The Challenge Manifesto

THE CHALLENGE MANIFESTO
A SUPPLEMENTARY GUIDE TO THE ONLINE VIDEO TRAINING PROGRAM LOCATED AT

HTTP://WWW.CHALLENGE.CO/
September 2011
by
Robert Somerville (GuruBob)

http://www.gurubob.co/
A L L R I G H T S R E S E RV E D R O B E R T S O M E RV I L L E!
H T T P : / / W W W. C H A L L E N G E . C O /
All material within this book is under copyright and as such cannot be modied in any format without the express permission of the copyright owner.
You are free to share this document, via email, social networks or the Internet without permission as long as the document being shared remains exactly as the version made available at http://www.challenge.co/manifesto.
All rights reserved 2011.
Copyright 2011, Robert Somerville
FOREWORD
I was greeted with silence and the slight raise of an eyebrow. On arriving back from New York, I'd just informed Guru Bob of my hair-brained scheme to teach people how to make their rst dollar online inside a month. For free. I'm pretty sure he thought I was nuts, but then proceeded to help me create the rst ever Challenge in 2005. Fast forward to today. Without Guru Bob, the Challenge wouldn't happen (for example, I'm typing this foreword ve hours before the new challenge kicks off)! Robert spends all year crafting the contents and lessons of the challenge. My role reduced to that of providing the beefcake... This year, Guru Bob on his own time has produced "The Challenge Manifesto". It is AWESOME! I hope the fact it's free does not distract you from the fact that many people have paid thousands of dollars for not anywhere near the quality of information found in this tome. I hope you take the time to thank Guru Bob on Twitter. I get to thank him in this foreword. Thanks heaps Rob.
Ed Dale
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION!
What Is The Challenge?! Who Is Behind The Challenge?! The Purpose Of This Supplementary Guide! Evolution Of The Challenge Training! How To Participate In The Challenge!
1 1 1 3 4 5 7 8 8 8 9 10 10 10 12 13 14 15 15 16
PRE-CHALLENGE - Mindmap! PRE-CHALLENGE TRAINING!

UStream! Twitter! Google Chrome! Setting Expectations! Disclaimer! The Symphony Of Four Parts! Optional Pre-Challenge Training! Pre-Challenge Checklist!
MODULE 1 - Mindmap! MODULE 1 - Keywords And Market Research!

What Is A Niche?! Finding Niche Ideas!
Assessing The Trafc and Competition For Your Keywords! Understanding the Broad Phrase Match Paradox! Finding Theme And Category Keywords! Assessing The Strength Of Competition In The SERPS! Evidence Of Commercial Activity! Module 1 Summary! Module 1 - Checklist!
17 17 18 19 19 20 20 21 22 22 23 23 23 24 24 25 26 27 28 29 29 30 30 31 31
MODULE 2 - Mindmap! MODULE 2 - Publish Your Micro-Niche Website!

Keywords And Domains! Finding Keyword Optimized Content! Writing Keyword Optimized Content! Editing Your Keyword Optimized Content! Creating Your Website (Wordpress Blog) And Publish Your First Article! Tracking Your Wordpress Blog! Help Your Blog To Get Found (Indexed) by The Search Engines! Module 2 Checklist!
MODULE 3 - Mindmap! MODULE 3 - Create Your Off-Page Network!

The Basics Of Backlinking! EzineArticles! Squidoo! Posterous! Creating a Posterous Account And Adding Services! Publishing To Your Posterous Network and Niche Blog!
ii
Module 3 Checklist!
32 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 39 40 40 41 41 41 42 43 44 45 45 46 46 47
THE CHALLENGE MANIFESTO iii
MODULE 4 - Mindmap! MODULE 4 - Authority Back Linking Strategies!

What Is An Authority Backlink?! Finding Sites From Which To Acquire Authority Backlinks! Commenting On Blogs! Posting In Forums! Using The Pingback Function Of A Blog To Acquire Authority Backlinks! Exploring The Link Networks Of Your Competitors! Leveraged Content Syndication To Article And Blog Networks [Optional]! Module 4 Checklist!
MODULE 5 - Mindmap! MODULE 5 - Market Leadership!

Passive Market Leadership - Competitor Analysis and Tools! Active Market Leadership - Twitter Lists! Active Market Leadership - Setting Up A Curation Workow! Active Market Leadership Tools -! Leveraging Strategies For Active Market Leadership! Module 5 Checklist!
MODULE 6 - Mindmap! MODULE 6 - Monetization!

Monetizing Using Google Adsense! Monitoring Google Adsense! Monetization Using Afliate Products! Monetization Expectations!
Module 6 Checklist!
48 49 50 50 51 51 52 52 53 54 55 56 75 78 78 79
MODULE 7 - Mindmap! MODULE 7 - Your Go/No Go Decision!

Assessing Your Website Stats And Conversions! The Consequences Of Your Decision! Flippa - Selling Your Niche Blog! Doing More Of What Works! Mistakes Marketers Make! Congratulations...You Made It!! Module 7 Checklist!
SOME THOUGHTS...IN CLOSING! GLOSSARY OF TERMS! RECOMMENDED READING LIST! RECOMMENDED SOFTWARE & SERVICES!
Software & Services For Beginner Internet Marketers! Software & Services For Intermediate To Advanced Internet Marketers!
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INTRODUCTION
What Is The Challenge?
The Challenge represents many things to many people, but at its core, it is an online video training program that gives participants a quality introduction to Internet Marketing for free. It offers a step-by-step system for people to learn the basics of keyword and market research, creating a WordPress blog (website) to target a niche, developing a link network to improve the ranking of the blog in the search engines so as to attract trafc, introduces the principle of market leadership, offers options to monetize the blog and shows how to decide whether the niche has sufcient commercial viability to justify continued participation and what to do if the answer is yes or no. The Challenge recently changed name from what was formerly known as the Thirty Day Challenge (30DC). The Thirty Day Challenge was created by Ed Dale in 2005 following a visit to New York where Ed was exposed to the National Writers Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) which has the goal of How To Write A Novel In 30 days, Guaranteed. At the same time Ed was also reading the book iCon by William Young (which is all about Steve Jobs of Apple). As it happens, at this time, Ed had been very successful with online marketing and through the urging of his mentor, Gary Halbert, was motivated to give back to the community that had served him so well. When all these factors merged, the genesis of an idea took hold. And Ed asked the question, what would happen if he was to create a 30 day program to teach people how to be successful online? And so, the Thirty Day Challenge (30DC) was born. Since 2005, the Thirty Day Challenge (and subsequently The Challenge) has taken place every year around July/August and has introduced and taught the principles of Internet Marketing to over 170,000 people even though the commercial goal of participating in The Challenge is just to make $1 by the end! Of course, many many people have gone on to make a whole lot more than $1 by implementing what they have learned through The Challenge program. In 2011, thousands more people will benet from The Challenge training. All of us involved in The Challenge wish you well with your Internet Marketing journey and hope for success in whatever online endeavors you ultimately participate in as a consequence of completing The Challenge.
Who Is Behind The Challenge?

Many people have assisted in bringing The Challenge online over the years, many of whom are behind the scenes including the wonderful team of volunteer forum moderators and Dominic Goucher who continues to provide amazing transcriptions of The Challenge Videos. This section
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focusses on The Core Team (responsible for bringing The Challenge to you) and the external content providers who you will see in at least one or more of The Challenge training videos.
The Core Team

Ed Dale - The face of The Challenge since 2005 and, in 2011, contributor of training videos on setting expectations and disclaimer, nding and writing articles, Posterous, market leadership, backlink basics, making a decision and mistakes marketers make. ! ! ! ! ! Blog - http://www.eddale.co/! Twitter - @Ed_Dale
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/tubbynerd
Robert Somerville (GuruBob) - Project Manager since 2005, responsible for developing and testing The Challenge strategy and contributor, in 2011, of training videos on Google Chrome, commercial indicators, Posterous, backlink strategies, consequences of decision and tasks moving forward. ! ! ! ! ! Blog - http://www.gurubob.co/! Twitter - @gurubob
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/GuruBobPage
Andrew Nesbitt (Nez) - The Challenge Webmaster responsible for coding and managing The Challenge website/blog and in 2011, contributor of training videos on how to download les, Challenge Meetups, Twitter and forum commenting. ! ! ! ! ! Blog - http://www.andrewnez.com/ ! Twitter - @AndrewNez
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/nezcorp
Dan Raine - Involved since 2007, often behind the scenes as a technical genius. In 2011, has contributed videos on introducing Market Samurai and explaining niche concepts, trafc and competition. ! ! Blog - http://www.danraine.com/! Twitter - @DanRaine Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/DanRaineHQ
Jon Dean - A previous content provider and in 2011, has contributed videos on the many aspects of Market Samurai including keyword research, SEO matrix analysis, publishing to a WPD Blog, nding sites to link from and nding afliate products and creating and publishing afliate ads. ! ! ! ! ! Blog - http://www.jondean.org/! Twitter - @JonDean1
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/JonDeansPage
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External Content Providers

Caro McCourtie - Contributed videos on The Challenge Forum and Challenge Teams, Ezinearticles and how to make a decision. Twitter - @CaroMcC Website - http://www.ofineherosmethod.com/ Kenny Goodman - Contributed videos on keywords in domains and acquiring domains. Twitter - @KennyGoodman Website - http://www.kenny.co/ Marty Rozmanith - Contributed videos on Wordpressdirect (WPD), obtaining a Google Adsense account and adding Adsense to a WPD blog and transferring a blog. Website - http://www.wpdirect.com/ Emily Becker - Contributed Videos on adding Google analytics to a Wordpressdirect blog and monitoring a Google Adsense account. Website - http://www.wpdirect.com/ Michael Roberts - Contributed videos on acquiring/installing Ping Kaching and how to submit a site to Ping Kaching for indexing. Twitter - @MichaelRRoberts Website - http://www.michaelrroberts.com/blog/ Michelle MacPhearson - Contributed videos on Squidoo and aspects of market leadership. Twitter - @michellem Website - http://www.michellemacphearson.com/ Paul Colligan - Contributed a video on market leadership Twitter - @colligan Website - http://www.paulcolligan.com/ Danny Batelic - Contributed videos on Flippa and how to submit a website for sale, managing and completing the sale. Twitter - @DannyBatelic Website - http://www.tradingwebsitesblog.com/ Sam Witteeveen - Contributed videos on acquiring backlinks through blog commenting and aspects of market leadership. Twitter - @Sam_Witteveen Website - http://www.samwitteveen.com/
The Purpose Of This Supplementary Guide

In years past, we have been reluctant to offer a written guide to accompany The Challenge video training largely to avoid the situation where people sign-up to The Challenge, scan the agenda (and/or guide were it to have been made available) and quickly decide that it is was not for them
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without a full appreciation of how they could benet. Consequently, we gradually drip-fed the training over several months so as not to overwhelm people. There were, of course, many people that appreciated this gradual approach but also others that wished to proceed at a faster pace. For the rst time in 2011, all of the content will be available to participants from the moment they sign-up to take part in The Challenge. This supplementary guide has been written to provide more of the context behind The Challenge and to justify and explain why we have chosen to teach certain methods, techniques and services in this course. Throughout this guide, links to the various online training pages are provided to make it easy to jump from the contextual material in this guide to the detail provided in the training videos. The purpose of this guide is not to duplicate what is being taught in The Challenge videos but, as you progress through the training (at your own pace), this guide will assist you to appreciate the context and the reasonings that lead to the inclusion of various components of the training. In addition, denitions of the various Internet and Internet Marketing terms participants will be exposed to is provided through a comprehensive Glossary Of Terms, a list of book recommendations that have been made to The Challenge community in the Recommended Reading List and a list of Recommended Software & Services at the end of this guide.
Evolution Of The Challenge Training

From the outset, it is important to understand that The Challenge is an introduction to Internet Marketing...it has never been (nor sought to be) a complete, detailed training on every Internet Marketing strategy and technique that can be learnt. A great deal of thought and testing has been put into The Challenge training which has transformed through a number of changes over the years largely due to external changes as the Internet Marketing world has evolved. In 2005 and 2006, the 30DC (as The Challenge was then known) was largely focussed on nding a market and developing a (digital) product to sell to that market. Most of the effort and teaching in the 30DC was directed at creating the product and the website to sell that product. The challenge of securing trafc to the product website was easily achieved through bidding on a large number of keywords in Googles PPC adwords program for what is now a ridiculously low cost. In late 2006, however, that situation drastically changed as Google instituted a number of measures (known as Google slaps) to prevent people from buying cheap unrelated trafc to direct to a website. Additionally, Google instituted a number of quality mechanisms between the ads and the web sites they linked to that also made it more difcult. Consequently, in 2007, it became impractical to teach an introductory course where the primary trafc model was based on PPC (it would have been too costly and fraught with difculty for a beginner) and a strategic change took place to teach search engine optimization (SEO) methods
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whereby organic trafc, mainly from the search engines, became the main trafc model. Organic trafc (while free) is much harder to acquire than simply paying money to Google Adwords and very ckle. At that time it was very difcult to determine how much trafc existed for certain keywords and whether that trafc would participate in a commercial outcome. Then (and now) the focus in the 30DC shifted from developing a product to researching and testing keywords and establishing the commercial viability of those keywords by determining whether the trafc would purchase an afliate product. From 2007 to 2009 it was still possible to achieve a testing outcome within 30 days but by 2010, however, that was no longer possible. In 2010, the decision was made to extend The Challenge to seven modules of seven days duration with a weeks break in between each module. This decision made it easier for people to keep up with the training by reducing what was expected of participants on a day to day basis and also to provide sufcient time for the search engine optimization methods to deliver an acceptable volume of trafc. The reality is that most of the trafc associated with a keyword goes to the web sites ranking on page 1 of Google for a keyword and mostly to those web sites in the top 3 - 5 ranking positions. Google does not, however, make it easy to rank that high for a keyword when starting from scratch and a certain amount of time (along with the need to acquire backlinks) must take place before any hope of a page 1 ranking for a keyword can be achieved. The strategy in 2011 remains largely the same as in 2010 (with perhaps more of a focus on building links to the website being developed) and, depending on the keywords, it still takes a variable but signicant amount of time to secure a high enough ranking that the website will receive sufcient trafc to be able to meaningfully test whether that trafc will participate in a commercial outcome at an acceptable conversion. By making all of the content available at once, some people will seek to rush through the training. Some modules can be completed rapidly (Modules 1 - 3 for example), however, the requirement that the website being developed in The Challenge must have a high enough ranking to receive an acceptable amount of trafc cannot be avoided. There is no point starting on Module 6 (monetization) until enough trafc is being received and it will not be possible to make a decision on whether the niche chosen is worth going forward with until enough people have been exposed to the commercial offerings to establish a meaningful conversion rate.
How To Participate In The Challenge

