Pyjamanating

Tumblr blogs rankings after 36 hours:

• niche1 phrase search: 28
• niche2 phrase search: 27

Ed’s got a bit stressed over some bad practices happening, with resulting bad press on the blogs.

I wrote on the 30daychallengeblog:

I suppose if anybody puts on a free course about Internet Marketing, and then gets people to join Facebook etc where things can go viral pretty easily, then it’s always going to attract the sharks circling around where all of this juicy groundbait has been thrown out.

But Web2.0 is not a set of tools, it’s an attitude.

Keep putting out the white-hat philosophy message Ed, and it will keep the heart of this community on the right track. I’m reading that people are falling in love with their community already, and that’s a strong indicator.

Maybe also a warning that it’s a wild wild world out there, and that world overlaps with us, at least at the fringes.

One of my tumblr articles still hasn’t appeared, but the other one is now at position 28  for phrase search after  18 hours. It’s had a bit of socialposting so hopefully it will creep up.

Socialposter has one site where all of today’s posts are of tumblr blogs which are almost certainly part of the 30day challenge, so that’s fun. I voted them up and added as friends within the tumblr dashboard. They all seem to have found phrases which are potentially more lucrative than mine!

What else.  Oh yes, I’ve submitted an ezine.  It was tricky working out whether to sign up as myself  or as the author, and the video didn’t help much by using an example where the reviewer  is the same person as the product.

I’ve used up a lot of my copywriting now, so I’ll have to get some more written over the weekend. It’s also tempting to spend too much time just checking Google to see if the ranking has improved!

Last night I wasted an hour adding feedburner stats to the themes in tumblr, when today there’s a video which shows an easy way to add google analytics.

learning, learning.

Off to check the forum now.  Have a great weekend

Published on Enterprise Nation today

A note from the Editor

Are you trying to write that one sales letter that will pull in the millions and guarantee your retirement to a small island in the Caribbean? Maybe you have just sent out 5000 letters and wondered why you haven’t had one response. Crafting an effective (and profitable) sales letter is an art, but one that can be learnt.

Nicola goes on to offer a 15 point plan to making a perfect sales pitch. Here are the first 5…

1. Headlines – grab ‘em early

It all starts here. Grab attention, make it interesting. As the world becomes more cynical and consumers more advertising savvy, you need to be clued up about how to switch a reader on. There are numerous types of headline from the question format to the shocking fact. Just make sure they are highly relevant to your audience.

2. Know your customers

What is the point of mailing 5000 people with details of your product if 4999 already own an identical product? Do your homework, find the right customers in your database, check that their details are up to date and when you do the letters make sure they are addressed to a person rather than Dear Sir/Madam. I don’t know about you but I’m more likely to read something that has my name at the top. Sales letters don’t always have to be mass mailings – if you haven’t heard from a customer in a while why not drop them a personal letter to develop your relationship.

3. Let’s talk about you

We’ve all read them, ‘Dear Mrs X, My name is Dave and I’m writing to tell you how wonderful our company, Doofus Ltd is. We’ve got loads of great gadgets and we are based in a town near you’. I’ll say this just once, so listen carefully, your potential customers have one question when they read a letter ‘what’s in it for me?’ If you don’t answer that immediately you’ve lost them and your letter will be winging its way to the circular filing tray marked ‘bin’. Speak to your customer and put their needs first, there should be few, if any, uses of the word ‘we’ and lots of incidences of ‘you’.

4. The truth, the whole truth

Building credibility is key in a sales letter. If you have testimonials then use them, don’t make over exaggerated claims about your product or service and don’t use millions of exclamation marks!!!!!!

You can use success stories or short case studies to illustrate how you have helped customers; remember to keep the focus on what you can do for the customer, not how great you are.

It is important you have some brief information about your company, but it should be further down the letter, to the point and unique to your business. No standard corporate speak thank you!

5. Blow your trumpet about benefits

The biggest trap most people fall into is talking about the features of a product or service, not the benefits. You need to think about all the reasons people would choose to use your product/service and why they should choose you over your competitors – can you save them money, get rid of hassle, increase their profits, change their life in undiscovered ways? Think about what causes your potential customers problems and how your product or service solves them. Don’t talk about the colour or size of your new super widget, instead explain how the super widget saves 10 hours and is half the cost of the product they are currently using.

PS. If writing your own sales letter scares the pants off you, call me on 0161 374 2752 for a free quote, 10% off all orders placed in September. Plus a place on my Caribbean island…

Before I turned in last night I dugg and stumbled my two tumblr blogs. Then I lay in bed wondering whether Google will pay me an overnight visit.

No such luck, but never mind.

In the morning I decided to organised Firefox sessions so that I can switch between the two seperate projects more easily. I still prefer Camino really, but Firefox has some benefits as well. That’s one of the things I will be able to take away from the 30daychallenge at the end.

