I’m an idiot!

I’ve had about 130 people click on my affiliate link on my niche page and no sales.I was a bit frustrated but remained determine. I wanted to focus on getting a high ranking in Google so I could confirm traffic rates before passing judgment.

Well today I decided to do a little tweaking to the site and I accidently clicked my affiliate link and saw a 404 Not Found error!

How could this be? Is my affiliate down? Did the TDC tracker screw up?

I never checked the link when I set up TDC Tracker so the link pointed to a page that didn’t exist.

2 days of potential sales…. gone!

Test, Test,and then Test some more….

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My content experiment failed?!

Absolutely nothing has happened!And I couldn’t be happier :)

So far in my test of content hosting platforms nothing has happened. Google has not indexed any of the 8 pages I have set up.

Let me explain. I am spamming! I created 8 identical sites on 8 seperate content hosts. The idea was to see which one got indexed first and highest.

I know this is spam but it is just research. I plan to take down 7 of the 8 pages once the experiment is done.

It’s been almost 48 hours and nothing. Not a single one has been indexed. And it’s GREAT! I didn’t give any of them social love because I didn’t want that to sway the results. Which made me wonder:

Obviously something about “giving love” told Google to check our sites, somehow social love let Google know that we’ve updated our content. But what is it?

Google uses a Spider to crawl around the internet checking webpages for content. The spider reads the page and stores all the important information about your site in a database. When you do a search, Google goes into that database to find webpages with those keywords and returns them to you in order of relevance.

So if you notice the fluctuations in your rankings it is probably because the Spider found that a page that used to be #100 just updated its content and is now more relevant than your page so it slips that page a head of yours in the ranking.

If we could control that spider, we could control the WORLD! Okay, maybe just Google but think about how powerful that would be. Well that is exactly what we did! By social posting, the Spider would find our social post, crawl it (follow the links) and end up at our content page, notice that it has been updated, then update the database. So the next time you searched for your keyword, you saw that you moved up a bit in the rankings.

Brilliant!

I have to run but there is obviously more to come. If you are thinking critically you should be asking yourself: is there one form of social posting that is more powerful than another? Why did Ed tell us to add content EVERYDAY? Can you get the spider to check your site everyday? How often do you need to “love” a site?

Answers are coming!

Think critically~

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Let the experiment begin!

Before I crack into my second niche, I want to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes I made with the first one.

The first step is finding the perfect hosting platform for my content. I need to find the next TUMBLR.Ed Dale is not going to tell us what it is, and rightfully so. That just means I have to find it.

In case you forgot, here is the list: (thanks Mike Mindel)

Spread the Text Love

I left off the video and article sites. I want my main content page to be a destination site that is updated frequently so visitors have a reason to come back.

So let’s analyze these bad boys:

I chose to look at PageRank, Y! Links, Alexa rating and google results for “free blog”

Since we know that Google loves TUMBLR, we’ll use TUMBLR as the benchmark. Tumblr comes in at 12 with a modest page rank of 6, 71,700 links and an Alexa rating between 3-360 (the Alexa ranking changed every time I clicked the Go button).

So we set a baseline of page rank of 6, 50,000 links and Alexa rating under 100.
*Blogger was ruled out because it is already very popular among thirty day challengers

The finalists are:
Wikispaces
Bravenet
GooglePages
Wordpress
Livejournal
Blog
Blogsome
Squarespaces

So this test is very unscientific test. I have no reason to believe that any of the criteria listed above will correspond with a high Google ranking for your content page.

What I do know is that I don’t have the time to test all 25 sites individually so I needed to narrow down the list. Now I can test these sites to find out which one is the most powerful.

Stay tuned for more…..

Think Critically~

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BIG GUNS!

I used to be the platoon leader of a scout platoon in the United States Army. We were equipped with two .50 caliber machine guns, two MK-19 automatic grenade launchers and two TOW missile launchers.

That’s right, tank killing, widow making, game changing MISSILE LAUNCHERS.Thankfully I never had to use them in combat. However, I always had them locked, cocked and ready to rock because you never know when the battle might get to a point where you need to pull out the big guns!

