Adsense was a gold rush for a lot of internet marketers in it’s early adoption however Google had to make several changes to improve the quality of traffic which resulted in a lot less profits for publishers. This was when phrases like “Adsense is dead” and “life after Adsense” were really common buzz words which no doubt you have come across on numerous occasions.

The strategy seemed to become less sites which offered greater quality content and a shift to promoting affiliate products and services and CPA opportunities. However the said warrior member recently went against the grain and adopted the following strategy.

• 1. More sites focusing on tightly themed niches or micro niches
• 2. Focus on popular products which can be found on sites such as Amazon, Ebay and Walmart (more likely to receive a greater RPC)
• 3. Greater emphasis on low competition keywords which have decent levels of traffic
• 4. Some of his greatest earners are sites with less than 30 pages, some sites with only one page are making $2-$3 a day
• 5. Builds 4-5 sies at a time and gets them ranking within a week
• 6. Content is always product descriptions
• 7. Relies exclusively on article marketing purely for back links
• 8. Occasionally ranks in the top 5 for keywords with no back links
• 9. Achieves up to a 75% click through rate

Just to add my 2 cents, the main key here which I believe is still rather under utilized is going after the low hanging fruit. It’s so tempting to go after that keyword which gets 500 to 1,000 searches a day rather than focus on the one which gets 50 – 100. You will have to do far less work to rank for those long tail keywords and spend more time building sites rather than building back links.

Also make sure your sites aren’t spammy, create good quality content which adds value for your visitors otherwise you may find your sites don’t hang around for long in the SE’s.

I am going to put this method to the test and see what sort of results I can come up with

Another tip on Adwords is to run two separate ad groups one for the search network and one for the content network, the reason being is that your CTR for the content network will be extremely low which in turn will ruin your search network CTR.

Also make sure you keep your keyword groups very tight,

Manage Your Google Adwords PPC Campaign

Visit www.perrymarshall.com for a more in depth and accurate course on Google Adwords.

Finding Keywords For Your Adwords Campaign

Add Keywords To Your Adwords Campaign

Points to not from this video are that when split testing you do not need to switch an ad on or off to ensure the best ad is displayed as mentioned in the video as Google automatically displays the ad which has the highest CTR. You simply need to add as many ads as possible and Google will do the rest.

Also mentioned in the video is to simply add the broad, phrase and exact match of your keyword however that is not necessarily going to give the best results. If you have your keyword entered as broad match then Google will display it for keywords which it believes are related to your keyword which may not convert well therefore it\’s best to start off with exact match first and then try phrase and broad match if you have success.

I would recommend spending additional time learning about the nuts and bolts of Adwords rather than just jumping right in because it is important to do it the right way otherwise you will find yourself spending money on keywords which aren\’t going to convert and also paying too much per click.

The best advice I can provide in regards to Adwords is to start off with a small budget and keep your keywords highly targeted. The more targeted the keywords are to your niche the more likely you are to generate a sale. If you are successful with your highly targeted keywords then you can start to experiment with broader keywords.

One of the leading experts in running successful Google Adwords Campaigns is Perry Marshall. He has a free 5 day course on his site www.perrymarshall.com

Getting Started With Google Adwords

Article marketing is one of the most widely used techniques to drive direct traffic and build links. There are literally thousands of article directories on the internet so there is a lot of potential to obtain a heap of back links. You can submit your articles manually or you can use article submission services which automatically submit your articles for you.

The top 3 article distribution services are

1. Unique Article Wizard

2. Article Marketer

3. iSnare

If you are anything like me you are probably starting to find all of this content creation time consuming and tedious. Luckily there are many affordable “ghost writers” who will write articles for you on virtually any topic. You can find writers on www.guru.com and www.elance.com

Another tool which creates articles for you is called Instant Article Wizard which you can find out more about here www.instantarticlewizardpro.com

Upload An Article to Ezinearticles

Update On WordPressdirect

Ed just does a quick overview of Google Analytics and how you can monitor your traffic. Google Analytics can tell you a wealth of information and is an extremely powerful tool. The best way to learn how to use it is just to spend time pushing all the buttons and seeing what they all do. Some of the important things you will want to look at is the search traffic data and what keywords people are typing in to the search engines to find your site.

