There is an endless debate online about whether you should only enter markets/niches that interest you,  and with the Thirty Day Challenge nearing the end that question has come up more than a few times.

The two downsides of the debate are these:

• If you tackle a niche that doesn’t interest you then it is going to be harder to: write content for your own web site, article sites and Web2.0 sites; find and read information on the topic on a daily basis; visit forums and blogs and participate in discussions on the topic; keep your interest long enough to monetize your site etc.

• On the other hand, if you are too interested in a subject you can become so attached to the idea of it that you ignore the signs that is may be a dud (too much competition, not enough interest, not enough traffic, not a spending market). You will find it difficult to view this market with neutrality.

Of course, on the plus side:

• Even a niche that doesn’t interest you can make you a lot of money and your detachment can work well from a business point of view. Good business is about finding a need and filling it.

• But, if you are interested in a subject your passion will show and will increase your chances of succeeding in that market, writing about it and generally keep the momentum going.

I find myself happily sitting on the fence in this argument because I have had successes and failures on both sides of the debate.

I was passionate about radio and being a radio presenter, to the extent that like many young presenters I was prepared to work crazy hours and do anything (or nearly anything) I was asked to do, for quite low wages. After a number of years and lots of office politics, my passion started to wane and it stopped being fun anymore. If I ever work in radio again it will be in the knowledge that it is first and foremost a business and I need to accept it as such.

However, I was also passionate about voiceovers… and still am (when I have the voice to do them). I love the nature of the work, the fact that everyday is different, the way I can use my voice for so many different projects, being fully self-employed. However, the difference is I accepted from the beginning that this is a business above all, and so I have to make business-like decisions about the work, my marketing, when I work and who I work with.

Online, most of the niches I have entered have interested me at least a little. The niche that hasn’t really worked was one I was passionate about and I was probably too close to. Others held my interest for a while but ultimately the interest fizzled, and one has grown into a passion beyond anything I imagined.

There is a new post over at the John Cow website called Start a Blog About Something You Want to Kick Ass At. There is a lot of sense in this, as it is easier to write about things you are passionate about, and work isn’t much fun if you aren’t interested in what you are doing. However, if you are entering a market that is your passion or hobby, and you want to make money from it (rather than just create your own fun hobby site) I would suggest asking yourself these questions:

• Do the numbers add up? Is there traffic for your keywords, can you compete with other sites targeting those keywords, are your visitors actually likely to buy, can you make a profit?

• Will working in this market gradually lessen your enjoyment of it? There is a big difference between pursuing a hobby and making a business out of it.

• Can you walk away from it if things don’t work out?

I don’t think there is any problem tackling a market you know nothing about. Once you have tested it and started making some money you can always outsource the work so you only need to keep an eye on the overall business concept. If you become fed-up with it then you can sell the website/blog and make some money to start a new one. You may never become passionate about a topic but as long as other people are (or you fulfil a need) you can make money to leverage other pursuits (business or personal).

On a final note, I would suggest you do a bit of both. I would never have started this blog if I hadn’t been passionate about Internet Marketing and wanted somewhere to publish my thoughts on it. The IM world is crowded enough as it is and I didn’t enter it with plans to dominate and usurp the big names in Internet Marketing. I do believe I can make some money from it, but I don’t expect it to be hugely profitable. My main objectives were to create an outlet for my own observations of online marketing and help others in the process. Those are perfectly valid and good objectives to have.

You may have a similar desire to write about your hobby, a medical problem, your weight loss, your overseas travels or your favourite Wii games, for no other reason than to share with and help others and hopefully make enough to have the website pay for itself.

From a business point of view this makes no sense, but on a personal level it can be extremely rewarding. However, if you wish to make money online you need to be prepared to be more objective and sometimes enter markets that don’t interest you. No one would admit to being enthusiastic about getting rid of cats from the garden (actually, get me onto the subject and I can be wildly passionate about it – spot my nemesis at the top of the post), but you can bet someone out there (me) wants information on stopping cats from using their garden as a toilet.

