Here’s what I’ve done to start the ball rolling during day 1 of my challenge.
Well I visited a few high profile marketing forums to seek the advice of some experienced bloggers on how I might quickly generate lots of visitors. I must say there were some blinding ideas, some which I’m going to start putting into action tomorrow.
I also hoped that my forum posts might start a little bit of a buzz about my challenge and generate some visitors through curiosity about what I was doing.
I also posted another article to ezinearticles.com. I’m steadily building a growing list of articles that include a link to my blog in the author’s biog that you’re allowed to add at the bottom of each article. Though this method takes time for the article to be reviewed and indexed my server logs show that they’re already generating 1 or 2 visitors.
That’s it for today. Check back tomorrow to find out what else I’ve been doing.
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Well if you were on Alex Jeffreys’ coaching call last night you’ll know that the next business building task is to get as many visitors to our blogs as possible by 1st January 2009.
To push myself to take massive action I’ve set myself the challenge of generating 2009 visitors to my blog between now and then. 2009 visitors by the start of 2009 – get it?
Now I’m a blogging newbie so I don’t know whether this is a realistic target or not? But you’ve gotta start somewhere right? So that’s my target!
Here’s a screenshot of the number of visits to my blog to date as reported by Google analytics…
So you can see the blog has been up for less than a month and my starting point is 170 visits. So to achieve my goal that figure needs to be at 2179 visits by new years day.
I’ll be posting daily reports here on my progress – what I’ve done, what worked, what didn’t, and my plans. So make sure you stick around to see how I get on.
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Just wanted to keep you up to date on what I’ve been doing regarding promoting the free ebook over there in the sidebar.
Well I decided that in addition to the traditional article marketing I’d try some of this web 2.0 stuff. So as well as continue to add my three articles to article directories I also created a video.
Take a look at the video first and then I’ll tell you how it was created…
It was very quick and straightforward to do. The steps I used were as follows…
Created a simple powerpoint presentation answering the questions in people’s heads.
Recorded the presentation in real time using the Camtasia Powerpoint plug-in with the audio switched off.
Selected a royalty-free music track and added it where the voice track usually goes in Camtasia.
Rendered the video using the YouTube preset that produces an .mp4 file.
Wrote a title, description and list of tags for the video.
Uploaded the video to a number of video sites using TubeMogul.com
I’m now going through the process of book marking the video from each of these sites on social sites.
Here’s a good tip when you’re using video on YouTube. Make sure at the beginning of your description to use the full URL of the site you’re promoting. When your video is published you’ll then have a clickable link right alongside the video player that visitors can click on to get to your offer.
That’s it for now. There’s another webinar scheduled for tonight so I’ll have more to report later this week.
Well the second session with my new business coach Alex Jeffreys was on Tuesday evening. He outlined the products and system provided – that he calls the “platform” - to get me up and running building my mega responsive email list. I had a definite spring in my step the next day – life is good!
Installing the “platform” was very straightforward and I had my new website operational on Wednesday. I deliberated long and hard over what domain name to get as I’d created a long list of available names. But eventually decided on ListBuildingTruths.com. I thought it was a good domain name that’s easy to remember and relevant to the product.
So what else have I been doing this week?
Well I knocked up a very quick cover graphic for the free report. That’s it over in the sidebar on the right. Not bad for about 30 minutes work eh? Of course I placed the ad in the blog sidebar as you can see. I’ve also started promoting the report in a number of high profile places.
Today I wrote 3 articles about list building with a link to the report and placed them in 4 article directories. They’ll take a couple of days to get approved, but then they’ll be listed in Google pretty quickly. I’m hoping at least one will get taken up by an ezine author or blogger. I also placed an online classified ad, which only took a few minutes to do.
I just checked my stats and as of 9pm GMT this evening I have exactly 7 sign-ups to my new list. According to Aweber my unique conversion rate is 60%. If it stays that high I’ll be well happy. No sales as yet, but I know where the traffic’s coming from and the guys on that forum are a cynical bunch.
Heard by email from Alex this morning that tonight’s coaching session is postponed until next week. I must say I was disappointed because I was looking forward to soldiering on over the weekend. But I guess I’ll just carry on promoting the site and this blog until then.
That’s it for now. Expect another coaching update from me next week.
Well my coaching by Alex Jeffreys has begun. It started with a webinar titled “Forward to Basics”. Now little old me was being unusually cynical about whether I’d learn anything new.
Perhaps it was because the 2 hour webinar started at 11pm and I had to be up for work at 5:30am? Or perhaps I was foolish enough to believe that just because I’ve been online since 2001 there was little left about the basics for me to learn?
Well egg on face time for me, because I did learn some new stuff that I hadn’t heard anywhere before about planning my business. It also inspired me to put into practice some things I’d heard about but had never actually put into action.
So what will I be doing differently?
Using a kitchen timer to work in highly productive periods of 60 minutes with no distractions. That way I won’t be wasting time reading emails and surfing.
Actually planning my day, week, month, and year ahead by working backwards from my goals.
Continuing to keep my journal where I currently record what I’ve learnt and any cool sites I’ve found. Only now I’ll be adding a record of what I’m doing to succeed.
Keeping a ‘did list’ of how I’m spending my time whenever I’m in front of the PC working on my business. That way I can analyse where I’m wasting my time and improve my productivity.
Now I don’t know about you, but 2 hours into my coaching and already I can see tremendous benefits. Bring it on!!!
Whether you like it or not the truth is that everyone needs a coach if they truly want to succeed in something.
Why should that be a difficult concept for most Internet marketers to understand when it’s a given in other fields like sports? I accepted this concept years ago and actually trained as a Life Coach. I ran a coaching practice for a while, coaching people over the telephone.
So in some respects it’s remarkable that it’s taken so long for me to sort out getting a coach myself.
Perhaps I just needed to be in the right place if you know what I mean? And for the right person to be available at the right time.
Well, all the pieces fell in to place recently and just by chance, or was it destiny, I came across Alex Jeffrey’s coaching program. So I’m now signed up and will be reporting my progress and experiences right here along the way.
Well the second session with my new business coach Alex Jeffreys was on Tuesday evening. He outlined the products and system provided – that he calls the “platform” - to get me up and running building my mega responsive email list. I had a definite spring in my step the next day – life is good!
Well my coaching by Alex Jeffreys has begun. It started with a webinar titled “Forward to Basics”. Now little old me was being unusually cynical about whether I’d learn anything new.
Whether you like it or not the truth is that everyone needs a coach if they truly want to succeed in something.