Internet Marketing is like a battle, there is a lot less at stake but it is a battle none-the-less. So having a strong arsenal is very important. So far Ed and Dan have given us some great weapons to use in our quest to reach #1 in google ranking. And yesterday they unleashed the big gun!

Google Alerts have just become my big gun.

Backlinks are a very powerful Web 1.0 technique. In order to achieve and maintain a high ranking in Google you MUST have backlinks to authority sites. The Day 27 training did a very good job of explaining how to do this. It is a slow, tedious process compared to what we’ve learned so far but it is extremely powerful.

It hit me today when I checked my Google Alerts and I saw a Yahoo!Answers question about my niche! I quickly responded to the question with my link attached as a resource…..BAM! A backlink from yahoo! Talk about powerful.

I set my alerts to update me as soon as a question is posted so I can be one of the first responses. So not only am I getting backlinks, I’m generating traffic because everyone who comes after me will see my link. Be cautious though, just like any other Web 2.0 technology, you must participate in the community. I don’t just answer questions about my niche and drop my link in. I answer questions about anything and everything. I even answer niche questions without linking.

I’m not there just to pimp my site, I’m an active member of a fun community.

Look out #1, here I come and I’m packing some serious heat!

Think critically~

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Who needs special sauce?

The forum is buzzing with talk about the “Special Sauce” decision.

What if McDonald’s announced that for the next 30 days they were going to give-away Big Mac’s for FREE, with one catch. No special sauce.That’s right, 2 all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun absolutely FREE for 30 Days!

What do you think would happen? They would have to change the sign out front to “Over 1 Trillion Served” That’s right, people would be standing in line for hours to get their FREE Big Mac. McDonald’s would Super Size the country!

Then why do people feel like the Thirty Day Challenge, packed with valuable internet marketing lessons that are 100% FREE, should come with “special sauce.”

How DARE you look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t know about you but teeth or no teeth, I’m riding this heaven-sent beast of burden into the Internet Marketing history books!

I must admit I’m a bit disappointed by the decision not to share the “special sauce” but who am I to complain. I’ve learned more in the last 27 days about IM than I could have in 6 months on my own.

So my plan (because you know I have one) is to make my own special sauce. That’s right, I’ve got a bottle of Thousand Island dressing up my sleeve. I have to verify that it works so it will take me a few days but I think I have a good idea of some of the ingredients in the special sauce.

Thanks to Ed Dale, Dan Raine and the gang for everything they’ve taught us thus far. Keep up the great work and beware the Mosby special recipe!

Think critically~

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Do NOT use WordPress

I hate Wordpress. I wish I used another platform to be my main content source.Tracking is the most important part of this portion of the 30 Day Challenge and Wordpress sucks at tracking.

I like StatCounter. It tells you everything you need to know in real-time from referrals to clickthroughs….everything. So now I’m restricted to the html-only version of StatCounter which only shows page views. When you compare that with Wordpress’ tracking data, there’s no telling which one is correct because they are so different.

I use the TDC tracker to track clickthrough, which again is dramatically different from the Wordpress tracking data.

I’m extremely frustrated but I will simply rely on StatCounter and TDC tracker because I think the Wordpress tracker is horribly inaccurate.

My second niche’s site will definitely NOT be on WordPress.

Are you tracking your traffic?

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Mike is my hero!

What a shock it was to read Mike Mindel’s Blog this morning! There was some outstanding content. He laid out a complete overview of his niche and all of his content. It is phenomenal. I couldn’t have done a better job myself so I won’t!I subscribe to the “work smart, not hard” school of internet marketing. Therefore I will not duplicate Mike’s efforts however, we’ll use his example and critique it.

I’ll stick to what I do best, thinking critically.

So Mike has content on 3 platforms:

Which three platforms did you choose and why? If you don’t know why you are doing something, then you are probably wasting your time? Here are my choices:

The wordpress blog is my main site designed to drive traffic to my affiliate’s site. The hubpages, squidoo and ezine article send traffic to my wordpress blog and provide help with Google ranking.

I use Digg, netscape, technorati, etc to highlight new stories on my wordpress blog in order to drive traffic and increase page rank.

That has gotten me to number 20 for exact match in less than 8 hours. I’m hoping my team of trusted marketers will help show my site a little social love.