It’s all a matter of perspective. And if you can use the less exciting markets to fund your passions and a great lifestyle then you will be a lot happier than if you stay attached to a market you love but which sucks up all your time and makes no profit.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please add your comments

We’re halfway through the Thirty Day Challenge and it’s time for an update on mine (and the Challenge’s) progress.

In brief, so far the Challenge has involved:

• Researching good keyword phrases using Market Samurai to find one that has more than 80 visitors a day when you have the top phrase in Google and less than 30,000 competing pages (phrase match)

• Analysing the top 10 sites for that keyword phrase in Google and seeing whether there is an opening for a well-optimised site with some good backlinks

• Setting up a Wordpress blog (using Wordpress Direct) that is highly optimised for the keyword phrase

• Adding an affiliate link to a relevant product to test the market

• Helping the search engines find the blog by submitting the first (and any subsequent) blog post to a number of social bookmarking/networking/media sites, such as DIGG, Propeller, Twitter and Delicious.

• Commenting on relevant blog and forum posts with the url of blog included in the signature or blog comment

• Using highly optimised Web2.0 sites to create quality backlinks to the main blog

This is not a lesson in Affiliate Marketing but a free and easy method for testing a market. With just 17 days of effort we should start to see traffic coming to our blogs and soon be able to judge whether any of these visitors are buyers.

My Own Thirty Day Challenge

So far, I have targeted two different niches. One is a completely brand new one, and the other is a niche that is practically new (I started a personal blog on this topic recently for some friends and then discovered that there were some excellent keyword phrases within it).

Site one was picked up very quickly by Google but is not ranking very high (maintaining a position around the 31-35 mark). Site 2 took nearly a week to be listed by Google but is now around the 10-12 position for phrase match.

It may not sound too impressive, but considering I have yet to actually catch up with the challenge and create any web pages on Web2.0 properties like Squidoo and Hubpages, this is pretty good going. I have only done some social bookmarking, rss submission and one or two blog comments (I haven’t posted to Squidoo or FriendFeed because I don’t want to reveal my niches). I probably wouldn’t have even managed all the social bookmarking if it wasn’t for the new Traffic Android tool I have been using, which makes it extremely easy to social bookmark more naturally and organically (read my review of Traffic Android on my Audible Marketing blog).

Why am I behind with the Challenge?

Partly because of keeping up with my moderator duties at the Thirty Day Challenge Forums (the forums have been incredibly busy this year) but also because of friends visiting and having to go away for a wedding. Also, I am doing quite a bit of writing outside of the challenge, so the extra writing involved to create all the required content is just more time at the keyboard.

Plus, I’ll be honest and say that researching markets on Market Samurai has become a new favorite pastime – it would take me years to follow the 30DC process for all the keywords I have researched but I keep looking anyway.

I’m not too panicked, though. I shall have a writing blitz over the next few days (I already dictated some ideas and notes to myself on the motorway today) and start setting up some more web pages.

What do I hope to achieve from the Challenge?

At the moment, it is too soon to say. If Niche One proves profitable I will probably keep it as an affiliate site and build up more blogs like it, but with the potential of creating a more general authority blog on the topic. Niche Two has more possibilities for an information product (or a variety of information products).

One decision I made early on, before the challenge even began, was that I was going to target higher priced products in my testing. I would rather sell a $2000 affiliate product than a $27 one. The effort and numbers required in traffic to make that sale are probably the same but the affiliate payout will be much better. So, if I can find a successful niche where visitors are going to buy a high ticket item (or at least 1 in 200 visitors to the money page are going to buy) I can make a much bigger chunk of change even at only 4-6% commission (that’s $80+ for most sales in these niches compared to $15).

In the case of both of these niches I would probably continue to manage them myself if they prove successful (but outsource much of the content). However, I am intrigued by Allison Reynolds’ business model of building blogs using this method, make them profitable and then sell them. When I have tested these markets and proved I can use this process to make money, I fully intend to pursue that line of thinking (check out Allison’s blog – she’s an incredibly intelligent woman and fellow IM Geek Girl).

So, that’s the challenge so far. Stay tuned for more.

Is there such a thing as the best Internet Marketing course? Should we be striving to find the ultimate course and ultimate teacher?