Having signed up for The Challenge you will have been rst invited to watch a webinar introducing The Challenge. If you are reading this guide and have not watched this webinar we strongly suggest that you do and a link is provided below: http://www.30dcwebinars.com/challenge Having watched the webinar you will have been introduced to the three main areas of The Challenge website which are:
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Training Area:!! Blog:! ! Forum:! ! ! !
http://www.challenge.co/training http://www.challenge.co/blog http://www.challenge.co/forum
We recommend that you regularly visit the blog (or register the RSS feed in your newsreader of choice - we recommend the free Google Reader) to stay up to date with all of the activities and notications related to The Challenge. The forum is a great place to ask questions about what is being taught or to clarify any misunderstandings you may have about the training. While we do not have the resources to provide one-on-one training or to answer content related questions via email, should you have any problems accessing The Challenge material for any reason you may email challengehelp@gmail.com for support. To access the training content you will mostly be visiting the training page (link above) or following links in this guide to specic training pages. Either method is acceptable. By making all of The Challenge training available at the start of The Challenge in 2011, we accept that we have transferred control of the pace at which participants consume and implement the training to the end user. We realise the consequences of this, and leave it up to participants to decide for themselves what the best pace is for them. Our recommendation, however, is that you proceed through the modules as they were planned and released in 2010. Accordingly, each module has seven days of content which should take you a week to watch and implement. We then recommend you give yourselves a weeks break before starting the next module. At the very least, however, you will almost denitely need a minimum of 4 - 6 weeks time gap between the end of Module 3 and the start of Module 6 to provide sufcient time for your website (and the links you will be engineering) to be found and indexed by the search engines and for your website to receive a page 1 ranking for your main target keyword. The Challenge video training is entirely free. You will, however, be required to purchase a domain and hosting if you are to follow the training as specied. During The Challenge training, you will also receive recommendations to sign-up for and use various tools and services (Market Samurai, Wordpressdirect and Ping Kaching). In all cases, the owners of these products have made unrestricted free trials available which should allow you to complete The Challenge. Should you wish to keep using these tools at the completion of The Challenge then there will be a cost to retain all of the functionality offered by the products. Discount pricing has been negotiated for participants of The Challenge and you will receive notication regarding accessing the discount offers towards the end of the free trials by email. Hopefully this chapter has given you a sense of the history and motivation behind The Challenge. And now...onto the training modules.
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PRE-CHALLENGE - Mindmap
Mindmap created by Andrew Nesbitt

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PRE-CHALLENGE TRAINING
In 2008, it became necessary to include a Pre-Challenge module to introduce and explain the various online tools and services that were incorporated into The Challenge training. By 2009, there were over 30 videos in the Pre-Challenge module which lead to overwhelm, so a decision was made in 2010 to reduce that number to 10. Prior to starting The Challenge, the goal of Pre-Challenge is to introduce and show you how to acquire and install those products/services that we believe are the absolute minimum that we expect participants to use (all are either free or available as a free trial). In addition, there are videos to explain what expectations participants should have in relation to The Challenge and a disclaimer video which is a necessary requirement for any online product offering. Lastly, we introduce the concept of the Symphony Of Four Parts, which sets the Internet Marketing strategic context for all of the video training to come.
UStream
In association with the release of The Challenge training each year, Ed Dale often broadcasts a number of streaming TV shows to highlight certain aspects of The Challenge and to answer questions. The streaming service we use is Ustream and we recommend participants create an account on that platform. Having a registered account allows users to participate in the community areas of the site such as the chat area. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale shows how to register for and setup an account an account on UStream.
Twitter
Twitter has come a long way in a short time and is now widely recognized as the #2 social networking platform behind Facebook. The core team behind The Challenge were early adopters of Twitter as a platform for rapid communication and also for market research and market leadership activities. Twitter allows users to post brief (140 character) messages which are automatically transmitted to the people that follow that user. In this way it is possible to communicate efciently to a large group of people such as The Challenge community. We strongly recommend that participants follow Ed Dale, GuruBob and Dan Raine as any important messages regarding The Challenge will usually be tweeted or re-tweeted by them. Twitter has other uses in addition to its value as a communication and notication platform. It is possible to search Twitter using keywords or hashtags to nd recent or breaking commentary
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related to those keywords. This is useful for keyword and market research but also to nd people who may have an interest in the same subject. Click Here to view the training page where Andrew Nesbitt shows how to register an account on Twitter and how to nd and follow people to receive their tweets.
Google Chrome
A fast, modern web browser that supports all of the recent technology developments and multimedia formats is a minimum expectation and requirement and in The Challenge, after testing a number of candidates, our recommended web browser is Google Chrome. Google Chrome was introduced in 2008 and by June 2011 is now being used by 20% of all users. A breakdown of usage (Jun, 2011) for the major web browsers is shown below:
BROWSER USAGE
50 37.5 25 12.5 0 5 Firefox Chrome Safari 44
Internet Explorer Firefox Google Chrome Safari Others
44% 28% 21% 5% 2%
28 21
IE
2 Others
More impressive than the actual usage stats is the rate of growth. By June 2011, all of the other browsers are declining in usage whereas Google Chrome usage is rising...and rising fast. Another reason for recommending a particular web browser is our desire that when participants visit a website, that it looks and performs the same as when that website is shown in The Challenge videos. We require all content providers (in The Challenge) to use Google Chrome when recording the video training so as to achieve this consistency. Readers of this guide may not be aware that it is possible to install and use several web browsers on a computer and they will co-exist quite happily. So even if you have a browser favorite, you can use Google Chrome when following The Challenge training and return to your preferred browser for other activities. It is possible that having used Google Chrome you might prefer it anyway :) Click Here to visit the training page where GuruBob shows you have to acquire and install Google Chrome and a range of recommended extensions.
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Setting Expectations
The Challenge is an extensive program that has a number of simple but important objectives: 1. To offer a free but valuable introduction to Internet Marketing. 2. To teach a sustainable and repeatable method for testing niches online where the rst goal is to make a single dollar. 3. To segment the training so it can be watched and implemented in a step-by-step process with a small daily commitment of 30 minutes. The key to success is to learn a process that works and to persevere until expertise is gained. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale discuss the expectations participants should have in relation to The Challenge.
Disclaimer
We have created The Challenge training with full transparency and are happy to disclose all relationships we have with 3rd parties who have assisted us in delivering The Challenge program and the tools and services that are recommended within. Participants can be condent that there is no cost for the video training itself and that any tools recommended within the training are available for use on a free trial basis. The only cost we strongly recommend participants incur is in relation to the acquisition and hosting of a domain. While it is feasible that participants could avoid this cost by using free hosting or by creating a website on a Web 2.0 service, the fact is that ownership of your site in this case is uncertain and the search engines may or not view that site differently than a self-hosted website. Click Here to view the training where Ed Dale discusses the disclaimer for The Challenge.
The Symphony Of Four Parts

Internet Marketing is a hugely complex subject and difcult to grasp. The symphony of four parts is an attempt to distill the key concepts that lead to success and focus when one is thinking about and working at Internet Marketing. The four parts are:
Market and Keyword Research

The rst and probably most critical step in succeeding with Internet Marketing is understanding the keywords associated with your area of interest and the market factors associ A L L R I G H T S R E S E RV E D R O B E R T S O M E RV I L L E! THE CHALLENGE MANIFESTO
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ated with those keywords. It is imperative that you know or can predict the trafc and competition around those keywords and have established that a market exists relative to these keywords that is interested or has a need for the products and/or services that you may wish to promote. In The Challenge, the whole of Module 1 (and parts of Module 5) is dedicated to this subject. We would even go as far to say that even if you were successful in ALL other aspects of the symphony of four parts, if you fail in this step then you WILL fail overall.
Trafc
Having established the niche focus of an Internet Marketing activity the next step is to undertake the process of obtaining a sustainable ow of trafc to a website in order to promote a product and/or service. This step involves creating a web presence and then undertaking the work to expose that website attractively to the search engines and other sources of trafc. Ultimately, the scale of your success online will be driven by the volume of trafc that can be acquired, coupled with the conversion of that trafc to a commercial outcome as explained in the next step. In The Challenge, we focus on search engine trafc as the primary trafc model although many other trafc models do exist online. Modules 2 - 4 of The Challenge are concerned with various aspects of the trafc challenge.
Conversion
Once a sustainable volume of trafc within a niche is secured, attention can next be focussed on maximising the conversion of that trafc to a commercial outcome. This will involve a combination of selecting products and /or services to promote and writing attractive and compelling sales copy (or other sales material). Ultimately, the website owner will layer a number of conversion techniques to maximise the probability of a sale. Module 6 (monetization) of The Challenge is largely concerned with conversion.
Product
Having tested a niche or market using third party products or advertising, it is often good practice to create products and services specically for the niche being targeted which can then be sold not only by the product developer, but also by an expanding group of afliate marketers who drive trafc (and sales) with the expectation of a commission. The leverage provided by having a group of other people selling your product can only be applied when you are the product or service owner.
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At any point in your Internet Marketing business you will probably be working on something that relates to one of the four parts listed above and it is good practice to focus your immediate attention on the part that is not operating at maximum efciency at any point of time. In The Challenge, the training is mainly focussed on Parts 1 and 2 with a partial focus on Part 3. Product creation is not covered in The Challenge itself but is signicantly covered in our paid member programs that follow on from The Challenge (Challenge Plus and Immediate Edge - nd out more in the Post-Challenge section). Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale discusses The Symphony of Four Parts.
Optional Pre-Challenge Training

On Day 7 of the Pre-Challenge module, a number of videos are provided that introduce and discuss various facets of The Challenge Experience. These are: 1. Market Samurai - In this video Dan Raine provides an introduction to Market Samurai which is a software tool custom designed to complement The Challenge training. 2. Challenge Forum - Caro McCourtie introduces the Challenge forum and overviews the structure and provides some tips to get the most out of the forum. 3. Challenge Teams - In this video, Caro McCourtie discusses the importance of working in teams through The Challenge training and offers some tips for nding a team and maximising the value of the team experience. 4. Meetups - Physical meetups with other people participating in The Challenge who live near you can be highly motivating and educational experience. Andrew Nesbitt explains how to plan and organise a meetup. 5. Downloading content - Andrew Nesbit explains how to download The Challenge training content for those unfamiliar with downloading content off the Internet.
Click here to access the training page containing optional Pre-Challenge training videos.
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Pre-Challenge Checklist
Setup an account on Ustream to participate in The Challenge TV shows. Create a Twitter account and follow Ed Dale, GuruBob and Dan Raine. Download and install Google Chrome and install the recommended extensions. Watch the video on setting expectations for The Challenge. Watch the video outlining The Challenge disclaimer. Understand the concept of The Symphony Of Four Parts. Download and install Market Samurai. Learn about The Challenge forum, teams and organising meetups. Learn about downloading content from the Internet. [Optional]
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MODULE 1 - Mindmap

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MODULE 1 - Keywords And Market Research

The rst, and possibly the most important training module of The Challenge, is focussed on the subject of keyword and market research. In order to participate in Internet Marketing (which can be dened as the marketing of products and services over the Internet) it is necessary to choose a market or niche within which to focus your activity. A market or niche is a community of people that share a common interest or activity and have needs that can be satised by certain products and services. In The Challenge, the term market, niche or micro-niche can be used interchangeably in that they refer to different scales of communities both in terms of the number of people within those communities and the number of web pages that exist that are focussed towards those communities. Markets exist at the largest end of the scale (for example the market of golf) within which some or many niches may exist (such as golf clubs). Within a niche many micro-niches can exist which are very specic (such as cavity backed irons). In The Challenge, we recommend that participants target micro-niches and we will show you how to nd micro-niches that have acceptable trafc and competition proles (both quantity and quality) and where there are sufcient indicators of commercial activity. By the end of Module 1, the user will be expected to have researched at least one micro-niche although more would be an advantage.
What Is A Niche?
While a niche can be dened as a community of people with a common interest...it is also dened by the words or phrases (referred to hereafter as keywords) that people in those niches are likely to us on the Internet to explore that interest and to nd information and products/services associated with the niche. A micro-niche is a subset of a niche (for example labrador puppy training is a micro-niche and is a sub-set of the puppy training niche). In this document we will use niche and micro-niche interchangeably but as our goal is to nd niches (read micro-niches) with limited competition that we can reasonably hope to compete for, we are most often referring to micro-niches. As the Internet and its connectedness is largely driven by words, these keywords become all important especially as many people nd web sites by conducting searches on keywords in search engines like Google. So the rst challenge in exploring a niche is to nd out the keywords that best dene that niche and then establish the trafc and competition that exists on the Internet for those keywords.
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The process of exploring the keywords used within a particular niche and quantifying those keywords from the perspective of trafc and competition is known as keyword research. In the past, keyword research has been a difcult, largely manual process, however, since the creation of Market Samurai the process has been made much easier. Not all keywords are the same and they have different (aesthetic and commercial) value depending on the likelihood that people within a niche use certain keywords when specically interested in looking for products or services to buy. Click Here to view the training page where Dan Raine discusses the subject of niches and keyword research.
Finding Niche Ideas

Understanding the hierarchy of keywords and how they relate to different scales of communities (of people with common interests) such as markets, niches and micro-niches doesnt necessarily mean a participant will automatically know which niche or niches they would wish to explore and test during The Challenge. This situation is made more difcult depending: 1. Whether you are coming to The Challenge with a pre-existing product / service / business in mind, or 2. Have no product/service allegiance starting out but also are not sure what area of interest you might wish to explore. What we have found over the years, is that the people who come to The Challenge with a preexisting allegiance to a product/service or niche have the most problems because that allegiance can cause them to ignore the warning signs that the niche is either too competitive or that there research indicates very little trafc searching for the keywords most associated with their niche. Module 1 teaches a 3-Step process for researching a niche and its associated keywords and the purpose of this research process is to minimize the probability of choosing a niche which will likely fail either due to a lack of trafc, too much competition or a lack of commercial activity. If you have no clue what niche ideas you would wish to explore, the Day 2 video in Module 1 will help you to identify some niche ideas you might like to start with. There is no right or wrong here because the method of research you will learn will ultimately allow you to assess niches very quickly in the future. Our goal here is that you learn the process. We do suggest, however, that you select up to 7 niche ideas at this stage as inevitably, some will not fulll the criteria we will be imposing later in this module. Click Here to view the training page where Dan Raine discusses how to nd niche ideas to research and explore in The Challenge.
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Assessing The Trafc and Competition For Your Keywords

The rst stage of the keyword research process after having identied a niche to assess is to establish the trafc and competition for the keywords associated with that niche and lter out the keywords that either have too little trafc or too much competition. Before we can get to this stage, however, a little education is required to explain what we mean by trafc and competition. Traditionally, estimating trafc for a keyword was extremely difcult to do and it wasnt until Google began providing trafc estimates via its external keyword tool in 2008 that we could assess keywords with more condence of what search trafc existed for those keywords. Dont assume the numbers Google provides to be 100% accurate, however, it is probably the best data source we have access to at present. Google provides the total search trafc in its network of sites for keywords but our interest is in establishing what the website located in the number 1 position in the search engines results pages (SERPS) would receive as this is probably the maximum amount of trafc we would expect to receive if we were targeting a particular keyword. We call this trafc value SEOT and it is the maximum trafc that a website ranking broad match in position 1 in Google for a keyword would receive. Competition or SEOC is the number of webpages that Google has in its search index that contain the specic keyword (or phrase) that you are investigating. This number can be found by entering the keyword phrase into Google using quotes. Were you to enter the keyword phrase without quotes, then Google would return the number of webpages in its index that contain the words but not necessarily together and not necessarily in the correct phrase order. As many of these pages are not specically optimized for our target keyword phrase, then these are of less interest to us. We only want to know how many pages specically contain the keyword phrase we are investigating...as these are our true competition. While nding and assessing keyword and competition for keywords can be done manually, Market Samurai makes the process of assessing large numbers of keywords very easy as you will see in later videos in this module.
Understanding the Broad Phrase Match Paradox