Think about this, if you are getting traffic for a particular keyword and you are ranking say 26 imagine what would happen if you managed to rank in the top 10 considering only 2% of people click on the second page of results.

A good idea is to check the sites ranking above you for those keywords using the SEO tool for Firefox and determine if you think you can outrank them. Look for sites no older than 3 years with few back links as they will be easy to out rank.

If you aren’t receiving traffic and your site is indexed then you may need to re-evaluate your keyword and target something with less competition. The worst thing you can do is keep promoting a keyword which isn’t performing. Don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board and start your market research again.

If your site isn’t indexed then you need to get more back links, it’s as simple as that. Building a Squidoo lens and social bookmarking it should get your site indexed in 24 – 48 hours max.

Using Google Analytics To Check Your Blog Stats

The first place to go is Google Groups www.google.com/groups where you can locate groups specific to your niche market.

To find forums related to your niche simply type your main keyword into Google with forum appended. For example if your niche is ‘golf’ you would type ‘golf forum’ in to Google.

The key here is to add value to whatever discussion you are participating in, if you spam these sites you will have your accounts banned and will be wasting your time.

A tool which I recently posted about called Comment Kahuna finds blogs and Squidoo lenses related to the keyword you enter which can comment on.

The other thing taught today is how to find out if your site is indexed which is simply a matter of typing ‘site:yourdomain.com’ into Google.

If your site is indexed it will come up in the results, if not you will get a message saying “Your search – site:yourdomain.com – did not match any documents.”

It can take some time for your site to be indexed however by building your back links the time will be reduced.

Today’s Videos

How To Get More Backlinks

How To Find Out If Your Site Is Indexed

Some believe that social media is going to become more popular than traditional search engines because of the fact it is voted for by humans therefore more reliable. Although search engines, Google in particular, are constantly making huge improvements to their search results they are a long way off being able to observe what a human can. Perhaps Google will start to factor in human submitted content to tools like Google Reader in it’s search results, if it is not already.

The advantage search engines have over social bookmarking sites is that they can process far more information whereas social bookmarking sites are limited by the amount of people submitting content. The majority of people who use social bookmarking sites are generally tech savvy people who all fit a similar demographic therefore you may find a lot of great content on the iPhone but very little on fishing tips. However as more and more people use social bookmarking this will become less of a factor.

Anyhow the search engines are definitely paying a close eye to social bookmarking sites and put a lot of trust in content which is listed there due to the reasons I just mentioned. This is why it is so effective at getting new content indexed. You will notice that social bookmarking sites rank extremely well and your bookmarked content will often outrank your own site especially if it is a new domain.

Social bookmarking is only one method you will be using to promote your site so don’t be concerned if you are not ranking on the first page of Google right away, the first objective is to get your site indexed then you can focus on increasing your rankings.

Something which is extremely important to know and was not mentioned by Ed in today’s training is that if you only bookmark pages on your own site then your account’s will be banned. Social bookmarking sites are highly susceptible to spammers so have very strict guidelines in place, in order to avoid having your account removed you need to use it as it was designed not as a self promotional tool.

A method I use is to bookmark new content which turns up from Google Alerts and throw in a few bookmarks to my own sites here and there but the key is to keep it to a minimum.

Today’s Videos

Bookmarking Your Blog With Socialmarker

Just the one video today which explains how to use Social Marker www.socialmarker.com which semi automates your bookmarking.

Summary of Day 8

Nothing surprising about today’s training, social bookmarking continues to be an effective tool for getting indexed just make sure you use it the right way!

See you on day 9!

You will also learn a method for tracking affiliate links using another service provided by The 30 Day Challenge team. You can access it by going into your 30 Day Challenge dashboard and scrolling down you will see a link on the left hand sidebar titled ‘TDC Stats Tracker’ or clicking here www.thirtydaychallenge.com/tracking/viewtrackers.php

All you need to do is click the new URL button and paste in whatever affiliate link you wish to track. You will then be provided with a URL which looks like this http://locatereviews.com/2052517237 which will redirect to your affiliate link location. You will then be able to track how many times the link has been clicked on.