Then I checked out Facebook, and pondered what to do about our dead group. I’ve sent a group message to individual team members inboxes on Facebook which says the following:

Ok, this is a message to all members of the thirtydaychallenge team which is called “30DC for mac”. The team is comprised of people who joined 30DC late, or didn’t have a team earlier so it may be kind of hard to catch up in some ways, but we really do need to have a functioning team, get to know each other and be able to trust each other for mutual support with our niches.

So please come on over to the group discussion area and say hello or something to break the ice. There’s just myself and Linda there at the moment, and for us there’s no point in carrying on like that. We’re going to need a lively group and so will you if you are ata ll serious about the challenge. If perhaps you have actually dropped out of the challenge, then you’re missing a great opportunity but it does require some application. Maybe other priorities took over, anyway If that’s you then we need to know so please leave the group now and maybe we’ll see you next year.

Everybody else, it’s nearly the weekend so we can relax and maybe catch up if necessary. It’s the exciting time now when we are publishing our tumblr blogs, netscaping then and watching to see if they ranked on Google. How’s yours doing? Fun!

If that doesn’t get any response by Monday we’ll close the group down and try and start again with a different approach.

So what’s on for today – three videos, one with Ed getting overexcited, one tutorial about how to post to 25+ social bookmarking sites at once, and one I haven’t watched yet on submitting an ezine article.

On the subject of social bookmarking, is using SocialPoster doing it the way the internet works? It’s a long way from what was the original intention of the first social bookmarking sites – Furl and delicious. Why does the internet need dozens of such sites anyway? And why don’t they all just provide a different interface into the same database?

Quite a long day really. First there was the fallback to tumblr, then the sudden introduction of thirtydaychallenge WordPress MU blogs, but without really explaining what they are for.

So anyway, I’ve set up two tumblr blogs, added three items of content to each and links to clickbank products. Then I set up this blog here, with the Welsh language theme Cwbrick. Yaki

Added a few comments to the forum, and added the feedburner stats to the tumblrs. Not written quite enough new content, but plenty of adaptation. Oh, and I found the TDC island on Secondlife too.

Enough for one day!

I’ve just been to Wuranga Island and there was nobody there.

By this stage we should all have narrowed our topic niches down to two keyphrases and begun writing short pieces of lightweight copy. Three pieces per day on each keyphrase, making six mini articles to be produced on top of the learning and community activities. Phew.

I’m using Google notepad and docs as suggested for one of them, and so that’s a learning curve itself, just to get the workflow streamlined. The web based Gnotepad has its advantages, but it can be a bit clunky as well. I made a blog post about one of my niches and it has risen to page two on Google already, so it will be interesting to see how the tools suggested for 30DC fare against that. I just made one adjustment, so it should be one page one tomorrow with a bit of luck.

I’m not sure about these affiliates selling nothing but hyped up documents, but then I asked on Facebook if anybody ever buys electronic reports and got a responses in the positive.
Our team isn’t getting started very well though. Eight people have joined but nobody is joining “in” yet.

Ed says you’ll never get rich selling stuff from Amazon and that’s very true indeed!

Here’s the rather convoluted way I contrived for measuring the red line against the blue one in photoshop.

I suspect the low tech piece of card method might have been quicker and just as accurate, but I’m not clever enough to think anthing so elegant as this:


Originally uploaded by eddale

While waiting for the next announcement about an announcement I’ve been busy upgrading wordpress blogs, reading news, twittering and facebooking and also found a really useful online training course to take part in. It’s called the “Thirty Day Challenge” and takes place during the month of August, about internet marketing and it’s free.

The challenge itself is to earn a first $10 in 30 days, without spending any money, using a combination of traditional marketing theory and web2.0 tools. If you can learn these techniques then it is hoped that you can apply them on a larger project, longer term bigger scale afterwards.

I admit I was a bit skeptical at first, but after three days catching up and taking in the resources I can vouch that there is some good quality information and advice, sound theory and enjoyable learning to be had through enrolling on this project. You’d have to be quick though since it started a week ago, and be prepared to put in the rest of this week catching up.

I’ll be using this blog to write about my progress so if you want to hear how I get on you’d better subscribe now.

• Subscribe to RSS Feeds:

• Full
• Comments

I knew it would be a challenge adapting to a new routine and of course like everything else, events never turn out as expected.

I’ve kind of just slipped into this work from home lifestyle without consciously sitting down and working out exactly what I need to do first and prioritising anything yet. That’s not worrying me too much, I know that anything pressing will find a way to gain my attention, but there is a lot that I could do to improve my personal efficiency and writing this blog is probably going to be a key activity towards that end.

Yet my rate of blogging has decreased in an eratic way, on both this and other blogs. One positive reason for that is the absence of morning train journeys on which there is nothing else to do except think. I don’t listen to personal audio, so this was a time for quiet contemplation, albeit in a desperately uncomfortable and crowded situation often!

The trips out to meetings and suchlike seem to be a stimulus, so I’l continue to plan for around two a week.

One thing I’m aware of but haven’t sorted out yet is the physical state of my workstation. The adjustable height swivel chair is just not right, and I can’t maintain a good posture. That’s interfering with my work.
So where can you buy a chair with four legs thes days?