The Challenge 2010

The Challenge 2010: Module 7/Day 7 – Where To From Here?

Well here it is, the end of the road. BUT The beginning of a new road. A road that you can step onto with confidence.  You see, whether your site got the final green light or not, what you have achieved is MASSIVE!

You are one of the few (compared to the 10,000's online) who actually know what to do to get started online. You realize the importance of research.

That by following a detailed process of evaluation, testing, and more evaluation, you are ensuring that what you move forward with is worth your time, whether it be a site you sell, or a site you build onto.

So what's next?!

Take a look here: What  you have learned are the most important fundamentals to build yourself a strong foundation in internet marketing. Both with your knowledge and what  you create from that.  And it is truly only the beginning.

There is A LOT more to learn, a lot more that we want to teach you,  You have actually passed your own test, You got this far. So round of applause to all reading this. In fact on your feet!

You deserve a standing ovation!

Where To Go From Here

After seven modules and a lot of effort from all involved, you are finally here. We hope that you have learned a lot and gained a lot. Now you might be asking yourself, "where to go from here?" In The Challenge you get to the point where you have tested a market. But what comes next?

You could redo The Challenge if you feel you have more to learn from our free training materials, or you might to consider looking for some paid work to utilize your new skills. Or possibly, you might want to consider taking your online marketing to the next level with one of our membership programs. Ed introduces our two membership programs, Challenge Plus and the Immediate Edge, and outlines for you what each of the programs primarily consists of.

Starting with the new look Challenge Plus, Ed walks you though the site and gives you an overview of the monthly format. In Challenge Plus the lessons are not so much step by step as they are grouped into series of content. The Challenge, lessons are delivered as videos, transcripts and even audio files.

Related Resources

You can find all of the related resources to today's content below.

Post-Challenge Webinar
Click here to register for the Post-Challenge webinar. Get in quick as the webinar room can only handle 1000 people.

Challenge Plus
Click here to find out more about Challenge Plus.

Immediate Edge
Click here to find out more about the Immediate Edge.

Handy Tip - Momentum is key. Now that you have started your internet marketing journey you need to keep the momentum going. Whether that means redoing The Challenge, signing up for one our membership programs, or finding some more training elsewhere, just keep at it. Keep refining those skills and keep learning new ones. Internet marketing can be a rewarding business but you always need to keep educating yourself as things change so fast online.

The Challenge 2010: Module 7/Day 6 – Mistakes Marketers Make

I generally like to focus on what is right. What you need to be doing to further grow your online business. However it's also important you are aware of some of the common mistakes that Internet Marketers make. So that you can avoid them for yourself:

Today, Jon Dean from Immediate Edge talks more about building back links. Some of these mistakes are through taking the wrong advice, others are from simply not listening, and deciding 'I know best'.  Whilst we can not control how Google and the online world responds to us There are some principals to follow that are going to lessen our chances of failure.

 Click here for 2nd video "Sourcing Backlinks"

How To Avoid The Mistakes Marketers Make

Today Ed talks to you about the mistakes that marketers make and how to avoid them. Learning what not to do now will save you a lot of pain down the road. Also today, Jon from the Immediate Edge shares some valuable tips on how to source quality backlinks using Market Samurai.

Every online marketer that has come before you has made mistakes, without exception. Being prepared is the key. Mistakes will be made and if you at the very least know what's coming it makes it at the very least easier to deal with.

Ed's first tip on avoiding mistakes is to be aware of the way Google works. In the online world, educating yourself and understanding how Google works is critical. When it comes to your websites there are only two factors that you are in control of. One is your SEO onpage optimization, which we have already taught you how to do in The Challenge, so one less thing to worry about there if you have followed along and implemented everything correctly.

The only other element you have control over is backlinks. The number and the quality of the backlinks that you generate for your site is only thing you can actively continue to do to keep moving your site up in Google's rankings. If you keep up with your practice of 30 minutes a day, and you use that time backlinking, you are going to move your site up the rankings. The Challenge has only scratched the surface of what is possible in creating backlinks, and we take that a step further with Jon's lesson today. As with anything, to learn move you need to keep educating yourself.