The astute reader will at this stage have noticed an apparent paradox in that we look at the trafc based on broad match (SEOT) but the competition for a keyword phrase based on phrase match. The reason for this is that once we have a web page ranking highly (top three position on Page 1) for a keyword phrase based on phrase match, Google will automatically rank that page highly for broad match and therefore that web page will receive the broad match trafc potential which is by its nature higher that the phrase match trafc. But we judge the competition that we face to rank for a keyword phrase based on the phrase match trafc as these are the pages that contain or are optimized for the keyword phrase we are targeting.
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Click Here to view the raining page where Dan Raine discusses trafc and competition in detail.
Finding Theme And Category Keywords

Now we are ready to jump into Market Samurai to research our niches identied on Days 1 & 2. When you enter a niche keyword into Market Samurai it will extract a range of semantically related keywords and phrases associated with the starting keyword (from Google) and assess those keywords based on trafc and competition. Our goal is to nd keywords that meet a range of criteria and these are: 1. SEOT > 80 2. SEOC < 30,000 3. PBR ratio > 15% SEOT and SEOC have been previously discussed, however, the PBR ratio (or the phrase to broad match trafc ratio) is the ratio of phrase match trafc for a keyword phrase (as provided by Google) compared to the broad match trafc for the same phrase. When this number is below 15% it tells us that while searchers are using the words (in your niche keyword phrase) they arent often typing in the specic phrase. This is enough to suggest that the phrase does not justify that we create a website or webpage to target. Our goal at this stage of the process is to nd niches that have at least three keyword phrases that meet the criteria above. If you cant nd at least three keyword phrases using Market Samurai when assessing a niche it is best to move on and start assessing another niche. Keyword phrases that meet the criteria are also know as theme or category keywords. The theme keyword (or phrase) best encapsulates the niche you are investigating preferably with strong trafc potential and acceptable competition. We need to single out a keyword phrase as the theme keyword as we will be acquiring a domain name that incorporates this keyword phrase. Category keywords are the other keywords that meet the trafc and competition criteria but which you dont decide will be the theme keyword for your niche. Instead they will be used to setup categories on your Wordpress blog later in The Challenge. Click Here to view the training page where Dan Raine shows how to use Market Samurai to nd candidate theme and category keywords for the niches you are investigating.
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Assessing The Strength Of Competition In The SERPS

Assessing the trafc and competition for a keyword phrase is the rst step of the keyword research process. The second step is to assess the quality of competition for the keyword in the Google search engines results pages (SERPS). By this we mean, what is the nature of the web sites that are currently ranking on page 1 in Google for your keyword phrase. Are they small, young, poorly optimized web sites with few backlinks pointing to them or large powerful authority web sites that have existed for many years with 100s or perhaps thousands of backlinks (authoritative sites). If all of the web sites currently ranking on page 1 of Google for your target keyword are too competitive then your chances of ranking on page 1 are minimal at best. Our goal here (for the keywords we are investigating) is to nd at least one website ranking on page 1 of Google that we can reasonably and condently outrank if we do a proper job of optimizing for the keyword on the website and will engineer and acquire a sufcient number of backlinks from other websites. Quality of competition and an understanding of the on-page SEO factors of web sites is a complex subject and is covered in detail in the videos on Days 5 and 6 of Module 1. Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean discusses aspects of SEO competition to allow you to assess the quality of the website currently ranking for your target keyword. Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean overviews the SEO Matrix module of Market Samurai as a tool to assist in assessing the quality of website competition that is currently ranking in Google for your target keyword.
Evidence Of Commercial Activity

The 3rd and last stage of the keyword and market research process is to establish that other web sites currently optimized for your target keyword/s are attempting to make money on the Internet. It is very likely that even before you get to this 3rd stage that some of the niches you started out with have already failed in that they did not meet the trafc and competition criteria or you found that the web sites already ranking in Google for the niche keywords were just to authoritative and powerful to easily out-rank. The reason that we seek to nd evidence of commercial activity for the web sites already ranking for your target keyword/s is that it is much easier to participate in an existing market than it is to create that market. The principle here is that if no one else has found a way to make money from the trafc associated with a keyword then you are going to nd it difcult to do so as well.
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Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob reveals methods for identifying evidence of commercial activity for the trafc associated with your target keyword.
Module 1 Summary
By the end of Module 1 you should have found at least one niche (preferably more) where you have identied at least 3 keywords (or more) with sufcient trafc potential and acceptable competition where the currently ranking web sites are not too authoritative and where there is evidence of commercial activity on the websites currently ranking for those keywords. By moving forward with keywords that meet these 3 stages of criteria you will be signicantly increasing your probability of success. Please remember...it takes exactly the same amount of time and effort to target keywords that lack trafc or commercial intent as it does to target ones that do. So if you are going to go through the process, then you may as well do so for keywords that at least meet the minimum criteria. This does not guarantee success but WILL reduce the chances of failure.
Module 1 - Checklist
Niches
Understand the difference between a market, niche and microniche. Use Amazon and Google to explore niche ideas.
Keyword Research
Use the concept of trafc and competition on the Internet. Understand the broad match trafc / phrase match competition paradox. Identify at least 3 niches using Market Samurai that satisfy trafc/competition criteria. Understand the quality of SEO competition concept and gain familiarity with SEO Matrix module of Market Samurai. Review each of your niches (from Day 3) using the SEO matrix module.
Commerciality Analysis
Analyze those keywords that meet the trafc/competition and SEO matrix criteria and look for evidence of commercial activity. By the end of Module 1 you should have identied at least one niche that satises all the criteria introduced in this module
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MODULE 2 - Mindmap

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MODULE 2 - Publish Your Micro-Niche Website

Having completed Module 1, you should have selected at least one niche/micro-niche to continue with through The Challenge which will contain at least 3 keywords that meet the Module 1 criteria for trafc, competition and evidence of commercial activity. In Module 2, the goal is to acquire a domain to build a website on, to write articles optimized for your keywords and to create a website (Wordpress blog). This website will become your main ranking vehicle (MRV) in the search engines and eventually will receive trafc from the search engines as soon as it begins to rank well. Module 2 focusses mainly on the on-page SEO aspects of your website which is that aspect of your search engine optimization over which you have the most control. Over the long term, your offpage SEO will have the most inuence over your ranking in the search engines but it is critical that you ensure your website and its keyword optimized pages are properly on-page optimized so as to maximise the value of your off-page link network that you will create in Modules 3 & 4.
Keywords And Domains

A critical aspect of maximising your on-page SEO is to ensure that your main theme keyword is contained in the domain name you acquire and upon which you will build your website. In a perfect world, there will be an exact match between your theme keyword and the domain so, for example, were your theme keyword to be labrador puppy training you would seek to acquire labradorpuppytraining.com (or .net or .org). If the exact match domain is not available then we suggest you add a modifying keyword as is explained in the training video on Day 1 of Module 2. You may also consider acquiring a .co domain as phrase availability is much more likely on this TLD, however, they are more expensive than (.com, .net and .org) domains and you will need to ensure you set the geographic target as explained in this linked post on GuruBobs blog. Fortunately, Market Samurai has integrated domain functionality that makes it easy to search for keyword domain availability and ultimately to acquire a domain once a suitable candidate is found. We also recommend you use Hostgator for your domain hosting as it is very cost-effective and works perfectly with Wordpressdirect. Once a domain has been secured, we then recommend that you secure a free Wordpressdirect (WPD) account. WPD makes it easy to install and manage an SEO optimized Wordpress blog on your domain. Click Here to view the training page where Kenny Goodman shows you the importance of domain selection using Market Samurai and Marty Rozmanith shows you how to acquire a WPD account.
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Finding Keyword Optimized Content

A critical part of creating a website and ranking well in the search engines for your target keywords is to write and publish unique, good quality articles/posts specic to your keywords. Depending on the niche you have chosen, it is very likely that you will not know very much about your niche and you will need to do some content research in order to build up sufcient knowledge that will allow you to write the keyword optimized articles you are going to need. Once again, the nd content module of Market Samurai comes in very handy for this task and we also recommend using the search functionality of Twitter as well. The goal here is to build up a collection of content related to your niche to strengthen your knowledge. We do NOT recommend you copy these articles or plagiarize them in an way as the search engines have become very sophisticated over the last few years and if your website is found to contain duplicate content (which is illegal) that has been published elsewhere then this will very likely have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale shows how to use Market Samurai and Twitter to nd content related to your niche for the purposes of research.
Writing Keyword Optimized Content

For many people, the requirement to write a topical or information piece on any subject can strike terror into the heart. Fortunately, the process is a lot easier than you think if you are well prepared (that is you have researched your niche as shown by yesterdays training) and you practice a writing technique called free writing. We recommend that you prepare a draft article using the free writing technique and the publish content module of Market Samurai. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale teaches the writing method called free writing using the publish content module of Market Samurai.
Editing Your Keyword Optimized Content

We all know that time is the great healer...and in the context of writing, time is the difference between an adequate rst draft and a great nished product. Having written your article(s) yesterday, today you are going to re-visit your article in the publish content module for Market Samurai and edit the article from the renewed perspective of a 24 hour time-gap. We can promise, that by leaving your writing for a day (or more) you will improve the article when you return to edit the article you have written.
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Having edited the article to your satisfaction we also need you to prepare it for publishing by nalizing its title and adding suitable tags inside Market Samurai. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale shows how to edit and nalise and tag your article(s) using the publish content module of Market Samurai.
Creating Your Website (Wordpress Blog) And Publish Your First Article
Over the years that The Challenge (and previously the 30DC) has been conducted, we have explored and tested every possible system for publishing content online for the purposes of achieving a search engine ranking to gain trafc from the search engines. In 2008, after an exhaustive research process a decision was made to focus on the use of the Wordpress blogging system. This decision was made for a number of reasons: 1. Search engines (particularly Google) seem to like Wordpress blogs to the extent that they consistently rank well across a wide range of keywords. 2. The Wordpress content management system (CMS) makes it very easy to both publish and manage the content on a blog. 3. The plugin and theme functionality of Wordpress makes it incredible easy to add and extend the basic Wordpress functionality and the look and feel of a blog. 4. Blogs have integrated functions that enhances search engine optimization (SEO). Market Samurai also allows you to integrate the details of your Wordpress or Wordpressdirect account to make it easy to publish your content directly from Market Samurai to a (Wordpress) blog. Click Here to view the training page where Marty shows you how to set your Wordpress blog up inside your WPD account and Jon Dean shows how to publish your article from Market Samurai that you wrote and edited over Days 2 to 4.
Tracking Your Wordpress Blog

Having created your Wordpress blog on your domain and published your rst article, the next thing we need to do is setup tracking on your blog so we can determine what trafc is coming to the site and also to monitor the performance and ranking of the website for your target keyword in the search engines. Fortunately, Google offers a feature rich (free) tracking service for web sites known as Google Analytics and after creating an Analytics account, it is very easy to add the Analytics function to
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your blog. We recommend you use the rank tracker module in Market Samurai to monitor the ranking of your blog in the search engines. Click Here to view the training page where Emily Becker shows you how to create a Google Analytics account and add to your WPD blog and where Jon Dean reveals how to setup the rank tracker module of Market Samurai for your blog.
Help Your Blog To Get Found (Indexed) by The Search Engines

The build it and they will come mentality doesnt work perfectly on the Internet and without user intervention, it can take days (and sometimes weeks) before the search engine spiders will nd (and index) your brand new website. Added to this is the fact that it is much better that your site is found by the search engine spiders by following a link from another website where the anchor text of that link is the same as the keyword optimization of the page (or domain) of your website that you are seeking to be found. It is therefore necessary and recommended that you implement the rst stage of backlinking which is to acquire backlinks that increase the probability that your website will be found by the search engine spiders (particularly Googlebot - which is Googles spider). See the glossary of terms for denitions of some of the terms being used in this section if you are unfamiliar. Recommended link building practices for the purpose of having your website or webpage indexed include: 1. Submitting links to social book marking and social networking sites. 2. Submitting the RSS feed of your blog to various RSS aggregator sites and directories. 3. Submitting your domain to various 2nd and 3rd tier search engines. 4. Submitting your domain to various directories. If it were necessary to undertake these link building practices manually, this would become a timeconsuming and arduous activity...but fortunately we have access to a tool that largely automates this process called Ping Kaching. Ping Kaching allows you to submit your URL (automatically in most cases) to a range of Social network sites, directories, second and third tier search engines and RSS aggregators/directories. we recommend that you submit your domain URL to all groups of sites and your blog post URLs to the social network sites that Ping Kaching supports. Click Here to view the training page where Michael Roberts shows how to setup Ping Kaching and add your blog so as to create backlinks to aid in having your website indexed by the search engines.
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Module 2 Checklist
Keywords and Domains
Research candidate domain names using the domain module of Market Samurai. Acquire a domain name and setup Hostgator hosting for your domain. Create a Wordpressdirect (WPD) account.
Keyword Optimized Content

Use Market Samurai and Twitter to nd keyword relevant content. Familiarize yourself with found content in preparation for writing articles. Familiarize your self with the publish content module of Market Samurai. Write at least 1 (preferably 3) articles using the Market Samurai publish content module. After 24 hours, edit your articles (and tag) using the Market Samurai publish content module.
Setup Wordpress Blog

Create a Wordpress blog on your domain using Wordpressdirect. Add your WPD details to the Market Samurai publish content module. Publish your rst article to your new blog. Sign up for Google Analytics. Add your Google analytics account details into your WPD account. Add your domain and keywords into the Rank Tracker module of Market Samurai.
Facilitating Indexing of your Wordpress Blog

Create a Ping Kaching account. Create social bookmarking and various accounts inside Ping Kaching Submit your blog domain URL and rst post URL to Ping Kaching and complete a full submission.
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MODULE 3 - Mindmap

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MODULE 3 - Create Your Off-Page Network

By the end of Module 2, you will have published your niche blog using Wordpressdirect and will have begun the process of having your blog found by the search engines by submitting your blog to various social networking and other destinations using the software Ping Kaching. Done properly, this should result in your blog being indexed by the search engines within 24 to 72 hours. Just because your niche blog has been found (and indexed) by the search engines, does not mean that it will automatically appear in position 1 on page 1 of the search engine results pages (SERPS) if someone were to search in Google for the keyword or phrase that your blog is optimized for. Google only displays web sites on page 1 of the SERPS that it determines are the most authoritative and relevant for the searched for phrase and in order to achieve a page 1 ranking...you need to acquire and engineer a network of backlinks to your blog. Backlinks are critical on the Internet as they form the network of connections between web sites that are so important for connecting web sites and to simplify the process of moving from one website to the next. Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google recognized their importance very early on and created the Pagerank algorithm that is largely founded on exploring and assessing these backlinks. Where the links are located (and the importance of the website containing the link) and the descriptive text used to describe the link (known as the anchor text) both reveal something important about the website the link points to. The more links you get (from a range of different web sites or differing size and quality) will eventually improve the authority and relevance of your website (blog) and improve your ranking in the search engines for the keyword/s your website has been optimized for and which have been used in the anchor text within your link network. Module 3 is principally concerned with teaching you how to begin the process of creating your link network initially by borrowing authority by publishing content (with embedded links) on important Web 2.0 sites like EzineArticles, Squidoo and Posterous (and the various sites that Posterous connects and publishes to). A Web 2.0 web site is one where the bulk (if not all) of the content on the site is contributed by its users rather than the site developer or owner. YouTube and Squidoo are examples of a Web 2.0 web site. In Module 4, we will be teaching you how to nd authoritative web sites in your niche and showing you how to engineer backlinks to your blog from those sites.
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The Basics Of Backlinking

