TDC Day 28: Day 28 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. You will learn how to create authority for your site by creating backlinks. When Google sees enough quality backlinks to your site (in other blogs etc with authority) then it views you in a new light and thinks you too have authority (otherwise why would everyone be talking about you?).
2. Ed stresses that we do this “legitimately, ethically and ecologically”.

TDC Day 28a: Get More Links Using Market Samurai (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Today will be building links to your posts on long tail keywords - this technique is also known as deep linking. Links to your blog’s homepage as well as links to individual posts give you “a much wider authority and rankings across all the keywords you aim to rank over the long a longer term”.
2. Sign up to Onlywire - this is useful for building backlinks to longtail blog posts (Social Marker is better for building backlinks to your homepage apparently).
3. Add the login details for your social bookmarking services and you will get a “bookmarklet”, drag it to your bookmarks bar and it acts as a button to start the service.
4. When you’ve written your blog post, click on the bookmarklet (you may need to login first) and you will get a pop-up which should be pre-filled. Check the details are correct and that you have the appropriate tags. You can add a comment/note if you wish and hit “Bookmark Page” - your post will be submitted to all your registered sites.
5. Market Samurai also has a Promotion tool. Choose your keyword phrase, choose “Promotion” in the main menu. You can select what service you want, but in the example we select “Squidoo” and hit “Find Backlinks” - it will then get 10 for you, hit “More” for another 10 and so on.
6. Each Squidoo result will have the lens’ title, a short description, the URL and an Analyze button. If you click on it you’ll get some more info:
   1. BL: backlinks to that Squidoo lens
   2. PB: pingback (these are only useful for blogs)
   3. F: whether the site has follow links (in the example, Squidoo’s were all no follow)
7. You can also use the Analyze All button to analyse all the pages at once, clicking on each column’s heading will sort it.
8. Click on the Squidoo lens that interests you the most and it will open in a new window.
9. Make a comment on it in the comments section (if it has one).
10. Do the same for HubPages, Yahoo Answers and Weebly (there may not be so many Weebly ones as it requires people to have added a blog, but at the moment, the links are follow links). You can also find blogs and forums (these will often let you have a link back to your site in a signature or linked to your name). You can search specifically for Wordpress blogs or blogs that say they do follow links.
11. Pingbacks are relevant to blogs. If you link to another blog that has pingbacks enabled then your link and some of the text around your link can turn up on that blog as a comment. If a blog allows pingbacks then you will see Y under PB (Pingbacks).
12. Only for blogs that have pingbacks enabled, select the items you want to quote on your site by clicking on the checkbox/es on the left of the blog/s.
13. You will then get a window open up that lets you easily create links for your own blog with a number of options:
    1. New Window: when someone clicks on the link, it will open in a new window
    2. List: turns the summaries into bullet points
    3. Table: puts a border around the summaries
    4. No Follow: makes links no follow
14. Check your results in preview box when you’re happy click on “Copy Code” - it will save your code to the the clipboard ( Copy Visual copies something you can post directly into the visual editor in Wordpress without having to go to the HTML tab - but it may only work in Safari).
15. In WordPress or WordPress Direct, create a new post and make sure you are in the HTML tab.
16. Copy and paste the html code into your post editor and add a little text to make it more natural (the example had “This week in review” as the title and then “We’ve found some great blog posts on vintage guitars you might like to take a look at:” then the pingbacking link code). Save and publish the post.
17. Your pingback may be published immediately in the comments of the linked blog or it may take longer if the owner has chosen to moderate pingbacks/comments. Note that even if the blog is no follow, its readers may click on your link to your site.
18. The goal is that you have 5 - 15 deep linked backlinks for all of your posts - these can be a combination of social bookmarking links, blog comments, pingbacks or forum postings. You should still create links to your homepage - you will want the most number of links pointed to the home page, but you should also have a spread of backlinks that deep link (ie are linked directly to longtail posts).

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.

TDC Day 27: Day 27 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Congratulate yourself for getting to Day 26 - today we are going to show you how to get more exposure and thus traffic.

