Thirty Day Challenge 2008 — Make Money Online Starting from Scratch

Just a quick update, I decided to participate in Thirty Day Challenge this year, which is the fourth year of this event. So, expect me to blog about this in the upcoming month. (The challenge will be started in August 1st, so if you want to participate, you still have time.)

This year is quite different thought because this year there is a pre-season, designed to help participants to warm up for the challenge.

Here’s the video of the pre-launch. Watch the…

This year’s challenge will use Flock as a browser. It is using the same engine as Firefox, but with built-in support for social media, which is awesome.

Download the video from the Thirty Day Challenge training area and watch Ed guides you through the features and installation.

Note: The demonstration is performed in Mac, but you can apply it easily to Windows machine or even Linux.

Go ahead, install yourself a copy of Flock… I’ll wait here.

Done? Good.

Let’s continue with the second video, which…

You need to login before you can access the members area of the Thirty Day Challenge. A tip: It doesn’t have a feature to remember your password so make sure you have the information handy all the time. Choose password that is secure and easy to remember.

After successful login, you will be landing in the Dashboard, where you can see the pre-season training.

The archive training for the 2007 Challenge will be (as of this writing, already be) taken down to make…

The second week of preseason teaches you how to enhance and speed up your Flock browser. It also introduces Twitter, what Ed claimed (in the preseason video) to be the biggest things to hit the Internet during last year. Both of them will be crucial to the Thirty Day Challenge.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Making Flock Faster

1. Type about:config into the address bar at the top and wait for the page to load
2. In the filter type network.http
3. Locate the strand called network.http.pipelining and…

Twitter is hyper critical for Thirty Day Challenge 2008. Ed believed it is the biggest thing to happen to Internet marketing this year. Veterans have started playing with Twitter last year and found it very effective. It is now a major communication tool.

Download the video.

For start, go to Twitter home page. To quote from Eric Nuzum:

If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, it is one of those things, like MySpace, that sounds totally ridiculous and stupid when you first hear…

This training presumes that you already have a Twitter account. Please follow the instructions on Sign Up to Twitter if you haven’t done so.

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Once you’re done with it, at least you should have known how Twitter web site looks and operates. There are so many better ways to be using Twitter than coming back to the web site. The beauty of Twitter is that you don’t have to interrupt what you are doing to post something in…

Using Twhirl is an important deal. When using Twitter for marketing and communication among team, it is critical that you use the right tool. One of the most important part of Twitter is that it is an amazing tool only if you use it properly. There are a lot of misinformation about it.

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Twhirl has a float feature. The application greys out, sort of become transparent when it is not the active application. It comes back into focus…

(Read the first part of Using Twhirl if you haven’t done so.)

By now, you should be ready to experiment a few things yourself, but here are some important features.

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The envelope icon at the bottom of Twhirl allows you to access all of your direct messages, sort of like personal inbox for Twitter. Look at the screenshot below.

Direct message, which this button is for, is useful when you need to reply to people (perhaps someone in your team)…

The reason for this preseason is to prepare you with the tools and let you get started upfront so you don’t have to take the steeper learning curve when the actual Thirty Day Challenge IV is started in August 2008.

What you will see during preseason is nothing compared to the real TDC. In recent weeks, you are just getting the basics on how to use the tools, not the marketing or business aspects.

In Thirty Day Challenge, you are going to…

Today’s lesson is going to blow you away, even if you are an experienced Internet marketer. It is going to save you at least one hour a day. It helps you become so much better informed and much more across your market.

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Google Reader is an RSS feed reader. Before you can use it, you must have a Google account. How do you know if you already have a Google account? Existing Gmail users and other Google’s services…

Once you sign up for an account in Google Reader, you need to fill it with the so called RSS feeds. Very unimpressive name, but RSS feeds are very important. All blogs, news sites and every major services like Twitter, FriendFeed, and a whole bunch of sites have RSS feed. It is a way to sharing information.

