Day 11 30DC - Relax, It's Only a Test

As more of my niches crash and burn during the analysis process I am reminded that this is extremely valuable work and ultimately it is saving me untold dollars as well as considerable heartache down the road.

Testing, testing, and more testing, has to be integrated into every part of your business. If you are not testing, you don't really know what's going on.

And it should be a joyous thing to see your work fail the test. Better it fails now, when you can fix it inexpensively, than in front of the customer, or after you have laid out plenty of money to launch.

While it is disappointing to see potentially interesting and fun niches splat against the wall, it is heartening to know that those that survive will be more likely to generate revenue.

And that's the name of the game.

Day 10 30 DC - The Power of Saying NO

I'm finding it hard to let go of some of my favorite niches. I chose them in the first place because they are topics I am passionate about, or that I believe others would find compelling. They are, for the most part, highly marketable niches, and I do have some experience and reasonable success in getting things to the right market.

I also liked many of them because I could quite clearly see the related products and services that would generate revenue, and I felt I knew how to attract the target market.

But the numbers just don't hold up. Even though I have run the analysis on my top eliminated favorites a few times (silly girl, the results aren't going to change in a day!), hoping to see potential I missed, they are still "no go".

That's not to say they must be abandoned, only that acting upon them would take certain resources that are beyond the scope of this challenge.

There is a great deal of power in saying "NO". I wish more of my clients would realize that. NO, we're not releasing the product before it has been thoroughly tested. NO, we are not skimping on the manual. NO, we are not spending money on a marketing campaign that doesn't have a specific objective. And so on.

Sometimes, you say NO to gather more data, and that is good. Your decisions will likely be better if based on thorough research. Sometimes, you say NO in order to wait for a more opportune time, thus increasing chances for success. And sometimes, you say NO to a good idea so that you can take advantage of a better idea that is just about to come along.

"NO" creates boundaries. It draws a line that you state you will not cross. And if you cross it you had better know the potential consequences. "NO" clearly establishes your position, without any vacillation or weakness. But you have to mean it.

"NO" is very empowering, in business, in relationships, in life. Try it sometime. Trot it out and give it a go. Let me know how that works for you.

Day 9 30 DC - Coming to Terms

Ed and Dan weren't kidding when they said that Days 7, 8 and 9 were the most important of the entire Thirty Day Challenge training. Their techniques have revolutionized how Internet Marketers approach their businesses.

I have already mentioned that having benchmarks, or proven criteria against which to evaluate our ideas in the research and analysis stage, is an innovation in this field that previously was a hit or miss game. The fallout, however, is that all the niche ideas that were developed out of interest and enthusiasm have, one after another, been eliminated because they don't hold up in analysis. You might think that's discouraging, and perhaps it is to a point.

But the real value in these techniques is that we are saving untold hours and dollars by NOT going down the wrong path. Information like we're getting at the on-paper stage is

Much of the work I do in the technical communication field, working with software companies and other product development organizations, is to help them solve user issues BEFORE they become coded or manufactured into being and passed to the customer. When you can eliminate most customer support issues by finessing the design (and the other part is rigorous user testing at the earliest stages possible), you save countless dollars and resources, plus your customers are happier with a product that works well. Unfortunately, the bottom line value of these improvements are hard to quantify, except in the omission. We know full well what bad software costs in terms of customer opinion and loyalty. You might see some feedback on tech support forums and in user communities, and customer support staff can certainly attest to how well the product is going over with the users.

When something works like clockwork, however, who notices? Very few people will stop and think, "Wow, that was easy!". Their expectation is always simply that things will work the way they are supposed to. Without a basis for comparison, one doesn't notice the performance difference. That's one of the reasons these Thirty Day Challenge techniques are turning most of us on our heads. We know what it's like to do things the hard way, the trial and error way. Being able to reliably assess each individual niche for its potential for success is HUGE.

So how did my terms fair in the analysis? Out of 103 potential niches that I had listed, so far 2 (TWO!) have survived all of the tests. I have five others which are borderline and are on the "keep watching" list. I am not disappointed by this. Now when I put effort into these two niches I will know that I have a better-than-average chance of succeeding with them. The stats are there to indicate precisely this.

