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?

Preseason Complete

I finished watching all the preseason videos, and boy did I learn a lot!! I learned about so many programs and applications I had no awareness of. I already know so much more now than I did at the end of my last internet marketing experience.

Part of my brain thinks about how far I could be now if I had continued back then. I need to get this particular thought out of my head as it just frustrates me. I can not change what happened in the past, only what I choose to do in the future.

Today my plan is to delve into day one of the challenge. I'll be back as soon as I finish.

Lesson Learned - Look Before you Leap!!

I'm working to get though the introduction or "preseason" lessons for the thirty day challenge, and just when I'm feeling totally overwhelmed...I catch something that states that the preseason videos are to be watched during the 2 MONTHS before the challenge begins, not the day before.

Oops, should have read that before I got started.

I will not be deterred however. I have watched most of the videos now, and have a learned a TON already! I had no idea Google has so many applications and services available. I have learned about tons of programs I had heard of but haven't used such as Skype and Twitter, and some I didn't know existed such as Google Analytics and Google Docs. To top it all off, I am about to embark on changing my browser to Firefox.

Long story short - my challenge will likely not start today, but it will start. Also, my challenge may not be finished by the 31st of January, but I will finish it. I will learn a lot. I will move forward. I will succeed.

Pre Challenge Warm Up - What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

I decided to start the challenge on Jan 2, so that I could take today to get set up and organized and ready to go. To my surprise, in my email inbox this morning was an email titled "Kathleen, Here's your thirty day challenge warm up". OK, I thought, probably a small project to get us going.... Boy was I wrong!

What I found was videos on all the programs that we would be working with throughout the challenge. We were advised that we didn't need to watch them all, just the ones we weren't familiar with. I looked down the list of 23 things, and found that I had heard of several of them: Facebook, Twitter, Skype etc - but I would consider myself familiar with only one - Facebook - and even that in only a casual way.

The voices in my head start to chime in: "This is too much!", "You're not ready for this!", "Don't do this!" "Push off your start date and re-evaluate this!" After I took a deep breath, I realized that these are the voices that are my insecurity, that are fear. I have always listened to these voices in the past, and they have held me back. So, this time I am not going to listen to these voices. I am going to press forward. Get the kids involved in an activity and just push through it. I'm going to hunt around until I find the positive voices that I heard yesterday, the ones that told me I could do this.

Success here I come!!

The Beginning

I have decided that I am going to make money online. I've done this before with some limited success so I know it CAN happen. I also know it takes time and effort. It is NOT a get rich scheme. It is a process.

That being the case, I knew I needed a plan. So I went to a place I had been to before and gotten good advise in the past which is Self Starters Weekly Tips. This is a discussion group full of
successful people willing to help as well as people just starting out like me looking for direction. I proceeded to register, introduce myself, and then read over 7 pages of posts to get a feel for where the site is now and what information had changed since I dabbled in Internet marketing some 5 or 6 years ago.

What I found was that the core things were the same - you need good content, relevant information, and good keyword research before you start. I also discovered that many of the details had changed such as: blogging has become super important, as has using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. So I have a bunch of things to learn.

I also know that in the past I have gotten stuck in indecision. I read and study and learn, soak it up like a sponge. Which is great, don't get me wrong - but there's one bad thing about sponges - they sit there, they don't DO anything. So I needed to find a way to get moving. Fortunately, as I was poking around at Self Starters Weekly Tips, I found something about a 30 day challenge. So...I Googled 30 Day Challenge and found my way to the website where I watched the video and decided this was just what I needed. The video claims that this series will walk you through everything from coming up with an idea straight through to earning your first dollar in 30 days. If this works, Great! Fantastic! Fabulous! If not, I may get some nuggets of information I can use as I move forward. At the worst I wasted thirty days, but even if that happens, at least I'm doing something. No more sponge for me!

Lastly, I decided I need to record my progress, thoughts about what worked and what didn't, what I learned, what I liked, what I didn't etc. So I decided to start this blog for that purpose. If I can help others learn from my successes (or failures) cool. If I can get other successful marketers to read and offer suggestions or encouragement, even better. If I'm the only one who reads this, at least I have a record of where I've been and where I want to go. Can you tell I'm a worse case scenario kind of person?

So here I go!! I will be starting the challenge on Jan 2, 2010 because after all, everyone takes off New Years Day, right? Here's to a successful and prosperous 2010!!