Module 1: Day 3 – Keyword Traffic and Competition
Day 3 – Keyword Traffic and Competition
Dan Raine explains traffic and competition based on both broad and phrase match data, as well as defines the difference between these two factors.
My experience on keyword research and analysis only makes use of the exact match data. I did not quite understand the significance of using an exact match data except for the fact that it gives us a search result specific to the topic in research. For example, if we type in the Google search bar the words credit cards in quotes (“credit cards”), Google will give us the number of pages that has only the words credit cards in the correct order, no words in between.
Traffic
Traffic estimates come in the form of exact, phrase, and broad matches. Dan clearly explains the difference among these three types of matches as well as the traffic potential of each type. It is my first time to understand that an exact match data has only a short term traffic potential, while a phrase and broad match data show medium and long term traffic potential, respectively. Since Google returns different traffic estimates for each type of match, these data will help us determine the estimated number of traffic a keyword or phrase can give us in the future and for how long.
Dan recommends using the broad match to determine the traffic estimate for a keyword or phrase that we are trying to target as it is the long term traffic potential that is most relevant in deciding which keyword or phrase to use for our niche.
Competition
On the other hand, Dan suggests that we use the phrase match, which is said to be the keyword phrase in quotes, to evaluate the competition. Using a broad match to study the competition returns results that are not that related to the keywords or phrase as majority of the pages presented only contain the word in a phrase in no particular order or relevancy.
Action for The Day
In this day, there is nothing much we need to do but simply to understand the two concepts, TRAFFIC and COMPETITION. Again, to reiterate what Dan says, when we want to look at the traffic for a particular keyword, we look at the broad match data. On the other hand, if we want to check the competition, then we look at the phrase match data.
So, that’s it for now.
Module 1: Day 2 – Finding Market and Niche Ideas
Day 2 – Finding Market and Niche Ideas
In this Day 2 of The Challenge we are going to find niche ideas by following the methods that are discussed or presented in the training video.
So we are taught in The Challenge that the best place we can get ideas for a market or a niche is a bookstore or places that sell magazines. Dan Raine explains why magazine is a great starting place. This is because if there is already a magazine about a particular topic, there sure is a market for it. Magazines focused only on markets but not niches, e.g. wedding magazines, golf magazines, or sports magazines. The content, on the other hand, is where we can find niche ideas.
Ads in Magazines
Our starting point with magazines is what the ads are selling. Basically, where there are adverts there are micro niches. We can pick our niches from ads that occupy a whole- or a half-page space in the magazine, and see what keyword research say about them. Another method is simply to take a subject from any ads in a magazine and come up with topics that are related to the subject. When searching for a niche, it’s not just about taking the niche that first comes to mind but by exploring further for more related ideas.
We can also get ideas for our niche from ads that stay in the magazines for months and months. Obviously, the reason why company spends money on these ads is because there is a demand and people are buying these products. Dan also shows us how we can get great ideas by looking through the articles in magazines as they show what the readers are interested in.
Amazon, Squidoo and eBay Pulse
More areas where we can look for niche ideas are from online sources such as Amazon.com, Squidoo, and eBay Pulse. We can look for ideas from the magazine section or the bestsellers in Amazon, the top 100 Squidoo lenses, and popular searches at eBay Pulse.
Any topic we choose will always cover a vast range of niches and micro niches that we can explore further. We have to take in mind that starting a business online does not always have to be selling products or services. You can be selling information and advertizing as well. Blogging and commenting about a micro niche also make up a great business itself.
Action For The Day
For today in The Challenge, we are to identify seven market or niche ideas from the methods above that we will be investigating further in The Challenge.
My Niche Ideas:
I don’t have magazines with me right now so I am using the online sources to search for my niche ideas.
- Amazon.com Best Seller -Kindle Fire, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 10.1 MP Digital Camera, Levi’s Men’s 501 Jeans
- Squidoo Top 100 – Laptop Bags, Best HDTVs for 2012, Best iPad Cases For Kids And Teens, Simple Affordable Little Girls Easter Dresses For Spring & Summer, Twilight Movie Themed Bedding & Bedroom Decor
- eBay Pulse – iPod touch, iPhone 4, headphones, iPad, Samsung Galaxy S, PS3, mens watches
Module 1: Day 1 – What is a Niche
Day 1 – What is a Niche
Day 1 of the first module of The Challenge is all about learning and understanding some key terms like market, niche, and micro-niche.
Let’s recall that the goal of The Challenge is for us to make that first dollar online and to do that, first thing we need to do is finding a niche to focus our efforts on throughout The Challenge.
Dan explains to us clearly what online markets are, what niches are and how they relate to markets, including micro niches, which are a further subset of niches.