Simply put, it is a way for you to get completely informed about what’s going on with your particular niche right across the Internet.…

Ed has been waiting to create this video since the start of the preseason. Using the trick in this, you will save at least an hour every day. For years, Ed was a Bloglines users, including professional blogger. Google Reader may not look better than Bloglines, but Google Reader’s feature is unbeatable, especially what’s going to be revealed soon.

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How It was Typically Done

On the left hand side of Google Reader is the list of your subscription,…

This is the third part about Google Reader. It shows some other cool things about Google Reader. If you haven’t seen previous videos or walk through the summaries yet, here are the links to Getting a Google Account, Using Google Reader, and Google Reader Secret.

Here’s the video for the fourth part — Google Reader Tips and Tweaks:

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The following is the comprehensive summary of the video…

A Tour on Google Reader’s Settings

Go to your Google Reader account. Click…

Today is all about StumbleUpon. It can be very addictive so be forewarned!

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When you are in the mood of randomly come up (discover) new web sites and pages that are interesting to you, StumbleUpon is a fantastic tool to find them. What so clever about StumbleUpon is that is notices what you do like, and what you stumble, and through some algorithms, they come up with sites when you press the Stumble button, usually they are fantastic,…

With your new power and skills from the preseason, you are going to use YouTube in a whole new way.

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The first thing you need to do is sign up and have your own YouTube account. Click the Sign Up link to go directly to the sign up form.

Type in your information in the right form fields and create your account.

Alternatively, you may login to YouTube by using your Google Account, which you use to login to Google Reader.

Once…

You may think the trick in Google Reader was pretty spiffy, or perhaps the YouTube lesson let you look in YouTube in a whole different way but the absolute bombshell is going to be shown today.

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When Dan showed this particular technique in the Beechworth conference, everybody was just stunned. If you are using Internet Explorer and the link given in Ed’s email didn’t work, you should seriously get rid of it. You should be using Flock, Firefox,…

Today’s lesson will be pretty easy. It is about helping your find stuff on the Internet. First, go to the 30 Day Challenge Dashboard or use your TDC toolbar.

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All you need to do today is to click on the icon that says “Add my expertise to your Google web searches”.

The page that appears after it will look like this.

Click on the Subscribe button with the blue tick to subscribe. If you are logged into Google, you will…

FriendFeed is going to be a crucial element in both Internet marketing and outside the marketing. If you are communicating to a group of people, FriendFeed is going to be a very important tool.

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You really need to learn how to drive FriendFeed, so you should take it slowly but nicely. If you try to consume straight up, it will really get you, in terms of the volume of information it sends out.

In truth, the secret to FriendFeed…

This is going to be a big “show.” Ed is going to tell you who is going to be the top ten referrers are who are in line to win the vehicle. No, not a matchbox or joke thing, but the real deal on the road vehicle. Ed is not going to reveal the vehicle though. Lamborghini or Ferrari is so last century, Ed is talking about something this century. More on that later.

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In the first part…

This lesson is about tips on using FriendFeed. In week 7th of the TDC preseason, Ed talked about seeing FriendFeed becoming a huge database of people’s interactions on the Web.

The thing that is cleverly done is that it gives you many ways to interact with that database and alert you about things that are relevant to you. This has really significant benefits when it comes to Google and SEO rankings. Don’t panic or even worry about it, if you don’t…

Preseason now is getting very serious because there is just a little bit over a week before the real Thirty Day Challenge will start. There will be hardly any technical lesson to go. The rest is going to be about team and getting set.

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Interviews with previous successful 30DC participants and people who have extremely good experiences with 30DC will be available too. It is time to whip up the enthusiasm and get as many people as possible.

Thirty…

This is the last technical lesson and it will be an easy one. You will learn the various ways to use the videos and lessons, like what you are watching right now. You may not know a couple that you don’t know about.

