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Day 30 - The End of the Beginning
By Mike Mindel | August 31, 2007
This content is summarized from Day 30 Training for the Thirty Day Challenge, presented by Ed Dale.
The End of the Beginning
This is the end of the beginning. Can you believe its day 30! Where has August gone? It’s not over yet though; there are actually 31 days in both July and August. So you’ve still got a whole day up your sleeve to join the hall of fame.
We’ve smashed the record of last year. Our biggest winner is Bruce Jones who made $8,500 but will go on to make $14,000. The first winner was Jenny Smith on the 18th August for $13.95 followed by 44 other winners as of 30th August 2007 with one day to go.
Before the Thirty Day Challenge nobody believed you could make money from nothing. How much have you paid? Forget the training and education. How much have you physically paid in the production of your product? Zero. Nothing. Other than your time.
I believe this wasn’t possible before the advent of the social networking sites and all the technology we collectively refer to as web 2.0.
The Critics
Whenever you create an event as huge as this you get some critics, which is fair enough. One of the major arguments I’ve had is why are you doing this work someone else’s site. That would be correct if that was the end of the story.
But this is the end of the beginning.
Today I want to paint a picture for you. I’ve got to thank Dan Raine because he is making available some of the diagrams, charts and article originally published for the The Immediate Edge. He has kindly let me publish them here as part of day 30 (see the end).
It’s All Been Testing
We’re in the choices phase. You’ve either got a success and making sales, getting traffic and want to keep with this topic. Or you just start again and do it over.
That’s what these web 2.0 critics just don’t get. Even though I could afford to pay for all the pay per click in the world, neither Dan nor I start off a project any other way than exactly this method. Using exactly the same market research techniques, same traffic techniques, same conversion techniques.
This process shows you if there are legs in the marketplace. It forces you to understand the marketplace.
It’s 100% Targeted
You’re driving traffic from a keyword directly to an article, specifically targeted to that keyword. You can’t get a better message to market match than that.
What Does A Complete Internet Business Look Like
Let’s assume we’re getting traffic and conversion and we’re getting off at the success exit
This is what a complete internet business looks like
It’s difficult to see a small image like this, so here’s the diagram in pdf format.
Affiliate Marketing Article
This article talks about affiliate marketing. The article was written before the strategy we are using today was discovered but it gives you some great ideas. It’s brilliantly written and gives you an idea of the whole process.
This is where we are now. We’ve got various content platforms (the pink squares) all pointing to an affiliate product. Very shortly if we have had success with that affiliate product, we’ll show you how to turn that into your own product. Eventually all these content sites will be pointing to the green site. That green site is yours.
Why didn’t we have your own site to begin with? Two reasons.
- It’s just not necessary until you know that money needs to be spent.
- Secondly you really want to make sure that you’ve got all this traffic available already.
Usually your own site is a blog but you can have a static website. Again, the whole basis of the Thirty Day Challenge is you spend no money. We’ve delivered on that. Now if you host your own website, you need to buy a domain, a website and so on. We’ll be publishing some videos on how to do that sort of thing inside the Thirty Day Challenge site over the next month.
From Now On You Need to Spend a Little Money
Here’s the thing. Once you expand this out you will need to start spending a little bit of money. You won’t have to spend thousands by any stretch of the imagination. Dan, when setting up this tomato growing exercise, describes how much he’s had to spend going forward. This is very educational so make sure you read it.
This is the plan for the next thirty days:
Build a List
This is a very important part of the process after you’ve determined a market to go after. We didn’t put in the challenge as you have to spend a little bit of money. It’s not much, perhaps $20 a month to get a decent email list maintainer. But it’s still an expense, so it was out. You want to build your list and own that list. It’s disingenuous (I had to look that up!) to claim that all these methods are piggy-backing other people’s sites as it’s just not true.
