political incorrectness made me laugh when I heard him explain it in more innocent terms of your competition.

Right let’s go an pick on someone smaller. As we get more skilled and confident we can start picking on the bigger kids. Personally, I have a few big kids already in my site and Market Samurai is perfect for uncovering their activity – more on that later.

So specifically here we look at the number of kids in your proposed playground and how big they are. You are out to be king of the playground and need to see who you can beat up easily. A few big ones may come up in the results, but really they are only there in reputation but the ones to look out for are the ones who are big and working hard to dominate the playing field. I shall leave any more analogies for this until the next module, where it comes to identifying them.

The only real actions for today was to make a list of the keywords that you will use in your niche and getting used to switching columns on and off in Market Samurai. Though before I would examine all the of data that came back from the SEO competition module in Market Samurai I must admit for speed when researching loads of different niches switching off what you didn’t really need was good for both the speed at which you got you data and the how fast you could decide whether to go ahead or not.

The five key factors are:-

• Page Rank (PR)
• Page Backlinks (BLP)
• Yahoo Directory listing (YAH)
• Keyword in Title (Title)
• Keyword in URL (URL)

It was good to see these pointed out as the priority ones. Prior to this I would spend loads of time weighing up all of them and wondering what criteria I should take more notice of. Sometimes just leaving niches when looking at loads of old domains dominating, a factor I see they haven’t included.

The story about the lion and the two Internet marketers gives me a great idea. I leave it to anyone reading this which two Internet marketers they would like to run for their lives from the lion and which one would probably win. Sorry, no bets allowed on the lion.

Here’s my round up of related Challenge Blogs for this module. I do update these now and again just to see how everyone is getting on:

• TC10 – Day 5 – Understanding SEO Competition
• The Challenge Module One-Day Five: Understanding SEO Competition
• Day 5 – SEO Competition
• Assessing the Competition in Internet Marketing – SEO Competition Analysis
• Module 1 / Day 5 Understanding SEO Competition
• Module One – Day Five – SEO Competition
• The Challenge 2010: Module 1/Day 5 – SEO Competition
• Day 5 – SEO Competition
• Challenge 2010: Are You On Board?
• My Challenge M1D5 #tc10
• The Challenge 2010 – Day 5

I am so glad of the seven day break even though I thought how much it would slow me down – funny now I think about it. The good thing with having this break is that you have the time to go deeper if you wish, or if you find ‘life takes over’  then you can at least catch up.

Mine was simply getting caught up in ideas …

The Search for Intelligent Life! On the Internet?

My distraction that caught my attention so eagerly, was the realisation that much of many process on the Internet require no cognitive intelligence at all!

I played with the technologies that allowed distributed processes to perform these simple but numerous transactions all over the globe. If I were to think of the simple Challenge process of Module 1 then the analogy would be instead of SETI, you would think of SEO@Home. I only ran out of steam when I reached architecture patterns for business process automation and then it all got a little dry.

I have decided though that I should add a new wish to my growing list, a technology research team made up of the best practical and pragmatic dreamers that I can find.

Right, let’s get on with Challenge things manual and dig deep.

For me this is the chance to understand everything I can in the time to get the selection of market right, scale up a little and test out a few variations.

Get the balance right

There were a few subtle differences made in Day 4 from the last 30 Day Challenge process to make it easier for anyone to follow it, the use of switching off columns in Market Samurai isn’t an important one in itself but when you are looking at loads of numbers checking out your niche it stops you from the distractions. The point is to check the viability of the keyword for getting into a reasonable place on the SERPs and have enough traffic to determine fairly quickly whether the niche is a good one to follow through with. I see the Challenge team are learning from the feedback and introducing usable methods and I can only imagine that their next big paradigm would be complete immersion into the latest media and learning methods. The cost in resources must be rising, hopefully less so than the returns from the take up of later products and I imagine Ed needing to mentor for more local versions of his lead in countries hungry for their own specific kinds of challenge – a Chinese Ed? – or is this imagining too far?…

Back to the post…

Well no, I do have one more thing on my mind that I haven’t looked at for almost ten years so it was a welcome wander down memory lane. Just one lane is a shame, I want loads of them with directions on mindmaps…

The efficiency of a forum for collaboration and learning.