Do I feel chagrined at my niche-picking skill? Not at all. The niches that didn't make the cut are still potentially good, I would just have to use different techniques to make them profitable. The point about this year's Thirty Day Challenge is that it is intended to cost us $0.00, zero, zip, nada, zilch, you know the rest. If that in itself is not a revolution in Internet Marketing, I don't know what is.

Day 8 30DC - X Marks the Spot

We've all seen those adventure movies where the hero(ine) has a treasure map but the part containing the X is missing, or they have a complete map without any labels so they don't know where to start. It is only by luck that they'll have any chance of finding what they seek.

This is exactly the thing that the Thirty Day Challenge team addressed in today's training. You can't find the treasure if you don't have any indication of where the gold is.


The million-dollar technique demonstrated today gives us all the landmarks we need to zero in on the gold in Internet Marketing. They shared with us a way of comparing the various statistics we've been looking at up to this point, so that we can correctly evaluate the traffic potential for any keyword phrase. More importantly, they showed how to use a baseline or benchmark to validate those statistics.

Baselines and benchmarks represent known, quantifiable, and tested points against which all other results can be compared. These consistent measurements give you a concrete way to prove the worth of your work and research.

In business, medicine, and project management, a baseline is a snapshot of your current situation. Before making any changes, you want to have a baseline against which to compare future results. The baseline is the known, that allows you to venture into the unknown.

Similarly a benchmark is a known, fixed point that gives you confidence in all of your results. Benchmarks are achieved through known and repeatable processes, the key being "repeatable". If you do the same things, you are going to get the same results, consistently and reliably.

In business, this is a valuable lesson. In Internet Marketing, it's revolutionary. Internet marketing has often been trial and error, hit and miss. It seemed that a good deal of range-finding was involved -- taking a shot, seeing where it hit, and readjusting if it missed the target. As Ed has told us, it took 38 tries before his first website was successful at generating revenue. He didn't have these techniques way back then.

That he and his team are sharing them now is a tribute to their generosity and character. They have given us a treasure map, complete with legend and starting point. The only thing left to do is follow it.

Day 7 30DC - Tools of the Trade

The podcast and videos today in the Thirty Day Challenge demonstrated how to begin to evaluate the niche ideas we have accumulated over the initial days of training. We are beginning the winnowing process, continuing to obtain statistical information about the niches from the various research tools Ed introduced. Our niches will either make it through the gate to the next round of evaluation, or they will prove to be unreliable risks that do not deserve any further effort.

There may be a few that are borderline -- some of the stats don't quite add up to form a perfect picture, but there may be other characteristics that give us reason to keep them in play for the time being. They would certainly involve further market research, and the application of some wisdom gained through our experience with this process.

For now, however, it is more important to focus on the niches that meet all of the stated criteria.

In addition to these techniques, Ed brought up an important point that is relevant to every field of endeavour. If you are planning to make your fortune (and my NAT132 students will know that one's fortune includes not only wealth and prosperity, but destiny and development of character) in any trade or profession, it is vitally important to have the best quality tools for the practice of that trade or profession.

He reminded us that top chefs have sets of knives worth thousands of dollars. If you are going to be making your living (and making a life, too) online, then you deserve and have an imperative for getting the fastest broadband connection you can get as well as the most powerful computer you can afford.

Precision tools allow your genius and your skill to be realized in the things that you create, fashion, repair, or reshape. They allow you to spend your time on the things that matter instead of wrestling with the tools. In the time/money equation (NAT132!) the time you save when you work efficiently goes toward growing your business and building your wealth, instead of cleaning up messes or finding workarounds for inadequate tools. How effective is a carpenter who has a substandard drill and is relegated to turning every screw by hand?

Beyond that are the limitations poor tools place upon your performance in other ways. If a carpenter only has a hammer, then every problem becomes a nail. You've heard that before, I'm sure. What it means is that creative thinking or innovation is not possible; the potential outcomes of all problems are constrained by the tools available for their resolution. This is a death knell for business, because you cannot react adequately to the issues that arise.

It may seem simplistic to state that tradesmen are only as good as their tools. What about knowledge workers? When the product of your brain is more important than the product of your hands, your tools need to be fast and sophisticated to process information effectively. Data gathering and data manipulation are increasingly the way to building one's wealth in the 21st century. Do that faster and better than your competitors and your success is assured.