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1. Good Thirty Day Challenge Training Page (YouTube)

The Thirty Day Challenge page is going to look pretty much like the preseason page, perhaps a slight change in color and a few small things. In…

I have a new announcement for you. No, not that one. I know you usually read an announcement about putting a blog on hiatus after the lack of updates for some time, but not for this one. This is my baby…

On the upcoming 30 days, I am going to focus on blogging about the Thirty Day Challenge 2008. If you want to join the challenge with me, you still have time, although it is going to be started in…

At last Thirty Day Challenge 2008 (TDC) is here. In the upcoming 30 days, you will see my progress to start a small business online from scratch. A lot of people are going to talk about their experience with Thirty Day Challenge but I’m going to offer complete details of my journey.

As I’m huge in blogging, you should expect my emphasize on using the tool to build this pilot project. If you think I already have an idea in mind…

In Day 2, the focus in on finding a niche or micro niche for the thirty day challenge project.

Keyword research is a critical part of an online business. Although you may build a business without getting traffic from organic search engines, for many bloggers search engine traffic contributes from 40 - 60 percent or even more of the entire blog traffic.

So, this is not only ideal for people who don’t have a lot of budget to burn from the start,…

Competition research in natural search engine is necessary to gauge the likelihood to rank for certain keyword. Finding the keyword with enough traffic is easy but nailing down for the sweet spot is an entirely different thing. Your aim today is to add a factor to solidify your keyword selection.

Thirty Day Challenge recommends that you have less than 30,000 - 50,000 competing pages for a phrase-matched search for the keyword. Phrase match can be better explained with an example. Let’s…

Let’s face it. The Thirty Day Challenge is about building a solid foundation for a business instead of just a hobby. Profitability is certainly not optional for this reason.

In previous days, you may have found a micro niche that meets the criteria we have set up front. Just as a reminder, the criteria are:

1. A keyword that is searched at least 6,000 times during the previous month.
2. For broad-matched search in Google, the number of competing pages is no more than…

Content is the only reason visitors come to your site. If you impress them with useful information, they may come back to your blog again. As during the Thirty Day Challenge you will be using a blog to build your site, you also give the readers RSS feed to subscribe to. To no surprise, they will only subscribe if you have the right content.

It is important to realize a blog is just a tool. You don’t carry around a hammer…

Building and using a blog are of the easiest parts in building a blogging business. The resources to help you build a blog is enormous. As long as you follow the instructions carefully, you will be able to do it. Using it is even easier. If you can use email, you will be able to get your content up online with a blog.

Because Day 6 will be quick, you should make sure that you have gone through the previous days…

Day 7 is really simple. All you need to do is to install Google Analytics on your blog so it starts tracking web visitors. The ad tracking link is used to monitor if your affiliate products are clicked by the visitors.

Once you have those kinds of insights into your site / blog, you can start improve things accordingly. If you find that you’ve successfully made a lot of visitors click on your affiliate link or image, you know that you…

The second week of the Thirty Day Challenge is about the second part of the magnificent symphony, which is traffic. No matter how good your content is, without proper promotion, you won’t be able to get it off the ground.

Traffic is important to any web site, and with the right content and product offer, you will be in profit quickly.

There is more than one way to get traffic. Because one of the main sources of traffic for this year Thirty…

Today is the time to get others know about your blog. This may be as simple as telling your friends, family members or colleagues about your new site. Basically, you want to go where your target market hangs out and let them know that you exist. Because in this challenge we focus on online promotion methods, you need to identify places to reach people via the Internet.

Here are just a few ideas for blog promotion:

1. Google groups and Yahoo groups
2. Discussion boards…

After ten days, this is the first official rest day. If you are still behind, it is time to play catch-up. Otherwise, just enjoy the day.

With several promotions taking place yesterday, now you should check to see if your blog starts to be indexed in Google, Yahoo or other search engines.

The site: operator is useful for this. It works in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

site:example.com

If you see one or more entries in the search result, congratulations, you are in Google’s index now.…

Over the years, Squidoo has developed into a very popular site for anyone to create a lens and become an expert in a particular topic.

What is a Squidoo lens?