The main mistakes that occur though, are in your mind. You will have your moments of self-doubt when you get a negative result testing a market, as many of you will have experience this week. The important thing is to not let it stop you. A negative result is actually a positive as you have saved yourself months of time and effort.

The second mistake that people make is thinking that the internet marketing lifestyle is an easy or glamorous one. It's hard work. An example is between the excitement of picking a market and then getting all of that traffic that allows you to test comes the grind. You just have to dig down and get the work down that you need to do. It's a simple as that. A lot of people hit the grind period and give up. It takes discipline and sustained effort.

In Challenge Plus, another advanced program where the focus is on a lot on the fundamentals of running an online business and using your time effectively (using the clock). Which leads us to the third mistake people make. Believing that time spent in front of the computer equates to working and getting things done. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking action, writing articles, creating backlinks, they are activities that grow your business. The 30 minutes sessions you have been actively participating in during The Challenge has been focussed action, producing a result.

The final mistake that people make is that they ignore the Symphony of Four Parts. In order, market research, traffic, conversion, product. Too often people work through this out of order and hit problems. In The Challenge, we've only really covered the first three. In Challenge Plus, they cover product creation more in depth.

In Jon's lesson for today, you will find out how to source backlinks for your site using Market Samurai. By going into the Promotion Module you can choose places to find sources for backlinks from web 2.0 services, blogs and forums. All you need to do is tick the box for the sites you are interested in and click the "Find Backlinks" button. Market Samurai then goes out and returns results that are based on the keyword being researched.

Using an example, Jon shows you how to sort through the results. Every site/page returned has an "Analyze" button (or you could just click the "Analyze All" button), that will tell you if a site provides follow or no-follow links, whether the blog allows pingbacks, what the Google pagerank of that page is, and tells you how many incoming links are going to that specific page. Ideally, if you want to pass pagerank to your site then you would choose pages with the highest pagerank possible that also allows follow links.

The process for creating your backlink couldn't be easier. Just click on the link title and the site will open inside Market Samurai. You then just follow the process for creating the backlink that the site offers you, ensuring that you use an anchor text link where possible. Obviously you need to be intelligent about it and contribute to the conversation as well as creating your backlink.

Jon also shows you how pingbacks work. Simply put, pingbacks are reciprocal links where both sites benefit. On sites that allow it all you need to do is create a link to their page on your site, and in turn their site creates a link back to you. Market Samurai has features in the Promotion Module that makes finding and creating pingbacks for your site as simple as you could possibly get.

These two strategies for creating backlinks are both easy to source and easy to implement. Your responsibility though is to build backlinks in a way that both adds to the existing conversation and is always relevant to the market you are in.

Action For The Day -

1. Do a free writing activity on your view of the four mistakes that marketers make. Be honest with yourself about where you feel you are and where you can improve.

2. Use the Promotion Module in Market Samurai to get yourself a few quality backlinks.

The Challenge 2010: Module 7/Day 5 – Finding Additional Keywords

Gurubob is back in town!

And he is going to take you through some next steps you can take, if you have decided to move forward with your website: In addition, Dan Raine will talk you through some techniques for acquiring backlinks to your website.

Now, the sky, or rather the internet marketing tool box is limitless. There are many strategies you can implement for your website. Which are cover in Challenge Plus & The Immediate Edge. However within the Challenge Training, Gurubob and Dan Raine are going to take you through the most effective next steps you can take.

And the tools they use to assist with these steps: So if you have decided to move forward with your site, get stuck into it. And know that there are many, many effective strategies you can implement, that will assist with getting you more traffic and/or greater conversions.

But you have to have the foundations to build on – which is a site that
completed ALL the criteria of The Challenge 2010.

Click here for 2nd video "Backlink Strategy"

Doing More Of What Works If You Are Going Forward With Your Micro-Niche

Today's lesson covers some of your options if you find yourself in a micro-niche that you have decided to move forward with. Now that you have that micro-niche, you need to be proactive in continually putting in the effort to give your WPD micro-niche blog the best chance it has to succeed.