I really think the idea of a forum has had its day, it is becoming cumbersome and is a long winding way of finding and sharing information. There are so many methods of collaboration now that cross informational, social and archival needs but nothing that ties it altogether. Seeing the progress of WordPress, of social apps, of new and rehashed paradigms, they all seem to limit themselves to a single set or single purpose. Yet as our needs of the Internet grow and we discover new ways of spreading our thoughts and wishes, isn’t there a more fundamental model that incorporates the whole menagerie of applications forming now?

I am absolutely positive that a new revolution is yet to come when the model becomes clear and all these disparate methods suddenly start coming together in a meaningful way. This is  not exactly in a social sense; Facebook has done great in connecting people, because they essentially wanted to be connected in the first place, but the ground could be lost when the connection suddenly  gives them a way of sharing that is more fulfilling.

Again, head in the clouds … can you see my problem just getting through a day …

So back to the post…

Low PBR – Bleeding Traffic Phrases – Be aware – But do not scare

The balance is currently a familiar and safe feeling SEOT 80, PBR 15% and SEOC 30,000. Although, I regret not being able to watch it, on a Q&A session on UStream the value of PBR 50% was mentioned. I hope this doesn’t confuse anyone because it is only important if you are near the bottom of the search count – otherwise carry on regardless. With a low PBR with only just enough traffic to sustain it, you might find that essential traffic is going to the related phrase and not yours. I have a few niches that are just below 50% but the traffic is high enough not to worry.

For anyone reading this who hasn’t got a clue what language I am talking here then there is a great post on the forums defining them all in a glossary – http://challenge.co/forum/showthread.php/633-Glossary-of-Terms.

RTFM!!! – Read The Forum Messages

I started using the forum immediately the Challenge started but found it got more and more difficult to get through all the posts and information that was passing through there. Just an example; the search didn’t seem to be helpful if you put in short phrases like SEOLC, so I use Google.

In fact here’s a useful tip for you… The best way to search The Challenge

In Chrome, or browser of choice, add …

site:http://challenge.co

… as a bookmark and add it to your toolbar. If you click on it, it will show you all the pages Google knows about it, but simply add a space and your search phrase you are looking for at the end of the Google search and hit return. Like this …

site:http://challenge.co SEOLC

…or…

site:http://challenge.co "pink thong"

(Yes, thinking of Dan Raine a lot lately and his Intern Program – I’m sure he has world domination tendencies that are of great interest to myself and future plans [strokes cat - laughs formidably] – see http://www.internapplication.com/ to find out more )

((I will add strongly that I certainly don’t think of Dan in a pink thong – I’ll let you find out that story for yourself. Don’t quote me on this but I think he was so desperate to wear a pink thong for a $15k bet that he managed to hide a few hundred of it – Unfortunately the wicked marketers made hime wear black – Or something similar???)).

Why doesn’t Google Use Real Computers!!

I really wish Google would allow me to search with regular expressions. Apparently they don’t have the power to do this with their boxes and are so ashamed of them that they go to extraordinary lengths to hide the actual hardware details from the world. They should send it all up into orbit, out of the way of prying (human at least) eyes, and remove the need to heat up local lakes for cooling. I feel sorry for them … but its no excuse, I want real searches, every page on the Internet, instantly, using grown up search algorithms.

Ahem … So back to the forums …

In the last week I have hardly visited the forums at all, if only briefly to quickly catch the latest posts and to see if I can provide some useful helpful or inspirational act to anything I can answer immediately. So I decided today I needed some help with filtering and categorising interesting posts and information.

Google Reader to the rescue?

Reader has now got all the forums linked in now and I can mark off and tag the ones I want to look at later. Although I must admit I usually have a few thousand unread posts in Google Reader every time I pop in to learn something that I didn’t know I wanted to. However, I now have this urge now to write something to download the whole lot to my real computer, so that I can do real searches on it with real regular expressions!

