Well I made it to Las Vegas. Found out my friends don’t have computer network I can use so I had to come down and find a coffee house with free wifi. I haven’t been able to check my email, so not sure if I have a response from WordPress Direct Support yet. I’ll check soon and see what I can find. If not, then I will start to build my Horse Race handicapping blog.
The only thing is that not sure what kind of wordPress theme I’ll be able find to use. But I guess that isn’t the most important thing right now.
Getting some funny looks since I have been in here for some time now. So I better scoot before they give me a bill for rent. Talk soon.
You would think that finding a niche to blog about would be no big deal. There is no shortage of subjects that’s for sure. And with the 30 Day Challenge tips and tricks that I have acquired, turning out a profitable blog should be no problem. All that is true.
The rub comes in at the point of decision. For me that has become a major stumbling block. Deciding which niche to take on and turn into a blog. Maybe it’s just me……maybe I just have a bad case of dumbitis. But in my favor, I have heard from a few readers that they seem to face the same problem. I’m glad to hear it’s not just me.
I do have quite a few interests. But all of them seem to have more pages listed in Google, than Carter has pills. Millions and millions of pages exist in almost every niche that I have an interest in and would be inclined to blog about on a regular basis.
So what is the answer? Man….I just don’t know. I keep searching day in and day out, but to no avail. That perfect niche continues to allude me. And evidently not just me. It’s an epidemic. Okay that maybe a bit melodramatic, but I am that bummed out. I want a niche. And damn it, I can’t find one.
So put on your thinking caps and quit whining to me about not being able to find a niche. That’s my job to be the whiner!
Times are a bit tough right now. We are having some serious family issues and that has impeded my ability to get on track. I’m hoping that in the next couple of days that I can get back on line. You just never know when life is going to throw a wet blanket on you and it’s not easy getting out under it that’s for sure.
I’m really going to try and get back on the 30 Day Challenge tomorrow if at all possible. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed.
Question is…what do you have to do to make money online. Regardless of what anybody says, having your own product is really the best. That way you control what happens to it, how it is marketed and where it’s marketed. I know there are people making money with affiliate programs, but the competition for those dollars is quite huge.
Most affiliate money is made by the big boys when a new product launch happens. It’s pretty funny to see about 8 different emails touting the virtues of one new product. Each email is associated with a different big name in the marketing world. Or at least a well known name.
You may be asking yourself, how can I get a chance to be an affiliate marketer during one of the big launches. Well you can’t. Not unless you somehow become friends or acquaintances with the closely knit group that always seems to be in the mix when a new product hits the Internet. Other than that, it’s nearly impossible to get in on the front end.
You get to be an affiliate marketer once most of the easy sales are completed. Then you get the nod. But that is once it is setup with Clickbank or Affiliate Junction or something like those sites. Once that opportunity does become available, the sales have dropped to a trickle and you are likely to pick up a sale or two once in a while. But the land office business is already over.
So don’t kid yourself when you read about the millions being made by affiliate marketers. It just ain’t so Martha. Google Nemesis is a prime example. It went to market and was promoted by several people. Each one offering something free if you bought through them. But no where could you find the place to sign up as an affiliate before the product roll out.
As you may have read here, I think Google nemesis is a terrible product. We did a test pitting it against a same style sight made by me with cheap or free software, and each site performed the same. No sales promoting the same affiliate product. And the product was suppose to be one of the better ones. Over 250 clicks on the Google Nemesis page and not one sale. And that wonder service costs $67 a month. Last time I checked anyway. I personally don’t think it’s worth 67 cents.
So that takes us back to having your own product or service. It’s not easy to go that route either. We’ll get into that a little later down the road. I’m looking into developing a product or two. When or I should say if and when it happens I will offer affiliate marketing to my readers here first. I’m not even sure yet what we are looking at, but when I do, I’ll announce it here first.
I ran across this tonight and I liked what it said. So I thought I’d share it. This practice really bugs me. John lays it out very nicely.
Free…sorta…
Has anyone else noticed that the definition of the word “free” seems to be undergoing some reshaping lately? I got an email today proudly presenting me “free” software. The software sounded interesting, so being the geek that I am I went to check it out.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the software is a “free 15-day trial” of an application. Once the 15 days are up, of course, they’re going to make me a heck of a deal to buy the full version. Wow, how lucky can a geek get?!?