TDC Day 27a: Find More Keywords (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Today is about on-page factors (the following few days will be about off page factors)
2. Remember your keyword hierarchy in your micro niche, using the “vintage guitar” example:
   1. Blog Theme Keyword: vintage electric guitar (204/32,600)
   2. Category Keywords: vintage base guitar (137/11,500), vintage gibson guitar (137/20,500), antique guitar (112/9,740), vintage electric guitar (204/32,600).
   3. Post Keywords: … (we’ll get these today)
3. Open your keyword folder in Market Samurai (make sure you’ve got the upgraded version).
4. Open one of your category keyword files - in the example “vintage electric guitar” and select “Keyword Research”.
5. Make sure “Google Synonym tool” and “SEO Traffic” (min=0) are selected and hit “Generate Keywords”.
6. Edit the list so that keywords that are not relevant to your blog are removed by clicking on the cross icon - the aim here is to find longtail keywords that are tightly related to your blog’s current keywords. In the example, Robert left keywords with “vintage”, “old” or “used” in them - he ended up having 76 left out of an original list of 200. Click “Analyze the Keywords”.
7. Select the SEO Competition (SEO) filter and set it to 30,000 so it will only show keywords with less than 30,000 competing pages for the phrase match Google search.
8. If you find results that have more than 100 searches/day (SEOT) then you can consider making these category keywords for the blog - but in this exercise we are looking for post keywords, we can go for keywords with much less traffic as long as there is little competition for them. In the example, GuruBob has chosen a whole bunch of keywords including those with 60 searches a day and only 358 competing pages as well as keywords with 12 searches a day and 1590 competing pages.
9. Take these keywords and create blog posts - put them under the most appropriate category in your blog (which usually will be the category keyword you originally started with). Remember to tag the post them with the relevant keywords. So if your longtail post keyword is “vintage silvertone guitar” create a post with that keyword in the title, post it under the “vintage electric guitar” category and make sure its tagged with “vintage silvertone guitar” and the category title “vintage electric guitar”. You should also tag it with your blog’s main keyword but in this case, it’s also “vintage electric guitar” so you’ve already got that tag.
10. Another method is to use Google Analytics. Log into your account and select “Traffic Sources” and select “Adwords” - this shows you keywords that people are entering into the search engines that have then made them to click on the ad and taken them to your blog. You are looking to find keywords that have multiple visits where there is no related content on your blog. One hit doesn’t mean much, but if you are getting multiple hits, you can consider adding optimised content for that keyword so that you rank higher for it and that should bring more traffic. (If you aren’t using Adwords then click on “Keywords” which is the keywords that people have entered into the search engine that has brought them to your site (ie not through an ad) - you’ll see that Google works in quite strange and wonderful ways.) As your site grows in authority, Google will send you related traffic even if you haven’t optimised for that keyword.

TDC Day 27b: Auto Content Creation (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. This requires WordPress Direct (if you haven’t signed up for the free version and are using your own Wordpress installation, you may be able to find a plugin that does a similar job. Or else just do a search on YouTube for videos with your longtail keywords and create posts with them).
2. Go to Manage Content Software, we will use the YouTube2WordPress module - the other modules work exactly the same.
3. Follow the PDF instructions to set up “Supervised Postings” for your longtail keywords. When you get more experienced you may want to set up automatic posting but it’s recommended that you stick with supervised to keep it more natural looking (and less likely to be labelled a spam blog).

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.

TDC Day 26: Day 26 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. If your niche keyword wasn’t converting, you can still make some money from it.
2. Don’t see the past three weeks as wasted time if one set of keywords doesn’t work - you’ve learnt valuable lessons and next time round it will only be a few hours.

TDC Day 26a: Getting Money From Your Blog (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. GuruBob gives us a number of ways we can monetise our blogs even if we didn’t get that golden sale in 200 visits.
2. The main technique is ADSENSE. Get your blog ranked first and some backlinks before putting Adsense on it (because the presence of Adsense will lower your initial rankings).
3. Sign up for Adsense, you can use a Google account (eg for Gmail) if you have one or make one now.
4. You will need to have an active website to fill out the form, use your blog, you can add more later.
5. You will also need to be over 18, have a real mailing address and a telephone. If you are under 18, get your parent or guardian to sign up on behalf of you.
6. It may take a few days for your Adsense account to be approved - Google likes to get a human to check your website that it is not spam central and has content on it - if you’ve followed the 30DC process, you should be okay.
7. Once approved, you need to set up Adsense on your blog. Go to the “Adsense Set-up” tab and then select the “Adsense for Content” option. If you don’t have WordPress Direct then choose an ad type that will fit with your blog and follow Google’s instructions for setting it up on your blog.
8. If you do have WordPress Direct, make a note of your Adsense publisher’s ID (it’s in the top right hand corner of Adsense) and follow the instructions in the 30DC PDF. You may need to change the theme and then re-enable it again to get the ads to show. You should also choose a theme that is Adsense ready. You also can use the Banner Ad option on WordPress Direct (but you will need to set up an ad banner in Adsense first) - see the PDF instructions.
9. Make sure you don’t click on your own ads - this is called click fraud and will get you (not just your website) banned forever.
10. You can also PROMOTE OTHER PRODUCTS.
11. You can use other ad networks like Yahoo - for a list see the Ad and CPA Networks List PDF.
12. You can try a banner for a product that has a lower commission but wider appeal.
13. Try an Ebay product.
14. Later you might consider a CPA ( Cost per Action) product or a CPL (Cost per Lead). Basically you get paid (maybe $0.10 - $2.00) if one of your visitors does something like fill out a form on another site or buys a ringtone. It can take some time for a CPA Network to approve an application (weeks to months) and they don’t like brand new sites so wait until you have good rankings and traffic. See thePDF list.
15. You are unlikely to make huge amounts this way, but you could well make a dollar a day which is $30/month or $365/year - if you can do this with a few hours work then this is a good return.
16. The last thing to consider is that if your blog gets traffic and rankings for keywords, even if it doesn’t make sales, it still has value - you could consider selling it. Sitepoint Marketplace is a popular place to buy and sell websites.
17. Look through the websites that are being sold. GuruBob found one blog that less than 6 weeks old, was getting less than 50 visits per day, optimised for one keyword and was earning a monthly revenue of $4 - it sold fro $70. Others were priced from $50-$300.
18. To sum up, you can get value from a “failure” - consider setting up AdSense right away. When it’s a few months old, try a CPA network or look for general products relevant to your niche. Also promote other products in Amazon/eBay along with Adsense. Look at other ad networks. Consider selling the website.
19. If on the other hand your site is getting traffic and sales and you want to continue with your niche - look at tomorrow’s lesson.

