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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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… 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,

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So I just woke up and saw that neither of my four tumblelogs were ranked, although one of my posts on Netscape was listed. A little disappointed, even if I would never expect to be listed in less than 24 hours. But this isn’t what I was afraid of.

While using SocialPoster, I noticed something. I noticed a lot of other tumblelogs on all of the social bookmarking sites! It seems the one problem of having a huge turnout for the 30 Day Challenge, aside from the increased bandwidth usage, is that when Ed posted Rob’s Tumblr and SocialPoster videos there would be a huge surge of freshly created Tumblr sites posted on the major social bookmarking sites.

It appears I’m not the only one who noticed this. The funny thing is early yesterday morning, just hours after the SocialPoster video was put up and before I was even finished all my tumblelogs, IndianPad banned Tumblr links from being posted.

The problem is that you have all this tumblespam on Digg, Reddit, Netscape, etc. which is getting very little “love” except from teammates and a few other fellow 30DC’ers. Most tumblelogs don’t have much in the way of content, while there are some that really do a good job of using great, even “sticky” content in just a few posts. Unfortunately most of those get buried in the deluge of other tumblelogs on the social bookmarking sites.

This publicity is also turning Tumblr into the next Squidoo, and may get “slapped” by Google in the future. Although a more likely scenario that could happen before the end of August is Tumblr deleting the blogs with the least valuable content on them. And seeing how almost everyone is posting a couple times and just leaving their tumblelogs alone, that might not bode well for 30 Day challengers. In fact, I think I’ll make another post on my tumblelogs today.

This challenge is going to be especially difficult since I’m working without a team and because my goal is $100. Now that I think about it, I have less than two weeks to make $100.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, Parasite SEO, Ticks, Tapeworms, Tumbleweeds, Tumblr, Tumblespam, Tumblelogs, Blogs, IndianPad, SocialPoster, Web 2.0, Social Bookmarking, Googleslap, Content

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Just a few hours ago, I posted on my first Tumblr blog, marking the end of the strategic phase and the beginning of the tactical phase. We’ve laid the plans as per Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and now we wage war!

It is a battle against ourselves, against laziness and lameness, and tap into our potential. It is a battle against the internet, an unforgiving environment where you will find some of the most unsavory characters that have ever traversed the web. It is a battle against all odds to reach our goals before the month’s end.

I’m all open. All out on the internet now. I’m still finishing up my last two tumblelogs. I’ve submitted my completed tumblelogs to a whole slew of social bookmarking websites, not necessarily to get traffic, although that would be a bonus, but to get Google to notice my blogs and rank them quickly.

The tumblelog-building process has been enjoyable to say the least. My original plan of 2-3 posts ended up being 3-5 posts. I discovered that I could easily add video content which would complement and add much more value than just my text and odd picture. I also sprinkled affiliate links here and there. One potentially “killer” keyword phrase has about 34 000 results, but 400 daily searches according to GTrends. If I can even hit the top 10 I’m sure I could get a nice juicy slice of that traffic.

I also noticed that I’m probably going to have some friendly competition with fellow 30DC participants in a couple of my niches. I hope they can settle with being #10 as I steal 1st place on the SERPs. :p

Today is a good day, and if I get ranked and start getting some traffic, today will be quite nice.

And if I make my first sale, today will be super awesome.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, Tumblr, Affiliate Marketing, ClickBank, GTrends, Google, Genghis Khan, Sun Tzu, Art of War

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