At least this one is a single payment after the 15 days are up. I recently received a “free” marketing book from a big-time marketer who shall remain nameless. The “free” book only cost me $7.95 for shipping and handling. What “free” means in this case is that the marketer only made a couple bucks’ profit on each book.
That wasn’t what I found annoying. That particular ploy has been going on for years. “I’ll send you this valuable CD/book/whatever FREE! You just pay a nominal fee to cover shipping and handling!” Okay, we all know that game and we go along with it because, hey, $7.95 for an actual printed book isn’t such a bad deal and we’ll overlook the “free” thing.
I got the book and saw the “BONUS! Money-making software included free!” alert on the cover. “Cool, free software!” thought I. So, I looked in the back of the book to see what the free software was and where to download it.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the “free software” is actually a 30-day trial of an online service run by said big time marketer that features all kinds of marketing advice and wisdom. That’s apparently the money-making part of the equation. I pay to access all this great content and the marketer makes money.
“So, what happens after the 30 days are up?” I hear you asking.
Good question. If I decide to continue accessing the service, it’s a mere $39.95 per month! And I didn’t think it could get any better than the “free” book!
For the record, I’ve actually used this service during its beta stage and there is software involved. There’s a little application that you download to your machine that puts a streaming bar across the top of your screen. You click on things you see that look interesting and it opens your web browser and takes you to the site where you can access the article or whatever.
Is it worth $39.95 per month? Not to me, but others apparently think so.
My issue is not with the service. However, I find it disingenuous at best to trumpet something as “free” when it’s going to end up costing me 40 bucks a month. Call it what it is: a “free 30-day trial.” Don’t tell me it’s “free software” when it’s clearly not.
Marketers have a bad enough reputation as it is. We don’t need further fuel for that fire. I have no problem with enthusiasm for a product, but let’s not be reinventing the language to suit our own agendas.
Pure passion is what is suppose to fuel your online business in order to make it successful. I believe that to be true to a great extent. But on the other hand, what I may be passionate about might be something that a million other people are passionate about also. That my friend leads us to what is called a conundrum. No not a condom. Alright already, a tough spot…that better?
If you read the comments from yesterday, guru Bob is one of the instructors with the 30 Day Challenge. It was very nice of him to stop by and see what was up. He became aware of my involvement with 30 Day because of some of the social bookmarking I am doing here in my posts. That in it’s self is pretty cool. Shows that some of these tactics do work.
But as he said in his comment, my niche is far too small when it comes to search traffic. But when I discovered 30 Day it was just the night before launch. That cut down the time I had to search to discover a niche that fit the parameters laid out in the program. Now the question is whether to go ahead with it, or move on. I will stick with it for a bit.
But I am searching for a new niche. That’s where the funny word comes in….where or what…..in regards to a new niche. I’m going to have to do some real work tomorrow to try and find one. I may have to spread or expand the parameters set out in the beginning.
Concert Promotions is a cool niche but way too small it turns out. I looked tonight and the EzineArticle.com article I submitted has been ranked by Google at #15 with my Concert blog being ranked #22. So Article marketing does work if you write quality pieces. As soon as I find a better niche I’ll write an article and submit it, or have my brother do it.
While I am deeply involved with the 30 Day Challenge, I do have to admit that I begin to wonder sometimes whether there is such an animal as ‘The Niche Life’? By that I mean, are there people that are really making a lot of money in small niches online. Or is it all hogwash?
Right now I really don’t know. I am very happy with the information I am gleaning from the 30 day challenge. And I am sure that it will help me in the future. But to find a niche that fits the parameters set out by Ed Dale in the challenge, I have to tell ya’ it ain’t easy my friend.
As you know I ended up choosing “Concert Promotions” and created a blog and a sub blog about the subject matter. Last night I spoke about day 17 I believe when it was actually day 18, and that was about analyzing you efforts to that point. We were looking for at least 200 visitors to our blog and then to see what our rank in Google had reached and had we made any sales.
