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Day 6 - Noticing, Not Judging (Day 4 / 5 - Catchup Time)
By Mike Mindel | August 6, 2007
YouTube
Unless someone is paying you for your video or it is private content you should have it on YouTube - because of all the amazing Web 2.0 possiblities.
First, find the videos on YouTube look under Ed Dale or Thirty Day Challenge. Don’t type 30 Day Challenge. They are always tagged with the appropriate day and part 1,2,3… etc.
Subscribe
The first thing you want to do is hit the subscribe button:
That way you will always be plugged into what I (Ed) am doing.
Rate The Video
Please make sure you rate the video:
Don’t just whack in 5. Give the video the rating you think it deserves. A fake rating will be picked up so don’t do it.
Save To Favorites
You probably also want to save to your favorites:
The reason you do this is that it is a great way of sorting. If you create a playlist you can add all the videos and they’ll all be in one spot.
Make It Sharper
When you watch the YouTube video you’ll notice it’s a bit fuzzy:
But if you click this little button on the bottom right:
you’ll see that it makes the video a bit smaller and a bit sharper:
Full Screen
You can also press this button (bottom right)
which will make the video play full screen. Just hit escape to go back to normal size.
(NOTE: Ideally you want to watch the full hi-definition version in iTunes when it downloads sometime in 2008 
)
Tag, Stumble, Bookmark, Twitter
Don’t forget to stumble, bookmark and tag the page.
You can also Twitter what you’re doing by typing something into the address bar:
and hitting the little + icon.
It will say ‘Post successful!’ when done. If you have a Twitter plug in for your blog it will then appear.
Make sure you always stumble, rate, delicious and twitter as it will pay dividends later on.
More Market Research
We’re still in the noticing phase. We’ll go to judgment soon.
It’s so easy to get traffic in the web 2.0 era which is great - can’t complain. But if you do your market research properly you won’t have a problem with traffic or a problem coming up with a product. Traffic has been so hard for so many people and we will make it so easy for you.
However there is a caveat. That is, you have to do your market research properly. A lot of you ask for checklists but it won’t help you. You just go after more checklists. I wan’t you to be smart about this.
You can use a notepad, Google notebook (which travels with you wherever you log in), Google spreadsheet to capture your information.
You must notice, not judge. It’s not your fault. We are taught to judge! It’s a genetic impulse.
From an education perspective we are either being judged or constantly judging. Which is a sham because the best writers don’t judge, people who create content, professionals never judge.
Once you understand this it will change your life.
You learn so much more if you just notice. Judging stops a part of your brain from being activated. You start filtering, you throw things out, you miss things.
In noticing things your brain is really good at picking up little trends, little factoids and bits and pieces.
The money is in those little bits and pieces.
Speed Reading Affiliate
Go to Google and type in ‘Speed Reading Affiliate’:
Now notice what has come up.
First on the left hand side notice the number of affiliate programs:
- Speed Reading Software Best Reader. Become an affiliate.
- RocketReader Affiliate Program - Banners and Text Links
This is a mature program as there are dozens of programs. Often you’ll go to a market and there will be no programs.
Now, experts amongst you, don’t go running off to the Warrior Forum and complaining that The Thirty Day Challenge is an affiliate program. It’s not. So sit down, button your mouth & focus.
What Does Lots Of Affiliate Programs Tell You?
It tells you that ’speed reading’ has been a good market. A mature market. People make money selling these products. That’s important stuff to notice.
Look At The Paid Ads
Look on the right hand side and see who is advertising on the paid Google adwords:
There are a couple of speed reading ones, general affiliate program people too.
Time For Your Seven Niches
So your task is to note specific affiliate programs for your niche e.g. ’sausage making affiliate’.
Notice and write down your results!
Google Trends
Type in Speed Reading into Google Trends:
and here are the results:
Note: you can actually compare two topics but we’re not doing this yet.
The blue line is speed reading but you can’t tell what the numbers are. However you do have plenty of information.
Notice how Speed Reading is pretty consistent. It spikes in the new year and then slows down towards christmas. This is a typical self improvementy (is that word?) type of topic so you would expect January to show a peak.
What is most important is that it is not a seasonal topic.