The goal of Day 1 of Module 3 is to provide a practical introduction to backlinks and provide an examples to enhance your understanding. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale describes backlinks and shows practical examples for illustration.
Most content management systems like Wordpress have rich text editors (rather like simple word processors) that make it easy to turn text into an active link. The actual link that is created in the background is an html tag as follows: <a href="http://www.gurubob.co/">GuruBobs Blog</a> The destination of the link (URL) is contained within quotes after the href= and the descriptive text (anchor text) that is displayed on the web page that contains the link (in this case - GuruBobs Blog) is located after the > and before the closing tag </a>.
EzineArticles
The rst major Web 2.0 site we are going to submit content to for the purpose of gaining a backlink is EzineArticles. EzineArticles has been around for many years and is a highly trusted site consistently ranking in the top 100 sites on the Internet based on trafc. EzineArticles was created to allow content publishers to make articles available online for website owners to use and publish on their own websites or in Ezines. Articles are human reviewed by EzineArticles content reviewers to ensure consistency and to reduce the potential for spam or duplicate content. Articles are accompanied by a biography box containing details of the author of the article where up to two links are allowed that can point to the authors website(s) at their discretion. Users of the EzineArticles website who wish to use an article on their website are required to publish the bio box information along with the article. Given the authority and trusted nature of EzineArticles, particularly in the eyes of Google, EzineArticles is an ideal place to publish content with embedded links to your web site. The upside is that users of EzineArticles may take and publish your article on multiple other web sites thereby extending the potential to acquire multiple backlinks from publishing a single article. Given that EzineArticles uses a human review and moderation system it may take several days to a week between submitting an article and it actually being published to the EzineArticles web site. Click Here to view the training page where Caro McCourtie reveals how to open an EzineArticles account shows how to submit an article for review and publishing.
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Once your EzineArticle has been approved and has been published and appears on the EzineArticles web site, dont forget to submit your article to Ping Kaching to speed up the process of having the article found and indexed by Google. Google will not give you credit for the backlink(s) in the article until it has been indexed.
Squidoo
Another important high trafc Web 2.0 site that has enjoyed uctuating fortunes (in the eyes of Google) but is now a trusted and authoritative site to publish content is Squidoo. Squidoo was created by Seth Godin (and associates) in 2005 and employs the concept of lenses as pages where a lens is created by an external user and is themed or optimized for a particular subject. The lens creator has the ability to publish content containing backlinks to external web sites (such as your niche blog). While recent editorial control has placed some limits on the number of links you can create from a Squidoo lens, the authority of the site coupled with the ease with which a lens can be created makes Squidoo a useful destination for publishing content for the purpose of gaining a backlink. In addition, Squidoo is a high trafc web site meaning that your lens not only produces an SEO benet but may also deliver human trafc to your niche blog as well over time. Click Here to view the training page where Michelle MacPhearson reveals how to open a Squidoo account, create a lens, add content and create that all important backlink to your niche blog. Once again, after the Squidoo lens has been created, submit it to Ping Kaching for indexing.
Posterous
The last four days of Module 3 in The Challenge will be focussed on creating a network of sites linked to a Posterous account and publishing an initial article into that network of sites. Posterous is a simple blogging platform started in 2008. It supports automatic posting to a network of social network and other blogging and micro-blogging platforms. Publishing to Posterous is similar to other platforms and offers a rich text editor through web access. What differentiates Posterous is the ease with which a user can publish via email which makes it easy for a user to publish when mobile. Another point of differentiation is the automatic publishing of content to a network of linked sites which gives the user a signicant syndication leverage whereby content (and links) published once to Posterous will then be published automatically on other linked sites. In The Challenge we will be taking advantage of that leverage to incrementally add to the number of links pointing to our blog from a single submission. Google understands the concept of content syndication, or news articles published in multiple media outlets would cause duplicate content problems. We do not, however, recommend that you syndicate the unique articles that your publish to your niche blog.
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Creating a Posterous Account And Adding Services

Days 4, 5 & 6 of Module 3 covers opening up a Posterous account and setting up accounts on various blogging and social network sites and linking them to your Posterous account. There is nothing particularly difcult about this process but it is critical that all your accounts are optimized for your theme keyword as far as is possible and pay particular attention to the process of linking your various accounts to your blog using your theme keyword as the anchor text of the link wherever possible. Add your Posterous account and other sites to Ping Kaching for indexing. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale reveals how to open a Posterous account and setup accounts on Twitter, Facebook Pages and LinkedIn and link to Posterous. Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob reveals how to open accounts on Wordpress.com, Tumblr and Identi.ca and link to your Posterous account.
Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob reveals how to open accounts on Blogger LiveJournal and Xanga and link to your Posterous account.
Publishing To Your Posterous Network and Niche Blog

Now that you have created your Posterous network, it is time to publish into that network to build backlinks to your niche blog. We recommend a method using Google Reader and email whereby you can include block quote elements, videos and (anchor text specic) links to your niche blog. Going forward from here you will predominantly be sharing your time amongst publishing content to your niche blog and building links using the methods taught in Modules 3 & 4. We recommend you publish an article to your niche blog optimized for either your theme or category keywords at least once a week. Publishing to Posterous can be much more frequent (even daily). You should be building links both to your niche domain and also to URLs of your keyword optimized posts. It is critically important that when building links to a blog post optimized for a specic keyword, that you engineer backlinks to those post URLs using the same keyword (or phrase) that the post is optimized as the anchor text of the link. Links to the domain will, over time, contain anchor text that contains the theme keyword and your category keywords and this will strengthen the relevance of your domain to the niche (and for the important keywords) that you are targeting. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale reveals the process for publishing to your Posterous network and also discusses the expectations you should have for publishing to your niche blog and Posterous network going forward.
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Module 3 Checklist
Understanding Backlinks
Make sure your understand what a backlink is. Continue writing and edit articles using the free writing technique.
EzineArticles
Open an account on EzineArticles. Prepare an article for submission to EzineArticles. Submit your article to EzineArticles and monitor until approved.
Squidoo
Sign up for Squidoo and create a lens optimized for your main theme keyword. Add the guestbook and RSS modules to your lens. Prepare and nalise an article and publish to the text module on your Squidoo lens. Publish your Squidoo lens and check that the links to your blog are active.
Posterous
Create a Posterous account. Open accounts on Twitter, Facebook Pages and LinkedIn and add to Posterous. Open accounts on Wordpress.com, Tumblr and Identi.ca and add to Posterous. Open accounts on Blogger, LiveJournal and Xanga and add to Posterous. Prepare and publish content to your Posterous network for the rst time. Write content on your theme and/or category keywords and publish to your niche blog on a frequency of at least once a week. Publish regularly to your Posterous network (several to many times a week) making sure you are constantly adding links to your niche domain and to your new posts as they are published.
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MODULE 4 - Mindmap

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MODULE 4 - Authority Back Linking Strategies

By this stage of The Challenge, it should have become obvious that ranking in the search engines starts with creating content that is properly optimized for your target keyword(s) and then follows with acquiring a network of links to your content similarly optimized for the same keyword(s). In Module 3, we revealed a number of techniques for creating backlinks from Web 2.0 sites (like EzineArticles, Squidoo and Posterous etc) which result in a range of low authority links to your content. On Day 7 of Module 4 we will also be discussing another technique for acquiring low authority links through the process of leverage content syndication through article and blog networks. The fact is, however, that while it is important that you acquire a platform of low authority links (dened as links from pages that have a PageRank of 0 or 1), over the long term, your ranking will be much more a function of how many authoritative links you have acquired. Because of their importance for SEO, authority links are much harder to acquire and almost impossible to do so with leverage. Accordingly, linking strategies that result in the acquisition of authority backlinks are usually manual but as the reward is an authority link (that has a disproportionate effect on the ranking of your web site) it is worth the effort to implement these linking strategies properly. In Module 4, we will be teaching a number of methods for acquiring authority backlinks. Any discussion of backlinks should include an understanding of the nofollow tag. The nofollow tag was instituted to reduce the effectiveness of search engine spam by preventing any authority or pagerank of the page which contains a link (that includes a nofollow tag) being shared with the page being linked to. While the debate regarding nofollow tags still rages online some people do believe there is no value in creating a link on a site that places a nofollow tag on all of its external links. Here in The Challenge we do not share that view, and believe there is still value in creating links on sites that use the nofollow tag especially where the Page Rank is 1 or higher.
What Is An Authority Backlink?

Day 1 of Module 4 is focussed on introducing the concept of authority backlinks and the importance of establishing the PageRank of the websites and specic pages from which you will be attempting to create a backlink. In The Challenge, we dene an authority backlink as a link from a web page or blog post/page that has a PageRank of 1 or higher. Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob discuss the principles of Authority backlinks and why they are so important for the long term ranking of your niche blog.
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Finding Sites From Which To Acquire Authority Backlinks

Progressively over the last few years, the search engines (particularly Google) have made it more and more difcult to assess the characteristics of websites ranking in the SERPS. In 2011, this has meant that it is almost impossible to do even small scale PageRank analysis from an individual computer without being soft banned (where Google imposes the need to enter a captcha before delivering search results) and, if too aggressive, a hard ban (where the searcher no longer receives search results for a period of time which may be hours to several days). The only way round this limitation is to use a solution that involves a network of proxy sites that still allows the assessment of multiple sites. Fortunately, Market Samurai uses an integrated network of proxy sites which therefore allows us to assess a large number of sites in one go. The promotion module of Market Samurai allows us to assess, on a keyword specic basis, the websites currently ranking in Google for our target keyword(s) in order to nd candidate websites where there is a higher probability of being able to engineer a backlink to your niche blog. These websites are predominantly blogs and forums but also certain Web 2.0 sites as well. Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean reveals how to use the promotion module of Market Samurai to nd candidate web sites from which to acquire authority backlinks.
Commenting On Blogs
As of February 2011, over 156 million blogs existed in the Internet across a massively variable range of themes and topics. Very often these blogs, particularly the popular sites, will have acquired a level of authority over time and several posts (and the domain page) will have a PageRank greater than 0. By their very nature, blogs allow the owner to publish material but also most blogs have commenting functionality which allows the blog readers to comment on the blog posts and offer feedback and opinion. It is this commenting functionality that we are going to take advantage of to engineer backlinks to our niche blog. Most of the time, when a blog offers the ability for readers to comment, the commenter will be asked to provide a name, web address, email address and the comment itself. Most of the time the blog will automatically convert the name into a backlink using the web address provided as the destination URL of the link. Some blog owners allow readers to comment using a keyword (or phrase) as the name and some dont. Dont use a keyword as the name if it is evident that no other comments have been accepted (and approved) by the blog owner where a keyword has been used as the name. There is no point submitting a comment if there is a low chance of it being approved by the blog owner. Even if you have to use a real name when making a comment it is still worth acquiring the backlink if the PageRank of the post where you attempting to acquire a link has a PageRank of 2 or higher.
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The promotion module of Market Samurai will allow you to nd blogs that contain content that is specic to your target keywords based on PageRank and incoming links. Click Here to view the training page where Sam Witteveen shows how to comment on blogs to engineer an authority backlink.
Posting In Forums
Similar to blogs, there are a large number of forums on the Internet orientated around a range of themes and subjects. An Internet forum or message board is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. While most forums do not allow users to post external links into their forum posts, it is usually possible to have a single link in your signature which can be displayed below each of your posts on a forum. That link can usually include anchor text that is keyword specic. Forums have a long life on the Internet and individual forum threads (effectively conversations) can become quite authoritative over time. The promotion module of Market Samurai allows you to nd forums (of different types) that contain content specic to your target keyword(s). Click Here to view the training page where Andrew Nesbitt reveals how to create an account on a forum, add a link into your signature on that forum and post a comment into a forum thread.
Using The Pingback Function Of A Blog To Acquire Authority Backlinks

A pingback is one of three types of link notication methods for web authors (particularly blog owners) to be notied when someone links to one of their documents. Wordpress fully supports the pingback function to the extent that if you place a link to an external blog post in a post on your niche blog, Wordpress will automatically send a pingback notication to that external blog. Sometimes, the external blog will automatically approve the pingback and then a reciprocal pingback link is placed on the blog post that you linked to that creates a backlink to your blog post from that blog. In most cases the title of your blog post is used as the anchor text of the backlink. Most of the time, blog owners require pingback requests to be approved and they appear as comments in the approval area when the blog owner accesses the admin area of their blog. Pingbacks can be an effective way of securing backlinks from 3rd party blogs that are also posting on the same niche subject as yours. When implementing the pingback strategy, it is recommended that you place links to 3 or 4 external blog posts and no more. To many links looks spammy, as if you were ONLY using this function for the purpose of securing backlinks.
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Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob and Jon Dean reveal how to use Market Samurai to create pingback links on your niche blog.
Exploring The Link Networks Of Your Competitors

One of the easiest methods to nd web sites from which to gain an authority backlink is to explore the link networks of your your competitors that are already ranking in the search engines for your target keyword(s). The basic premise is that if your competitors have been able to secure a backlink from those sites, then there is a high probability that you will be able to do so as well. Fortunately, Market Samurai makes it relatively easy to do this using the SEO Competition module. Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean reveals how to use Market Samurai to explore the link networks of your competitors in the SERPS to nd candidate web sites from which to gain authority backlinks.
Leveraged Content Syndication To Article And Blog Networks [Optional]

Day 7 of Module 4 covers the strategy of creating multiple backlinks to your niche blog via leveraged content syndication to article and blog networks. This strategy is optional within The Challenge for the following two reasons: 1. This strategy is impossible to implement manually and requires the use of software or online submission services that vary in cost between US$67 and US$97 a month. 2. While the strategy is effective and forms a critical component of a long-term link building project, it can take between 4 - 8 weeks to result in a meaningful impact on the ranking of the page to which the links are being created. In short, the strategy requires the creation of unique articles which can then be spun (creating multiple versions using synonym or phrase replacement) before submission to the various services. Spinning of the article content increases the probability that Google will index (and give you credit for the links from) multiple versions of the article. The services then handle the submission of the articles to various web sites (blogs and article directories) on a gradual basis. This strategy can result in the creation of up to 150 backlinks from a single spun article submission. The recommended services for leveraged content syndication are Article Marketing Automation (submission to blog network), Unique Article Wizard (blog and article networks) and Article Samurai (blog and article networks) from the developer of Market Samurai. Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob discusses the strategy of creating backlinks though leveraged content syndication.
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Module 4 Checklist
Make sure you understand what an authority backlink is. Learn how to use the promotion module of Market Samurai to nd web sites from which to engineer authority backlinks.
Blog Commenting
Learn how to correctly comment on a blog to gain an authority backlink. Find at least 5 blog posts (with a PageRank > 0) and comment to engineer an authority backlink to your niche blog.
Forum Posting
Learn how to correctly post in a forum and add a backlink to your niche blog in your forum signature. Find at least 5 forum threads (with a PageRank > 0) and post in those threads to create an authority backlink to your niche blog.
Pingbacks
Learn how to create a pingback on your niche blog. Pick at least one of your posts and add pingback links to 3 or 4 relevant external blog posts.
Exploring Your Competitors Link Networks

Learn how to use the SEO Competition module of Market Samurai to explore the link networks of your competitors in the SERPS to nd candidate web sites from which to gain authority backlinks. Explore the link networks of at least 5 of your competitors in the SERPS for your main theme keyword and engineer backlinks to your niche blog on those web sites found where it is possible to engineer a backlink.
Leveraged Content Syndication