A market is defined as a community of people who share a common interest in a particular subject or activity like golf, fishing, sports, or fashion. These are large topics which can be broken down further. For example, fashion can be further broken down into designer shoes, sunglasses, hand bags, designer clothings, and so on and these are examples of niches themselves. Furthermore, these niches still are a bigger topic themselves which we can break down further into what is called a micro niche. Example in fashion is designer sunglasses which can be narrowed down to Ray ban, Dolce and Gabbana, or Prada sunglasses.
Here in The Challenge we are going to drill down further into the micro niche level. The further we break down a niche into smaller and smaller niches the better chances we have in succeeding throughout the whole Challenge process.
Action For the Day
So our action for today is to list down in a notebook as many ideas we can think of and out of these ideas, we have to pick at least three and break them down further into micro niches.
My Niche Ideas
Below are some of the niche ideas I came up with:
- Cars
- Computers
- Cellphones
- Make-ups
- Nursing schools
- SEO
- Baby things
- TVs
- Appliances
- Toys
- Bags
- Pianos
Out of these 12 niche ideas, I have chosen SEO, Appliances, Baby things. Drilling down further, I have the following:
- SEO – SEO services, WordPress SEO, off-page SEO, on-site SEO, backlinking
- Appliances – Home applicances, home theatre systems, kitchen appliances, office appliances
- Baby things – Strollers, diaper bags, baby car seats, baby life vests
So, that’s it for today.
Day 7: Pre-Challenge – Getting Ready To Start
Tools and Tips for Getting the Most Out of The Challenge
Market Samurai
One of the most important tools in the whole Challenge training is Market Samurai. Dan Raine tells us a little background of what this tool is and shows us where and how we can download it free of charge for the whole duration of The Challenge.
The Challenge sees Market Samurai as the “swiss army knife” of internet marketing. It features basically everything that one needs to start an online business or set up a website from scratch. The tool includes keyword research, competition analysis, article sourcing and backlinking, and publishing content directly to your website, and more. Market Samurai is the tool to use throughout the duration of The Challenge. There is nothing to worry if you are not familiar with this software as The Challenge will guide you through.
The Challenge Forum
Also in Day 7, we are introduced to The Challenge Forum where Carrie, another person from The Challenge, shows us how we can take advantage of the forum in terms of what we put in and what we get out of it.
Here, we are shown how the forum is structured and how we can navigate around it. In addition, the rules of the forum are also introduced, and how we can best use the forum to our advantage. Carrie points out the importance of searching the subject first before posting anything about it. The reason is that there may already be a discussion about the topic and you can get the information faster this manner.
Getting in Teams
Carrie also talks about how important it is to get into a team as well as how to work with and communicate effectively with a team. Carrie also shares some free tools that are beneficial in maintaining a communication with each team member.
Ideally, an effective team has 4 to 5 members, or a maximum of 6. Within a team you share each others’ experience and progress in The Challenge and you get to learn from each other. It is recommended to meet once a week with your team.
Carrie also discusses how to download and use Skype for conferencing and meetings, as well as Google Groups, Google Docs and Dropbox for sharing files among each member of a team.
Going to Meetups
Nez, another member of The Challenge team, discusses how to plan and find meetups with people in your area as well as the importance of doing so can bring to your Challenge experience. Nez guides us through in using The Challenge Forum to find possible meetups, or how to organize one in the forum.
The shortest way of finding a meet up in your area is to search the forum by typing in your location. If there is any post that mentions your location, you can simply just take a look and check what it is about. When there is no meetup that is organized in your area yet, you can set up one by going to the Teams and Meetups section of the forum and post a new thread.
It’s suggested to schedule different dates where people can choose in case they can’t make it on a particular date. State the time and meeting place as well as include a Google map of the meeting area.
Downloading Content
Nez shows us the very simple and easy way of accessing and downloading The Challenge content right from the content page, as well as how to subscribe to the content feeds using iTunes.
Actions For The Page – For this day, our action is to download our trial copy of Market Samurai, get ourselves to familiarize The Challenge Forum, plan or find a meetup in our area that we can attend, and to make sure that we know how to download and access the training content.
Day 6: Pre-Challenge – The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts
Day 6 – The Symphony of Four Parts
In day 6 of the Pre-Challenge training, again, Ed Dale, founder of The Challenge, talks about the Symphony of Four Parts.
The Symphony of Four Parts is an important aspect of internet marketing. It starts with doing a market research followed by traffic, conversion, and finally, product. Following the order of the Symphony is very important as it is the foundation of everything you do in The Challenge training and in online marketing in general.
