Paul's Challenge

Viral Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 3 May 2005 13:55:00 GMT

How can you implement viral marketing principles to get people to come to your site?

I believe that this video from Jim Edwards because people will pass it on to others (just like I am in this blog)

http://www.igottatellyou.com/blog/archives/2005/05/inspirational_v.html

Sometimes you feel discouraged and something like this is good to remind you that you can do it – what you focus on is what you get.

Another site you can take a look at is http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com/home.html

Tens of thousands of people have downloaded this screensaver and it has generated 6/7 figure income for the person behind the site

In future I’ll be trying to implement some viral ideas to get people to come back to my niche sites, to get people to pass things on to others (word of mouth marketing)…

It’s a lovely day here in UK - going to go pick up my daugther

—————————-

I’m currently trying out two RSS Aggregators – I’ll let you know if either become my program of choice.

Want to keep up to date with RSS resources

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 1 May 2005 20:50:00 GMT

This site has lots of information about RSS resources – I’m just going to try and find a good RSS News Aggregator (basically this allows you to easily read all the different RSS feeds you want to keep up to date on either in your browser on a desktop application).

I’m looking for a Desktop Application and if I find a good one I’ll report back.

Here is the site http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/resources/

I hope you find it useful

Comments from my readers...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:26:00 GMT

Dazed and Confused

John G Kelly wrote to me recently and said

I was reading your blog and became ... dazed and confused

“a lot of what you write in the blog is going over my head as to the reason WHY you are doing it”

So if he has that question he’s probably not the only one.

Also Gill Poland very politely asked if I could explain terms like RSS when I use them. I pointed her to an excellent resource which you can find at http://whatis.techtarget.com/ and I will see if I can remember to link to the appropriate page in future for my newbie readers (but if I forget you know where to go)

Above is a sample listing from the site - scroll down below Sponsored Links

So let’s get back to the question in handy – WHY

There are actually more than one project going on concurrently but all are interlinked together

Project 1 – My main focus

Myself and two other marketers are putting together a fantastic membership site with three primary aims

Teach people about Niche Marketing – niche mini-sites, niche products… and provide people with the tools, resources and knowledge to get moving quickly and how to do that little bit extra which makes the difference between little to no results to incremental growth
Get people to take consistent action and give them the knowledge, skills and support they need to make progress
Create a vibrant community and implement various tactics which we haven’t seen other people doing that will motivate, inspire and get people taking action towards their goals

This is very much an overview but if this sounds of interest you can goto http://www.nicheservicestation.com and register your interest and you will be one of the first to know. We will be limiting membership and there will be price increases in future.

Project 2 – Niche Products

I will be launching a new product this week which fits in with the first theme of the site. Members will get a product with sales page in that niche as part of the membership but the simple fact of the matter is that many people find it difficult to take that page and add bonuses, get testimonials, setup payment, upload everything… so what I am trying to do is offer them an alternative by either 1) creating our own products 2) arranging special arrangements with vendors and then have these products presold on their niche site and then get 75% commission on any sale. This mean no hassle of support, no worrying about differentiating the sales page, having to edit the page, uploading them…) so we cater for those who are experienced and those who are less experienced too.

Project 3 – Niche Sites of my own

The key to building a niche site is to built it incrementally so I wanted to get 50 sites setup with the domains registered and the hosting sorted out. Then rather than trying to add hundreds of pages at once – build perhaps 30 pages initially and get it picked up by the search engines. Then as you add new content and the search engines come back then they see that it is a site that is growing.

What is the point of these little sites in subjects like calligraphy

1. Adsense revenue (if you don’t know what Adsense is you can find out more at https://www.google.com/adsense)

2. Affiliate revenue - selling related ebooks, books, pens.. and getting a commission for any sales

3. Build up a list of people interested in that topic – I also aim to survey them to find out what their questions are – in which case can create my own product

4. Many of the topics were specifically chosen because I already have products that I have rights to or public domain works that I have gathered that can be used for content.

None of these projects were making any money at the start of the challenge so they are all valid for my goal of $100 a day in 90 days.

Each one of these projects could make me that amount alone possibly. I’m actually hoping to make $200 a day from these projects within 90 days – which would be around $6000 per month

That’s it for me today – must get back to work – quick break then my timer starts (I use XNote Stopwatch and set it for 55 minutes - after which I take a break and make sure I have a pen and paper to hand as often as you rest a little after working ideas can come to you). The big mistake many people make is set themselves unrealistic expectations – if you set yourself just 1 or 2 hours a day of focused work you can achive quite a lot.

