Moving On

I haven't posted in a few days because, well, I got a bit bogged down and felt a bit defeated. But, I persevered and am happy to report that I have passed the roadblock!

Days one and two were all about finding keywords. Day one asked us to find a Theme Keyword within our micro niche, and day two was finding related category keywords related to the theme keyword. Sounds easy right? Just pick a topic and break it down. There is a catch however. There are certain characteristics we are to look for in those keywords. The program we are using is Market Samurai. Within this program you can search and analyze potential keywords to increase your chance for success. Also, by going through the Thirty Day Challenge website, you get a 40 day free trial!

The challenge parameters state that your chosen keyword should have at least 80 searches a day, a Phrase to Broad Match ratio of at least 15% (this is how close your specific keyword phrase matches to more general search terms) and an SEOC number of less than 30,000 (this is derived from a formula that measures the competition for a particular phrase). This all makes sense if you think about it - you want something that people are searching for, and you don't want to fight the tons and tons of successful marketers for every one of those people who are searching.

So I happily started plugging in idea after idea into Market Samurai, and my mood began to drop. Everything I tried or was interested in, no one was searching for or tons of people were already selling it, and selling it well. Out of my list of 45 ideas, I found about 4 keywords that were workable. Satisfied with that, I moved on to day 3.

Day three tells us to look at the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in more detail using a component of Market Samurai. This looks at how competitive the websites currently in the top 10 positions in Google are. So I followed the steps in the video and found that all 4 of my ideas were highly competitive. Back to searching for keywords I go.

After about 5 hours of fruitless searching, I gave up for the night. Over night I came up with more ideas, so I repeated the process from the day before, plugging in ideas with new enthusiasm. Alas, I got the same results.

I started thinking that this looked way easier in the videos, and I must be doing something wrong, so I went back and watched the videos again, and started the process again, only to have the same results.

I pretty much repeated this process for the next few days getting more and more frustrated and more and discouraged. So I went to the forums at 30dc and read a bunch of the posts listed there. I found the posts by one of the moderators Caro, to be the most fascinating. I read her telling people over and over again, that attitude matters - that if you expect negative results, negative results will find you. If you go in with an open mind, expecting to succeed then you will. Even those these statements were not directed at me specifically, they hit me right between the eyes. I was in serious need of an attitude adjustment.

So I took a break from my computer, played some Wii with my husband, and some silly make believe play with my kids. When I sat back down at my computer, I went over to Self Starters Weekly Tips, then moseyed on over to Lynn's blog: ClickNewz. There I surfed my way to this entry on The Products People Are Searching for Online , I skimmed through the list and suddenly, one of them jumped out at me! Something I was interested in, something I knew at least a little bit about - it just might work.

So I hurried myself over to Market Samurai and plugged in the keyword, drilled down a bit and voila! something that worked. Okay, it wasn't perfect, the SEOC (competition) was a little higher than the challenge wanted, but it was close and it had all the other qualifications. I went back to the teachings for day 3 and looked at seo matrix. I finally found one that looked decent!!

Now I'm stuck in a quandry. I'm a rule follower by nature. I had a topic that I liked, and I wanted to move forward, and it met ALMOST all the criteria, but not ALL of them. Should I keep looking or move forward with what I have?