I use Google Analytics to track my affiliate links which provides more data and also allows you to use URL’s which match your site such as yoursite.com/more-info/affilliate-product.php rather than locatereviews.com/2052517237

To do this you need to create a text document on your computer and use the following code

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/wealthon/public_html/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php:11) in /home/wealthon/public_html/wp-content/plugins/exec-php/includes/runtime.php(42) : eval()’d code on line 12

Replace the link http://www.domain.com/affiliate-link with your affiliate link and replace UA-000000-0 with your Google Analytics ID.

Save the document as affiliate-product-name.php

You then need to create a directory(folder) on your site called ‘go’, ‘more-info’, ‘review’ or basically whatever you like and upload the file into that directory. You should now be able to load the file in your browser and it will redirect to your affiliate link.

Today’s Videos

How to Setup Google Analytics

A video showing how to set up a Google Analytics account and configuring it on your WordPress blog.

How to Track Affiliate Links

How to use the The 30 Day Tracking link tracking system.

Add Tracked Links On Your Blog

How to add your links generated by The 30 Day Challenge link tracking system to your WordPress blog.

Summary of Day 7

Tracking is an essential part of any online business and provides you with extremely valuable information to help your business succeed.

Google Analytics is a great tool which I use on a daily basis to keep track of how my sites are performing and as it’s free it’s perfect for people starting out on the internet.

For those getting itchy feet we should now be moving on to the promotional stage where you will start to learn how to generate traffic to your WordPress blog and hopefully make some sales.

See you on day 8!

Ed introduces a new tool from, yes you guessed it, Google, which allows you to easily make notes straight from your browser. The tool is called Google Notebook and you can get a plug-in for your browser here http://www.google.com/notebook/download

The goal for the day is to start writing some articles about 300 to 500 words long for each of your keywords. The more content you write the better but as a guide try and create at least ten articles.

Today’s Video’s

Find Article Content Using Market Samurai

GuruBob shows you how to use Market Samurai to find and analyze content on your keywords which you can then use to create your own content.

How To Write A Article

Ed shows you how to convert the content you have gathered so far using Google Reader, Google Notebook, Google Alerts and Market Samurai into your own content.

Summary of Day 5

As an experienced internet marketer I can tell you that becoming efficient at creating unique content is extremely useful as the more content you have the more traffic you can generate providing you are targeting the right keywords.

If English is not your first language or you really struggle to write content for whatever reason you can hire a ghostwriter to create the content for you.

See you on Day 6!

Ed’s method to test a market is to locate an affiliate product(s) related to your niche. There are dozens of affiliate networks where you can find products to sell as well as going directly to companies.

• The first step is to go in to Google and type in your main keyword for your niche followed by affiliate. So for example if I wanted to find affiliate products related to golf I would simply type in “golf affiliate”.
• Next you can go to affiliate networks to find products and here is a list of affiliate networks which you can join.

  PayDotCom
  ClickBank
  Shareasale
  ModernClick
  LinkShare
  Affiliate Fuel
  Commission Junction

• You can also become an affiliate at Amazon www.amazon.com. Amazon commissions are quite low but as Ed points out in the video we aren’t interested in how much we can make only that people are actually buying products in your chosen niche market. If people are buying your recommended affiliate products then that the provides the opportunity of creating your own product and making 100% of the sale price rather than 5%-15%.
• One place I don’t think Ed has mentioned so far is eBay which is another great place to discover niche markets. You can also become an eBay affiliate and promote any product that is on auction. Again commissions are low however their are millions of products in just as many niches being sold on eBay every day. To become an affiliate for eBay you need to join Commission Junction www.cj.com

So your job today is to find some products you can promote to test your market.

Today’s Videos

Finding An Internet Affiliate Program

A quick video on where to find affiliate products

Writing Your First Copy

Dan gives some tips on writing your first small piece of ad copy to promote your affiliate products.