See the A, B, C, D? They correspond to news articles:
And also see the bottom section:
which shows the news volume. You can see where the spikes occur in news sites.
You can also see the regions
but this is relative as almost always we are targeting the United States. That is where we have the highest disposable income.
You can see cities and languages which is interesting. But we are predominately looking at US English.
In one niche a couple of years ago there was such a difference between the US and a South American country that it made sense to do a whole campaign targeted to a particular country (outside scope of 30 DC).
So look at our time of the year now:
As you can see the traffic looks pretty good. We want to know there’s some traffic there.
Tool Examples
Lets have a look at ‘trout fishing’:
Look at this. See the peaks and troughs and how they repeat year after year after year.
You don’t want to be launching here:
That would be most bad. You’d get no sales until May the following year. In the Northern Hemisphere trout fishing has a season.
So some of your niches might have seasonality. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing - you just need to be aware of it.
You’ll have big sales in one part of the year and low sales in the later part. It’s just the nature of it.
Compare Trout Fishing to Bass Fishing
It’s amazing how you can compare the two side by side. In the US you’d probably want to spend your time with bass fishing as it gets more search volume than trout fishing.
The peaks are higher than trout fishing and the dips are higher than trout fishing too. But you see the same seasonality effect applies in both.
What About The News Volume?
Also a seasonal sport - the spring season in the US - in the run up to summer. It’s an ok market and good for the thirty day challenge as its out of season.
Notice the news volume. It spikes.
If you’d entered the market at that point without knowing the seasonality this would not have worked out well.
See how Google tells you why that news spike was there:
The Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested was huge in the US but not necessarily so in UK or Belgium.
This is not marketable traffic. It’s just a lot of people interested in the news story about ‘Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested’.
If you look through to the resolution of the story in 2007 when the charges were dropped:
you’ll see it spike again.
So Google trends saves a huge amount of time because of the information presented. The best part is that it’s totally free!
Action Points
Pop your niches in to Google trends (perhaps add a couple of comparison points). No judging yet!
The stuff over the next couple of days will blow your socks off.
Technorati Tags: youtube, day six summary, thirty day challenge, subscribe to youtube, youtube videos, rate the video, save to favorites, make it sharper, full screen, tag, stumble, bookmark, twitter, market research, speed reading affiliate, affiliate programs, paid ads, google ads, seven niches, google trends, trout fishing, bass fishing, news volume, duke lacrosse players
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Topics: Daily Summaries |
August 7th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Another great sum of the day! Thanks!
Mike: can you post a “how to” on how to do those great screen captures you post? Ed did a VIDEO on it and I forget where and how. Ed like clipped it and saved and…oh!…I forget!
Thanks!
Cheers!!
Kelly
August 7th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
FYI: NOT that I want to do that on my 30DC site, but I would love to do it on some of my other blogs.
My way now is to highlight, copy, name, save.jpg, upload as a pic (jpg) in the “add a pic” section of my blog.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Thank you greatly Mike. These re-caps you’ve provided are amazingly put together, and are great reviews of the material! Much appreciated.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Mike,
Thank you for these excellent daily summaries! Also, I would like to second Kelly’s request for a “how to” on these great screen captures for this newbie…:)
Thanks for all you do!
August 8th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Man thx again
its even easier than the video
August 8th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Thanks a ton Mike - This has been such a help as I had a lot of catch-up to do! Cat
August 9th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
[…] Learning about Google Trends (check out Mike Mindel’s blog here) […]
August 9th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Hi Mike!
Thanks so much for the training summaries! They are so helpful. Viewing the videos and then studying the summaries proves to be a great synergy that pulls everything together. Thank you!
August 9th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Thank you so much. The information really sinks in when I am able to both hear it and see it. Then to top it off I can review your information to make sure I understand everything. I really like the system that you guys have worked out. Thanks. I would also love to know how you do your screen captures. They are so clear and seamless………
August 10th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Thanks!
Here’s a post on how I do it.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:33 am
This is a great report..awesome
August 13th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Mike - you rock! I was getting so bogged down with this day’s content (for no good reason) and your summary really helped straighten it out for me.
Peace,
JudyO