Ed Dale released a Cheat Sheet summary (Part 13) for those who were trying to catch up on the pre-season content. If you have time, try and do the Pre-season stuff that you missed out on when you have time.

Pre-season Part 13: Preseason Cheat Sheet (Ed’s guide to getting up to speed quickly) Do this if you want only the essentials of the Preseason (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Register then login at the 30 Day Challenge homepage.
2. Check out the Dashboard, Training, Blog and Forums links in the top right hand corner.
3. Go to the Training area – you’ll see all the modules for the 30 Day Challenge and below that, the modules for Preseason training.
4. The Twitter module is the most important one to go through. It’s the one with the blue bird. (For set up instructions see Preseason Part 4 below.)
5. Also set up Twirl, a program that lets you access Twitter through your desktop (Preseason Part 5 below).
6. Set up the Flock browser (Preseason Parts 1, 2 and 3 below).
7. Watch/read the Google Reader lesson (Preseason Part 6 below).
8. Watch/read the Google Subscribed links lesson (Preseason Part 9 below).
9. All the videos have PDF Transcripts, just look for just look for the “T” icon in a black circle – you can use these if you need to get through the material in a rush. (You’ll find the same links here under “PDF” next to the lesson heading, along with links to the original 30 Day Challenge page (TDC) and YouTube video (Video)).
10. If you have time, make it through the rest of the pre-season while you’re working on the Challenge. Don’t let it hold you back, but when you have time look through it as it is all good stuff.

Pre-season Part 1a: Starting the 30 Day Challenge (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. (Optional) Watch the Video to see find out more about the 30 Day Challenge’s origins
2. Follow the 30 Day Challenge TV program - it’s on UStream.tv and lets you interact during the show.
3. Note that the official time zone for 30 Day Challenge is USA’s EST (Eastern Standard Time).
4. Note that 30 Day Challenge is suitable for all walks of life – teachers, kids, artists, musicians are only a few examples. Small business owners have used these techniques and applied to they are currently selling. Women did better than men on average last year.
5. Note that 30 Day Challenge works best when you’re part of a team (you can find a team under “Team Talk” in the Forums).

Pre-season Part 1b: Set up the Flock browser (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Go to Flock’s homepage and download Flock – this will be the internet browser you should use for the 30 Day Challenge 2008.
2. Install Flock. Make sure you have a link to it on your Desktop and/or your Desktop
3. (Optional) Watch the intro videos built into Flock. Don’t worry about the video on Flock’s built in RSS reader – we won’t be using it.

Pre-season Part 2: Flock Settings (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. To change Flock’s settings – on a PC, go to: Tools/Options – on a Mac, go to: Flock/Preferences.
2. MAIN: Enable the following settings:
   1. When Flock starts “Show my windows and tabs from last time” (as a time saver)
   2. “Show the Downloads window when downloading a file”
   3. “Always check to see if Flock is the default browser on setup”.
3. TABS: Enable the following settings:
   1. New pages should be opened in a new tab (keeps windows contained)
   2. Warn me when closing multiple tabs
   3. Warn me when opening multiple tabs might slow down Flock
   4. Your choice what you do with the rest, but in the video the rest are unchecked (though I like “Always show the tab bar “– it saves time if your screen is big enough not to worry about screen real estate)
4. CONTENT:
   1. It’s up to you whether you want Java enabled or not (Ed does, Dan doesn’t).
   2. Make sure “Enable Digg flyout” is checked.
5. FEEDS: Select “Subscribe to feed using” then find and choose Google in the list.
6. SEARCHING:
   1. For the “Default Search Engine”, choose your favourite from the drop down list. Ed and Dan picked Google.
   2. For “Live Results”, Ed recommends “Favorites and Recently Visited” and “Technorati Search”.
   3. In “Include in Search Elsewhere”, you are choosing search engines that will appear in a drop down menu when you use the search box in the upper right corner of the screen, so choose as many as you want.

Pre-season Part 3: TDC Pre-Season Week 2 TV Show (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. (Optional) Login into the TDC homepage, go to the DASHBOARD and find your referral link to share with friends – this could land you some neat prizes.
2. Notice the links to cool tools on the DASHBOARD right hand sidebar – you’ll find a Stats Tracker,
3. (Optional) To contact Ed Dale, Twitter him don’t send him a PM on the Forum.
4. (Optional) Use the “New Post” link on the Forums to find the latest posts on the Forum.

