Thirty Day Challenge 2008 Action List

Join Thirty Day Challenge for free if you haven’t yet done it, so you can follow along.

After some thoughts, I’ve decided to make a compact version, sort of the checklist for Thirty Day Challenge participants. You can go through the list quickly and check if you have anything missing in your step and take action accordingly.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy it.

Preseason

Week 1
1. Install Flock 1.2.x
2. Setting your Flock’s preferences / options

Week 2
1. Tweak Flock to make it faster
2. Install all the extensions / add-ons
3. Sign up to Twitter
4. Become familiar with it, subscribe to Ed’s and Dan’s Twitter

Week 3
1. Setup TwitterBar in Flock
2. Install Adobe AIR and Twhirl
2. Connect Twhirl to your Twitter account
3. Start using Twhirl (and don’t forget TwitterBar!)

Week 4
1. Sign up to YouTube
2a. Subscribe to http://youtube.com/eddale (feed or YouTube or both)
2b. Pick other viewing options if YouTube is not available (Revver)
3. Get 10 niche ideas — avoid judgment
4. Get a Google Account (for Google Reader)
5. Set Flock to use Google Reader for feed subscription
6. Familiarize yourself with Google Reader
7. Practice adding feeds from Twitter and Google News search
8. Start looking for RSS feeds everywhere you go
9. Use the Google Reader secret (the All items view)
10. Set and customize your Google Reader account
11. Import your feeds (if available) into Google Reader using OPML
12. Use discovery in Google Reader to find related feeds
13. Join Stumble Upon
14. Start stumbling!
15. Play with StumbleUpon (SU) toolbar
16. Learn how to use YouTube to view video effectively

Week 5
1. Subscribe to Ed Dale’s Google Subscribed Links
2. Try different searches to get a feel of it

Week 6
1. Sign up with FriendFeed
2. Add Twitter, Google Reader shared items and other services into FriendFeed
3. Browse around, interact and discover the room functionality
4. Add Thirty Day Challenge room in FriendFeed
5. Learn how to contribute to the room

Week 7
1. Start using FriendFeed
2. Learn how to use filters and search options in FriendFeed
3. Subscribe to RSS feeds from FriendFeed for things you want to track
4. Learn about FriendFeed room (for your 30DC team)
5. Change your signature lines in 30DC to comply (a quote + FriendFeed)

Week 8
1. Learn about Kiva and why it is matter for 30DC
2. Find and join a team
3. Organize local meet-ups
4. Invite others to Thirty Day Challenge
5. Choose your video consuming experience
6. Set your PC and/or to be ready to view 30DC videos

Thirty Day Challenge Training

Day 1 — Introduction to the Thirty Day Challenge 2008
1. Learn the Research, Traffic, Conversion and Product model
2. Make sure you’ve gone through preseason (especially Twitter)
3. Come up with 5-10 ideas
4. Setup Google alerts for your ideas / grab the RSS feeds

Day 2 — Unleashing and Using the Market Samurai
1. Download and install Market Samurai
2. Watch the videos to make sure you’re not banned in Google even temporarily
3. Follow along and use your own niche keyword from Day 1
4. Repeat for all your ideas (pick only 2-3 of best ideas)
5. Learn how to do keyword research manually if Market Samurai doesn’t work

Day 3 — Competition Analysis
1. Use Market Samurai’s SEO Competition module to analyze competition
2. Learn how to use alternative method using SEO for Firefox
3. Pick one keyword that meets traffic, page competition and optimization criteria

Day 4 — Finding Stuff to Sell and Test
1. Find a few affiliate products (in ClickBank or Amazon)
2. Write your first slippery copy (use product description, etc.)
3. Grab your own unique affiliate link
4. Resize product image to 150 pixels across (with Picnik)

Day 5 — Creating Your Content
1. Find articles and blog posts
2. Analyze interesting articles for authority
3. Stay on the edge and find article ideas from feeds in Google Reader
4. Create your own content with attribution method (5-10 articles)

Day 6 — Build Your Own Blog with WordPress Direct
1. Choose your route (independent domain or sub-domain)
2. Signup and setup your own domain plus hosting if applicable
3. Sign up for WordPress Direct
4. Build your very first blog
5. Add your first content to the blog
6. Add your affiliate offer (image and text) to the sidebar

Day 7 — Setup Tracking
1. Sign up and add Google Analytics to your blog via WordPress Direct
2. Create your tracked link with TDC Stats Tracker
3. Adding tracked link to your blog (affiliate offer and article content)

Day 8 — It’s Time to Open for Business
1. Learn how to use Social Marker effectively
2. Submit your blog post to Propeller, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter and StumbleUpon

Day 9 — Introducing Yourself to the Neighborhood
1. Learn how to find authority sites to contribute
2. Get more backlinks by participating in forums, groups and other social places ethically
3. Check if your site has been indexed using the site: operator

Day 10 — Rest Day, and One Small Thing
1. Submit your blog and RSS feed with TDC RSS Submitter
2. Play catch up or enjoy your day!