Market Research
Most people when they start their business begins by coming up with a product first. For example, one would like to start an online business about bikes. The question is: How many people out there are interested in buying a bike? What is wrong with this picture is that you are just guessing that there is a market on this niche. There is a better way of knowing whether there are buyers for a particular niche, and that is through Market Research.
Market research is that part of the Symphony which is often missed or overlooked. This is the most important of the four parts as this will lead you to finding the niche where people are more interested in. The Internet has made available to us several tools that we can use in doing market research, and thus saves us a lot of time, energy and effort doing surveys and manual ways of doing this type of research. The Challenge recommends the Market Samurai tool as this has many features that we can use in the entire duration of The Challenge training.
Traffic
The next most important element of the Symphony following market research is Traffic. Traffic is important because it is what determines the sustainability of your business or how long will it stay in the marketplace. Traffic tells us how many people are interested in the niche that you have chosen, whether it can be generated, and if the number is enough in order for your business to stay and to make the market worthwhile. All these things can be tested and measured using the tools and techniques that The Challenge will teach us how to use and implement without spending money before we need to.
Conversion
The third part of the Symphony is conversion. Conversion is a measure of how many people are taking the actions that we want them to take when they come and visit our site or web pages, and how long do they stay in the site. Conversion is not just about how many people buy something from your site. There are other elements of conversion which includes but not limited to: where do people click, how many do sign up and become a member of your site, and how many do subscribe to your email list. The ultimate measure of conversion is the action that your traffic takes that leads to a sale or profit.
Product
And, finally, the last but not the least, is Product. This comes in many forms. Once you know the market and there is traffic to it, then you know just what products or services to sell or to promote. You don’t necessarily have to come up with your own product. You can actually be an affiliate selling a particular product. But the best position of all is that if you have your own product, you either sell them yourself or get affiliates to sell them for you. Either way, you still get an income.
As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest mistakes that people make online is to put the product first instead of doing a market research initially. That is, they come up with a product first then trying to find the market and traffic for it.
Action For The Day - Write out 10 times the The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts – Market Research, Traffic, Conversion, and Product – in the correct order just to drill in to ourselves and understanding the concept as they are the first critical steps we will take to being successful online.
So, that’s all for Day 6 – The Symphony of Four Parts.
Day 5: Pre-Challenge – Disclaimer
Day 5 – The Challenge Disclaimer
Day 5 is about The Challenge Disclaimer as discussed by Ed Dale, the founder of The Challenge. The video is meant for people interested in how The Challenge is structured, as well as serves as a disclosure between The Challenge and third parties involved.
The Challenge is a free training program and the only time that it requires the participants to spend money is to purchase a domain and a web hosting. It does not promote any of their materials and programs in the whole duration of the training.
The Challenge does not require any form of payment in order to access the training. In fact, The Challenge gets its revenues from ads that may appear on the site and use the revenues to pay for the bandwidth costs.
The Challenge also gets revenues from commissions on the sale of domain names and web hostings that are purchased through the site. In addition, it also receives an affiliate commission should the participants choose to upgrade the products or softwares from their trial versions.
The goal of The Challenge is to provide the best training program available online and it does not make any representation that one will surely earn money at the end of the program. It is how well you implement the lessons from each training module, the niche or market that you have chosen, and the effort you put in that will get you to earning your first dollar online.
So, that’s all for Day 5 - The Challenge Disclaimer.
Day 4: Pre-Challenge – Setting Expectations
Day 4 – Setting Expectations
In the fourth day of the pre-Challenge training you will be setting your expectations – What do you expect from The Challenge and what should you expect from yourself if your Challenge training is to be a success.
Ed Dale explains why The Challenge chose the goal of making a dollar. The Challenge tries to get rid of all the hype about earning big through online business simply by starting to make a dollar a day. If one is to expect earning ten thousand dollars or a million dollars after a month of work and yet earns nothing can be frustrating. So in the end, you will decide to just give up.
The success of this training relies on sticking completely on the program, by turning up and doing something everyday, and maintaining the momentum until the end of the Challenge training.
The people who are really successful in the Thirty Day Challenge, are the people who follow the steps each day. The Challenge training is about testing a niche and searching for the right combination of factors that tell you to move forward, and testing your actions from each of the modules and measuring your results. Everything is geared towards moving forward and keeping that momentum going.
You can also join a team by visiting the team section of The Challenge forum. It is suggested that you each set a goal to achieve before the start of every meeting. Start the meeting by presenting each others progress and how close you are from reaching your goal. If you are in a team, you can keep each other motivated as well as keep the momentum going.
The Action For The Day is to commit to sticking to the training and never missing a day. Spend thirty minutes a day and come up with something, keep doing it for those seven days, for those seven modules.