Pre-season Part 3a: Speeding up Flock (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. (Optional) Speed up Flock by following the instructions in the PDF (or this blog).

Pre-season Part 3b: Installing Flock Add-ons (TDC, Video, PDF) Pre-season Part 3c: Flock Add-ons (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. When you click on a link to install an add-on from most websites, you will be asked if you want to add it to a list of “allowed sites” – click on “Allow” and then click on the add-on install/download link again and it should start installing it. You will need to restart Flock to enable the Add-on.
2. Most Firefox add-ons will work in Flock.
3. Install Google Global. People in different parts of the world will get different results on Google as they assume you’re most interested in the local result. This extension can let you see Google results for different locations.
4. Install the Google Notebook extension (you can sign up to Google now or see Preseason Part 6a)
5. Install SEO for Firefox/Flock - if you notice things highlighted in red once enabled, don’t be alarmed, it is just highlighting “no follow” links. You can switch this of by clicking on the SEO button in the far bottom right hand corner.
6. Install Search Status - this will show you Alexa rankings and PageRank information for the current page.
7. Install the Stumble Upon toolbar.
8. Install TwitterBar so you can twitter directly from your Flock’s address bar (and it will make a short URL of the website you’re twittering about).
9. Install the Thirty Day Challenge Toolbar - download the Firefox version for Flock (Flock is built on the Firefox engine so most of the Firefox extensions work in Flock).

Pre-season Part 4: Twitter! (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Join Twitter. To twitter you simply answer the question “What are you doing?” – but really it’s a way of sharing quick thoughts and cool stuff, as well as asking and answering questions. See it as your own broadcasting system.
2. Start following people (ie subscribing to their twitter alerts).
3. Follow Ed Dale and Dan Raine.

Pre-season Part 5: TDC Pre-Season Week 3 TV Show (TDC, Video, No PDF) Pre-season Part 5a: Using Twitter in Flock and Installing Twhirl (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. (Optional) You can access Twitter in Flock through the People Sidebar (get to it by clicking on the person icon in the toolbar) it will show you your friends, but if you use the “post link” it won’t make a nice short url like Twitterbar does. So use Twitterbar instead.
2. Set up Twitterbar:
   • Go find your add-ons (PC and Mac: Tools/Add-ons) and scroll down to find Twitterbar, click on “Options” (Mac:”Preferences”).
   • Choose “Secure Mode” if you share your computer with others, “Safe Mode” stores your Twitter login details.
   • Keep, change or delete the “Before URL” text – whatever phrase you choose will prefix the URLs (website addresses) you twitter.
   • Keep “Open Twitter in new tab after posting” and “Hide addressbar button” UNchecked.
3. Make your first Tweet: at any website you choose, write a comment in the address bar after the URL (leave a space) and click the plus sign inside the address bar (when you mouse over it, it goes green), you should get a “Post Successful!”. Remember you only get 140 characters!
4. Install Twirl. You might get asked to install Adobe Air too as part of the installation.
5. Set up your Twitter account on Twirl: check Twitter is selected. Enter your Twitter username (screen name) and click on the ‘+’ sign. You to set up multiple Twitter accounts (eg a personal and a work one).

Pre-season Part 5b: How To Use Twhirl Pt. 1 (TDC, Video, PDF) Pre-season Part 5c: How To Use Twhirl Pt. 2 (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Familiarise yourself with Twirl following the instructions in PDF 1 and PDF 2 (or this blog).
2. Make sure you shorten urls (link button) and choose the “twurl.nl” as it tracks who is clicking on your link (important later).
3. @ is important – it lets you send a comment to a person (eg @Ed_Dale to contact Ed) but it will let everyone see. So don’t use @ if you are just writing back “yes I agree” or “great link” as it is not interesting for anyone else. Instead send a direct message by using the envelope button which will only be seen by the person it’s directed at.
4. # is also important – it is a way of labelling/tagging content for a group of people with a similar interest, eg you could use #30dc to signify it as relevant to the 30 day.
5. Click on the search button (magnifying glass) to search for other people or topics – try your niche or if you don’t have one yet “trout fishing”.
6. The camera icon lets you post a picture to Twitpic.
7. Mouse over people’s icons next to their tweet and you will get options like direct messaging and re-tweeting (broadcasting someone’s tweet in yours).

Pre-season Part 6a: Get a Google Account (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Go to Google Reader. If you don’t have a Google Account (eg you have a gmail email) then sign up for one. When setting it up select “Remember me on this computer” (if on your own computer ONLY) and “Enable Web History”.