A lens is one person’s view on a topic that matters to her. It’s an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, your eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and oh so much more. That way, when someone is looking…

HubPages is another Web 2.0 property that works much like Squidoo. Although HubPages is better according to some marketers, being the first is an important marketing strategy. Often that makes the name a household name. This is certainly an interesting marketing lesson in an by itself. However, that’s not the purpose of this post.

First off, what is a Hub?

A Hub is a rich web page that you write and design. Each time you want to write another article, you’ll create…

Today is an easy one. There are two main things that have to be done. The first one is to familiarize yourself with ad tracker, and another one is to install Google Analytics, a free web stats and web analytics service with business-grade features.

If you have done so in Thirty Day Challenge Day 7, you should now have the data you need to at least see what’s going on your site.

It takes a bit of technical skill, but if you…

Thirty Day Challenge finally decided to skip Day 14. That gives the fellow challengers more time to catch up and do more of whatever they’ve been taught to do. Day 14 was actually about Tumblr, but like in 2007, Tumblr disabled / banned accounts created by 30 Day Challenge participants once again.

The reason behind this is inappropriate content that is against their terms of use. Like last year, a lot of people go frantic.

What’s my stand on this? Perhaps, to…

Weebly is a popular service to create web site easily. The interface is easy to use. It doesn’t require any additional software installed on your computer. As long as you can point and click, you can use Weebly.

You can create a free web site and blog using Weebly, but unless you upgrade to Professional, there is no way you can remove the promotion link in the footer.

In Thirty Day Challange, you are going to use Weebly to create a simple…

Day 16 in Thirty Day Challenge has a special place in my heart. Since 2005, I’ve been an active article writer and marketer. Back then, I really struggled with this one. It took me at least 4 hours just to finish a 300-word article. I didn’t know what it was about me, but it happened.

Those days are long gone though and now I’m regularly writing 10-20 articles every single day, not including updating this blog and contributing to other blogs…

Rest day is a great day to play catch up. With more lessons that are already available to you, you can progress at your own pace and finish a few days worth of the challenge in a day.

Over the last week, you have used various Web 2.0 sites to drive inbound links back to your blog. The purpose it to get your links into sites that are already visited by Google. When the search engine spiders find the links, they…

Decision day is coming. With the free promotion that you’ve done so far, your blog should have traffic. How many visitors you get on a daily basis depends on many factors. If your chosen micro niche has little competition, you may be able to rank quite well in Google in only a few days and traffic may come quickly.

However, for some people, it takes a few days just to have their site indexed. After it, if the keyword is relatively…

Although traffic is just one variable in the equation to create a successful business online, it is an important one. Assuming that everything is the same, the more traffic you have, the more business you get.

Ed Dale and the team are doing a great job in discovering a way to test a niche with natural search engine — which means anyone can spend zero dollar if they don’t want to spend money — to jump start a business.

Although the system…

Google AdWords is an independent topic of its own. If you have the budget, you can start testing a product or a niche in 10 minutes. That’s how powerful Google AdWords can be.

On the other hand, if you are not careful enough, you may shoot yourself in the foot. There were stories of people who wake up in one morning just to find that AdWords charged them thousands of dollars. Well, there are a lot of advertisers who are spending…

The lesson for Day 21 includes adding more ad groups and split testing ads. Based on the principle in Day 20, you are going to take it one step further. In fact, it is the only thing that successful AdWords advertisers on a regular basis if they want to squeeze more out of their advertising campaign.

If you’ve heard about Google Slap, it has something to do with quality score. Recall from Day 21 that Google wants good user experience. There…

In Day 22, based on the data you’ve got from advertising in Google AdWords, you adjust the Maximum Cost Per Click (Max CPC) accordingly, add and delete keywords and add conversion tracking, if you want to get a bit technical.

Rather than repeating what’s already in Thirty Day Challenge, allow me to broaden the discussion a bit. Let’s talk a bit about building an online business instead of money maker.

My approach to online business is a bit different from the Thirty…