TDC Day 26b: Ad and CPA Networks List (TDC, PDF)

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.

TDC Day 25: Day 25 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. Today is D-Day - you’ve got to make a decision.
2. Testing and Measuring is the secret to success - not holding onto dud niche keywords.
3. If your keyword doesn’t cut it, then let go of it and try a new one. You will be able to do all the actions of testing a new keyword in much shorter time (even 2 hours) because now you know how to do it.

TDC Day 25a: Time To Make A Decision (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. You must assess whether to do forward with the niche or to drop it.
2. But don’t worry about wasting your time with your work on your last niche - you’ve still got an asset which you can still use (more tomorrow).
3. Remember that when you do your next niche, you will be able to do these steps, much much faster.
4. 1st Decision Point - TRAFFIC:
   1. You need at least 200 people coming to your blog in a relatively short time frame. So 200/day is good but if you get 200 over 5-10 days then you’ll need to reassess it.
   2. You also need to be in the at least the top 3-4 for your broad match to be able to assess whether it is a worthwhile niche or not. If you are on page 20 and getting very little traffic then that doesn’t mean the niche gets very little traffic - it just means you are ranked badly and may need to do more work (and it may mean there’s too much competition in that niche) .
5. 2nd Decision Point - Affiliate Click Through:
   1. If you get 200 people going to your blog and less than 10% are clicking on your affiliate offer then you should consider changing to your second product. There could be nothing wrong with your niche or even your blog - it’s just a dud product. You need to identify exactly what is the problem to properly make a decision.
6. 3rd Decision Point - Conversion:
   1. If you are making a sale in once in every 200 visits to your affiliate then this is a good signal that you can keep continuing or “building out”.
   2. If you are getting your 200 visitors but not getting a sale per 200 visitors then you need to reassess. (Note that you must be getting 200 people to your affiliate offer page too, not just 200 people to your blog to make this assessment).
7. If you aren’t getting the sales (with at least 200 people visiting your affiliate offer page) then Ed suggests to:
8. Try another affiliate offer.
9. Move on and pick a new niche (you can still monetise the blog with techniques taught tomorrow).
10. Target more keywords. Create content for these new keywords and see where you rank.
11. Do you like the market? Is it something interests you? Can you spend a lot of time on it? Remember you will be working on it a lot. It’s too easy to be distracted when you’re not interested in a subject and then it won’t be your best work.
12. Ask yourself “Would you be fine going on Oprah to talk about the product that you are going to build your business in?” Ed tells a story of someone who built and headache site but wasn’t comfortable with that area so it wasn’t successful. He sold it to someone who took it onto Oprah and did very well.
13. Ed tells us that marketing on the Internet is NOT about: 1. Markets 2. Niches 3. People 4. Products / Services or 5. Small furry animals. He says it is about PHRASES - what your market types into Google. When they want something they rarely type in a really broad phrase like “golf”, they are more likely to type in “golf courses in Atlanta” or similar. Marketers try to identify those phrases and market to those markets searching for those phrases by what is called “building out” (you will learn how to build out this week).
14. Our goal is to dominate every phrase that people in our market type into Google, Yahoo and others. But for the time being we are concentrating on Google (it is the biggest). If you have an existing business or you are an artist, you can look at competitors. Ed gives the example of a musician who is in the same genre as John Mayer should use Market Samurai to identify and dominate all phrases that people use when searching for John Mayer.
15. In an ideal world, you would have the following for every phrase that has traffic in the niche:
    1. Yourphrase.com – the domain
    2. Your phrase blog
    3. Your phrase articles
    4. Your phrase Web 2.0 sites, like Squidoo, HubPages and Weebly
    5. Everything bookmarked. Every time you create a new piece of content, you socially bookmark it with a tool like Social Marker.
16. This is building out or expanding your phrases. You want the business to give you a steady stream of cashflow that you can reinvest into more domains, AdWords etc.
17. Set the goal to make a decision on your chosen niche keyword now. If you choose another market then set the goal to make this same decision again at this point. Now you have done it once, it is so much easier (and quicker), the second time round. And remember you don’t need to waste the work you’ve done on the keywords you’ve cut (more tomorrow).

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.

TDC Day 24: Day 24 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. This is a rest day, so spend it learning more about copywriting - read the PDF report on How to write a killer sales letter.

TDC Day 24a: How to write a killer sales letter (TDC, PDF)

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.