One of the things you can do straight away is to start posting on your WPD micro-niche blog for a wider variety of related keywords in your micro-niche. In one of today's lessons, GuruBob demonstrates how to use Market Samurai and your Google Analytics account to find those additional keywords.

When you originally researched your theme and category keywords earlier in The Challenge using Market Samurai, you used the traffic criteria set out in The Challenge. When finding additional keywords, this criteria is revised to allow more keywords to be returned in your research. These keyword still need to have sufficient enough traffic to justify writing a post or creating some content. These additional keywords are known as long tail keywords, or if you prefer, low hanging fruit for you micro-niche. Now that you have a site that is ranking in the search engines, writing and posting content for the low competition additional keywords should allow you to rank for them fairly quickly.

By using an example niche market, GuruBob outlines the process in Market Samurai to identify these additional keywords. In your keyword research module of Market Samurai you reduce the SEO traffic (SEOT) to lower number like 10 or 20. This will return keywords that less traffic per day but also less competition.

Another method for identifying these additional keywords is by using your Google Analytics account. GuruBob shows you how to look at the traffic sources for your site to find keywords. You simple navigate to Traffic Sources, and on the bottom right is a keywords column. Click "view full report" on the bottom of that column and you are presented with a list of keywords that the search engines have deemed relevant and has resulted in traffic to your site. This means that if the search engines are already sending traffic to your site for those keywords, then it makes sense to post some keyword optimized content on your site for those keywords. The likely outcome of this is to rank higher for those additional keywords and receive more traffic. This is a very clever way to slowly increase your traffic.

In the second lesson for today, Dan Raine from the Immediate Edge outlines a backlinking strategy to follow after The Challenge. This backlink building process can used if you are moving forward with your WPD micro-niche blog, or you can use it to increase the number of backlinks to your site to make it worth more when selling it on Flippa.

Backlinks are ultimately about two things, ranking and visitors. It's important to be diverse when creating backlinks. Backlinks that are spread out on a variety of sites and services, will result in your site looking a lot more natural to Google. Dan also explains the relevance of page rank and no-follow links.

Relevancy is the key to building effective backlinks. When building your backlinks, it's important for those links to be niche or market relevant. This looks natural, is natural, and is the best way to build quality, relevant links to your site. Also, when you are building these backlinks you should be using anchor text links where possible. Whatever your target keyword is should always be in the anchor text. Again, it also builds the relevancy.

Dan outlines via a diagram how your linking strategy could look over time. So far in The Challenge you have created your main WPD micro-niche site, created some third party sites that link to your main site, and have been using Posterous to keep those sites updated frequently. As Dan shows in his diagram, you can extend that network of incoming links via creating links on forums and blogs etc, remembering our earlier lessons in The Challenge about best practice when commenting on other people's sites.

The most important aspect of building your backlinks is to be natural about it. Be part of the conversation, add some value, offer suggestions or your own input. The key is to be a real person with real input. Your rule of thumb is that if you received that comment, would you think it's okay?

Actions For The Day -
1. Research additional keywords relevant to your micro-niche using Market Samurai and Google Analytics.

2. Prepare some keyword optimized content for those new keywords.

Related Resources

You can find all of the related resources to today's content below.

Market Samurai
Click here to find out more about Market Samurai.

Market Samurai Support
Click here to get support for Market Samurai.

Google Analytics
Click here to access Google Analytics.

Handy Tip - Take your list of additonal keywords that you have found using Google Analytics and add them to your Market Samurai project. Most of the time they will already be there, but occasionally you find yourself getting traffic for keywords you may have missed in Market Samurai. Analyzing those keywords will give you better idea of what kind of traffic to expect for ranking higher with them.

The Challenge 2010: Module 7/Day 4 – Managing Your Flippa Sale

Today is All-Star day. We have Caro, Danny, and then Emily from WPD all presenting on the different parts of the Flippa auction process. So I hope you listened to me, and didn't jump ahead and list yesterday? You did listen, didn't you?

Caro is taking you through how to conduct yourself in the auction. Sharing some
of her secrets to success with it. This is what can make the difference between getting the price you want, and it not selling.