Day 11 — Create a Squidoo Lens
1. Create Squidoo lens for your main micro-niche keyword with 5 modules
2. Submit the Squidoo lens to 5-10 social sites with Social Marker

Day 12 — Create a Hub page
1. Learn how to comply with HubPages terms of service
2. Create a Hub related to your main keyword phrase and link to your blog
3. Submit the Hub to 5 social sites with Social Marker

Day 13 — Analyze Google Analytics Data
1. Find out where your traffic comes from
2. Look for keywords people use in search engines to come to your site
3. Write a few more articles and content

Day 14 — Create Your Tumblr Blog (Skip This!)
1. Create and customize your tumbleblog
2. Post at least one blog post to Tumblr

Day 15 — Build Web Pages at Weebly
1. Create web page(s) in Weebly and link to your blog
2. Load blog’s RSS feed in Weebly’s web page content

Day 16 — Write an Article (or more) for EzineArticles
1. Read the Terms of Use and Editorial Content for EzineArticles
2. Write a compelling article and submit
3. Learn new features in WordPress Direct

Day 17 — Rest Day
1. Rest day (play catch-up)
2. Learn how to check rankings for your keywords effectively in Google

Day 18 — It’s a Decision Day (D-Day)
1. Determine your blog ranking
2. Assess your traffic level
3. Decide if you want to switch to another affiliate product offer
4. Decide if you want to start over in a new niche

Day 19 — Theory of Traffic and Online Business
1. Learn the concept of traffic in online business
2. Find the lowest hanging fruit in traffic acquisition strategies
3a. Prepare for Google Pay Per Click (AdWords)
3b. If this is not for you for any reason, keep getting backlinks or rinse and repeat

Day 20 — Google AdWords Basic
Pay per click is optional but very powerful. If you don’t want to take this route, you can continue building links or rinse and repeat.
1. Sign up for a Google AdWords account
2. Create your first AdWords ad for your main keyword

Day 21 — More about Google AdWords
1. Monitor your AdWords stats
2. Use Market Samurai to find more relevant keywords that have AdWords traffic
3. Create new ad groups for each of the found keywords
4. Create different ad variations (2-3) so you can start split testing

Day 22 — Manage Your AdWords Account
1. Learn the concept about peel & stick, CPC, CTR and ad positioning
2. Make decision based on your ads
3. Find out about conversion tracking

Day 23 — Autoposter and Q & A
1. Learn the new autoposter feature in WordPress Direct
2. Find out the reason why your site hasn’t been indexed, why ranking shuffles, etc.

Day 24 — Rest Day and Read Copywriting
1. Rest day and play catch up
2. Read provided copywriting material from Underachiever

Day 25 — The Decision Day Part 2
1. Assess your traffic and affiliate offer
2. Decide to build out to start over

Day 26 — AdSense, CPA, and Other Monetization Options
1. Add AdSense if appropriate to your blog
2. Know other possibilities to monetize your blog, such as with CPA or selling the site

Day 27 — Broaden Your Keywords
1. Research for more long tail keywords with Market Samurai
2. Find more keywords from Google Analytics report
3. Categorize your keywords so you can create content related to each of them
4. Using WordPress Direct to create high quality content (or do it manually)

Day 28 — Get More Links!
1. Use OnlyWire to submit post-level pages
2. Find Squidoo lenses related to your niche automatically using Market Samurai
3. Learn about pingback and engineer links using it

Day 29 — Get Off-Page Authority Links
1. Find Yahoo Answers related to your niche, so you can answer and get links
2. Use Market Samurai to find .edu and .gov discussion boards to get links
3. Learn how to use different options in Market Samurai to get authority backlinks

Day 30 — Common Mistakes Marketers Make
1. Learn common mistakes in each phase of the symphony of four parts
2. Avoid the mistakes and increase the chance of success of your business

Day 31 — Conclusion and Final Words
1. What’s next? What do you need to do post 30 day challenge?
2. Consider supporting Kiva, the charity that TDC supports

Return to Thirty Day Challenge.

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