As is always going to be the case when a big online event like the Thirty Day Challenge happens, the criticisms and misconceptions begin to fly. It happens to all the big name marketers when they launch a product or do something new. It happens in the offline world as well. Successful people will always have critics. Individuals will always have their opponents.

Some things I’ve heard others say about the Thirty Day Challenge so far:

• They are just teaching affiliate marketing

• They are just teaching social networking

• They have given this tool away for participants to use but there are other tools that do the same thing

• They are teaching people to create spammy blogs

• They are not giving everything away for free – look there are affiliate links on their website!

All these statements can be confusing for people just starting out on their Internet journey and can lead them to doubt what they are learning and who they are learning from. How can they possibly judge which course is best? If you are one of those people facing confusion, it’s worth noting that:

1. Some people criticise a process without first getting all the facts and then following the process through to completion i.e. testing the process to see if it works
2. Many people online become very defensive about their own process and tools for marketing. Instead of observing what others are doing from an analytical standpoint they immediately see it as a criticism of their own methods.
3. It’s easy to criticise the leading names in Internet Marketing, and through creating controversy they draw more people to their own blogs and websites.
4. Any big name on the Internet is going to face criticism, especially when they launch a new product. It happens offline as well. Famous authors, directors, actors all face strong scrutiny when they release something new, and much of it is far from complimentary.
5. People can’t see that free is actually free. They look for a catch. They have to point out what’s in it for the person giving stuff away. They even have to criticise the giver for doing it.

I would like to suggest that people bear these points in mind when following the Thirty Day Challenge (or any Internet Marketing process for that matter):

• There’s more than one way to skin a cat! Meaning, there is more than one way to create an online business. People have succeeded creating businesses online using many different methods, so no one method is necessarily best

• If you start following a process (in this case the Thirty Day Challenge) you are most likely to succeed if you pursue it through to its conclusion. Giving up halfway through because you can’t see the outcome, or switching to another process because someone else slammed the current one or made a great case for their process being better is not an effective use of you time and efforts. Have a little faith and follow the process exactly. If it doesn’t work for you then you can move on (in this case after only a month of your time)

• Personalities clash online and offline. You may not warm to a particular teacher and/or their methods but that doesn’t mean they are wrong and does not give you or someone else the right to flame them. If you truly believe you have been ripped off then follow the appropriate legal path. Trying to discredit them online is beneath you and serves no purpose except to make you unhappy. Your energy would be better spent becoming successful yourself.

• Trust that the process you are following has been tested and proven. I can’t speak for all online marketers and I do believe you have to be discerning in your choices, but I know that the Thirty Day Challenge system has been tested over and over again by the lab to ensure it works. And they have the added difficulty of finding a process that will work for thousands of people all using the same tools and methods at exactly the same time. Most Internet Marketers are only teaching their method to a fraction of those people.

• Show gratitude to the people who give their time and a lot of energy to try and teach you new things. Not everyone has an ulterior motive. No, they wouldn’t be Internet Marketing “gurus” if they didn’t make a good living out of it (that is true) but many of them only choose to teach their methods because they have a desire to help others. The Ed Dales, Dan Raines, Jeff Walkers and Jason Moffatts of this world all know how to make a lot of money online, and would probably make even more money if they focussed solely on non-Internet Marketing products – that’s how they became the experts in the first place. But something compels them to share their knowledge and success with others. I may sound naive to some of you – and I know that many people start teaching “making money online” because they think there is a fast buck to be made – but if a person is an established online marketer and has been at the top of their profession for some time and others hold them in high regard, then there is probably a good reason for that.

• We’re all human. Some people we will like, some we will find annoying, abrasive or arrogant (got to love alliteration). Some people will not warm to you and your style either. When I was a radio presenter I used to have people criticise me all the time – not everyone liked my style, what I said or the way I said it. But I also had enough people (thankfully) who loved listening to me. You can never please all of the people all of the time.

• The great thing about the Internet (and radio) is you can shut out the people you don’t like. If you don’t like their Twitters, their constant promotions by email or their Facebook invites then you just turn them off/block them/stop following them. If you decide you don’t like their personality and would rather not learn from them, you never have to deal with the again. Just walk away (figuratively, of course).