Pre-season Part 6b: Using Google Reader (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. If you haven’t already done it, set Flock’s Preferences/Options to use Google Reader as the default RSS reader. Under FEEDS: Select “Subscribe to feed using” then find and choose Google in the list.
2. Go to the 30 Day Challenge Blog and subscribe to it: click on the orange RSS button in the address bar, select “Thirty Day Challenge” and choose the “Add to Google Reader option”
3. You can also subscribe through RSS to Ed’s Twitter feed, Dan’s Twitter feed and our Twitter feed - just look for that orange button.
4. Go to Twitter Search (previously known as Summize) and do a search on #30DC – you will get tweets from everyone who has mentioned it. And, surprise, surprise, you can subscribe to an RSS feed of these tweets. Add it now, to your Google Reader
5. Still in Twitter Search, if you are in Flock, you might notice another orange button next to the RSS orange button in the address bar. Click on this and you will add Twitter Search to your list of “Search Elsewhere” search engines. If you are using Firefox 3, you may notice your search bar in the top right corner has a small glow around the drop down arrow – click on the button and at the end, you should find an Add “Twitter Search” option. Click on it to add it to your list of Firefox 3 search engines.
6. Unfortunately, you can subscribe to Google searches through the google homepage but you can atGoogle Alerts. Enter your search term, whether you want Google to search everything or say just search blogs or video, your desired search frequency and your email address – you will now be updated via email when Google finds a new search result. NOT a good idea if you have a popular term as it’s a good way to kill your email inbox.
7. What is Ed recommends instead is to go to Google News and this time Google will let you subscribe to new stories through RSS – if for some reason the RSS orange button doesn’t show up in your address bar, you will find it at the bottom of the left hand column as well as an option to sign up via email. 
8. Be aware that this means you can have all information related into your niche funnelled and delivered to one spot – don’t discount the power of that.
9. Next time you are at a blog or a website, have a look out for the orange radar icon – and consider subscribing.

Pre-season Part 6c: The Google Reader Secret (TDC, Video, PDF)

Pre-season Part 6d: Google Reader Tips and Tweaks (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Learn how to be a power Google Reader reader – watch the Video.
2. Essentially, Google has tools that make it a lot easier to get through lots of blog posts very quickly
3. You can subscribe to the major blogs in your niche (or all of them if the niche is small) and use “list view” to quickly scan through hundreds of items daily looking for interesting stories for your own websites.
4. You can also create folders for each of your niche markets that you are researching and organise subscriptions in them. If you click on the folder in the subscription list left hand sidebar, Google Reader will display all the stories from all subscriptions in one big date ordered list.
5. You can also use the search bar at the top of the page to search through all your subscriptions for items (Google will keep an archive of all your subscribed stories).
6. You can use the “Discover” button next to “Add subscription” on the left hand side bar to let Google suggest similar blogs to what you have already.
7. Down below all story items in expanded view (when you select the story and it opens up so you can read it all) you’ll find options to email it and share it. You can also tag a story for follow up or reference.

Pre-season Part 6: TDC Pre-Season Week 4 TV Show (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Go to the 30 Day Challenge Forums and subscribe to the Forum’s RSS feed or if you prefer, a sub forum.
2. Sign up with YouTube and remember your username is also your channel address egyoutube.com/eddale -
3. You can favourite Ed Dale’s channel and/or subscribe to in in your RSS.
4. You can see the 30 Day Challenge on YouTube, Revver and other video platforms to be announced.
5. Find/buy a notebook (Moleskines are nice but any will do) and make sure you write down ALL your ideas. “The way to brilliance is to have a lot of ideas” – you can then toss the bad ones.
6. Start thinking of ideas and looking around you – try to come up with 10 ideas (they can all be bad). Don’t edit while you’re writing, just go with the flow and edit later.
7. Ed recommends reading Software for your Brain by Michael Hewitt, you can get it as a free ebook (you may want to ignore his religious opinions if they don’t sit with yours).