The forums…

During the Challenge, the forum is an absolutely essential element and great opportunity in steering your path through the process they have given you. Sometimes a point may be unclear or missed and the posts help keep this in check.

Please read the forums. Even if you cannot use regular expressions for searching them.

More … Me… Me… Me… Oh and my Niches

My progress through the list of 42 niches discovered for the Challenge have morphed into a new set of 33 microniches since checking them in Market Samurai for traffic and competition. 11 of these are true Challenge style niches, the other 21 are what I regard as test niches, they all have different qualities and values outside of the scope of the challenge that I want to try out. This will get interesting…

Out of Challenge bounds!?

This question was raised in http://challenge.co/forum/showthread.php/1318-A-Hill-Too-Steep-To-Climb-Guidance-Please and the recommendation is, if you are a new person to this kind of Challenge then follow the process, go outside of the bounds will take extra work and maybe not in the timescale of The Challenge. For me, I will use them as tests, keep good records of what numbers I was looking at to pick on those niches and keep a detailed log of the time spent working on them. My plan is to get some understanding of what is involved in future work and hopefully work out constantly what ways are most effective.

A useful tip – Search for Questions not Answers

Finally a useful tip, which makes perfect sense now that I have thought about it. A niche that you may think of that is a perfect solution to a problem may not be worth looking at. It makes sense that people mostly search using keyphrases belonging to the problem and not the answer. Think of what a person would type in if they had the problem. For instance more people search for headaches than paracetamol. In fact when I swapped over to my problem searches niches were flying out of Market Samurai … well, sort of, I found two very quickly.

Related Challenge Journal Blogs

• Module 1/ Day 4 Finding Theme and Category Words
• TC10 – Day 4 – Theme & Category Keywords
• Day 4: Market Samurai
• Challenge Module One-Day Four: Finding Theme and Category Keywords
• Day 4 – Theme and category Keywords
• Day 4 – Theme and Category Keywords

Dr. Anthony Fernando goes through how to judge traffic estimates and web page rankings over time, why the broad match is use for traffic and phrase match for competion.

Now I know the most effective people in the world take instruction and run with it. Sometimes I wish I was one of those people but I have to admit it to myself, whenever I have the time to learn something in depth, I have got to do it.

The subject of broad, phrase and exact keywords is one of those things.

I had a fair understanding of it before, but I found when I looked deeper it seemed to change, just like studying quantum physics, really!!, it is exactly the same process of thought.

So what was causing the confusion? Phrase and Exact matching – What on earth were the results I saw in Google. Were they, as I originally thought exact phrases when I put quotes round them or were they phrase matches. When you look in the Google Advanced Search form it tells me it is an exact search I am performing after all, but it was described as a phrase search in the video.

Then the obvious hit me – of course it’s both when you type it in using quotes!!

The exact phrase will be returned of course but it will be amongst loads of other text normally. That text will likely be all your phrase keyphrases you are looking for as well as just the exact keyphrase. Why was I being so blind to this? It’s simple but it caused me no end of confusion. That doesn’t bode well for me does it?…

But saying that the whole area does seem to be filled with mystique and dark arts. This is the one area when you can measure on average how much work you need to put into your microniche and if you search hard enough you can still find some nice ones out there.

I created a mini cheat sheet to help me remember which is which now – which can really only be understood if you watch the above video. Or inded you know it all! Like I thought I did.

Upcoming Experiment in Time (Well – effort really)

For my part in the Challenge instead of 7 ideas from yesterday I have 42 waiting to be tested in the forthcoming process. I am tempted to run an experiment on finding niches soon. What I am thinking is to gather all the niche finding ideas – and I have a personal list of almost a 100 different methods – and test each method on its ability to find Challenge affirmed niches. I will share with my team, The Challenge UK first but then if I am not able to use them myself and effort wasted I would rather posts them up here. Might be a great little project. I don’t know if anyone else wants to join in but it would need to be time boxed, for example allowing 1 hour to use the method and then testing how many Challenge microniches are green.