In terms of the Thirty Day Challenge specifically, I hate people criticising what Ed and Dan do. They are two of the finest and most giving people I have ever met, but I understand that other people have their own opinions and experiences. However, I will defend them to the hilt if someone makes a slur on their character or suggests that they are not as honest and transparent as they make out.

I could go into great detail responding to those earlier comments but I can’t be bothered! There are too many other things to be doing right now and it just demeans me and my time to enter into petty arguments. I simply suggest they (and you) follow the training through in full before passing judgement, and if you have any questions, concerns or comments you can join us on the forum to air them (I’ll try to be polite).

If you are still on the search for the Holy Grail – the best Internet Marketing course ever – then I’ll let you in on the secret. The best Internet Marketing course is…..the one you finish and take action on.

One of the things I have been really looking forward to doing on this new blog is talking about my experiences with the Thirty Day Challenge.

Every year for four years, Ed Dale has provided free training for people to learn about creating a business online. At first he provided that training with Frank Kern, and now he works with Dan Raine (along with a whole host of behind-the-scenes folk and experts).

The first Thirty Day Challenge in 2005 had around 1000 participants. It has been increasing every year, and this year more people joined on the first day of the challenge than had taken part in the previous 3 combined (and there were already thousands who enrolled during pre-season).

Naturally, it can be difficult to teach a method of online marketing that thousands of people can follow which doesn’t involve them having to spend money. Last year, so many people tried to create Tumblr blogs following Ed’s instruction that Tumblr shut them all down, believing they were spam.

Every year the Thirty Day Challenge seems to pull something out of the bag that astonishes even the veteran marketers. In fact, even those of us who are members of Dan and Ed’s Immediate Edge membership site are usually surprised by at least a few things they deliver in training. It came as no surprise that the GTrends method of market research they showed in 2007 was being taught by other marketers 6 months later.

This year is shaping up to be the most astounding yet. Ed and Dan have a great team and have managed to bring exclusive access to a brand new piece of software that shaves hours off the keyword research process. Market Samurai is the ultimate market research tool – not only does it suggest numerous keywords based on the LSI of the top web pages, it also tells you:

• how much natural traffic you could expect (if you reach the number one spot in Google)

• how much Adwords traffic you could expect (and what you should expect to pay for it)

• how many competing web pages there are for that keyword phrase

• and the approximate OCI (likelihood that someone searching for the phrase is an actual buyer and not just browsing)

And that’s just a section of the software. Each part is being added as we reach that stage of the training, but already we have the Market Research section which tells you what the top websites are for your keyword phrase and what on page and off page elements they are using that might hinder your chances of reaching a top position in Google (or, what elements they aren’t using that your could use to dominate that keyword). This is the best and quickest judge yet of whether it is worth pursuing a keyword phrase.

Today they rolled out the article research component, enabling us to search for relevant articles and blog posts optimized for that keyword phrase and analyse their age, backlinks, index count and more.

And we’re only on Day 5!

Previous years, much of this market research has either been impossible or extremely time consuming. In the first two years we had to use Google Adwords to test a niche. We paid out money just to gather leads and find out what the market wanted. Then we created the product and sold it to them (and unfortunately at this point could discover that it wasn’t a buying market).

But it’s more important than just 30 days of fun and new experiences. It is teaching a method of creating an online business that will last far beyond this month or year. Some of the techniques may be different each year but the overall objective remains the same.

This year, more than ever before, I am focussed on making this work for me. In previous years I have always put my heart and soul into the challenge and even created a product that sold quite well and led me to a new hobby and passion. But, as I mentioned in my previous post, my offline career was always there as my primary concern and income, and at the moment that is no longer the case.

My posts here about the Thirty Day Challenge will not be a step-by-step breakdown of the process but rather what I am learning from the experience. If you’re interested then they will always be posted in the category Thirty Day Challenge so you can find all the relevant posts by clicking on that over on the right of the screen. Or better still, add me to your rss reader for instant updates as soon as I post.

And if you are also doing the Challenge then I wish you every success and would love for you to share your experiences in the comments section.

