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.