Understand the strategy of leveraged content syndication using services like Article Marketing Automation, Unique Article Wizard and Article Samurai to gain backlinks. The implementation of this strategy within The Challenge is optional due to cost and time constraints.
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MODULE 5 - Mindmap

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MODULE 5 - Market Leadership

We are now just over half way through The Challenge training and you will have researched and published a niche blog and have begun (and are continuing) your link building activities to strengthen the authority of your blog in the search engines and ultimately increase your ranking for the keywords you are targeting. From the end of Module 3 till the start of Module 6 there is a natural hiatus where you are waiting for the search engines (principally Google) to reward you with a page 1 ranking for your keywords and a suitable volume of trafc so you can proceed with Module 6 where you will attempt to monetize that trafc. This hiatus is not passive, however, as you should be continuing your link building and publishing to your blog. The time frame between Module 3 and Module 6 may be from 4 to 6 weeks. It is within this time gap that Module 5 sits during time which we will be teaching the principle of market leadership. Market leadership is a broad subject that encompasses a number of passive and active techniques for understanding, monitoring and ultimately inuencing your niche of interest (and the community within that niche). The rewards of market leadership are many-fold but principally focussed towards being a recognized player within your niche from which you will signicantly increase your potential as an inuencer and to maximise your marketing/sales activities. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale introduces the concept and provides examples of Market Leadership.
Passive Market Leadership - Competitor Analysis and Tools

The rst aspect of market leadership we need you to understand and become skilled at is to be able to analyse your niche to assess your competitors who are operating within that niche. This involves a combination of using Google and social search engines (like Twitter) to seek out those people/companies who already have a strong presence within your niche. Having identied your competitors, you will need to monitor the content being published in your niche so that you can either use that content as research material for your own activities or to share great content to your community of followers. We are very fortunate that Google sees all on the Internet as they seek to index new content to expand the relevance and coverage of their search engine. Google have created 2 critical tools for monitoring content and these are Google Reader, which allows you to monitor a large number of websites via their RSS feeds and Google Alerts, which is a
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service provided by Google to reveal new content that Google nds during its indexing activities that contains a keyword or key phrase that you nominate. Click Here to view the training page where Sam Witteveen shows how to analyse your niche competition using Google and Twitter.
Click Here to view the training page where Paul Colligan discusses and shows how to use Google Reader and Google Alerts.
Active Market Leadership - Twitter Lists

Having identied your competitors within your niche and setup Google Reader and Google Alerts to passively monitor the content being published in your niche it is time to start undertaking some active market leadership activities. The rst activity we recommend is creating a Twitter list targeted to your niche where you follow the top 20 Twitter personalities that have a clear interest in and are publishing within that niche. Click Here to view the training page where Michelle MacPhearson shows how to identify and follow the key players in your niche using Twitter Lists.
Active Market Leadership - Setting Up A Curation Workow

The next level of active market leadership activity is to curate the content being published in your niche and then share the best ltered content with your growing Twitter (and possibly Facebook) community. We are fortunate in 2011, that there are a number of tools available to us to allow for the efcient curation of your niche content as will be discussed in the Day 5 training of Module 5. Click Here to view the training page where Michelle MacPhearson shows how to setup a curation workow.
Active Market Leadership Tools Having setup a curation workow, it is time to go seriously hard core with your active market leadership. To that end, Ed Dale discusses his daily (morning and evening) workow in the Day 6 training for Module 5 and outlines the tools he uses to facilitate the market leadership tasks he undertakes each and every day. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale reveals and describes his key active market leadership tools and morning and evening processes.
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Leveraging Strategies For Active Market Leadership

Our goal by the end of Module 5 is that you understand the importance of market leadership as a concept and have some exposure to the passive and active market leadership tools at your disposal. Ed Dale will urge you to use Apple devices like the iPad and iPhone to simplify the process of market leadership and to make it easy to jump into market leadership mode wherever you have a spare ve minutes be it standing in a queue at the bank or during the ads when watching TV. The fact is, however, the process of market leadership we teach here can be implemented on a range of devices the only requirement being that they are connected to the Internet. When it comes down to it, whether you will become a market leader using the processes we teach will probably depend on you overcoming your fear of publishing...putting yourself out their and in effect saying that I believe and stand by the content I am sharing. So, to ease yourself into this, we suggest you start on rm ground by starting with a subject you are comfortable with (a hobby perhaps) and select a content medium that suits your personality and, step by step, work yourself up to being one of the top 20 inuencers in your niche. You CAN do it! Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale summarizes the market leadership concept and tools and provides advice for success.
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Module 5 Checklist
Market Leadership
Watch Ed Dales introduction to and discussion of market leadership.
Passive Market Leadership

Find the competitors in your niche using Google and Twitter. Setup Google Reader and Google Alerts to monitor the important keywords that dene your niche.
Active Market Leadership

Setup a Twitter List to follow the key players in your niche on Twitter. Setup a curation workow for your niche and implement daily. Watch the videos outlining Eds market leadership workow and the tools he uses and consider setting up something similar for your niche.
Summarizing Market Leadership

Select a subject and content medium you are comfortable with to start with market leadership. Watch Eds advice for succeeding with this critical important marketing process.
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MODULE 6 - Mindmap

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MODULE 6 - Monetization
Depending on the level of competition for your theme and category keywords, it may take between 4 - 6 weeks (from the completion of the Module 3 tasks) for your niche blog to rank in the SERPS such that your blog is receiving sufcient trafc to justify adding monetization elements to test the extent to which that trafc will participate in a commercial outcome. Our goal in this module is not necessarily to determine what is the best product or service to promote over the long term, but to establish whether the people who visit your niche blog will participate in a commercial outcome be it clicking on an advert or purchasing a product that you promote. We do not recommend that you commence implementing the content of Module 6 until such time that your blog is receiving at least 50 unique visitors per day. You may ask why dont we add monetization content to the niche blog right from the outset? Our testing has shown that sometimes Google will retard or depress the ranking of a blog/website in the SERPS if Google perceives that the site has ONLY been setup to create a monetary outcome. Consequently, we allow Google (and the other search engines) to judge your niche blog initially based on the quality and relevance of your published content and only add monetization elements once an adequate ranking (and volume of trafc) has been achieved.
Monetizing Using Google Adsense

Google makes 97% of their corporate revenue from advertising on various Google properties. Their agship advertising property is Google Adwords which displays keyword relevant ads in the SERPS. With a view to extending the reach of the Adwords ads, Google developed a service known as Google Adsense where web site owners allow Google to place ads on their sites based on the keyword relevance of the page where the ads are placed. In Q1 2011, Google earned US$2.34 billion or 28% of total revenue from Google Adsense (statistics from Wikipedia). In The Challenge, we recommend that your initial monetization activity is to add Google Adsense to your niche blog because Google has the best technology for matching advertising with your blog content. Testing has also revealed that Google Adsense can co-exist on a web site without signicantly affecting the conversion of any other monetization option you may wish to include. Your initial activity is to open a Google Adsense account which is then followed by integrating the Adsense code to your niche blog using Wordpressdirect and creating ads in your blog posts. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale discusses monetization in The Challenge and Marty Rozmanith shows how to open a Google Adsense account.
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Click Here to view the training page where Marty Rozmanith reveals how to add your Adsense publisher ID to your niche blog in Wordpressdirect and customize the look, color and positioning of the Adsense ads in your blog posts.
Monitoring Google Adsense

Having added Google Adsense to your niche blog it is important that you become comfortable monitoring the performance of your Adsense ads in terms of the number of times your ads are being displayed and the ratio of people clicking on the ads. We are less interested on the amount of money you are making from the clicks on ads rather whether the trafc coming to your niche blog is clicking the ads at all. We wont be making any decisions about your ad performance in Module 6 or any other monetization option you may implement...that will occur in Module 7. Click Here to view the training page where Emily Becker reveals how to monitor login to and monitor your Google Adsense ads and activity.
Monetization Using Afliate Products

In addition to Google Adsense, we recommend that participants in The Challenge promote afliate products on their niche blog to test whether people visiting the blog will participate in a commercial outcome. Once again, we re-iterate that we are not trying to nd the best long term monetization outcome as that may very likely require the creation of a product which is outside the scope of The Challenge at this stage. We are testing the commercial activity within the niche only to establish whether there is a justication for sticking with the niche over the long term. An afliate product is a product made available by the product developer/owner to marketers to promote with the expectation that if a sale is achieved from the marketers efforts then the marketer will receive a commission (which may vary from 25 to 70%) from the sale proceeds. There are a number of ways of nding afliate products to promote, but once again, Market Samurai comes to the rescue with its monetization module. Over the next three days we will show you how to use the monetization module to nd an afliate product relevant to your niche, how to create an add for the afliate product and how to publish the add to your niche blog all using the monetization module. Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean reveals how to nd a niche relevant afliate product using the monetization module of Market Samurai.
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Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean reveals how to create an afliate ad using the monetization module of Market Samurai for your selected afliate product. Click Here to view the training page where Jon Dean reveals how to publish your afliate ad for your selected afliate product to your niche blog directly from the monetization module of Market Samurai to your Wordpressdirect blog.
Monetization Expectations
At this early stage of monetization it is important to maintain realistic expectations regarding the outcome of your monetization test on your niche blog. Not all niche tests will be successful as in some cases the people searching within your niche are just not prepared to buy anything or click on ads or will do so at an unacceptably low rate of conversion (more of that in Module 7). Internet Marketing is a lumpy business meaning that commercial transactions will not occur evenly spaced out within the trafc coming to your niche blog. It will be very uneven requiring you to ensure that you have received at least 200 unique views of your ads before you begin to draw ANY conclusions about the commercial value of your selected niche. In addition, we will show in Module 7, that even in the case where you determine that your selected niche does not justify continued effort going forward, you still have created something of value. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale discusses the expectations you should have in relation to the monetization tests that you will be conducting on your niche blog.
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Module 6 Checklist
Monetization and Google Adsense
Open a Google Adsense account using your Google account. Once approved, integrate the Google Adsense code into your niche blog using wordpressdirect and create ads in your blog posts. Learn and get comfortable with monitoring the performance of your Google Adsense ads.
Monetization and Afliate Products

Learn how to nd afliate products and select at least 1 product relevant to your niche blog using the monetization module of Market Samurai. Create an afliate ad for your selected afliate product using the monetization module of Market Samurai. Publish your afliate ad to your niche blog directly from the monetization module of Market Samurai.
Expectations
Maintain realistic expectations at this early stage of monetization...remember we are testing the niche only at this stage. Make sure your various monetization ads have received at least 200 unique views before you begin to draw ANY conclusions.
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MODULE 7 - Mindmap

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MODULE 7 - Your Go/No Go Decision

Finally, after six modules of research and implementation we have nally arrived at the point where we can begin to draw conclusions and make decisions regarding the niche/micro-niche we have chosen to test. You should be strongly motivated to make this decision because no one wants to waste time and effort working on activity that wont reward you ultimately with the outcome you are seeking...and for most of you that will be making money online! It is far better (and a much better use of your time) to put that niche aside and get on with nding a niche that will perform than persisting with a poorly performing or marginal niche. Dont worry if your niche turns about to be one where you are unlikely to proceed into the future. We are going to show you a method for extracting some value from a failed test but also be condent that the niche testing method you have learnt through The Challenge is one which can be implemented far quicker and easier when you know all the steps than it was to learn and implement in the rst place. It is very important that you dont allow yourself to take a negative result personally. What we have been doing in The Challenge is a test...and a test only. The fact is, that as you proceed in your Internet Marketing journey you will very likely experience more failed niches than successful, and that is perfectly normal. Our ultimate goal is to nd the niches that perform well and allocate as much of our time and resources into those successful niches as possible. Even though the commercial goal in The Challenge is to make just $1, it does not necessarily mean that if you make that dollar that your niche is sufciently commercially viable that you would wish to continue. It is all about the rate of conversion relative to the trafc you are receiving.
Assessing Your Website Stats And Conversions

The rst aspect of being able to make a decision about your niche is to ensure your are fully up to speed with your website stats and the stats and conversions associated with the monetization options you have implemented on your niche blog. Firstly, you will need to be aware of the raw trafc (visits and unique visits) to your blog and also the number of clicks on your monetization options (Adsense and afliate ads) and the number of sales. It is the ratios between these numbers, as will be explained in the Day 1 training videos of Module 7 that is most important. Ultimately, we are looking for a conversion ratio of 0.5% or better meaning that at least 1 person in 200 unique visitors to your blog will engage and take action with your commercial offerings. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale and Caro McCourtie discuss the principle of making a decision about your niche test and the stats and ratios you will need to assess to be able to make that decision.
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The Consequences Of Your Decision

Now that you are on the verge of making that crucial go/no go decision with respect to your niche it is helpful to consider some of the options that open up for you either way. Even if your decision is negative, you do have choices and those choices are discussed in the Day 2 training video of Module 7. Some of those choices may require you to have a fuller understanding of certain Internet Marketing strategies than we have had time to cover in The Challenge itself. Most of those are covered in much more detail in our other (paid) member programs such as Challenge Plus and Immediate Edge and we invite you to consider joining those programs should you wish to expand your Internet Marketing knowledge and skill-set. Click Here to view the training page where GuruBob discusses the consequences of making a decision about your niche test in The Challenge and options you have depending on wether you decide to go forward or not.
Flippa - Selling Your Niche Blog

On Days three and four of Module 7 we will be teaching you a method for selling your niche blog on the buying and selling website service offered by ippa.com. You are in no way obligated to sell your blog if you dont want to, however, if you have no intention of using your blog for SEO purposes going forward and have no intention of undertaking any further activities in the niche that the blog has been optimized for, then selling the blog may allow you to extract some value from the time and effort you have given to creating your niche blog during The Challenge. A thorough understanding of the service offered by Flippa can only be of benet in the future as you may wish to sell a web property that you have developed either to raise capital for a future project or to exit a niche you have been operating in but wish to move on from for some reason. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale further discusses the options available to you if you decide not to go forward with your niche and Danny Batelic introduces you to Flippa and shows sign up for an account and create a site listing. Click Here to view the training page where Danny Batelic reveals how to manage your site listing through to sale completion on Flippa and Marty Rozmanith shows you how to transfer your site to the new owner with Wordpressdirect. Should you decide to keep your niche blog that you setup in The Challenge, Wordpressdirect offers a range of options for managing, cloning and auto-posting content. Marty Rozmanith of Wordpressdirect discusses some of those features in the Day 4 training content.
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Doing More Of What Works

In the situation where you decide that your niche has further potential and you decide to go forward there is a myriad of things that you COULD do, many more so than can be explained in The Challenge but which are covered in much more detail in Challenge Plus and the Immediate Edge. Initially, however, your immediate focus should be on getting more trafc to your niche blog. Ultimately, the more trafc you get...the more sales you will make. To that end, two immediate strategies you can employ to get more trafc are: 1. Publish more content on your niche blog optimized for a wider range of (semantically related) keywords than the theme and category keywords you have already been publishing on. This will include long-tail keywords that have smaller trafc potential than the initial lters we employed in Module 1 but where the competition is much lower and therefore you will nd it much easier to rank (and receive the trafc) for. 2. Increase the authority of the pages by acquiring more (and higher quality) backlinks to the pages on your niche blog that are already indexed and ranking for your target keywords. By increasing the authority you will almost certainly rank higher in the SERPS and you will receive more trafc from the search engines as a consequence. Click Here to viewing the training page where GuruBob shows how to use Market Samurai and Google Analytics to nd more keywords to optimize and publish content for and Dan Raine outlines a backlink strategy for increasing your authority.
Mistakes Marketers Make

In The Challenge, as in life, it always better to be focussed on what you can do and to nd reasons to do something and take action. The fact is, however, Internet Marketing is a vast mineeld of possibility and many people have trodden this path before you, some with success and some not. We would much rather you conduct your activities online with at least some understanding of what has worked for others but also to be aware of some of the mistakes other marketers have made so that you can avoid them yourself. Some may say that you learn from experience and this is true but as Isaac Newton once said...there is nothing wrong with standing on the shoulders of the people that have gone before you. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale discusses some of the mistakes marketers make so that you can benet from their experience.
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Congratulations...You Made It!

