The Thirty Day Challenge is officially over as of September 1, 2007, Hawaii Time, which is now. The past 31 days went by incredibly fast.

A number of people have won the challenge, most of them making their first $10 on the internet. I wish I could shake each of their hands, because truth be told, they’ve probably made more than 90% who have attempted to earn money online, ever. And they didn’t have to spend a single cent to do it.

I hate picking favourites, but Bruce on the forums has inspired me to keep going on into September. For those who don’t know, he made over $14 000 using the Thirty Day Challenge techniques on his own existing site. He also restarted part way through the challenge.

I had the goal of earning $100 online using the Thirty Day Challenge’s methods and I also had a mini goal of earning $1 a day, every day. If Ed Dale and Dan Raine could almost guarantee that a complete newbie could earn $10, I could probably do that and then some! So I upped the challenge to $100.

Oddly enough, I failed. Both goals were not met and I have yet to make that “first sale.” I made nothing, and I’m sure I’m not alone, but I did learn a few tricks (notably GTrends) that I will take with me on future projects.

What makes this even funnier is that I did make $114.06 this month, but not by using the Thirty Day Challenge techniques. This was also the largest sum of money I’ve ever earned in a single month, a personal milestone. Seeing how successful others have been and seeing that I can get the rankings and at least some of the traffic (I’ve yet to hit #1 in Google, but I’m in the top 10 for most of my niches) I will keep going on into September. What’s nice is that Ed Dale and the gang will keep the 30 Day Challenge active indefinitely, periodically adding more content and keeping the forums active due to the immense turnout they had this year.

I’m keeping the same goal, $100 by the end of September. I’m also adding a second goal of hitting $200 in my other online ventures. This will be a bit tougher since I have classes this fall, but some things are happening soon where I’ll be receiving tons of traffic in one of my projects, so I should be able to hit the $200 mark. If the traffic converts well, I may even reach my goal in the next week!

This was a great month for me online, and I hope 30 Day Challengers and other aspiring internet marketers and bloggers continue to charge into September, sword in hand!

Technorati Tags: Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, TDC, 30DC, Goals, Failure, Online Earnings, Making Money on the Internet, Internet, Serious Business, Disclaimer, New Exploits, Optimism

No matter what obstacles we meet in life there’s always a way around them, or if you’re bold enough you can always steamroll your way through those obstacles!

Take this lady from northeast China. She has no arms and yet she learned how to work with what she has to take care of herself and her family. With some of the tasks she does she’s even better with her feet than some people are with their hands!

Most of you aren’t in her situation, but maybe you feel like you’re “handicapped,” especially if you aren’t that experienced with internet marketing. If you’re doing the Thirty Day Challenge, maybe you haven’t yet made your sale or received much traffic (you’re definitely not alone!) or are losing faith in yourself. If this remarkable woman can find a way around her physical shortcomings and successfully raise a family, what the hell is our excuse?

And while I’m at it, I want to show you a smaller friend who beats the odds. Now I’m not an insect person, but the bumblebee is up there as one of my favourite insects. According to simple aerodynamics a bumblebee cannot fly, but it does so anyway, which has been the seed of legends and stories.

For buzzing about regardless of what classical aerodynamics suggests, I am officially declaring the bumblebee as the official mascot of Life Conquest.

Technorati Tags: Motivation, Inspiration, Bumblebee, Aerodynamics, Video

Even before I started the 30 Day Challenge, I was doing some blogging and working on other internet marketing projects. On an average day, I spend only 2-3 hours on the 30 Day Challenge. There were some days when I’ve worked 5-6 hours, and some days (like yesterday) when I work only an hour. So what am I up to now?

Personal blog: Life Conquest
The aim of this blog is to document and track my progress from struggling internet marketer to online superstar. I aim to update it daily, but it just doesn’t always happen. Sorry!

News blog: Small Niche
This is that news blog I started a couple weeks back. I won’t go into details about what it’s all about, but it’s in a small niche and I promote some stories using the Web 2.0 tactics I learned in the 30 Day Challenge. I’m starting to write longer summaries as opposed to 3-4 sentence blurbs for each article. Updated daily, and it takes me less than 20 minutes to post a couple stories, and the niche is so small that some days I can only find one or two relevant stories (although I could probably find more if I looked hard enough). I’ve earned a little AdSense but not much. If I can end up making a few consistent bucks a day with this blog, I’ll start another one in another small niche.

