August 12, 2008 By 6 Comments

Oh It’s True, It’s True

Been watching my tweets today? No? Well if you did you would have seen that I decided to do a speed run at doing the Thirty Day Challenge up to now in one day. If I am too slack to post each day, well i can do 12 days in one and post about it.

You might think something like  “She’s a witch! Burn Her!!”, or that I am insane, or both. Hard to tell at the moment with all of the cough medicine I have been taking.  Still it might seem a big deal to some people to try such lunacy but if you have a procedure you can do anything 10 time quicker than flailing around in the dark.

For 8 years I worked for IBM and in that time I wrote dozens of procedures. I wrote them for people who had no idea what they were doing, I wrote them for highly technical people, I wrote them for managers and I wrote them for people for whom English was a second language. Procedures rock, and this is coming from someone who gets off on chaos.

The Thirty Day Challenge lays out the steps so clearly and simply that once you have done it once, you can easily replicate again. Now I don’t expect a new person to all of this to be able to do what I did in one day, but you can definitely chop in half the time it took the first time, and the time after that probably halve again.

So what did I achieve?

7am started research using Market Samurai. I picked a high end market and drilled down to a three word micro niche.  Seriously with this tool you can pick ANY word and find a niche waiting for picking. That is just what i did, picked a word out of the air that I knew would like writing about. Simple.

Stats:  Searches 2433/SEOT 1021 SEOC < 50k cheated a little because I know I can  OCI 96%

Speed Niche Before

Speed Niche Before

The SEO page shows a lot of big name sites that you would probably know that sell or link to a page selling the physical item or a variation of it.  The parts of this table I personally thing are important are the BLP  (which the competition is sorely lacking in) and the BLEG (again lacking). The on page SEO title, URL etc I can kill easily having a blog set up, rather than an eCommerce site.

7:30am I bought the domain name. Now this might interest you, or it may not, but when I have a niche term that ends in an S (Market Samurai will tell which term is searched for more) naturally say like British Bulldogs I will buy a domain that goes like this www.britishbulldogsite.com . See what i did there? BOTH search terms british-bulldog and british-bulldogs are in the domain name. Google will usually be able to figure out plurals but I like to make absolutely sure that I am SEO ready for anywhere :)

8 am Dropped kids to bus stop while DNS resolved and returned to write content and eat breakfast

8:30am Blog is up using WordPress Direct dead easy (though they still need to work on cleaning the crap out of their templates)

9 am starting sourcing affiliates from Share-a-Sale who I use for my affiliate testing stuff  (and a couple of sites that sell pretty well).  Like i said, this niche is a physical product and there were a few good affiliate deals that pay 10% or more on pretty high ticket items.

10 am Affiliate pretties added, site proof read again (to be sure, to be sure) and then the bookmarking began. I manually used Digg, which I have to admit is something i would NOT normally do, good content will mean that people will do this for you, but this was for speed … erk ends justifying the means was never my strong point, must pay back my social networking karma on that one . I also fired up Traffic Android (wait for tomorrow on that one *wink) and went to town.

11am BOOYAH!! Site is ranked 5 in broad match (I don’t really care about exact match because I look at #1 broad as THE goal). That’s the site, not any of the social bookmarks. so 4 hours from NOTHING to a top 5 raking. Shit hot stuff!

Speed Niche after ranking

Speed Niche after ranking

12 noon broke for lunch.

1pm Site moves to 4th in Google. I write more content and post a second story. Set off Traffic Android to bookmark second page in a couple of hours.

2pm Nap time…yep still sick and rest and fluids are important

4pm Wake up and check site.  Ranking is now 3 for domain name and 5 for first post awesome!

5pm read more stuff for content, spend some quality time with family and order dinner

6pm Write this blog post before going to create Squidoo page and Hub Page.

7pm Up to date with the Thirty day Challenge and have a site already dominating the search term in 12 hours.

Not a bad day all in all.  Yep, the goal is still the same with this one. Get it earning cash and then flog it off… which reminds me about a little thing i pointed out to my 30DC team mates about Market Samurai… but I will leave that post for another day.

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June 23, 2008 By 4 Comments

Scratch That Niche Itch

I remember, two years ago, while working through the Thirty Day Challenge, trying to get my head around how to brainstorm niches. My mind would immediately rate whatever I thought up as “a goer” or “not a goer” or “stupid”. I wasn’t very successful.

In the years in between I have developed an exercise to get my mind thinking in niche search terms.

Disclaimer: This is my personal way of working up niche ideas and may not work for you (if you think in different ways to me). Also, if you use any of the search terms I use here you will probably be fighting with a gazillion others who read the blog as well.

My Niche Brain Exercise Method

I set a day a “Niche Day” (as in Have A Niche Day!)

Tools: pen, paper

Time: 24 hours

From the minute I wake up I do a sense inventory. What do I see, hear, smell, touch + taste? I then continue that during the day.

To “see” niches you need to be hyper-aware of your surroundings. On Niche Day you are going to be a giant sponge absorbing everything that is around you, from the mundane to the out-of-the-ordinary. Let’s look at a few entries from my Niche Day yesterday

Hour 1

Mmmm warm doona

Shower – need hot water

Need breakfast, hungry

Get ready for Work

And so it goes on…very basic yeah?