Remembering though,  that the value of something is always no more, or less, what someone is willing to pay for it. As opposed to what we think it is. Then Danny is taking you through the next steps once the sale has been completed. It is actually a really straightforward process, nothing to worry about, as long as you follow what Danny says.

And then to round it out we have Marty taking you through how to transfer your WPD blog from your account to the new owners. Again, this is a straight forward process. Sometimes the 'not knowing' how to do something is what creates a bigger problem in our mind. Yet if you just keep on watching the Training on all the elements, try it out for yourself, you will see it all unfold before you.

Remember both Danny & Caro sold their first website once upon a time. So everyone starts out as a Flippa newbie. It's not big deal, so don't make the anticipation of the process worse for yourself in your mind.

Tomorrow we we will be looking at some options in greater detail if you do
decide to move forward with your site.

2nd Video click here "Completing The Sale"

3rd Video click here "Site Transfer"

Managing And Completing Your Flippa Auction

Yesterday, Danny introduced you to Flippa and showed you how to setup your Flippa account. In today's lesson you will learn how to manage the entire process for your first Flippa auction, all the way through to completing the sale and transferring your site to it's new owners, as well as what some of your options are if you decide to keep your site and stay in you micro-niche.

Caro starts the lessons for Day 4 by sharing some tips on how to best manage your Flippa auction. Caro also spends some time going through some current listings to give you an idea of what to look for and how you can approach setting up and managing your own listing.

Caro's starting tips include always being transparent (eg, using video as proof of claims you make), answering every question you get asked about your listing politely and not engaging with any rude behavior from buyers (it does happen). One crucial tip that Caro shares is to never divulge your reserve price no matter how rude, persuasive or bullying prospective buyers might be.

Other tips recommended by Caro include being aware of tire-kickers, building a professional relationship, if possible sell to someone you like, and most importantly, do a BIN (buy it now) towards the very end of the auction. Adding a BIN is a great way to extend your auction when it's nearing it's end and you're getting close to the price you would like.

Danny outlines the steps involved in completing your Flippa sale. After an auction has completed and a site is sold, the buyer and seller are both able to access the Sale Completion Area. In here the buyer and seller are able to communicate while still being inside the safety of the Flippa website. This is also where you can pay your success fees, leave feedback, and if it becomes necessary dispute the sale.

As Danny points out though, the most important part in the sales process is in the sale itself and the copy used in your sales letter. The best way to avoid any misunderstandings that result after the sale of your site is to address everything in the sales letter up front. If you are clear about what will and what will not happen after the sale is completed you can avoid confusion.

To cap off Day Four's lessons, Marty from WPD (WordPress Direct) shows you how to both transfer your blog if you have decided to sell, or if you have decided to stay in your micro-niche, manage your blogs from within the WordPress Direct interface. There are some very clever tools in WPD that make migrating, transferring or cloning blogs very easy to do.

If you have decided to sell your blog, you can easily transfer the blog using the migration tools in WordPress Direct. Marty outlines the whole process for you step by step. To make the transfer process as painless as possible, Marty has introduced some new functionality to WordPress Direct that sends you an email after a site transfer. Just fill out the review in the email and if you have any issues the support at WPD is there ready to help you. This acts as a failsafe to ensure the transfer process is as smooth as possible.

Marty also suggests listing your blog as a self-maintaining blog. Doing this means the possibility of getting a higher price for it. This is done using features of WordPress Direct not yet discussed in The Challenge. Marty shows you a few of the tools and explains what the advantages of each are. The content software is only available to paid WordPress Direct accounts.

If you have decided to keep your blog and stay in your micro-niche, WordPress Direct allows you to expand your blog coverage of keywords. With this approach you can easily clone your existing blog and then edit it to support your new target keywords or easily create multiple new blogs. Marty provides some tips on managing multiple blogs and points out some the advantages of using WPD to do so.

Whether you have decided to keep your micro-niche blog, or whether you have decided to sell it, by now you are hopefully realizing that with both Flippa and WordPress Direct you have two very powerful services at your disposal for your next step.