Some Interesting Forum Posts

• The unreliability of certain long tail results – http://challenge.co/forum/showthread.php/113-Can-really-long-tail-keywords-with-lots-of-searches-be-trusted
• The unreliability in fact of Google results – You don’t tell Google – Google Tells you!! – http://challenge.co/forum/showthread.php/906-Google-result-backwards

Fellow Challenger Blogs

• Day 9: Keyword Traffic and Competition
• Challenge: Module 1 – Days 2 & 3
• Hmm… a little behind on the blog…
• Day 3 and Trout Fishing
• The Challenge Module 1/Day 3 – KeyWords
• Checking in: Finished my The Challenge 2010, Module 01, Day 03 #TC10
• Exact Match, Phrase Match, Broad Match – Knowledge is Power!

The reason for the delay is twofold. One I lost my posts on WordPress, I found out how annoying it is when you are tired and mix up a restore with a backup. The other reason is I Have come back to Day 2 to put more effort into the process, I am going to step up and create a few more sites using this process than I originally planned. I have the time and the energy – so here we go.

This lesson, finding niches ideas…

Brent Hodgson of Noble Samurai reaffirms what niches are and shows how to look for them both online and offline if you are short of ideas. Of course if you have an idea already that interests you then investigate that.  The two online methods identified were:  looking through magazines in Amazon and the Search based Keyword Tool (SKTool) of Google (used by its AdWords users primarily). The other places for inspiration briefly were bookstores, Yellow pages, eBay and CraigsList.

The most important thing to keep in mind is to make sure it is a niche that you have some interest in or the worst that can happen to you will be that it becomes successful. Oh Yes – success will mean you will need to get to know this niche. If you have found a niche such as “History Teacher Lectures for Insomniacs” , then you will have to delve deep into the finer points of what makes history teachers so boring. Sorry to any history teachers out there, I am just recalling those lessons in grammar school of writing until my hand hurt whilst the history teacher paced up and down talking about the Renaissance and how bad teaching was in those days and sometimes a pupil was known to fall asleep. Our geography teacher was a keen shot with the blackboard duster and chalk should you not be paying attention to his pacing lectures so the risk of a ricochet on your school desk kept us in full attention.

What’s this to do with finding niches you might ask – or have you fell asleep – well, teaching nowadays is so much better, in full multimedia, and bite size modules. II understand from Tweets from a few of the female challengers out there, watching Brent Hodgson to be enough of an incentive to stay awake. Come on – the man has already shown us he can move faster than a noble samurai in catching falling laptops at conferences, is there no end here.

The action to come out of this is to create seven niche ideas ready for the rest of the process.

Why this fixation on 7 I thought, is there some mysticism associated with the 7x7x7 method proposed by Ed Dale and the 7 ideas. Hmmm….

On a personal note I almost made a mistake here again.

Of course I know all about this and can find niches on the back of my hand (I really must wash that ink of sometime soon). I was reminded a day later by my team that some were making the effort and sharing their choices. Ahhh!! Follow the program and now I will do exactly that, with one difference – Il will do it sevenfold – Yes the mysticism is working on me too – my birthday is on the seventh so scientifically that’s a logical decision for me to make. If I can afford to spend 7 30 minutes in a day easily on this then why not, I will create 49 ideas instead, as soon as I have finished typing this sentence.