Oh, and apparently tomorrow (or today as it is now in the UK) is the best day of all – I can’t imagine how it can get any better. You can imagine why it is so exciting to be a part of the Thirty Day Challenge.

Lisa

P.S. You can still sign up and follow the training over at Thirty Day Challenge. If you’re really keen you can still finish within the 30 days, but the training will still be there after August and you can take it at your own pace if you prefer.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was originally focused on creating an online business separate from the voiceovers. I had a couple of niche information products and a variety of websites and was doing OK with them, gradually building them up in my spare time.

At the same time I was becoming quite well-known as a voiceover online, especially among Internet Marketers as these were the people I was hanging out with in forums and on Twitter/Facebook etc. I was often asked for advice on both outsourcing audio work and creating audio products themselves. At the end of 2007 I was so busy working as a voiceover I put everything else on hold. I just didn’t have time for the other stuff and decided I didn’t need it.

In January 2008 I noticed my voice wasn’t sounding or working quite the way it should – nothing too serious, just cracking occasionally or sounding a little tense. I decided it must be the result of a virus I had before Christmas and did everything I could to keep it in tip-top condition. By March 2008 it was clear that my voice was not working properly and producers/clients were starting to notice. I went to see a doctor and he referred me to a specialist. After having a mini camera stuck up my nose and down to my vocal chords (ugh) I was diagnosed with Functional Dysphonia (laryngeal tension) and sent to a speech therapist. By the time I saw my lovely speech therapist my voice was so bad I had stopped being able to work altogether. She gave me daily exercises to do, and we were confident my voice would be back in no time.

Without going into too much more detail, things haven’t improved. My voice has deteriorated to the point that I cannot even hold normal conversations. Definitely no quality voiceovers coming out of this mouth at the moment! The docs think they may have found a new reason for the problem, but I’m still waiting on confirmation. I have been keeping very quiet about this problem (literally – lol) because I kept thinking it would be temporary and I’d be back voicing very soon (and I didn’t want to lose work because of it).

I don’t tell you this to illicit your sympathies or make you feel sorry for me. I don’t feel sorry for myself so please don’t waste your own energy on those emotions. The biggest bummer of this whole situation is I lost out on a job to voice a full length video promo for Second Life in the UK (told you I’m a geek)! Oh, and I miss being able to chat like I used to (but my friends are enjoying the peace and quiet).

The reason I am telling you this is because it may explain this blog more. I have had more time to throw myself back into Internet Marketing, especially attempting to revive my online niche businesses. I continue to update my Audible Marketing blog and provide information on product creation/audio marketing there, but I find myself limited on what I post there. Those are rules I have placed on myself, but I feel that blog is better suited to remaining focused on those topics as much as possible.

I wanted a place where I could be more open about my endeavours online, and to be held accountable for what I am doing. I wanted to talk about other issues that I believe go hand in hand with Internet Marketing, such as mindset, prosperity and business management. And I wanted a place to post about my experiences of this year’s Thirty Day Challenge.

I hope this blog will be as useful to you as it is to me. It will be an evolving project and if you have any questions or want to suggest topics for me to cover here I would love to hear from you.

What this blog will not do: Internet Marketer bashing; misleading linkbaiting; endless affiliate promotions of products I have no experience of; or anything else that creates negativity. If you prefer controversy to rational conversation this is probably the wrong place for you.

What this blog will do: offer calm, reasonable (and hopefully balanced) posts on the subjects mentioned and others that may develop; include product reviews of products I use or have a good knowledge of, with affiliate links where appropriate (after all, I’m a business woman); make no apologies for the content of the blog.

I’d love you to stick around and see where this goes and help hold me accountable. This is going to be a lot of fun (and hard work)!

Let me tell you a bit more about myself and my plans for the IM Geek Girl blog.

My name is Lisa Hartwell and I have worked most of my adult life as a Professional Mouth! My family and friends will tell you it’s a job I was destined to do!

I went off to university planning to be an actress/singer. My ideas quickly changed and I left university thinking that TV and/or radio were more up my alley. Radio came first and after a year of working as a volunteer and then swing presenter (i.e. stand-in presenter…not what you were thinking), I was offered my first full-time gig at a radio station in Plymouth. Apart from 9 months spent travelling around Australia I have been here ever since, working for 10 years on various shows at both Plymouth Sound and South Hams Radio and making the transition in late 1999 to part-time then full-time voiceover.