Paul

A good blogging page

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:22:00 GMT

Now I’m first to admit I am not yet a blogging guru (you can probably tell that by things overlapping on my page – I guess this could be changed by making the template bigger)

I just found this site which has lots of information for all things blogging http://www.blogkits.com/blog/ – I will have to have a read through when I have more time.

Let’s run down a few things I have been working on

I’m not a programmer but I was up till 5am working out how to do something in PHP - so I can paste in a list of keywords and it will automatically generate pages for me. What I do is put in a folder name and then the keywords and it generates the html and names the file so if keyword is chinese calligraphy alphabet then it would generate a page called chinese_calligraphy_alphabet.html. The reason for coding something is that it gives me the flexibility I require and because of something I am planning to do with it. Many traffic creation tools create folders for each keyword with an index.html for example - but that is no use for what I am doing.

I did study Software Engineering Management at University and although somebody could probably knock up what I did in half an hour or something I do like problem solving and it gives you a sense of satisfaction when you get it working the way you want it. It also means that I can adapt the script myself easily without having to rely on a programmer. I’ll probably get somebody to take the concept of what I have done and enhance it with a good interface and functionality so I can then hand it to freelancers in future. With some tweaking it could make a good little program to sell too.

I’ve been getting to grips with XSitePro – I’ll update this blog with more details on this great software soon.

What I am doing at the moment is going through and picking out some RSS feeds for my different niches and putting them into Excel.

You may want to check out a free script called RSSStatic which you can download at http://www.rsstatic.com (just two s’s)

I like it where one of the challenge members has it where shows what music is playing – I’m currently listening to Hed Kandi (CD Series), Beach House – some summery dance music.

No pretty pictures for you at the moment

Niche Within a Niche

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:37:00 GMT

If you haven’t read the Andy Williams free report on Niche Within a Niche then I recommend it - you can get it as a freebie when you signup for his ezine:

http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/search-engine-optimization-newsletter.htm

This is what I have been up to a bit over the weekend

What I do is use Excels autofilter function (rather than Andy’s tool)

To do this you need to have column headings then you goto:

Then what you want to do is pull down the menu for the keyword column

Here you can specify different filters you want:

You can also use this for example to narrow down which results you want to see from the other columns (e.g. KEI > 10, Competition < 5000)

In the example above I am looking for words that contain acu or words that contain treatment (unfortunately you can’t add many ors)

Then I would add all these keywords into an insomnia treatment category

I’m going to do a bit of work and then I’ll update you about what I’ve been up to Monday and Wednesday (Tuesday I was in hospital)

Article Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 14:35:00 GMT

Thanks to some advice I checked out Feedburner last night and had a go at installing that and adding RSS Feed buttons to my site - so if you want to keep track of my posts you can read them easily.

Yesterday and Today I have been Playing with Article Analyzer

Article Analyzer comes highly recommended by me – I am really pleased with the latest updates which allow you to search by Keyword Density and Keyword in Title/Body Text. It took me a little while to play around with getting my template right. I created a video for my subscribers recently (drop me an email at pauls.challenge at ntlworld.com if you purchase and I will send you an Article Syndication Script and also a script which I am getting created which allows you to randomize article listings..)

Here is the video http://wisuk.onestopnettraffic.com/aa.htm – it doesn’t contain the new updates – they are very simple to use.

Here is a screenshot of the article template from a dating site that I am creating:

and here it is filled in with an article

Once you have the template created you can create a lot of content for your site quickly – I found 60 articles and split 20 to an index page

I had to play around a little with some of the titles and change them to smaller if they were too big

Article Analyzer

Here you go - any comments?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:06:00 GMT

This took me about 5–10 minutes to put together with The Logo Creator.

I hope you like my pun

I have resized it as an image before was too big and couldn’t see the blogroll properly

Anybody know how I easily add it so that people can add my progress to their RSS reader in Blogger - answers on a postcard (pauls.challenge at ntlworld.com or a comment on this post)

Domain Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:41:00 GMT

Ok almost done with setting up 15 domains – needed to set them up

Then had to go in and unlock the domains and wait for that

Then point those domains to the name server.