You made it to the end of The Challenge...congratulations! Whether it took you weeks to implement The Challenge training or many months, it doesnt matter, you have learned an awful lot about marketing and Internet Marketing in particular which will stand you in good stead, whatever your journey will be from this point. At the very least, you have learnt a repeatable and sustainable model for testing the commercial potential of a niche (and associated keywords) online. Sure, it might be possible to test a niche faster (using paid PPC trafc for instance rather than organic trafc) but the method you have learned is largely free to implement with the only major risk being a time risk. Along the way you will have learned: 1. The importance of keyword and market research online. 2. The importance of acquiring a niche specic domain relative to your niche. 3. How to setup a Wordpress blog to target a niche and its associated keywords. 4. How to speed up the process of having the search engines nd (and index) your blog. 5. The critical importance of acquiring backlinks to your niche blog to improve its ranking in the SERPS for the keywords you are targeting. 6. The fact that not all backlinks are the same and that you will need a platform of low authority and high authority links to maximise your ranking. 7. The principles and value of Market Leadership. 8. Options for initially monetizing your niche blog to establish the potential for a commercial outcome in your selected niche. 9. The criteria for making a decision about whether a niche has sufcient commercial potential to justify future effort and the options that are available depending on that decision. Having come this far...you are very likely wondering what options are available to you to continue your Internet Marketing education and to that end we have created a special webinar to assist you to with exploring those options. Click Here to view the training page where Ed Dale conducts a special webinar to outline the options available post-Challenge.
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Module 7 Checklist
Assessing your Website Stats
Ensure you have acquired and assessed all the required website and commercial stats. Make a decision about whether you wish to continue with your niche based on the stats and conversion ratios. Understand the consequences of making a decision and familiarize yourself with the options available to your depending on whether your decision is to go forward or stop.
Flippa
Open an account on Flippa if you decide to sell your niche blog. Create a site listing on Flippa for your niche blog. Understand the techniques you will need to manage the sale of your niche blog through to completion. Learn how to transfer your niche blog to the new owner post sale.
Going Forward
Learn how to increase trafc by publishing content across a wider range of keywords and increasing your site authority by acquiring more and higher quality backlinks.
Mistakes Marketers Make

Absorb and learn about critical marketing mistakes to prevent them from happening to you.
Webinar
Watch the post-Challenge webinar to explore options for continuing your Internet Marketing education and improving your skill-set.
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SOME THOUGHTS...IN CLOSING

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory." - Frederick Engels
Our goal in The Challenge is for participants to learn a credible and repeatable method for testing niches online to nd evidence of commercial value and to justify the building of an Internet Marketing presence within such niches. In achieving this goal, participants will also learn a tremendous amount about marketing, Internet Marketing and how trafc can be obtained from the search engines through search engine optimization. At the beginning, you were probably underwhelmed with the goal of participating in The Challenge being to earn just a single dollar! What we have found though, is that it is the earning of that rst dollar that makes all the difference. Once you have proved to yourself that it is possible to make any money online, then your future success is just a matter of scale and implementation. We dont know what YOUR motivation is for taking The Challenge, but whether you are looking to improve the exposure of your website for a hobby or passion, a charitable concern, to improve the online visibility of an ofine business or to create an online information or product business we are condent that within The Challenge training you will nd much to assist and benet you regardless of your initial motivation. Ultimately though...this whole experience is about YOU! Are you prepared to take action and do what it takes to learn the methods and techniques, to do the research, to build the websites/blogs etc? And even after The Challenge is over, there will be more that you can and should learn. Will you do what needs to be done to secure the understanding and skill-set you will need to become an Internet Marketing professional? We hope The Challenge has give you a great (and free) head start with Internet Marketing and we encourage you to join us in one of our member programs (Challenge Plus and Immediate Edge) to continue your journey towards success! If you have come this far with us, we are very grateful for your participation in The Challenge and sincerely hope that you have derived maximum value and enjoyment from taking part. On behalf of the whole Challenge Team, I would like to personally wish you every success in whatever Internet Marketing endeavor you choose as a consequence of completing The Challenge. An innite number of marketing and business opportunities have now opened up for you on the Internet if you dare to implement what you have learned!
Robert Somerville (GuruBob)