Pay Per Click
Another strategy is to use pay per click which was the core of the first two Thirty Day Challenges. Pay per click for those who are new to internet marketing can be seen on those ads on the right hand side of a Google search page
If you take out a Yellow Pages ad you have to pay an extortionate amount of money regardless of how the ad performs. With Google pay per click, you pay for performance only. You only pay when someone clicks through to your target site. Imagine going to Yellow Pages and saying we’ll take a quarter page ad out but we’ll only pay you 20c every time the phone rings. You just can’t do that with Yellow Pages.
That’s the beauty of online pay per click. Going to pay per click starting off is also a legit strategy. But now you have tested keywords that deliver traffic and you know for a given keyword exactly how much it’s worth to you. You know what you can afford to pay and still make a profit. So now you can go to the pay per click arena and not cross your fingers and pray. That’s why I don’t bother doing pay per click straight away. I can build much more traction using these free organic strategies and then use pay per click afterwards.
A lot of pay per click hasn’t changed from past challenges and we will publish anything that hasn’t changed on the site.
You Now Have All the Pieces
Follow the process. You know the work. You’ve seen all the success on the forums. You’ve now learnt a lot of the mistakes people have made. You’ll learn a hell of a lot more from mistakes than any wins or successes. Success can actually make you very sloppy.
In Summary
It’s been an extraordinary year this year. It’s been the best of times, the worst of times. To see the triumphs and success which have literally made this the largest internet marketing ever held is humbling in the extreme. It’s been brilliant. I’ve got to thank you guys for doing that.
Not Quite the End
This isn’t the end. The Thirty Day Challenge site will continue and we will continue to build the community. We ask you to continue to recommend it to people. I can guarantee that those people who come to the site will not be assaulted by internet marketers and given a whole bunch of mixed messages. The forums will be properly moderated. We will have a very strict and open set of policies.
While I don’t want people to promote offers and nothing else I do want people to contribute to the forum. If you think those people have something of value then by all means go and have a look at their products and services.
It’s Important to Learn the Manual Way First
We have taught you the manual way to do these things. It’s so important to learn to carve the statue rather than begin by making pressings. This makes you a better artist. This makes you a better internet marketer.
By doing what we teach by hand you get to appreciate that magnificent symphony of four parts: market research, the traffic, the conversion and the product creation. By getting your hands dirty you will get a much better appreciation of internet marketing.
When you go out into the big bad world of products you will find there are so many ways to skin the marketing cat. But at least you will be armed with the basics. Those four things never change. If a site has a problem it is in one of those four areas. If I may be so bold to suggest 90% of the time - it will be in the market research. That’s why we spent half the challenge on this one area alone.
The farewell podcast will be tomorrow so tune in and we’ll speak then.
Resources
- The Thirty Day Challenge training
- Presentation slides
- The grand plan pdf
- Affiliate marketing is dead pdf
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Topics: Daily Summaries |
August 31st, 2007 at 4:11 am
Mike,
Firstly, thanks for your summaries, they have been awesome.
One question about ppc. I think the problem starting with organic sites is that you have to guess which phrase works and then spent time writing articles and giving love to see if you get traffic that pays. You could get traffic from lots of keywords, but they might not pay. You’ll only know if you go through the long process.
Surely it is quicker and more efficient to start with ppc, find the keywords that pay, and then when you know they pay, do themed search engine sites, web 2.0 etc
What do you say?
September 1st, 2007 at 5:39 am
Hi Mike,
I wanted to give you heaps of thank yous for providing, summaries, ideas and kick a.. tools. I am truly grateful for everything you have brought to this challenge. As a newbie this has been incredible and I am psyched to keep moving forward.
Great luck to you at worktracker and everything in front of you!!
Thanks again
Samantha
September 1st, 2007 at 7:39 am
Mike, just wanted to say thank you for all of the time and hard work you’ve put into publishing these summaries, as well as your tips and 30 DC diary. They are–and have been–appreciated greatly.