It's almost 1am here, snow is falling heavily outside the bedroom window and it's time for my first daily entry. It struck me earlier that I didn't really go into what I'm actually going to be doing in order to try and reach my target. Well, at the end of each day I'll write an account of what I did, how I did it, what tools(if any) I used, and any money I made.
I was actually prepared to make a big fat zero in the first week of this challenge. It's all about putting things in place and really getting my strategies together. I thought I may get a sale or two here or there though, and I got one today. A Clickbank one for $24.47. A nice little bonus that I wasn't really expecting. It came from my main niche site, and although I haven't set up Clickbank tracking(I really need to get around to doing that!), judging by my Google Analytics stats it seems it was a visitor that was on the site for 23 minutes and read 21 pages of content. Feels good to know someone found that much value in the info and advice offered on the site. Usually visitors stay for no more than 5-10 mins, and mostly much less. I'm happy about the sale, but in the next couple of days I'm going to turn my attention to building a list from that site.
The current list of subscribers is pretty tiny, somewhere between 20 and 30 if I remember rightly. When you consider that this is out of thousands of visitors the site has had since we put it up in August, it's a pretty pathetic number to tell the truth. I completely understand why though. If I was a visitor, I don't think I'd sign up. Why? Because it doesn't seem like there is much in it for me. There's lots of content on the site itself and I can find lots more info elsewhere. A few days ago, I came across a really good PLR ebook at Resell Rights Weekly, which is a PLR membership site. I only signed up there a few days ago, it was recommended to me in a newsletter from another PLR site. The sales page had me hooked, and although I'm only a free member, I'll probably upgrade to Gold in the future. On that note, I should say that with a couple of exceptions, I will NOT be spending money on anything extra in terms of IM this month. I've made a promise to myself. There are a few things I want, but I'm going to work for them, rather than just buy them. Back to the ebook, it has an excellent title, and is really well written. I'm going to upload it and offer it as a free gift when visitors sign up to our mailing list. I'm hoping it'll dramatically increase opt in rates.
(You'll have to forgive my awful habit of writing extremely long paragraphs - it's a lifelong habit that I'm gradually trying to break).
OK, so what did I do today? Pretty much everything I set out to at the start of the day. The first thing, and something that has been in the works for a few weeks now - my first ever WSO! If you're not a Warrior Forum member, WSO means 'Warrior Special Offer' - you sell products at special prices/exclusive to the WF etc. In this case, it is a 20 article pack, and they were written exclusively for this project. This also marks my first joint venture(or JV). I have teamed up with Warrior NewBum76 AKA Jon. We each wrote 10 articles for the project - he did 10 Get Your Ex Back ones, and I did 10 General Dating & Relationship ones. I'm really pleased with the finished product. We're limiting the pack to 50 sales. It'd be nice if we sold out, but more important than that is that anyone who buys the pack is happy with it and has some good things to say. This could be a really good way of building our reputations. I'm sure we're going to team up again, and also eventually release products individually too. I would go into how this JV came about, but this paragraph is already long enough and it's really late. I'm really excited to be putting up my first WSO and hope it will be the first of many. The thread is currently awaiting approval, hopefully it'll be ready to go live tomorrow morning.
The second task on my list today was to sign up for ArticleProductions.com. I've been meaning to sign up for a few weeks, but as it's a paid subscription thought I'd wait until the new year when I could really get the most out of it. The site is owned by James Stein, known on the WF as TheRichJerksNet. I've always been impressed by the value he gives with his posts on there, and he really knows his stuff when it comes to article marketing, backlinking and pretty much any other area of IM. If you post on the WF and come out with a statement like 'Google penalizes duplicate content' or 'I'm posting all my content to EZA', prepare to feel his wrath! More than that though, you'll see just how much knowledge and experience he possesses. I've seen him say that he spends 12-16 hours a day on IM. Now THAT's dedication. His site is not only a very good article directory without annoying ads, it offers lots of tools, including a spinner, the ability to submit to multiple directories and MUCH more. I haven't had a chance to really get into everything available yet as putting my WSO up took longer than I thought. It's my first stop tomorrow though. Upon signing up, you get an affiliate link so I might as well use it - Article Productions, but I highly recommend you click the link in his WF signature, where you can try it out for 7 days for $2. I'm very excited to be a member.
My final task of the day was to make a spreadsheet of keywords/urls, and my position in Google for each one. This is something I learned from Jeremy Kelsall, another A grade Warrior(WF = IM school). He has a meticulous approach to organization of keywords that I really want to have myself. I also put into practice his tip of concentrating on building backlinks to articles that surface in the first 5 pages of Google when they go live. I typed in the keywords/urls of my sites, the inner pages of these sites, and some articles, mostly at EZA. Using the Open Office spreadsheet program, I simply type their Google ranking. Perhaps I should include Yahoo and Bing, but it's a good start. I am going to update it every Monday, so I can see just how well my backlinking efforts are working. Whilst doing this, I discovered quite a few of my articles(both on my sites and in directories) are still ranking nicely months after they were written. Also, after 3 weeks of doing pretty much nothing in terms of backlinking and adding new content, my main niche site sits nicely at number 14 in Google for it's main keyword phrase - a keyword phrase that gets 600 or so searches a day. It's been up as high as 11, in late November, but I'm really pleased it is still sitting so high and I actually get organic traffic from it every day. When it's in the top 10, things are going to look even better too.
Overall, I'm very pleased with today. I got lots of work done, made some real progress and even made an unexpected sale. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, or rather today. Only another $975 or so before I reach my target! Until tomorrow, take care.
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