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GLOSSARY OF TERMS
301 Redirect See URL Redirection. 404 Error Page The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not nd what was requested. Usually occurs when the page being addressed does not exist. A/B Testing The process of testing two different variations of a web page to see which performs best in delivering the outcome the page has been created to achieve (maybe an opt-in or a sales conversion etc). Above The Fold Used to describe that part of the page that is viewable in the browser when visiting a website without scrolling. Originally came from the newspaper industry to identify content (photographs and headlines) visible when the newspaper is folded (which is how most people rst see a newspaper) and therefore is content that editors felt would entice people to buy the paper. Adwords Googles Pay Per Click advertising system (see PPC). http://www.google.com/adwords Afliate A marketing partner that promotes a product or service usually under a pay for results agreement. Afliate Agreement A document containing the terms that govern the relationship between a merchant and an afliate. Afliate Commission The fee paid to an afliate for generating a sale, opt-in or click thru to a merchants website. Afliate Marketing The act of promoting a merchants products and services on the internet usually with the expectation of earning an afliate commission. Afliate Product A merchant product or service that is available for promotion by afliates and tracked such that if a sale takes place, then the afliate receives a commission. Algorithm The process a search engine applies to web pages so it can accurately produce a list of results based on a search term (keyword or key phrase). Search engines regularly change their algorithms to improve the quality of the search results. Hence search engine optimization tends to require constant research and monitoring. It is understood that Google checks over 200 individual variables in its search algorithm. Alt Tag The alt attribute is used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text (alt text) that displays when the element to which it is applied cannot be displayed (for instance when a user has turned off the display of graphics in their web browser). Amazon Is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer and has an extensive afliate program. http://www.amazon.com/ Anchor Text Anchor text refers to the visible clickable text for a hyperlink. For example: < a href="http:// www.google.com/" >Click here to visit Google< /a > The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about. Article Marketing Automation (AMA) AMA is a paid syndication service allowing the user to either: receive keyword relevant content for automated
publishing to a user contributed Wordpress blog, or Publish spun article content to a network of blogs for the purpose of receiving keyword specic backlinks from those blogs to a user-specied website. http://www.challenge.co/ama
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www.challenge.co Arbitrage Arbitrage is the technique of simultaneously buying at a lower price in one market and selling at a higher price in another market to make a prot on the spread between the prices. Article A discreet piece of writing usually focussed around a single theme. Article Samurai A paid content syndication service created and marketed by Noble Samurai that allows users to publish spun content to an extensive network or article and blog sites for the purpose of receiving keyword backlinks to a userspecied website. http://www.challenge.co/ArticleSamurai Associate A synonym for Afliate. Audioboo AudioBoo is a website and iPhone OS application designed to allow users to post and share sound les on the AudioBoo website. http://www.audioboo.fm/ Banner Ad(s) Authority On the Internet, authority is derived from the quantity and quantity of web sites that link to a website or page of content. The more links a website or page has...the more authoritative it is deemed to be. Google provides a measure of authority by calculating a parameter called pagerank which is a number between 0 (lowest) and 10 highest and is a measure of the link network that links to a page or website. An authoritative link is therefore a link from a website that has a high pagerank. Authority is also a Cialdini (Robert Cialdini - see recommended reading list) inuence factor whereby people will tend to obey authority gures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. Accordingly, the more authoritative a marketer is, the more likely he/she is able to invite people to buy or engage with the products or services they are promoting. Bing Bing (formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is the current web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine") from Microsoft. http://www.bing.com/ Black Hat SEO Those practice of search engine optimization (SEO) using unethical methods that are against the terms and conditions of the major search engines. Blog (Blogging) A blog is an online journal or "web log" on a given subject. Blogs are easy to update, manage, and syndicate, powered by individuals and/or corporations and enable users to comment on postings. The comment function of a blog maybe a valid place to links to another website as part of a link building strategy.
Autoresponder An email robot that sends email replies automatically, without human intervention. Aweber is an example of an email autoresponder service. Avatar A digital representation of a user in a virtual reality site. Backlink A backlink is a link to a webpage. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization (SEO) because some search engines (particularly Google), give more credit to web sites that have a good number of quality backlinks. An internal backlink is a link from one page to another page on the same website. An external backlink is a link to a page from another domain altogether. Bandwidth The quantity of information (text, images, video, sound etc) that can be sent through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of text is about 16,000 bits. Full-motion full-screen video, however, requires about 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression.
Banners are graphical ad space (of various sizes) on commercial web sites that are usually linked to the advertiser's website.
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www.challenge.co Blogging is the act of publishing to a blog. Blog Post An individual post (or article) on a blog. Bounce Rate Is the proportion of views of any given web page that resulted in an exit from the page without a visit to any other page on the same website. Broad Match With respect to the search engines, broad match relates to the number of pages that contain all of the keywords a user enters into the search engine but not in any particular order or even whether those keywords occur together on the page. Browser An application used to view information from the Internet. Browsers provide a user-friendly interface for navigating through and accessing the vast amount of information on the Internet. In The Challenge, the recommended web browser is Google Chrome (see below). Canonical Tag Code (usually an html tag) which is read by search engine crawlers/spiders to tell search engines which URL is the original version of a web page. Captcha Is a type of challenge response test in computing to ensure that response is generated by a person (not a computer or bot). A common type of captcha requires the user to type letters or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen. Category Keyword In the context of The Challenge, a category keyword is a keyword within a niche or micro-niche that meets the SEOC (< 30,000) and SEOT (>80) criteria. (The) Challenge An online video training program created to teach the basics of Internet Marketing and to provide a repeatable methodology for testing the commercial viability of niches/micro-niches online. Located at http://www.challenge.co/ Challenge Plus A private paid member program created to provide more in-depth Internet Marketing education that follows on from that provide in The Challenge. Caters for beginner to intermediate Internet Marketers. Located at http:// www.challenge.co/ChallengePlus Chat Room An area online where you can chat with other members in real-time. Click The action whereby a viewer is transferred from one website to another by clicking on a link, advert or banner graphic. Clicks can be recorded by a web host or tracking service such as Google Analytics. Click Thru Rate (CTR) The proportion of views that responded to an advertisement by clicking on the ad button/banner relative to the total number of views of that advert. Expressed as a percentage. Clickbank A popular online billing, 3rd party payment processor and marketing service for the development of afliate programs, and the largest distributor of digital information products on the Internet. Eliminates the need for a merchant account. Known for its ease-of-use. http://www.clickbank.com/ Click Fraud Click fraud, also called pay-per-click fraud, is the practice of articially generating trafc to advertisers sites either manually or through the use of automated clicking programs (called hitbots). Cloaking Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. May also refer to the process of hiding page content or afliate linking code. Commercial Indicators The presence of advertising or sales content on a website indicating that the website is designed for or achieving a commercial outcome.
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www.challenge.co Commercial (Viability) A circumstance where the commercial outcome delivered by a website results in a prot scenario sufcient to justify the continued development and existence of the site. Co-Branding In the context of Internet Marketing is where afliates are able include their own branding on the merchants website. Commitment And Consistency One of Cialdinis inuence factors whereby if people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self image. Even if the original incentive or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue to honor the agreement. Content Management System (CMS) A content management system (CMS) is the collection of procedures used to manage work ow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. In the context of the web, a CMS allows a group of people to publish to a single website. Wordpress (see below) is an example of a content management system. Contextual Advertising Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content, keywords, or category. An example is Googles Adsense program. Conversion When a visitor makes a purchase on a merchant website i.e. converts from visitor to buyer. The conversion rate is the proportion of buyers to visitors expressed as a percentage. An acceptable sales conversion rate in the context of The Challenge is 0.5% or higher. Cookie A le on your computer that records information such as where you have been on the World Wide Web. The browser stores this information which allows a site to remember the browser in future transactions or requests. Since the Web's protocol has no way to remember requests, cookies read and record a users browser type and IP address, and store this information on the users own computer. The cookie can be read only by a server in the
domain that stored it. Visitors can accept or deny cookies, by changing a setting in their browser preferences. Cost Per Action (CPA) A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Cost Per Click (CPC) Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC (or PPC) model. Cost Per Lead A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every lead (or opt-in) generated by the ad. Cost Per Impression (CPM) CPM is the cost per thousand for a particular website. An advertiser that charges every time an ad (usually a banner graphic) is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM Critical Focus Time (CFT) A commitment to work for a specic amount of time (30 or 45 minutes) during which you will only work on actions critical to your business. During the CFT period, a person usually works with a single purpose (without other distractions) with the expectation of a dened outcome. Cross-Linking (Link Wheel) Linking a group of domains, usually your own, to each other and to the target website for the purpose of increasing popularity of the target website within the search engines. The network of linked sites may often be known as a link wheel. Excessive cross-linking may lead to your site being penalized by the search engines and so this practice, particularly in relation to Google, is no longer recommended. Curation In the context of market leadership, curation is the process of organizing and ltering content published within a
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www.challenge.co niche and sharing the best content to a community interested in that niche. Customer Value (Lifetime Value) The total amount that a customer will spend with a particular merchant during his or her lifetime. Directory An index of web sites based mainly on human editing and categorization. In most cases the content is submitted to the directory, the editorial team will then approve a title and description and place the URL in an appropriate category. For example, Yahoo! is a human edited directory. Disclaimer A disclaimer states the terms under which the website or content may be used and provides information relating to what the copyright owner believes to be a breach of his/ her/their copyright. In some cases you may wish to permit certain activities, in others you may wish to withhold all rights, or require the user to apply for a license to carry out certain actions. DNS Translates domain names to IP addresses. When a domain name is delegated to a name server, the domain name system ensures the name can be translated to the IP address of the web server. Domain Name The unique name that identies an Internet website eg. google.com Doorway Page Also known as bridge pages, gateway page, entry pages, portals or portal pages, these pages are used to improve search engine placement. Caution: some search engines will de-rank or remove a website (from the search index) entirely if the existence of doorway/gateway pages is detected. Download The process of transferring a le from another computer or web server to a users computer. Dropbox Dropbox is a free service to sync and share les between computers that are logged into the same Dropbox account. http://www.dropbox.com/
Duplicate Content Refers to webpages with the same content across the same domain name and across different domain names. The detection of duplicate content by the search engines may have a negative impact on the ranking in the search engines of the page that is deemed to contain duplicate content and is not considered the original version of that content. Earnings Per Click (EPC) Term used by the Commission Junction afliate network, being the average earnings per 100 clicks. This number is calculated by taking commissions earned divided by the total number of clicks multiplied by 100. Email Electronic Mail, text les that are sent from one person to another. Email (List) Marketing The process of using email to market products and services to an email list that has previously opted-in to receive information about that product and/or service. Both the merchant and/or an afliate may use this method of promotion. Exact Match With respect to the search engines, exact match relates to the number of web pages that contain the exact keyword (or key phrase) a user enters into the search engine. Ezine An abbreviation of electronic magazine. EzineArticles EzineArticles is an online article directory with the highest authority in the eyes of the search engines. Articles submitted to EzineArticles are vetted by human moderators before they are displayed on the website. http://www.ezinearticles.com/ Facebook Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600million active users. http://www.facebook.com/
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www.challenge.co Facebook Fanpage A specic feature of the Facebook service that allows for the creation of commercially orientated pages or pages not specic to a users personal circumstances. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) A protocol that allows the transfer of les from one computer to another. Commonly used to transfer les from a users computer to a web server (host). Flippa A popular website that allows for the buying and selling of web sites. http://www.ippa.com/ Followers Followers are people who receive Tweets from the people they follow on Twitter. If someone follows you, they: become your follower and will display in the 'newest follower' section. receive your Tweets in their home page, phone, or any application (like Tweetie, TweetDeck, etc.) that they use. If you follow someone, you are their follower. Forum Online community where visitors may read and post topics of common interest. Maybe a valid source of backlinks as part of a link building strategy. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) FAQ is a commonly used abbreviation for "Frequently Asked Questions." Most Internet sites will have a "FAQ" to explain what the website is about and how to use its features. Geo Targeting Delivery of ads specic to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results. Googles Adwords program allows for geo-targeting of ads. Google The most popular search engine and a tool for nding resources (based on user entered keywords or key phrases) on the Internet. Commonly understood to receive ~70% of Google Alerts Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news , etc.) based on your choice of query or topic dened by a keyword or key phrase. Located at http://www.google.com/alerts Google Analytics Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.
the search trafc online. Located at http://www.google.com/ Google+ Google+ is basically Google's latest attempt at creating a social network to rival Facebook and Twitter. As of July 2011, Google+ comprises a number of functions: Circles - allows you to follow people in discreet and overlapping groups mimicking the complex nature of human group interactions. Stream - Allows users to receive text and multi-media updates from the people they follow inside Google+. The stream can be ltered based on different circles. Sparks - A function to receive content found and ltered by Googles search algorithms that is relevant and up to date based on a subject of interest. A user can have multiple sparks at any one time. Hangout - A simple to use group video chat service where up to 10 people can join a hangout and chat at one time. The main video window (seen by all participants in the hangout) is focussed automatically on the current speak while small thumbnail versions of each participant (not speaking) are displayed below the main video window. A simple text chat interface is also available to Hangout participants. https://plus.google.com/ Google Adsense Text and image ads that are precisely targeted to page content, from which the webmaster earns a percentage of the price per click paid by the advertiser. Located at http://www.google.com/adsense Google Adwords Googles Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising program. Located at http://www.google.com/adwords
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www.challenge.co The product is aimed at marketers and is the most widely used website statistics service. Located at http:// www.google.com/analytics Googlebot The name of the spider (see below) used by Google. Instructions to Googlebot can be directed in the robots.txt le. Googlebot statistics can be viewed with web analytics software, on web server logs, and in Google Webmaster tools. Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. As of May 2011, Chrome was the third most widely used browser with 12.52% worldwide usage share of web browsers, according to Net Applications. Chrome is the recommended web browser for The Challenge and can be downloaded from: http://www.google.com/chrome Google Dance Some internet marketers refer to the "Google Dance" as the time just after the search engine results pages change because of a change in Google algorithms. It can also refer to the period of time after which a web page is initially found and indexed by the Google and before the ranking of that page in the SERPS becomes stable. Google Docs Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, slide show, form, and data storage service offered by Google. Located at http://www.google.com/docs Google Insights Google Insights for Search is a service by Google similar to Google Trends (see below), providing insights into the search terms people have been entering into the Google search engine. Unlike Google Trends, Google Insights for Search provides a visual representation of regional interest on a country's map. It displays top searches and rising searches that may help with keyword research. Results can be narrowed down with categories that are displayed for each search terms. Located at http://www.google.com/insights/search Google Reader Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or ofine. An
incredible important resource for monitoring a large number of web sites efciently. Located at http:// www.google.com/reader Google Slap With reference to Googles PPC Adwords program, A Google Slap occurs when Google suddenly increases the quality requirements between the keyword being bid on, the Adwords ad and the website the ad sends trafc to. If the website does not meet minimum quality requirements then Google either turns off the ad or requires the advertiser to pay more to keep the ad alive. A Google ad has the net effect of increasing the relevancy within Adwords but also to drive out advertisers who cant afford to pay the ever increasing costs or whose business isnt protable enough to pay for PPC trafc. Google Trends Google Trends is a public web facility provided by Google and based on Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. Located at http://www.google.com/trends Google Webmaster Tools Google Webmaster Tools is a free web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their web sites. Located at http://www.google.com/webmasters Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) GIF (pronounced "gift") is a graphics format that can be displayed on almost all web browsers. It is a common compression format used for transferring graphics les between different computers. Most of the "pictures" you see online are GIF les. They display in 256 colors and have built-in compression. GIF images are the most common form of banner creative. Grey Hat SEO Grey-hat SEO tactics are those which have some genuine and accepted use (for search engine optimization), however, are subject to abuse by unethical SEOs and webmasters. H1 to H6 Tags The <h1> to <h6> tags are used to dene HTML headings.
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www.challenge.co <h1> denes the most important heading. <h6> denes the least important heading. As one of the important on-page SEO factors, it is recommended that you try to place your keyword that the page is optimized for within a <h1> tag on the page. HashTag A tag embedded in a message posted on a microblogging service (such as Twitter), consisting of a word or phrase within the message prexed with a hash sign. Header Tag The tag <header></header> that denes the title, description and other Meta information about a web page. Headline A heading at the top of an article or page in a newspaper, magazine or webpage. Signicant as it is usually grabs the initial attention of the viewer and is therefore an important inuence over whether the viewer continues to read the remaining content of the article or web page. Hit A hit is simply any request to the web server for any type of le. This can be an HTML page, an image (jpeg, gif, png, etc.), a sound clip, a cgi script, and many other le types. An HTML page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips. Therefore, the number of hits a website receives is not a valid popularity gauge, but rather is an indication of server use and loading. Homepage The page designated as the main point of entry of a Web site (or main page) or the starting point when a browser rst connects to the Internet. Usually located at the domain of the website. Hostgator A popular discount Internet hosting service. http://www.challenge.co/hostgator HTTPS A secure version of HTTP (see below). Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) HyperText Markup Language is a coding language used to make hypertext documents for use on the Web. HTML resembles old-fashioned typesetting code, where a block of
text is surrounded by codes that indicate how it should appear. HTML allows text to be "linked" to another le on the Internet. Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, the format of the World Wide Web (WWW). When a browser sees "HTTP" at the beginning of an address, it knows that it is viewing a WWW page. Hyperlink Is the clickable link in text or graphics on a web page that takes you to another place on the same page, another page on the same website or a different website. It is the single most powerful and important function of online communications. Immediate Edge A private paid member program created to provide more in-depth Internet Marketing education that follows on from that provide in The Challenge. Caters for intermediate to advanced Internet Marketers. Located at http://www.challenge.co/ImmediateEdge Impression The ad impression is the metric a site uses for measuring inventory. Different denitions exist for this term: 1. The viewing of a page or ad(s) by the user. The assumption is that the page or ad images were successfully downloaded and the user viewed the page or ads on the page are recorded whether or not a user clicks on an ad. 2.The request for a page or ad. Agencies usually collect a fee for every thousand impressions. Index The database of a search engine or directory. Indexing The process whereby a webpage or website is found by a search engine spider (bot or crawler) and added to the search engine index so that it may be displayed in the SERPS (see below) when that web page or website is deemed relevant to the keyword or key phrase a user may be searching for in the search engine. Instapaper A free service that allows a user to save webpages so as to easily retrieve and read later on a range of computer and mobile devices. Located at http://www.instapaper.com/
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www.challenge.co Internet A collection of approximately 60,000 independent, interconnected networks that use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from ARPANet of the late '60s and early '70s. The Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks providing reliable and redundant connectivity between disparate computers and systems by using common transport and data protocols. Internet Marketing Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, webmarketing, online-marketing, or e-Marketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Internet Service Provider (ISP) A business that provides access to the Internet. IP Address Internet Protocol (IP) address. Every system connected to the Internet has a unique IP address, which consists of a number in the format A.B.C.D where each of the four sections is a decimal number from 0 to 255. Most people use Domain Names instead and the resolution between Domain Names and IP addresses is handled by the network and the Domain Name Servers. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) JPEG (pronounced "jay peg") is a graphics format newer than GIF which displays photographs and graphic images with millions of colors, it also compresses well and is easy to download. Java (Javascript) Java is an object oriented programming language created by Sun Microsystems that supports enhanced features such as animation, or real-time updating of information. If you are using a web browser that supports Java, an applet (Java program) embedded in the Web page will automatically run. Joint Venture (JV) A general partnership (between 2 or more independent entities) typically formed to undertake a particular business transaction or project rather than one intended to continue indenitely. Keyword (key-phrase) A word -- or often a phrase -- used to focus an online search. A keyword is a database index entry that identies
a specic record or document. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on the web. Most search engines do their text query and retrieval using keywords. Unless the author of the web document species the keywords for her document (possible by using on-page SEO factors), it's up to the search engine to determine them. Essentially, this means that search engines pull out and index words that are believed to be relevant or signicant. Keyword Density The ratio between the keyword being searched for and the total number of words appearing on your web page. Keyword Optimized The process of optimizing an article so that the search engines will deem it to be relevant for a particular keyword or key phrase. Keyword Research Keyword research includes the processes and
methodologies to research key words that would be used for search and internet marketing campaigns. Latent Semantic Index (LSI) Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI for short, is an algorithm used by Google (and possibly other search engines) to determine how words are related to each other in the context of a web page. Leverage The power to inuence a person or situation to achieve a particular outcome which in the case of Internet Marketing is likely to be a commercial outcome. Liking A Cialdini inuence factor whereby people are easily persuaded by other people that they like. Internet Marketers take advantage of this factor by presenting marketing material designed to increase the like-ability of the marketer and the product/service being marketed. Since Facebook introduced the Facebook Like button, liking may also be dened as the process of liking a webpage or website by clicking a Facebook Like button that is located on that page or website.