Pre-season Part 7: Getting Started with StumbleUpon (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. StumbleUpon is a great tool to discover new sites. You indicate whether you like a site, or you don’t like a site and StumbleUpon remembers to give you more of what you liked in the future. Eventually, we will be using StumbleUpon to help bring visitors to our site.
2. Join StumbleUpon. You may want to check the options to “Let friends find me by e-mail” and “Show website ratings & reviews next search results”.
3. If you haven’t already downloaded the StumbleUpon toolbar, do so now and install it.
4. Start stumbling by clicking on the “Stumble!” button, you will be given random pages according to how you set your preferences. If you like something that StumbleUpon serves up, click the “I like it” button — you can also do this when you’re surfing the Web. If you discover a new site that StumbleUpon doesn’t know anything about, you may be asked to fill in a review of it. If you don’t like it, click the thumbs down button. Choosing the thumbs down button does not give that website a “bad mark” — it just tells stumble upon not to give you sites like that in the future.
5. Get into the habit of stumbling sites you like, it’s fun but more importantly it establishes yourself as any real human being. Ed likens it to a bank account — when you stumble sites that like you are depositing money into your bank account, when you stumble your own sites you are taking money out.
6. Check out the channels: “World” is just that, you stumble through everything. In “Favorites of friends”, you are only stumbling through your friends favorites. You can also stumble only images or only video. Or you can choose only to stumble through a particular site, e.g. MySpace.
7. Spend the next hour just stumbling sites. Remember o get into this habit.

Pre-season Part 8: Getting started with YouTube (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Sign up for your own YouTube account.
2. Go to Ed’s channel – notice the orange RSS button in the address bar and subscribe to it through Google Reader.
3. Go to the YouTube and notice the other orange button in the address bar – click on it and choose to add YouTube to your search engines.
4. Notice on the YouTube video pages there is a yellow “Subscribe” button next to the user who posted the video. If you like this person’s video, you can click this button and subscribe to their channel. YouTube will let you know when you next visit if that user has posted any new videos. However, subscribing through RSS is a better option.
5. On the video page, under the video you can rate the videos by clicking on the red stars.
6. Notice also under “Views” there is a link that lets you “watch in high-quality” — if your Internet connection is good enough, you can watch videos in much higher quality.
7. From the Share tab, you can share your video finds with others if you have logged in.
8. The Favorite tab will let you create a favourites list that you can access through your profile page or even through your Apple TV.tothat

Pre-season Part 9: TDC Pre-Season Week 5 TV Show (TDC, Video, PDF) Pre-season Part 9a: Let Ed help you search on Google (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Go to the 30DC Dashboard, look for the cartoon of Ed’s head, and click on “Add my expertise to your Google web searches”, then subscribe (you will need to login if you haven’t already).
2. Test it by going to Google and searching for “Ed dale” (without quotes) – you’ll notice one link with Ed Dale’s face on it with a recommended link. The same thing would happen for another search term if Ed had created custom links for that term. (It’s not part of 30DC yet, but you can read more here)
3. Think what this could mean if people subscribed to your expertise – your recommended links would come up every time they searched for particular terms. Eg if you recommended a video you made on “how to use YouTube” and they searched for “YouTube”, your video would turn up in their search. You can even use it to recommend an affiliate product (or make a video about an affliate product like Ed did for John Reese’s Traffic Secrets). Wow!

Pre-season Part 10a: Getting Started with FriendFeed (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Create an account in FriendFeed.
2. You will be given the option to import your friends from Facebook (if you have an account) or your webmail address book – this way you can keep up with stuff your friends are doing. But hold off subscribing to many feeds at the moment – it is easy to become overwhelmed and we will look at this again later.
3. Also skip the step to add popular FriendFeeders.
4. When you click on the option to see your FriendFeed you will be asked if you want to connect services that you use to FriendFeed – this will make it easier to share things to your FriendFeed (and whoever else is subscribed to it).
5. Sign up whatever services you’re familiar with including your YouTube and Twitter accounts.
6. Sign up your Google Reader Shared Items page, it will ask for its URL (you can find this by going to Google Reader, clicking on the “Shared items” under “Your Stuff” in the top left-hand menu. You should see a link to “See your shared items page in a new window” – if you click on this, you’ll be taken to a web page of your shared items that anyone can access online (pretty cool in itself), the URL of this page is the one you should use).
7. Get familiar with FriendFeed before subscribing to anything. You can access your own FriendFeed through the “me” tab – you’ll see stuff you’ve feeded into it and any comments people might have made; videos can be watched in the same window (inline); you can click “Comment” and comment on items in other people’s feeds; you can also get a permanent link to posts and share them with others.
8. Look at the “rooms” tab and start by joining the Thirty Day Challenge Room - like other feeds in FriendFeed, you can subscribe via RSS if you want.
9. Make a bookmarklet when you’re in the Thirty Day Challenge Room so that you can share items directly with everyone else who has joined. A green bubble gives you an option to install the Add to FriendFeed bookmarklet, if you click on this link it will give you instructions on how to do this (basically just drag the bookmarklet image to your Flock/Firefox bookmarks bar) – do this because it makes it easier to share things. Each room will give you the option to create its own bookmarklet to share to the room.
10. Go to the “me” tab, and make a bookmarklet for your own feed – this can really help your Google rankings in the future.
11. Follow Ed in FriendFeed.