The Two “Other” Blogs
These are the two blogs I occasionally mention in my posts, which I’ve been working on since before Life Conquest went live. One blog has been active since late last year, the other since early this year. They are in two distinct niches. Unfortunately I think the niches they’re in are a little broad. The good news? I’ve used the GTrends method to siphon a little more SE traffic using a great keyword. I update both blogs 2-3 times a week. Earnings are only through affiliate programs and I’ve made $60 this month with one of those blogs.

Two Experimental SEO Blogs
These are two blogs which I’m using to test GTrends, Web 2.0, and SEO so I can get a blog up into the top 1-3 on Google for a phrase. The idea is not to set up a blog to test the market as in the 30 Day Challenge, but to set up a blog for the long haul. They are not yet in Google’s top 10. I post in both of them 3 times a week.

30 Day Challenge Blogs
I have seven of them, but I’m actively working on four. Two of them are in Google’s top 10, whereas the other two are listed but far down. I update these blogs daily with one or two posts. I try to add a lot of photos and videos to make things interesting. I find I get a lot more stumbled traffic to my video posts. I haven’t made any sales.

I track all my blogs with StatCounter. I’m going strong on blogging because it’s ridiculously easy to set up and in many cases I can test the waters with a free hosted blog. The hardest part is writing up content! I’ve done review sites and “set and forget” blogs, and blogging has been most profitable for me so I’m sticking with it for now.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, TDC, 30 Day Challenge, Blogs, Blogging, Earning Money Online, Making Money Online, Money, Internet, StatCounter, Problogger, Ka-Ching!

I’m going back to the drawing board to sift through my ideas and find some good niches with promising keyword phrases. I’m going to be even more discriminating in that I am only going to select niches with 150 or more searches a day according to the GTrends technique.

It’s been a few days and only one of my blogs is still in the top 10. I’ve received 5 visitors from Google for my phrase since it was listed, but my 75 visitor/day estimate is for the top 1-2 spots, not #7 where I’m at right now. One blog isn’t listed at all, and the others are very far down the list. I will keep updating them daily with fresh content, but I’m starting anew with at least three more keyword phrases. I’m also going to try some completely “new” publishing platforms - one for each new phrase.

In other news, Ed Dale was talking about the next steps, including creating our own product. It looks promising, but I noticed a little something, which might be nothing, but I noticed he said you could create a product in just a few hours. I’ve said before that I have no experience creating my own info product, but I doubt I could create a great product in mere hours. Maybe it would take me a couple hours after the research and planning phase. Are we talking about a 25-page $7 e-book, or a full-fledged product? I’m sure he won’t set us off to churn out a $2000 product but I hope I’m not reduced to selling $1 reports off eBay.

The last thing I want is to turn into the one thing I hate most: an e-book peddler.

If I make an info product during the challenge, I want it to be a quality product. And by quality, I mean a product that is worth every penny and then some.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, E-books, Info Products, $7 E-book

I made close to $40 yesterday, bringing me to an unprecedented $102.97, and almost all of it is going to be in my hands sometime in September, plus the $60 I earned last month. I’ve earned more in the past two months than I have in the six months prior. Things are slowly starting to pick up.

If I play my cards right, I’ll also have a juicy $100 ClickBank cheque. Unfortunately, I’ve made zilch in the 30 Day Challenge thus far. Now, only a very, very few have made anything, and we’re still only a couple days into the traffic/conversion phase, but I’ve yet to receive any SE traffic, let alone make a sale. My deleted tumblelogs are still listed in the top 10 on the SERPs *smacks forehead* and all except one of my new blogs aren’t listed, period.

Perhaps I’m a little impatient, but I have to hit this goal and time is running out. I’ve already surpassed this goal with what I’ve already been doing with my other blog projects. Something tells me I should just replicate that, But I’m not even sure what I’m doing that’s suddenly putting money in my pocket. My traffic is only marginally better than it was three months ago. This blog has enjoyed a nice surge in traffic in the last month, but what I’ve earned from Life Conquest is only a mere microscopic, tiny fraction of my total earnings.