Actions For The Day -

1. If you are selling your site, follow Caro and Danny's guidance in listing your micro-niche site on Flippa.

2. If you are keeping your site, consider the possibilities of what you can do to expand your blog network using WordPress Direct.

Related Resources

You can find all of the related resources to today's content below.

Flippa
Click here sign up for a Flippa account.

Flippa's Learn To Sell Guide
Click here for Flippa's Learn To Sell Guide.

Flippa Support
Click here for support with Flippa.

WordPress Direct
Click here to access your WordPress Direct account.

WordPress Direct Support
Click here to get support for WordPress Direct.

Handy Tip - Like anything, before selling your site it's always important to do your research first. Research similar types of websites listed on Flippa to get a realistic idea of the price you could possibly expect. Remember, the value is determined by what someone else is willing to pay for it, not just what you think it's worth.

The Challenge 2010: Module 7/Day 3 – What To Do If No Go

Danny Batelic, guest presenting today. This man is a Flippa whirlwind. From past Challenges, Danny saw the opportunity of Flippa and jumped all over it:

Danny is going to take you through how to open a Flippa account and how to construct your listing, so you get the most out of your Flippa experience. He offers some crucial advice. Please please listen. Danny has successfully sold multiple sites on Flippa, he knows what he's talking about!

As Danny states, it's important you register as the real you. No pen names. Flippa do their best to make it as real and secure as possible. It also is in your best interests to be as real as possible, as part of selling your websites is to have a strong trust rating. That's both externally and how you list your website and manage it (Caro has a lesson on that tomorrow).

An important part of listing your website, is to have as much proof of your stats, which Google Analytics is perfect for. As far as what to put in your listing, take a look at the recently sold, and then pick from the best there.

Now, just a closing word, please wait until tomorrow's Part Two lesson on Flippa before you go live with your auction. We have important information that will round out your Flippa knowledge and the 'how to' of the auction process.

What To Do If Your Micro-Niche Is No Go

If by now you have made your decision regarding the future of your micro-niche and you have decided that it's a no go, today is when you explore some of your options. The main option outlined today is to use the service Flippa.com and to sell your site.

The reality is, that for many of you that have arrived at a no go decision you will be taking it pretty hard. We are taught all the way through school that failure is bad. That really doesn't apply to what you have achieved since beginning The Challenge because there are so many outs and positives to take away from what you have achieved so far.

By far, the best option you have is to do The Challenge again. The first time you undertake The Challenge you are learning everything for the first time. Every time you repeat the process it becomes quicker and your skills grow. If your skills are at a level that you think is pretty good, you can eve consider getting a job using those skills.

One of the greatest outcomes that you can achieve from reaching a no go point is having the ability to onsell your site using Flippa, which Danny Batelic will introduce to today. Think of Flippa as an auction site like eBay, but for buying and selling websites.

Today Danny introduces Flippa and how to sign up for a Flippa account and walks you through the entire process. Once you have signed up and clicked on the link in your activation email, you will arrive on a welcome page with some options to follow Flippa on some various social media platforms. As Danny B suggests, Flippa is constantly adding new features and tweaking their system, so choose whichever platform suits you the most and follow or become a fan of Flippa.

One of the ways that Flippa makes it a real and secure experience for everyone involved is an area they call Trust Manager. Here you add your phone number for verification purposes, some information regarding your feedback and the age of your account is also available, and your LinkedIn and/or Facebook account.

Once your account is created and you are logged in, Danny shows you how to setup your first listing. He also recommends following Flippa's comprehensive guide on how to sell a website. Using an example listing, Danny shows you the types of data and information you can provide in your videos to increase the chances of the site selling.

Please wait until tomorrow's Part Two lesson on Flippa before you go live with your auction. We have important information that will round out your Flippa knowledge and the 'how to' of the auction process. Today we are creating the listing and in tomorrow's lesson you will be shown what to do when you take the listing live.

Actions For The Day -

1. Sign up for an account with Flippa.

2. Familiarize yourself with the Flippa website.

3. If selling your site, prepare a listing on Flippa using Flippa's Learn To Sell Guide.