So what’s next? Work on my second cluster. I plan to make a blogger page focused on a separate but similar key word phrase. That blogger page will also point people to my wordpress blog. My goal is to drive all associated traffic to my wordpress blog.

We haven’t talked about “link building” at the Thirty Day Challenge yet but I assume we will. Using my Keep It Simple Stupid method of marketing I analyzed the top 5 exact match search websites backlinks.

For example for Mike’s niche “how to write a story” the number 1 site is:

Then I would enter “link:blackdog4kids.com” into google search bar. Then just look at what sites are linking to the number 1 site. If it is a content site, try to submit some content. Or simply request a link exchange. The worst they can do is say no.

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Wholly %#$@ Ed is psychic!

Not only is he handsome, charming and down right generous but he’s also PSYCHIC!

I have to admit, this weekend I was extremely frustrated with the 30 Day Challenge. I made great progress the week before only to have the rug pulled out from under me as Tumblr decided I was “affiliate scum.”But I knew there had to be a better way. So combining everything I’ve learned so far on the 30 Day Challenge and a few ideas I stole from researching Internet Marketing, I came up with the perfect strategy!

Somehow from 2876 miles away, Ed managed to creep into my brain, sift through the garbage and steal my plan!

Okay, maybe Ed came up with this all on his own and I was just trying to reinvent the wheel instead of following the 30 Day Challenge process but I’m sticking to the psychic story for now.

So instead of rehashing today’s lesson, I’m going to show you exactly how I am implementing Ed’s advice.

Ed does a great job of teaching the lessons but I think the lessons are a little short on the details, sometimes. I don’t know about you but I’m not a very smart man so I need clear, concise directions on exactly what I should be doing.

Feel free to follow my example:

I swear I made this diagram yesterday before I saw the lesson….that damn thief!

So let’s talk specifics.

I will drive all traffic to my wordpress.com blog site. I don’t like wordpress because I can’t use statcounter with it but I didn’t know that when I set it up so I’ll stick with it.

My Wordpress blog site will be a destination site, providing tips, tricks and resources for people in my niche. It is not designed to be salesy (did Ed make that word up?) it is designed to be a place where people in my niche come back regularly.

My Web 2.0 content is designed to increase my weblog’s rank in Google. I’m not concerned with getting my hubpages article into the top 10, I simply want my blog site to get to the #1 or #2 spot so that is my only focus.

What about content? I have studied each one of the content hosting sites (hubpages, squidoo, etc) so that I can make sure my content is relevant and valuable:

So there you have it…. Mike’s Strategy for success with details.

I’m kicking around the idea of showing you exactly what I’m doing set-by step using my actual niche and articles.

In order to make it worth my time and effort I need to know that it will be useful for you guys so let me know what you think.

Think critically

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Let’s rock!

It took me all day but I’ve got my plan. Got yours?I deleted my spammy blogs and all social site references to them. I also deleted the social bookmarks that pointed to my killer niche’s Tumblr page. I did a lot of deleting today but in the middle of it all it hit me.

I’m still in great shape!

In my never ending quest to stay ahead of the game, I produced a couple of Hubpages articles that didn’t point to my tumblr page. I also wrote a ezine article that I hadn’t submitted yet so I can modify that and submit it tomorrow. Oh, did I mention the Squidoo lens I put up Friday?

The only thing left to do is re-establish my niche’s blog somewhere but I still haven’t decided where. I’m mulling over the laundry list of options and I will pick one tomorrow. By Monday, I WILL be back in Google, not spamming but providing value!

I love adversity! This set back is only going to make us stronger. Think about it, aren’t you going to make sure you content is solid now? The spam levels will be dramatically decreased once we emerge from this set back.

The only reason why I am still in good shape is because I stayed focused on my goals.

I will continue to work hard, produce quality content, generate traffic and provide them value.

What are you going to do?

Think Critically……….

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Save your content

If you aren’t already reading Mike Mindel’s Blog, you need to subscribe now!Here is a great post about saving the content from your suspended Tumblr blog.

Check out the post here.

After you are done saving your content, sit down and write down your goals. Why are you doing the 30 Day Challenge?

Write them down, be specific, be realistic and post them near your computer. We are down but definitely not out!

Think Critically…….

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