My interest in Internet Marketing began back in 2004/5. I can’t remember which came first, but I found some of Yanik Silver’s and Jim Edward’s stuff online and I was also learning general marketing through Dan Kennedy’s books and training. At the time I had big plans to launch an information product for voiceovers in the UK. Thankfully, I learned very quickly to do my research before anything else and realised the UK voiceover market was too small to be profitable in that area.

The love of Internet Marketing took off from there. There are so many possibilities on the Internet that have still not been fully explored, utilised or even imagined. That’s what makes it so exciting. Of course, Internet Marketing should be about business building, so I take action as much as possible – I am a great believer in lifelong learning but there’s no point learning if you don’t do anything with it.

Originally, I pursued Internet Marketing as another string to my bow. Having worked as a freelancer in radio and then as a self-employed voiceover, I was aware of how important it is to diversify and have several strings of income. I also had long term plans to eventually work fully online so I could pursue one of my biggest passions in life – travelling. I love to travel both within the UK to visit family, friends and new places, and around the world and I want to have the opportunity to do it more and more often.

After I discovered the original Thirty Day Challenge material in late 2005 I became a huge fan of Ed Dale and Frank Kern and have taken part in all subsequent TDCs as well as being a member of their Ultra Underachievers membership site. When that ended I watched with interest as another Ultra Underachiever, Dan Raine, set his own challenge to make $15k in a month and only just missed out on managing it. He went on to create the Immediate Edge, which I have been a very happy member of ever since. The Edge is now a joint project with Ed Dale that utilises the skills of their lab and various teams/interns, and Ed and Dan have also joined forces on the Thirty Day Challenge (2007 and 2008).

Things went a bit awry for me this year (2008) which I will explain more about in the next post, where I’ll also give you more info on my plans for the IM Geek Girl blog.

Lisa

I’d like to welcome you to my new blog – IM Geek Girl. This is not going to replace my other blog Audible Marketing but instead will run in conjunction with it.

For a long time there have been things I have wanted to blog about that seem inappropriate on the Audible Marketing site. Sometimes I have blogged off-topic but most of the time I have just not posted it. AM was always supposed to run in conjunction with my voiceover business and be a learning tool for people who want to learn more about audio marketing, and how it relates to the wider world of Internet Marketing.

So, I finally bit the bullet and set up a new blog.

Why IM Geek Girl? Well, it started as a phrase some of my female online friends started using. We kept calling ourselves IM Geek Girls or IM Girl Geeks (as in Internet Marketing Geek Girls). Now, not one of us is a day under 30 (actually I have no idea how old we all are – that’s the beauty of the Internet, it doesn’t really matter) but I’m 35 and certainly not a girl anymore. But it’s a fun name and it stuck. We’re all women who met through our love of Internet Marketing, which we all use for our different businesses – information marketing, voiceover services, offline business promotion, coaching etc. That makes it sound like we are an exclusive club, but actually we meet new IM Geek Girls everyday on the Internet (usually through the Thirty Day Challenge, Immediate Edge and Twitter) and we just use it as a universal name to encompass all the fantastic (and often unsung) women who are working Online.

I’m not a tech head but I have friends who are. I do love new shiny gadgets but usually require someone to give me a quick lesson in how to best use them. I love using computers and the Internet, and you only have to show me something once and I’ll run with it. One of my best friends is a computer whizz and he says I’m a geek, so I’ll take his word for it – I think it’s because I’m the person he turns to when he wants to know about optimizing websites, social networking and finding good keywords. He also calls me the Queen of Google – if he wants something finding fast he’ll just ask me to Google it;)

This blog is going to be a bit more personal than Audible Marketing. Again, I always aim to be open and honest when writing posts but in the framework of the other blog there have been many things I have omitted.

So, I hope you enjoy my blog whether you are an IM Geek Girl or Guy (yes, guys are welcome too). I’d love to hear from you and read your comments – and don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed (just click on the orange button in the top right and add me to your reader).

Lisa