Here is a useful link:

• A Challenge Day Two Tip – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEAK-HycIi0

Also here are my fellow Challengers Journal Blogs

• My Challenge – M1D2 #tc10 – http://kerrycarron.com/my-challenge-m1d2-tc10
• Kevin Beckford – Accepting the Challenge! – http://chiggsy.posterous.com/accepting-the-challenge
• Accepting the Challenge – http://chiggsy.posterous.com/accepting-the-challenge
• Checking in: Finished my The Challenge Module 01 Day 02 Homework #TC10 – http://tamarasmarketingtoolbox.posterous.com/checking-in-finished-my-the-challenge-day-02
• The Challenge 2010 – http://daisy-made.com/?p=14
• Day 2 And Still On Fire! – http://louisesmac.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/day-2-and-still-on-fire/
• That Funny Google (Pointed out some of the weird results you can get from the SKTOOL) – http://internetmarketingjunkie.com/training/that-funny-google/
• Diary of a Photoholic – Day 11 – http://suehodgson.posterous.com/
• Day 8: Finding Market and Niche Ideas - http://blog.kyleoliveiro.com/day-8-finding-market-and-niche-ideas/
• TC10 Day 2 – Finding Niche Ideas – http://davemarkel.com/finding-niche-ideas/
• Module 1 Day 2 Brainstorm 7 market/niche ideas – http://thenichehunter.blogspot.com/2010/07/module-1-day-2-brainstorm-7-marketniche.html
• Methods and Techniques for Exploring Niche Ideas – http://jsime7.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/methods-and-techniques-for-exploring-niche-ideas/
• Module One – Day Two – Niche Ideas – http://www.vitalymakarkin.com/module-one-day-two-niche-ideas/

Arriving late into the 30 Day Challenge last year wasn’t a problem but one thing I missed out on was the interaction with a team. This didn’t really concern me as my experience of team work stemmed from the last decade of corporate training and the headaches or running teams, being part of teams, even resourcing teams. This experience instilled in everyone all the things that a team must have to be effective but it came at a price of the social problems of team members not pulling their weight, the administrative waste of time that was excused as reporting and the awful feeling of management of a team having too many heads. Well, not being part of a team seemed to me a SMART idea, if I may disuse the term.

I have been part of teams since, but really only a walk on part, backing up people who knew of my skills in a previous incarnation and supporting them at conferences should difficult questions arise. But that wasn’t the same; it was a fleeting team of people of whom I have not even an email of contact.

So enough of me rambling suffice it to say I was not interested at all in teams and didn’t want to be part of one.

Well the Challenge appeared this year, starting in July and I had made a conscious but firm decision to test out the whole thing by following their process.

The first thing on the agenda was to form a team! Well I must say being a lone wolf suited me fine, it hadn’t caused me any problems but the decision to follow the program was something I knew I shouldn’t go back on. So I looked through the team forum to see what was there. I decided I could create one and run it myself, to keep everything running SMART or take a back seat and just follow a herd. You can see all the negative attitudes I had here can’t you?

Well my opinion of a team has quickly changed.

I joined someone online who had the foresight to set up a space, a Facebook page, called ‘The Challenge UK’ and I asked if I could join. I was thinking of the back seat follow, but in my mind giving it a chance and accept the experience.

The paradigm has shifted very much so from the corporate team one where budgets, man hours and reporting reigned. There was no one to report to, no team leader, no goal except one.

“To help each other finish the Challenge with as much success as possible.”

I found the members of the team were interesting people all with varying skills and strengths, which gives anyone who has worked by themselves a more complete idea of their own strengths and weaknesses. A barrage of questions, answers, tips and information has ensued in a mixture of Facebook discussion, DropBox and Skype Channel and it has been a regular occurrence. You learn from each other’s strengths and knowledge and become concerned if anyone has any difficulties.

The image I have now is of a journey, the team formed within the journey are people around you following the same path, there are in the same place and it would be absurd not to talk, not to ask for help or give help to those needing it. The success of the team depends on those who wish to continue in it to complete the journey and I must say at this early stage I know it will.

What you find is that it keeps you on the right road in this journey. If anyone wanders off it is noticed and if you are still part of the team you either feel obliged to get back on the path or help someone else depending on your ability to keep up.

… and did I say the members of this team are really interesting! That is an important factor in remaining interested and I am lucky for finding them.

I have learned so much already from my team and it has all been a positive experience.  If you are not part of a team now, get into one quickly.

Even if like me your preconceptions need to be changed.