Pre-season Part 10b: Tips for using FriendFeed (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. You can create filters for your feeds (accessible under the Search bar) – including the “best” (ie most commented/liked) for the day/week/month. Each filtered feed has its own RSS feed that you can subscribe to.
2. In your “me” tab, once you have content you can set up a filter on your own feed for “Comments” to check when people have commented on your items.
3. You can search for things in any of the tabs, e.g. put “#30dc” and it will bring up stuff with #30dc in it (think how this could bring your business traffic). If you want to search everything, make sure you’re on the “everyone” tab. Remember these searches also have feeds that you can subscribe to in Google Reader.
4. You and all members of the room can share things in the room (adds it to the room feed). You can also search within a room.
5. You can do advanced searches that can create a feed from anyone who has shared items from particular website, eg Twitter or YouTube. And again, you can subscribe to it in Google Reader. (FriendFeed keeps the search terms in the search bar so you can make another of the same type of search by replacing the keyword instead of going through the “Advanced Search” window again).
6. See FriendFeed as a huge bucket which you can then slice and dice and deliver this info in great ways that can bring your business lots of traffic.
7. Set up a room for your Thirty Day Challenge team (if you have one, if you don’t find one in the 30DC Forums under “Team Talk”).

Pre-season Part 10: TDC Pre-Season Week 7 TV Show (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Ed recommends reading Brain Rules by John Medina – it explains the importance of sleep and how much better we do everything when we get enough of it.
2. Go to FriendFeed and install it as another search engine in Flock (click on the orange button that has a magnifying glass on it) or Firefox (click on your searchbar’s drop down list for the option to add it) – you can now search directly from your browser.
3. Set up a link your FriendFeed in your 30DC Forum profile and it will add it to your signature on all your posts.
4. Ed also recommends reading Group Genius by Keith Sawyer – it explains the power and science behind team that will help you with your TDC teams.

Pre-season Part 11: Tips For Watching The Videos (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Watch the videos on YouTube - you can watch it in SD, HD and download it; or
2. Watch the videos on Revver - you can also download video in Flash or Quicktime for your own personal use; or
3. Watch it in iTunes or on the iPhone. Keep it organised by creating a new “Thirty Day Challenge” playlist in iTunes; or
4. Watch it in VLC Media Player (you will need to download and install it) if you have an old PC or if you just prefer going with something that is cross platform and open source.

Pre-season Part 12: Pre-Season Week 7 TV Show (TDC, Video, No PDF)

1. Jot down as many ideas as you can – without judgement (let the tools do that).
2. Look at what is in the magazines, bookshops, stores, real life – just notice things.
3. Ed says his job is to “notice things”.
4. Have your notebook ready at all times (make sure you can carry it with you).

Pre-season Part 12a: The 30DC Forum Guide (TDC, Video, No PDF)

1. Check out the 30DC Forums. If you have the TDC Toolbar installed.
2. Make sure you’re logged to get full benefits – it’s the same username/login as your Thirty Day Challenge sign up.
3. Ask any questions in the Forums – there are lots of beginners so don’t think any question is stupid, also there are many really helpful people.
4. To contact other forum members directly, you can PM them. BUT if you want to contact Ed Dale personally, use Twitter – do not PM him because he doesn’t use it.
5. The forums will be developed so they will be relevant 365 days of the year.
6. You are only allowed to have a quote and a FriendFeed in your signature.
7. You can access links to edit your signature and more from the Quick Links link.
8. Read the 30DC Forum Rules.

PHEW! That was just the Pre-season now we’re on to the real meat of the challenge…

Because our Summary was over 25,000 words and was taking forever to load – we’ve split it up and posted them according to the date they were originally allocated to – ie over August 2008 – it’s easiest to access all of them from the Thirty Day Challenge 2008 Summary page.

Note the quick links to the originating Thirty Day Challenge page (TDC), the relevant YouTube video (Video) and the transcript (PDF) for your convenience to help you access the study materials.