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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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!

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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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… 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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I’ve picked my final six niches, but I’m going to focus most of my efforts into the best three over the next few days. This is because most of my niches have two keyword phrases pulling 40+ searches a day. At 3 mini articles per phrase (6, actually!), that adds up. But hey, when I get back later tonight and start on these mini articles I may end up speeding through them and catch up entirely.

Today’s video taught me nothing new, but I loved the teaser at the end showing Ed’s Tumblr blog as eighth on Google. I checked it a few minutes ago and it’s sixth. Not bad indeed.

I smiled when he was going through ClickBank. I’ve used it in the past and made a few sales, but never made the minimum five sales, at least one with Visa and one with MasterCard, that you need to make before ClickBank can start sending your cheques. Below is an actual screenshot, only edited to make it fit the blog post. Yes, these are my actual ClickBank earnings.

Note the “LOL.” After a few months of no sales activity, ClickBank starts removing $1.00 every pay period. Perhaps after this month I’ll have better success with ClickBank, using FREE traffic. I spent (i.e. wasted) almost $50 in PPC ads. Nowadays I never use paid advertising. After I make some more money, I’ll reinvest it in some PPC arbitrage projects.

I’m already tinkering with the idea of using the “GTrends” technique to identify keywords that I could use to get more search engine traffic to my other blogs. Currently, they receive very little SE traffic, and in the case of two of my other four blogs, they get nothing. I could do this with maybe two of my blogs which are very “niche.” Tomorrow, when I make updates for my other blogs for the next week (takes a few hours for all of them) I’ll do some keyword analysis.

Technorati Tags: 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, Affiliate Marketing, ClickBank, Earnings, LOL, Funny, Actual Screenshot, GTrends, Google Trends, Technorati Tags

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As frustrating as internet marketing can be, the community can be very encouraging and inspiring.

I read a blog post at 45n5 on how to make money blogging and I think it’s a great supplemental resource if you want to earn money as a blogger.

The one thing I’m not so sure about is his suggestion to not go for small niches but go for a broad, competitive topics. I suppose it makes sense, since there is definitely money to be made and it would be easier to keep writing content i.e. blog about baked goods vs. a Louisiana apple pie blog. But I’ve always been taught to go for the small, the untapped niches.

His step-by-step plan focuses more on frequently writing great content with the aim of getting others to link to you. Also, the goal is to profit $600 per month from three blogs in about a year. That will take a lot of work and patience, but it’s very reasonable. When I start my blog project I will refer back to this post.

The 30 Day Challenge podcast and video was posted yesterday. I’ve already sized up the demand and competition for over a dozen niche markets. I’ve narrowed down the choice of niches for my pending blog project, and I plan on having the first blog live with a nice first post by tonight. My news blog is coming along nicely.

Oh, and if you’re using StatCounter, or any visitor tracking tool, look for something that will block your visits from being counted. I just found out yesterday that StatCounter has such a feature in the configuration settings ( ) where you can select “Create blocking Cookie,” which will prevent your visits from inflating your visitor count.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Blogging for Money, Blogging, StatCounter

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I’ve mentioned before that I may use the techniques or strategies taught in the 30 Day Challenge in other developing or ongoing internet marketing projects that I’m working on. I’ve already started.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the Day 3 materials, which have been held back until they get another dedicated server up and whatever else they need to do to deal with the increased load. Anyhow, I’ve been working on other projects but nothing is getting me nearly as hyped than the 30DC. I got impatient and started working on some rudimentary market research. Up until now all we have done is use various resources to brainstorm ideas, niches.

What I am starting to do, and what I hope Ed goes into greater detail today, is see which niches are good and which ones are duds. I’m going to take one of these niches and use them in an upcoming blog project that I’ll run parallel to the 30DC (assuming we won’t be focusing on blogging in the 30DC). Essentially, I want to build a blog that will dominate the SERPs for a certain keyword phrase. Not necessarily make huge earnings, but actually get some SE traffic. I’ve been using a combination of Wordtracker and SEO Book’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to see how often related keywords are searched, and how many other sites I’d be competing with. I’ve found some really nice keywords that have little competition, two of which actually have no competition whatsoever.

The problem with the latter is the tool at SEO Book doesn’t show anybody searching for these keywords. Also, the potential traffic is so low (but I’m guaranteed to get it it all) and I’m not sure how I would actually go about making money with these keywords that previously turned up zero results. What would you do in a situation like this? In this case these are physical products that a few people are searching for but there are literally no SE results for them. I can’t really sell these products because when I search for them, nothing turns up! I may be able to use the keywords on a more general blog in this niche, so I can at least catch this little bit of traffic and they get a website that is related to their search (i.e. they search for “Louisiana apple pies” and find a website about apple pies).

The point is, some of my smallest niches, if I choose to build some kind of web presence, shouldn’t be too difficult to get on the first page of SE results. I’ve inadvertently done it with other blogs in broader niches for short periods of time, there’s no reason why I can’t intentionally do it in a focused microniche.

I hope Ed goes through how to test niches today so I can start working through my list and actually use them!

Technorati Tags: SEO, Search Engine Optimization, 30 Day Challenge, 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, Niche, Keywords, Market Research

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I was perusing through the warrior forum when I saw a thread on making $1 a day. I was inspired to set up a new mini goal for August, which is to consistently earn $1 a day online by August 31. The key word there is consistent. I might be able to make a sale with one of my sponsors, giving me $30 and giving me an average of $1 a day for a month. But I want to actually make $1 a day, every day.

This is will probably be even harder than earning $100 online in the whole month because the goal is to keep earning. Maybe the 30DC can help me reach this bonus goal, but I won’t limit myself to just 30DC techniques and income strategies.

Why only $1? Because it’s a very small number, and because it’s so small, I may be able to set up a system that generates $1 on autopilot, or with very, very little maintenance. If I can set up a $1/day autopilot system, then who is to say I can’t build 99 more autopilot systems, earning me $100 a day? I’ve been looking into click arbitrage or autopilot pay-per-lead (from sponsors on CJ) although I have no idea how to actually get down to setting up the latter.

Now I’m just waiting for Day 3’s podcast and videos!

Technorati Tags: Online Income, Internet Marketing

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