Not even close to 200 visitors yet. Maybe 45 so far. But then I do have to admit that the week of tech and family problems I experienced didn’t help the cause any and in fact hurt our efforts. Very little blogging has gone on and link building was non existent during that period. But still with the 30 day stuff, we have reached #20 rank on Google search.
What I’m building up to is the fact that I have decided to continue for a while at least with the concert promotions blogs, but I will quietly in the background look for another niche to work also. Once I find one, then I will recreate my efforts so far but with a different subject matter. I may not try to find such a small niche the second time. I may in fact reach out and look for one with a bit more traffic and more competition.
After finding and developing the new niche blog, I will announce it’s birth here and we can then watch the development of that one in conjunction with the Concert Promotions Blog.
By the way I finished a couple more days in the challenge and am up to day 22. The info I covered today was all about Google Adwords and how to set up an account and write your first ad. All very elementary and easy stuff.
Here’s a 30 Day Challenge update. I was able to log on again today. So we are back up and running. I went and viewed the video for day 17 of the 30 Day Challenge. Yes I am way behind, but I’m not going to skip any days as that would not help us at all.
Day 17 is about looking at your results so far on the target blog we have set up. The idea is to take a look at the traffic we have generated with our new blog for our chosen keyword phrase and see if we have reached 200 unique visitors. Also we are suppose to check and see where we rank for a broad match and phrase match on Google. And thirdly, have we sold anything yet?
“Concert Promotions” for broad match is ranked 20th and phrase match is ranked 21. So for just a couple of blog entries, we are doing pretty well. But we do not have 200 unique visitors, nor have we sold anything yet. But that is ok. We have had some serious Internet issues and have put us way behind. Tomorrow I will press on and continue to catch up.
Once I do catch up, I will have a good idea if our chosen keywords are doing anything. If not, then we are then suppose to move on to another set of Keywords and select another affiliate product to sell. I already have one picked out. If we do ok with our first one, I will most likely still setup the 2nd one anyway.
So hang in there with me and I will get us caught up as soon as possible. Nice to be fully connected and not be buried with technical problems.
I’ve been gone because we had a family emergency. I’m hoping everything is taken care of within the next couple of days. This has put me a couple of days behind in the challenge, but I’m sure I can catch up. Right now I’m sitting in the office of one of our stores writing this. So it will be short tonight.
No real news about our marketing efforts because of the family problems. Hopefully will be back on the ball tomorrow night. I do have to go get a wordpress spam filter. I opened up tonight and found over 200 pieces of pam in the comments box. I’d like to strangle somebody. But then i don’t want to have to ask to use the prison computer, so the filter probably is the best answer.
I hope we have something to put up tomorrow night that is interesting. We’ll just have to see.
Concert Promotions blog that I have set out as my 30 day challenge project has acquired a new face this evening. Day 15 assignment was to create a Weebly site based on your chosen keyword. The idea being is it is another step in building an authority site back link to help your main site rank better. So I stepped up and built a new site on Weebly.com tonight naturally called Concert Promotions.
If you’d like to go see the site, and I suggest you do, you’ll notice the header is a picture that really has nothing to do with music. But I thought it was so beautiful, I couldn’t pass it up. If you go look at the site and the new post I put up there, I’d like to hear what you think of the header.
Day 16 assignment was to post an EzineArticle article about your niche and then link back to your main site in your author’s resource box. I did that in about 10 minutes using the Instant Article Wizard Pro software program that is featured on our tools page. I tell you, if you need to do an article and you don’t feel like spending a lot of time writing your own, IAWP is great. And the way it’s set up, you don’t have to worry about plagiarism, because you get research snippets back and formed in paragraphs. Then you select the paragraphs you want to use and you even can rewrite them if you want. It’s way cool.
So that brings us to day 17 which was designated a day or rest and a chance for people who might be behind to catch up. Yea for that.
I want everyone to know that the list building exit program that you see when you leave this site, offers a newsletter that we will be starting soon. And you can just select it if you are interested in receiving it. You don’t have to check anything else. Also you can un-check anything that is pre-checked if you are not interested in those offers.
That’s about it for tonight. Have to get some sleep and give this old brain some rest.