The Tao of Ed, Take II

You know I'm a scamp, right? Ed happened to mention that we needed black T-shirts in support of the Tao of Ed movement. So here's what I did:

Ed is too modest to have his face on a T-shirt, so we went to additional iterations, including one with Tao or Yin/Yang symbol, one with the symbols for Knowledge and Prosperity, and one with a guitar, sort of. Consensus is that the guitar is something we all associate with Ed, so it deserves a place in the Tao of Ed graphical reality.

Since the guitar is so representative of Ed, I want to render it better than you see here. Y'all know I'm graphically challenged and that I have zero artistic skills -- but I am a copy/paste mashup maven! And this soon-to-be-a-collector's-item T-shirt deserves a much better image.

I have also been asked for a pic of a combat hamster -- I'm workin' on it!

Day 6 30DC - Don't Judge, Just Notice

Even with 2 days of rest and catchup, the clock is still ticking, counting down the magical 30 days of the Challenge. In today's training Ed continued his riff on market research and gave us a couple of new ways to go about it. His emphasis continued to be on noticing, not judging.

It's hard not to employ one's critical thinking skills when looking at niche markets. Immediately the brain tries to edit and evaluate what we're seeing, but at this stage of market research, like brainstorming, it is important only to notice what we're seeing. Essentially, it's a data-gathering phase.

By the way, that is one of the first phases of project management, for any project, the research and analysis phase. Note that the word Research comes before Analysis. You need data in order to have something to analyze. The quality of your analysis will only be as good as the quality and thoroughness of your data.

The term "noticing" also implies that you are paying close attention to what you are seeing. Your market research is not just a factoid grab, but an intelligent observation of the data you are gathering. This means taking in the information on the periphery as well as what is directly in front of your face. What else is on the web page you are looking at? Where do links take you from that page? How many people have been looking for that keyword? What related keywords do they search for?

If you only gather the superficial data, i.e., the low-hanging fruit, your market research will be inadequate, and if you later base business decisions on that market research, you put yourself at risk for losing money.

There is no substitute for the research and analysis phase in project management. (And if you've taken any of my classes you know that project management, product management, document development, software development, event planning, and pretty much every other human activity follows the same Development Life Cycle.) You cannot take shortcuts with this. While it's attractive to rush this stage to get into the sexy and fun part of developing a product or project, neglecting the research and analysis phase creates time bombs and traps that you will have to deal with in the latter stages of your project, and then they will be very costly indeed.

So in phase 1, Research -- noticing everything, judging nothing. Then analyze. No doubt we'll be talking about that tomorrow.

Day 5 30DC - A Day of Rest

Strictly speaking, the 30DC is holding at Day 3 until Monday morning. They are giving us 2 days to catch up with the technology and get our lists of niches filled up so that we have a minimum (or whittled down list) of 7 to begin applying process to next week.

It also gives their tech team a chance to boost the server capacity and make sure everyone is able to download the large video files (often 50MB) for the training. Currently, they are serving 1 terabyte of data a day -- somewhat more than what was anticipated. No worries, however, they are able to scale up so all will be right with the 30DC world momentarily.

This also gives everyone a chance to read the multitude of forum posts and wrap their heads around everything that has happened so far. There has been some awesome training, and the synergy on the forum boards is quite wonderful to see. Veteran marketers and 30DC participants from the past 2 years are generously sharing tips and techniques, both for dealing with the technology and clarifying the concepts. They are also showing admirable restraint in not stealing Ed's thunder by revealing any strategies that they already know he might offer.

There is a true sense of community on the forums, and the teambuilding is proceeding apace. Teams of disparate individuals with the most tenuous of connections ("Looking for anyone warm-blooded for a team.") are coming together to form solid partnerships that will pay off later in the challenge.

We're expecting a great deal of activity this upcoming week, but for now, it's a day (or two) of much-needed rest. If you are not taking a day of rest in your business, or your studies, you cannot hope to be as effective as if you had that time to decompress and re-create.

I guarantee that if you build a day of rest into your week, you will find that on the remaining six days, you will accomplish as much, and probably more, than if you had worked flat knacker* the entire seven. The brain needs a chance to assimilate and integrate input -- cognitive correlation, we call it -- so that it can provide you with more valuable output. I always send my students off with the admonition to get some sleep!

And you know, that's very good advizzzzz zzzz zzz zzz zzz zzz...
See also: Beth Buzz: Day of Rest June 25, 2006

* Flat knacker - Australian for working very hard indeed