I’ve got a birthday to attend later today, so that should give me some time to clear my mind a bit and start thinking about what to do after the 30 Day Challenge, assuming it doesn’t work out the way I had hoped.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, Earnings, Online Income, Goals, Zero, 0, Zip, Zilch, Bupkis, Naught, Goose Egg, Diddly Squat, Nil, Nothing

I can rebuild them. I have the technology. I can use a different platform to completely transform my “tumblelogs” into full-fledged something or others. Better than they were before. Better. Stronger. Faster.

I’ve created new blogs for three of my keyword phrases, and if I don’t fall asleep I’ll have the other one finished before bed.

What am I doing now?

I’m building better content. I haven’t even added affiliate links yet. I’m just trying to get listed. One of my blogs was listed at #11 and #12 for the exact and broad match phrase, respectively, in less than two hours. Still waiting for the others. I’m also using two blogging platforms. One is kind of iffy, I never heard of it before and doesn’t have that great a layout, and the other is probably going to be one of the more popular Tumblr replacements. I won’t mention their names but you can probably figure out the latter.

Each blog has at least five initial posts with decent content. I’ve mixed a lot of other media in there, including videos and pictures. I’ve actually acquired a genuine interest in one of my niches, and I think it’s really showing in my posts.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, Tumblr, Tumblrgeddon, Tumbliterated, Tumbludgeoned, Tumblrdered, Tumblelogs, Content, Better Content, Six Million Dollar Blog

Word on the forum is that Tumblr just mass deleted all the 30 Day Challenge tumblelogs. In other words, we just got F’d in the A. All my tumblelogs are gone.

Just a small setback, right? It seems we’ll have to use some other Web 2.0 territory to plant our flags. I’ll tell you straight up, though, if there is another “official” blogging platform or other free platform, I won’t be using it. At least not for most of my blogs. The mass creation and promotion of tumblelogs brought this upon us, and I won’t be following fellow 30DCers off a cliff like a herd of bison.

I had a feeling this would happen, and I’m sure a number of you did, too. I have to hand it to Tumblr, though. They did a great job of cleaning up very fast. I don’t know what they used to mass delete all of them, but unless they have a crew of people sifting through the latest created tumblelogs, they probably used something to detect affiliate links or similar system to detect our tumbelogs.

I know that Ed’s tumblelog is still around, but that might be because (if using human detection) it was built a bit before the tumblespam, or because his affiliate links are cloaked.

Don’t worry folks, it’s not the end of the world. Time to look for some free online real estate.

Technorati Tags: Tumblr, Tumblelog, 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, TDC, Ownage, Pwnage, Banhammer

… from a blog which is not affiliated with the 30 Day Challenge.

This is one of the reasons why I love internet marketing: your blog or website works and earns while you’re not around, even when you sleep. The other reason is that I can work on said blog or website in nothing but my underwear and a T-shirt.

This not only increases my August earnings to over $60, but I’ve hit my minimum payout for this unnamed affiliate program and should be expecting a $120 cheque in the mail in 2-3 weeks! This is my second cheque from online wheeling and dealing and it’s over four times bigger than the last one! I really, really, really, really, really hope that I keep getting cheques (sorry, I’m Canadian) in the mail each month, and I’m not just getting lucky. The thing is, traffic hasn’t increased much in the past few months, but I’m making more money. (Note that my 30DC goal is to make $100 solely from the 30DC, so this doesn’t count towards it.)

I’m earning more money with my other blog projects that I’ve put on the back burner since starting the 30 Day Challenge. It’s too early to say I’m disappointed in the 30 Day Challenge, because we’re just starting to get into the meat and potatoes of it.

But not everybody has been pleased with the way the 30 Day Challenge. Mark at 45n5 criticized the challenge for using parasite SEO and not really working to create something sustainable. I agree with him that what we’ve done so far isn’t really sustainable, but we’ve just started, and Ed has mentioned that there are still more things to do. Mark suggests to “Do what they do, not what they say,” but I think we are building up to what they really do, which is create and sell (or get others to sell) your own info product.

I’m going to chug along with the 30 Day Challenge, and if I don’t end up making anything, I’ve only lost a little time.

Technorati Tags: TDC, 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, Parasite SEO, Online Earnings, Internet Income, Making Money Online, Making Money While You Sleep, Tumblr, Tumblelogs, Tumbleweed, Tumblespam,