Now break down the activities into items that you are using

doona, duvet, sheets, pillows, wardrobe, carpet, dressing gown, slippers, pyjamas, nightie, chest of drawers

hot water heater, towels, soap, shampoo, conditioner, exfoliate, shower head, tiles, steam, soap scum

breakfast foods, diet, carbohydrates, balanced diet, fruit, coffee, tea, milk

hairstyle, hair dryer, makeup, jewellry, corporate clothing,  work shoes, dry cleaning, laptop bag, cell phone…..

And it goes on. A whole lot of things that your eyes normally travel over, but don’t really notice .

I went on to do the next part of the chunking down process and came up with some viable ideas, but at this stage I will not race ahead of the thirty day challenge teachings for 2008.

So get out there and start noticing things!

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June 12, 2008 By 1 Comment

What Are You Good At?

I have been thinking about what I am good at. Using a really awful interpretation of the 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principal) I think I should be super awesome at 20% of the things that I do and  80% of my results will come from those things. To do the very best I can in life I am going to focus on those super awesome things and let the others take care of themselves.

“But” I hear you say “What about being a well rounded person? Improving those bits of you that aren’t super awesome would be a worthwhile pursuit would you not think?”

Not at this point in my life.

You see with my focus (but still not my actions) fairly and squarely on getting out of corporate life, I can’t afford to spin my wheels or spend precious time on things that aren’t going to help me right now.

During the week I watched the YouTube video of Jason Calacanis (Founder of Mahalo) talking about what he sees are the things that make-up an entrepreneur and how they can be interpreted by non-entrepreneurs. Now Jason, while he says he gets plenty of speaking invitations, isn’t really a good speaker. His passion does not translate to what he says, but despite that I still heard what I needed to hear.

I need to get REALLY focussed.

So what is it I do really well?

I can write well, not as well as I used to write, but practice is bringing it all back. I can put words down in such a style that people enjoy reading them. I can have text conversations with their minds and excite their thoughts and imaginations using a keyboard. That’s probably where 80% of my income will come from in one way or another.

I know the internet, social media, communities, forums and how to bring people together. i think I will have a pretty good shot at creating some cool mash-ups by combining what i know and can do in these areas.

I am great at planning, motivating, visualising and documenting processes/procedure and work flows.

The rest of the stuff I am good at …. well that may be a niche market I won’t write about here *wink*

Have you ever considered what you do well?

Sitting down and writing everything you do well is a great self esteem builder. This list is for YOU and no one else so you can be perfectly honest. Every single thing that you are good at can be a marketable/saleable product.

You might be an absolute wizz at cleaning the oven. Don’t dismiss such a valuable skill! How to get Your Oven Spotless :Oven Cleaning for Everyone is just what someone is looking for right this very minute. How to Test a Dodgy Radiator Hose, Dehydrating Fruit For Beginners, Cleaning Greasy Fingernails….Write that list, then add another five things to it each day. Get used to thinking about what you do well and recognising it.

You might be surprised to see that the things you are good at will start popping up everywhere. This is good news and is exactly what is meant to happen. The more you focus on your strengths, the more opportunities will present themselves to use those strengths.

Check it out for the next couple of days and just see what crosses your path.

Filed Under: Me-anderings Tagged With: , , , ,
May 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Everybody is Working for the Weekend

The weekend forecast says the weather is going to turn cold(er) over Saturday. Sounds like a great reason to pull my finger out and work on some niches I have up my sleeve.

Niche 1

This cutie of a niche will need some interaction with a programmer to make me a “thing”. The “thing” will bring traffic and while the traffic is there, they will see some cute hard products to purchase.

to-do

  • must write specs for the thing (flow)
  • grab example from else where on the net
  • write a bloody long list of words to be produced by the thing
  • look for cute blog skin

Niche 2

This niche is a how-to niche that will be based on a free how-to product with paid upgrades, a membership/forum site with page advertising. This weekend I will need to engage an “artist” to design the free how-to and upgrades.

to-do

  • write spec for artist(s)
  • look for appropriate forum application
  • look for nice blog skin

I have not used either of these business models before and to be perfectly honest i will probably get them up and running and sit on them for a while, then use them for testing site selling.

What I like about both niches is that they are both interesting and will be fun working with. Much better than my joke suggested niche (that is a perfectly viable one) about pap smears.

I will also be doing the usual weekend thing of shoving as much information in my head as possible. I have a few videos I want to re-watch from the Immediate Edge, as well as start thinking about my approach to this year’s Thirty Day Challenge.

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April 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Going With The Flow

About 18 months ago I spent a month in Bangalore training technical people how to perform the work that some of my team in back home was doing. Prior to going I had spent some time mapping out the entire process, writing work instructions and creating training presentations so that my new Indian team could survive once I left.

Last night I spent about 40 minutes mapping out the entire process I will be running the business to. Inside the map are spaces for 7 work instructions that need to be written. Once written I will probably do the training slides so that if I engage complete n00bs (like my daughter’s friends) to perform some of the work, they can learn before diving in.

One thing I did learn from my Indian experience is that I am a pretty good teacher. While others had trouble gaining the respect and attention of their groups, my group were pleasant and attentive, and seemed to enjoy the experience. I am hoping to take that into my product creating later on.

work flow

I am probably recreating what a million people have created before, but the act of creating such a flow helps me to visualise where I can inject outsourcing and where I would be performing the task myself.

keep an eye on my to-do list to track my progress as I tick each of the tasks off. At this stage the plan is May 30th to be up and running with the first pilot run of externally created sites and content.

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