I have gone through the Day 1 & 2 material and I am smack in the middle of what, for me, was the hardest part of last years challenge and is turning out likewise this year. In other words, I feel like if I could truly “get” this part of the challenge – I think I could really make a break through and have a go at this Internet marketing thing here... So in an effort to do that, I'm going to lay out what I've done and invite critique and rebuttal from any and all comers. Now I know you are a gentle lot, but I'm asking for the strong medicine so I can improve – so for now... have no mercy!
Let us begin:
I was in the challenge last year, didn't make ANYTHING online. Well that's not exactly true. Thanks to learning about revver.com and using it for all my cheesy family videos on our new family blog (which I wasn't blogging before the 30DC, so credit goes there too...), we have earned $0.62 so far this year. At this rate, by next February I fully expect to have earned my first dollar online
So where did I go so wrong? Let's have a look.
By my best count, last year I had 18 markets I listed... I'm going to expose the best one I had for anyone to steal or use – whatever. Just so I can show you my process and you can tell me what's wrong with it. So here it is.
The Market:
According to gurubob, a market is a group of people with a common problem or desire. So I looked at:
“People wanting to be uplifted or inspired”
And I looked for any number of key words using GTrends (for all you 1st timers, GTrends is the old timey MarketSamurai – just think of it as another way to get those target numbers of > 100 hits per day for a #1 ranking and < 30,000 pages of competition to avoid playing “Major League Baseball”). I thought I had struck a gold mine:
(I have totally failed at trying to present tabular data in this editor, any ideas?)
niche phrase - - - hits/day - - - competing pages
quotes on family - - - 155 - - - 573
quotes on change - - - 210 - - - 846
quotes on success - - - 175 - - - 956
quotes on happiness - - - 115 - - - 723
quotes on friendship - - - 538 - - - 15,100
quotes on death - - - 265 - - - 9,940
quotes on leadership - - - 180 - - - 9,500
quotes on marriage - - - 140 - - - 9,170
quotes on education - - - 235 - - - 19,500
So these all looked good (of course, I just ran through them again and they all stink!! Hmm, maybe GTrends has gotten smarter
)
So I had a market and some phrases that met the criteria. I followed along the symphony of 4 parts and moved to traffic. I made a few pages, but I didn't get much traffic. Now I could blame the pages and maybe that is the real problem and I'm looking in the wrong place.
But I suspect that the way I'm thinking about markets and niches and long-tail phrases is where I'm falling off the tracks.
Is that a bad niche? Too broad? Should I be looking in my refrigerator and seeing what products I buy and trying to find markets there? Or should I follow my kids around with a clipboard and note what they are playing with/interested in? (e.g. “Large families who are way to crazy about condiments...”, or “Webkinz tips and tricks”) This seems too commercial and too product driven – getting the symphony backwards.
I'm wanting to play the symphony in the right order, but I fear I have the sheet music upside down.
Along comes Market Samurai
I am getting spotty performance from this creature, but what I did try is my big winner and see if the Samurai can slice it up differently (if you want to be inspired by the concept – Google “Samurai Deli” many of you are probably too young for this reference).
So I started with “quotes”
It came back with 200 results. I painstakingly removed 144 of them, leaving 56 that I thought would be relavant (that took a while, hopefully they won't all be that time consuming... one at a time? A multi-select option would be nice...)
I filtered on > 100 hits and < 30,000 pages and ended up with 7 results:
Phrase - - - Searches - - - SEOT - - - SEOC - - - OCI
relationship quotes - - - 1332 - - - 559 - - - 30000 - - - ?
happy quotes - - - 2975 - - - 1250 - - - 12200 - - - 8%
meaningful quotes - - - 487 - - - 205 - - - 28000 - - - 6%
quotes about death - - - 325 - - - 137 - - - 11000 - - - ?
encouraging quotes - - - 325 - - - 137 - - - 10700 - - - 59%
philosophical quotes - - - 487 - - - 205 - - - 21600 - - - ?
encouragement quotes - - - 325 - - - 137 - - - 24500 - - - ?
So it looks like “encouraging quotes” is a winner? Is it not?
Is it just a matter of taking that on to make my first of millions of dollars? Or am I doing something wrong that I'm just not seeing.
Input appreciated... thanks for your time.