Now I am starting to create some logos with Logo Creator for those 15 sites.

Been rather busy today with phone calls and sorting out insurance claim and got a splitting headache so had to take a rest – hopefully can get all the logos done by 8pm (It’s now 5.40pm).

Look out for my calligraphy site logo later

Paul

Phew I'm done!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 00:33:00 GMT

It’s now 1.25 am and I have researched and created 50 domain names with Godaddy.com – next lot I will use a different domain name registrar (not good to have all your eggs in one basket).

I went for privacy on all the domains - total cost was under $400 - also if you want to buy a domain try using PROMO CODE: Candy – I saved $1 (not $1 a domain – $1) - but if you are just buying one or two domains it all counts.

It would be very easy to get caught up trying to find the perfect domain – I used a few tactics to try and keep it easy – easy to obsess about things like this – important key is to take action and get momentum/movement going

Plan of action for tomorrow

Setup Cpanel accounts for each domain (I most probably will start with 10) and point the DNS information across

Start creating simple logos for each domain - for this I will be using Logo Creator by Laughingbird which is an excellent piece of software – check out my calligraphy logo tomorrow

After that I will be working on playing around with some template stuff for Niche Portal Builder and Sonic Page Blaster

A quick Screenshot for you

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:18:00 GMT

You can see which domains are free and which are registered – 1st, best, new… are all prefix/suffixes. This program is free from http://www.webexpired.com/

I think they have a great idea here.

1. Get their email address so can mail them

2. probably many people use the tool and find it useful and buy domains right from within the program – I haven’t actually checked prices.

3. Uses reciprocity – if you provide something useful then they may feel obligated to return the favour

Progress Report

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 21:55:00 GMT

I’ve whittled things down to 50 topics ranging from a multiplier (number of searches x #10 bid) of 5021.2 to 5198224.

Had a demonstration today for a high end product (not double glazing) and could be a great backend for a product I am working on - hope to speak to the Marketing Manager soon (think they could do quite a bit by embracing the Internet more e.g. Adwords…). Also gave me some good ideas for some keywords I probably wouldn’t have thought of looking at which I will be buying domains for.

A good lesson – keep your eyes and ears pealed – becomes like a game.

While I was researching the keywords I was surprised at the bid amounts and searches on some of the terms – sometimes thought. Some keywords that I thought would have lots of adverts had less than 10 on Overture. Sometimes you have to play around to get the right word.

For example ornithology doesn’t have a great deal of searches but bird watching performed a lot higher.

Now I am going through ExpiredPro trying to create a custom Append list e.g. let’s say keyword is table then will look for things like 1sttable.com 1st-table.com – 1st being one of the words on the append list.

Aim to get that done and start looking for domain names – hopefully can get all 50 done before bedtime

Let the games commence

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:31:00 GMT

It's 1.30am here so I will get started on Day 1 of the challenge tomorrow.

Paul

Researching those markets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:14:00 GMT

Here’s an example for you

This site http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ allows you to see both the bids and the number of searches on one page – nice and easy

I’m looking at the keyword calligraphy

I put that data into Excel

I’m pretty happy with a figure of 7937.92. I actually use a figure that Kirt and James use as their baseline which is that it has to do better than airguns (this was the first niche site they setup)

Airguns is currently:

airgun

31271

0.15

4690.65

So anything which scores higher than 4690.65 shows good potential for me

So calligraphy is a winner

want to take this niche for yourself too – go ahead and create a good site and let’s link. I’ll probably use this one for the rest of my screenshots…

Another 50 decent keywords to find.

I have started with a list of 52 words and will see how many are viable out of that before I start adding more

Toodle Pip

Domain Name Registrations

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:27:00 GMT

I thought I would go check out godaddy.com.

Bulk Registrations looks like a good idea – can get them cheaper + Privacy is cheaper – need to register 50 domains to get bulk rates:

So what I plan to do is do some prelimary research on 50 domains

Step 1.

Break down the topics I have products/public domain info.. for into one word phrases ideally

Step 2.

Take a look at Overture - want over 25,000 searches for main term + a reasonable #10 bid price (multiply them both out and see) what we get

Step 3.

Go through ExpiredDomainPro and find suitable domain names

Step 4.

That’s my plan for today (and may well roll onto tomorrow)

Catch up with you soon

Paul (posting this using excellent program called BlogJet)