Creating Amazon Affiliate Links

Dan explains how to create your Amazon affiliate link for whichever products you wish to promote to test your market.

Manipulating Images With Picnik

A tool which is going to be released for 30 day challenger’s is going to be released in the next few days (day 6 I believe) which is going to require your affiliate link from the previous video, a short bit of unique ad copy about the product and an image. This video shows you how to use a free online edit imaging tool called Picnik www.picnik.com to get your image of your product ready.

Overview of Day 4

Testing your market with affiliate products is very effective and some internet marketers make a lot of money simply promoting affiliate products and services however a lot of internet marketers would agree that having your own product is far more profitable for obvious reasons.

Dan mentioned a new function which I am assuming is going to be added to the Market Samurai tool, perhaps the ‘Publish Content’ function which will take the info collected above, compile it, and post it to a blog, maybe?

Today’s Videos

SEO Competition Using Market Samurai

This video explains how you can obtain a lot of crucial information on the top 10 ranking pages for a particular keyword you are interested in targeting using the Market Samurai tool. Data includes off page factors such as domain age, PageRank, Alexa Rank, Page back links, domain back links, .edu and .gov back links, DMOZ and Yahoo Directory and on page factors such as keyword in title, URL, description and heading tags as well as Google cache age.

SEO Competition The Old Way

In this video Ed goes through the original method for analyzing competition using the SEO tool for Firefox.

Overview of Day 3

Analyzing competition may be a bit overwhelming for newbies due to the amount of data which needs to be processed. Don’t let this put you off just concentrate on the main factors such as sites less than 3 years old, fewer than 100 back links to the page, less than PR3, no authority sites such as eBay, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc and you should have any problems ranking on the front page for your chosen keywords.

I think I can smell some Google Knols cooking in the upcoming videos

See ya on day 4!

Today’s Videos

What To Expect In The Thirty Day Challenge

Ed talks about how crucial it is to research your market before promoting or creating a product. In fact the product comes last in what Ed calls “a magnificent symphony of four parts”. Which are market research, keyword research, traffic generation and finding or creating products.

Recommended Setup For Thirty Day Challenge

A quick overview of the tools which will be used in the 30 Day Challenge including the 30 Day challenge toolbar, Flock web browser, Stumble Upon, FreindFeed, Twitter, Twhirl, Google Reader and YouTube.

The Getting of Ideas

How to use Amazon to find ideas and keep up to date with your market by subscribing to Google News RSS feeds using Google Reader and using Google Alerts.

Overview of Day 1

Amazon is a massive “encyclopedia” as Ed calls it of products sold in every market imaginable. A good place to start is in the non-fiction books and the magazines section. You can guarantee if there is a book or a magazine on a subject then there is a niche which you can capitalize on. At this stage you want to find as many niche ideas as you can and Ed recommends finding niches which you have some interest in as they will be easier to work with.

It’s a good idea to try and find small niches as it will be easier for you to compete in rather than trying to go after the big ones such as ‘weight loss’ where there is intense competition.

You can keep up to date with your choosen markets by using Google Alerts www.google.com/alerts by simply enterting in the main keyword for your market and your email address. You can set how often you want to be emailed about any new content and you can also set up a rule in your inbox so that emails are automatically sorted for each niche.

You can also go to Google News www.google.com/news and enter your main keyword then you will get a list of the latest news related to your market which you can then subscribe to the RSS feed of these results so that you can easily keep up to date as new content is added. RSS feeds are an internet marketers best friend as it makes it much easier to manage and process large amounts of content from multiple sites all from one location. That location is Google Reader www.google.com/reader

To subscribe to the feed enter you main keyword into Google News search and either click the little RSS icon in your address window or in the left sidebar you should see a link which the name RSS. Simply right click and copy the link then go over to Google Reader, click add subscription and paste the link and click save.

It’s a good idea to create folders for each niche so that you can keep everything nicely organized.

That’s about it for day 1, feel free to subscribe to our feed to keep up to date with the rest of the challenge.