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www.challenge.co Link A link is a clickable object on a web page that, when clicked, will take the viewer to a particular page, place on a page, or start a new e-mail with an address you specify. A synonym of backlink. Link Building The process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques may include reciprocal linking, entering barter arrangements, publishing content on 3rd party web sites that include a link and may include buying links (although this practice is not considered acceptable by Google). Link Network The sum total of backlinks (both internal and external) that link to a web page or website. Linked-In LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. Located at http://www.linkedin.com/ Long Tail Keyword A longer, more specic keyword phrase that contains a hierarchically superior niche or market keyword. For example wedding party favor ideas is a long tail keyword of the wedding party favor micro-niche, the wedding party niche and the wedding market. Long tail keywords usually have limited trafc potential but very low phrase match competition (less than 20,000 competing pages). Because they have low competition they are usually easy to rank for in the SERPS. Sometimes long tail keywords are referred to as low hanging fruit. Mailing List (Email) On the Internet, a mailing list is an automatically distributed email message on a particular topics going to certain individuals. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to a mailing list by sending a message via email or by entering details into an opt-in form. Main Ranking Vehicle (MRV) As an Internet Marketer you will probably create a number of web properties when targeting a niche for commercial benet. The main ranking vehicle or MRV is that web
property containing the highest quality content that you intend will rank highest in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting. Your main ranking vehicle was also likely contain money pages which have been specically constructed to engineer a sale for a product or service you are promoting within the niche. Market Leadership A process (dened by Ed Dale) whereby you seek to control and inuence the conversation taking place within a niche/micro-niche using common publishing and social media techniques. Market Research Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy. Market Samurai A keyword research and Internet Marketing software tool (developed on the Adobe Air platform) and marketed by Noble Samurai. It was conceptualized and developed to be consistent with The Challenge training process and is therefore perfectly matched to support the methods and techniques required to be implemented during The Challenge. Located at: http://www.challenge.co/MarketSamurai Marketing The act of making people aware of and eager to obtain a product or service. Merchant A business that markets and sells products or services (on the Internet or ofine). Meta Description The meta description tag is intended to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. When the meta description contains the keyword or key phrase that the search engines deem the page to be most relevant for, then the meta-description is usually used as the 2 line description of the website that is displayed in the SERPS. The meta description tag is therefore important not only from the perspective of SEO but also as a marketing factor to inuence a viewer to visit the web page.
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www.challenge.co Meta Tags Information placed in the header of an HTML page that provides important information about the page which is not visible to site visitors but is visible to the search engine spiders. May also inuence how the page is displayed in the browser. Micro-Blog Microblogging is a form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically much smaller, in both actual size and aggregate le size. A microblog entry could consist of nothing but a short sentence fragment, or an image or embedded video. Examples of micro-blogging platforms are Twitter (http:// www.twitter.com/) www.tumblr.com/) Monetization The act of exposing trafc visiting a web page or website to ads or sales copy with a view to engineering a commercial outcome (a click on an ad or the sale of a product or service). Money Page The page(s) on a website created to sell or promote a product or service. A website may contain several money pages where several products or services are being promoted. Multivariate Testing A process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous A/B tests performed on one page at the same time. Google Website Optimizer offers the ability to implement multivariate testing. http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer MySQL MySQL is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. The SQL phrase stands for Structured Query Language. Netiquette A term that is used to describe the do's and don'ts of online behavior. In summary it all comes down to good business -- and social -- practice. Be polite, be aware of the folks you are talking to, talk nicely and not too much. and Tumblr (http:// Newbie A term to describe anyone new to a subject, whether it be a particular forum online or the Internet. Newsgroup A discussion group on Usenet devoted to talking about a specic topic. Currently, there are over 15,000 newsgroups. Also called usenets, newsgroups consist of messages posted on electronic bulletin boards. Each board has a theme, and there are tens of thousands of newsgroups concerning every imaginable topic. Many of them cover professional subjects and societies and are rich sources of business information; others are junk and contain little but mindless drivel. Niche (Micro-Niche) In the context of The Challenge, a niche/micro-niche is a collection of keywords and/or key phrases that are semantically related and that meet certain competition and trafc criteria. The purpose of identifying a niche/microniche is to create a website to attract viewers interested in the topic and expose that trafc to a commercial opportunity. Niche Marketing The process of marketing products or services to a group of people interested in a narrowly dened theme and who are searching on the Internet using keywords that are semantically related to that theme. Niche Persona The process of creating an online persona so as to market products and services to people that are interested in a specic niche. This becomes important when for instance a male marketer is trying to promote products and services in a female dominated niche or vice versa. Nofollow (tag) Nofollow is a value that can be assigned to the rel= attribute of a link tag which instructs some search engines (particularly Google) not to share any of the page authority that the page containing the link has with the destination URL of the link. The tag was intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain search engine spam although the degree to which the nofollow tag is taken notice of has been questioned in recent years.
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www.challenge.co Off-Page (SEO) Factors Those search engine optimization (SEO) factors that are not directly related to the content being displayed on a particular web page or the address of that page. These may include the age and page rank of the domain, the backlinks to the domain or web page itself and whether the page is listed in certain authority directories (Yahoo and DMOZ) etc. On-Page (SEO) Factors Those search engine optimization (SEO) factors that relate to the page content being optimized for a specic keyword or key phrase. The most important of these are whether the keyword or key phrase has been included within the URL, the title, the meta-description and a heading tag on the page. Outsource (Outsourcing) Outsourcing often refers to the process of subcontracting a service to a third-party service provider. In the context of Internet Marketing, the service provider will very likely be located in a 3rd world country where the labour cost is much lower thereby leading to a signicant cost saving. Page Rank (PR) PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance. Panda/Farmer Update From time to time, Google makes a signicant update to its search algorithms in an attempt to signicantly improve the quality of the search returns across a wide range of keywords. These signicant updates are noticed by the SEO community and given names. In 2011, a very signicant update occurred over several releases which has been called the Panda/Farmer update. The update was designed to reduce the ranking of low quality sites from the top of Googles search results pages (but not de-index). This has impacted negatively the rankings of scraper sites, content farms, sites with poor quality content and sites with a high advert to content ratio or that offer a weak user experience. Ping Kaching A software application (developed on the Adobe Air platform) by Michael Roberts which allows for the automated submission of a web page or website to a range
Pay Per Click (PPC) An advertising payment model where the advertiser pays only when the advertisement is actually clicked. Also, an afliate program where an afliate receives a commission for each click (visitor) they refer to a merchants web site. An example of a PPC service is Google Adwords. Pay Per Lead (PPL) An afliate program in which an afliate receives a commission for each sales lead that they generate for a merchant web site. Examples include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials Pay Per Sale (PPS) Afliate programs in which the afliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchants web site. PayPal PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. Located at http://www.paypal.com/ PHP PHP is a general-purpose Scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document. Phrase Match With respect to the search engines, phrase match is a form of keyword matching where the number of pages that contain the phrase will be displayed if the user's search query includes the exact phrase, even if their query contains additional words. Ping The act of querying (another computer on a network) to determine whether there is an active connection to it.
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www.challenge.co of social networking sites, directories, search engines and RSS aggregators. The software is recommended in The Challenge to facilitate the efcient indexing of a new website or web page http://www.challenge.co/PingKaching Pingback A pingback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for authors to request notication when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Plugin In computing, a plug-in (or plugin) is a set of software components that adds specic abilities to a larger software application. If supported, plug-ins enable customizing the functionality of an application. The functionality of Wordpress (a blogging platform recommended in The Challenge) can be extended by the installation of plugins. PNG (Portable Network Graphics) A graphic le format similar to JPEG that can be displayed in most modern web browsers. Allows for transparency in the image which is not possible in GIF or JPEG les. Podcast A method of publishing audio les to the Internet for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Portable Document Format (PDF) A document format (developed by Adobe) used by word processing software, business applications or desktop publishing to save les on the Web that look exactly like the originals. Must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view. Portal A Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as email, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The rst Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience. Also known as a "gateway to the Internet". Posterous Posterous is a simple blogging platform started in May 2008, funded by Y Combinator. It supports integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics
package, and custom themes. Located at http://www.posterous.com/ Product Creation In the context of The Challenge, product creation is the process of creating (usually digital products - text, PDF, audio or video etc) to satisfy the information needs or desires of people within a niche or micro-niche usually (but not always) for the purpose of engineering a commercial outcome. Prot The net amount left over from revenue (see below) after cost of sales and expenses are deducted. Privacy Policy A privacy policy establishes how a company collects and uses information about its customers accounts and transactions. Quality Score A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad's click through rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad's landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm. Ranking Vehicle When developing a range of web sites within a niche or micro-niche, the ranking vehicle is that website designed to rank highest in the search engines for the main keywords or key phrases being targeted. The main ranking vehicle will very likely contain pages designed to convert trafc to sales (money pages). Rank Tracker A module within Market Samurai to track the ranking (in the search engines) of nominated web pages for the keywords or key phrases those pages have been optimized for. Ranking A generic term to describe where a web page ranks in the SERPS for the keyword or key phrase that web page has been optimized for.
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www.challenge.co Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web, also known as syndication. The XML le is also known as the RSS feed. Reciprocal Link(ing) The process of exchanging links with other web sites to increase search engine popularity. This practice is no longer supported by Google and may lead to a reduced ranking in the SERPS for those pages which have a large number of reciprocal links. Reciprocity A Cialdini inuence factor whereby people tend to return a favor, thus the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing. In the context of Internet Marketing, when a person receives something (of value) for free, without any expectation of a return payment, they are more likely to take action in the future when presented with a commercial opportunity by the merchant that originally provided the free item. Residual Commissions Commissions paid over a dened or open-ended period of time to an afliate for the referral of a sale to a merchant. Return On Investment (ROI) Return on investment = (Revenue - Cost)/Cost, expressed as a percentage. A term describing the calculation of the nancial return on a Internet marketing or advertising initiative that incurs some cost. Revenue Total income for your sales. For example, if you sell 50 ebooks at $27.00 each, your revenue would be $1350.00. Sales Conversion See Conversion. Sales Letter A sales letter is a piece of direct mail which is designed to persuade the reader to purchase a particular product or service in the absence of a salesman. Although originally designed to be sent by direct mail, since the advent of the internet, the sales letter has become an integral part of Internet Marketing and typically takes the form of an email or webpage. Search Terms Text that is typed into a search engine to identify web sites and web pages deemed to be relevant to the search term by the search engines. Google has dominated in this space (and built a very protable business) by offering the most accurate search results for the search terms entered. SEO Competition (SEOC) SEOC (a variable displayed in the keyword research module of Market Samurai) is the number of phrase matched pages that exist in Google for a particular keyword or key phrase. It is a measure of how competitive
Scarcity A Cialdini inuence factor whereby perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for a "limited time only" encourages sales. A very powerful mechanism to increase conversion. Search Engines A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results known as search engine results pages or SERPS. A program that searches documents for specied
keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Although search engine is really a general class of programs, the term is often used to specically describe systems like Google that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web and USENET newsgroups. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization is the ongoing process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to nd and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketingfocused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) The page searchers see after they've entered their query into the search box. This page lists several Web pages related to the searcher's query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs.
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www.challenge.co the Internet is (in terms of quantity of pages) for that keyword or key phrase. SEO Matrix A table displayed in the SEO competition module of Market Samurai listing key on-page and off-page SEO factors for the web sites or web pages currently ranking on page 1 of Google for a specic keyword or key phrase. SEOT A projected value (in the keyword research module of Market Samurai) of the trafc that the number 1 ranking website would receive for a specic keyword or key phrase. Spider (Bot, Crawler) Silo (Siloing) The act of structuring the internal linking of a website to control the importance (and therefore the authority) of certain pages and to improve the ranking of the website in the search engines for target keywords and key phrases. Sitemap A page which contains an organized listing of links to all pages within the website. Having a well structured sitemap will assist the search engine spider to index the pages. Google Webmasters allows for the submission of site-maps which may improve the probability that the website and its pages will be indexed by Google. Spyware Social Media A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, social Squeeze Page A squeeze page, also known as a name squeeze page is a landing page specically created to solicit name and email addresses from site visitors. Many webmasters collect only email addresses. Squidoo Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Located at http://www.squidoo.com/ Stickiness A measure used to gauge the effectiveness of a site in retaining individual users. bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg, and other sites that are centered on user interaction. Social Networking / Marketing Meeting and building relationships with people using one or more of a broad range of social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, etc. Social Proof A Cialdini inuence factor whereby people will do things that they see other people are doing, buying or using. Internet Marketers take advantage of this principle by providing evidence of Social Proof to potential customers in the form of testimonials or positive reviews of the product or service they are promoting. Also known as adware, a program hidden within free downloaded software that transmits user information via the Internet to advertisers. Spinning The process of creating multiple versions of an article or post (for submission to leveraged content syndication services) by utilizing synonym or phrase replacement within the article. The recommended tool for (manual) spinning is The Best Spinner - http://www.challenge.co/ TheBestSpinner. The recommended automated spinner is Content Boss - http://www.contentboss.com/ An automated, computerized algorithm hosted by search engines that browses the web. The programs create a copy of each webpage for future indexing by the search engines. Spam The use of mailing lists to blanket usenets or private email boxes with indiscriminate advertising messages. Very bad netiquette. Even worse, it's bad business. The future of marketing online is about customizing products and information for individual users. Anyone who tries to use old mass market techniques in the new media environment is bound to fail. Other types of spam include search engine spam and twitter spam which all have the objective of increasing the exposure of a product by mass publishing low quality content within a particular content network.
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www.challenge.co Super Afliate The top 1 or 2% of afliates that generate approximately 90% of any afliate programs earnings. Surng Exploring the World Wide Web. Commonly known as "Surng the 'Net." Symphony Of Four Parts A concept introduced by Ed Dale to describe the four main aspects of Internet Marketing that lead to success online. They are: 1. Market/keyword research 2. Trafc 3. Conversion 4. Product Testimonial In promotion and advertising, a testimonial consists of a written or spoken statement, sometimes from a known person, sometimes from a private citizen, extolling the virtue of some product or service. The term testimonial most commonly applies to the sales-pitches attributed to ordinary citizens, whereas "endorsement" usually applies to pitches by celebrities. Text Link A link (to a web page or website) not accompanied by a graphical image. Theme (Wordpress) The look and layout of a Wordpress blog can be altered by the installation of different themes. There are many paid and free Wordpress themes available on the Internet Theme Keyword In the context of The Challenge, a theme keyword is a keyword within a niche or micro-niche that meets the SEOC (< 30,000) and SEOT (>80) criteria AND reects the niche/micro-niche to the extent that it will be used to secure a domain name. Thirty Day Challenge (30DC) The Thirty Day Challenge (30DC) is the precursor of The Challenge which was rst conducted in 2005 and ran up till and including 2009. Title Tag An element of a web page which appears at the top of most browsers. It is also the part of a directory submission that represents the title of the website. Arguably one of the most important parts of on-page SEO (along with having your keyword in the URL) is ensuring an optimized title or unique titles exists for all pages of a website. Trackback A trackback is one of three types of linkback methods for Web authors to request notication when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles or blog posts. Tracking Method The method by which an afliate program tracks referred sales, leads or clicks. Tracking URL A tracking URL is a web site URL with your special afliate code attached to it, i.e. http:// www.awebsite.com/?myID. Visitors arriving at the side are tracked back to you through your special code, or ID. Trafc Generally measured by the amount of visitors to a website, may be differentiated in terms of unique or return visitors. Tribe The term tribe is used as a slang term for an unofcial community of people who share a common interest, and usually who are loosely afliated with each other through social media or other Internet mechanisms. Commonly attributed to Seth Godin. Troll A person who publishes a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board or blog with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument. Tumblr Tumblr, sometimes styled as tumblr., is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. Located at http://www.tumblr.com/
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www.challenge.co Tweet A tweet is a post or status update on Twitter, a microblogging service. Because Twitter only allows messages of 140 characters or less, "tweet" is as much a play on the size of the message as it is on the audible similarity to Twitter. Twitter Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's prole page. Located at http://www.twitter.com/ Twitter List A Twitter List is Twitter's way of allowing users to group proles (and their tweets) together without having to display them in the main user prole. Two-Tier (afliate system) An afliate program structure whereby afliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Uniform Resource Locator, an HTTP address used by the World Wide Web to specify a certain site. This is the unique identier, or address, of a web page on the Internet. Unique Article Wizard (UAW) Rather like AMA (see above), UAW is a paid syndication service for either publishing or receiving content from a network of Article directories. When publishing articles, the end user can include Keyword-specic links to a user specied Website meaning that UAW can be thought of as a link building service. http://www.challenge.co/uaw Unique User / Visitor The total number of different users, or different computer terminals which have visited a Web site. This is measured using advanced tracking technology or user registration. Probably the best measure of trafc to a website. Universal Search Also known as blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images,
videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories. Upload The process of transferring a le from a users computer to another computer or web server. URL Redirection URL redirection, also called URL forwarding and the very similar technique domain redirection also called domain forwarding, are techniques on the World Wide Web for making a web page available under many URLs. The HTTP standard denes several status codes for redirection the 2 most used being: 301 moved permanently 307 temporary redirect User Generated Content (UGC) User-generated content (UGC), also known as consumergenerated media (CGM) or user-created content (UCC), refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users. UStream Ustream (established in 2007) is a website which consists of a network of diverse channels providing a platform for lifecasting and live video streaming of events online. Located at http://www.ustream.tv/ Viral Marketing Any advertising that propagates itself. A marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users. Virus These are programs that can be downloaded onto your computer or network from the Internet. Some are harmless, others are programd to destroy your system, trash your les and disable your software. Visits A sequence of requests made by one user at one site. If a visitor does not request any new information for a period of time, known as the "time-out" period, then the next request by the visitor is considered a new visit. Vlog A vlog is a video blog.
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www.challenge.co Web 2.0 A term that refers to a second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking folksonomies. Web Host A business that provides storage, connectivity, and services necessary to serve website pages and les. Webmaster The individual assigned to administer a corporation or organization's web site. This person lays out the information trees, designs the look, codes HTML pages, handles editing and additions and checks that links are intact. In addition, he or she monitors, routes and sometimes responds to email generated by the site. Web Page A HTML (Hypertext markup Language) document on the web, usually one of many together that makeup a web site. Website The virtual location for an organization's presence on the World Wide Web, usually making up several web pages and a single home page designated by a unique URL. White Hat SEO Ethical search engine optimisation techniques that are encouraged by the search engines. Widget A widget is a live update on a website, webpage, or desktop. Widgets contain personalized neatly organized content or applications selected by its use. Like plugins, widgets offer a method for extending the functionality of a Wordpress blog. Wiki A web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website. Wikipedia A multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. With rare exceptions, its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply
by clicking the edit this page link. Located at http:// www.wikipedia.com/ Wordpress WordPress is an open source blog tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It's often customized into a Content Management System (CMS). It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template (theme) system. http://www.wordpress.com/ Wordpressirect (WPD) A web service developed by Marty Rozmanith to simplify the process of installing and managing a number of Wordpress blogs. Also offers functionality to auto post content to those blogs from a range of public domain content sources. Recommended in The Challenge to simplify the process of installing an SEO optimized Wordpress blog. http://www.challenge.co/WordpressDirect World Wide Web (WWW) The web allows computer users to access information across systems around the world using URLs to identify les and systems and hypertext links to move between les on the same or different systems. The web is a client/ server information system that supports the retrieval of data in the form of text, graphics and multimedia in a uniform HTML format. Allowing hypertext links and interactivity on an unprecedented level, its introduction transformed an academic communications system into a powerful marketing tool linking businesses and customers around the world. Yahoo A popular web portal and search engine located at http:// www.yahoo.com/ YouTube YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share and view videos, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. Now owned by Google, it is the second most searched website on the Internet (after the Google search engine) and is located at http://www.youtube.com/ Zendesk Zendesk is a saas-based (software as a service) customer support / help desk product. Its features include email ticket tracking, providing a customer self service portal,
sites,
wikis,
communication
tools,
and
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www.challenge.co and general help desk reporting and tracking. Located at http://www.zendesk.com/ Zine Magazines that are published digitally, rather than on paper. Some are mainstream, others are oddball and cover almost every topic imaginable.
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RECOMMENDED READING LIST

Allen, David Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin (USA) 2002. Allen, David Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life. Viking Adult 2008. Anderson, Chris The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. Hyperion 2006. Anderson, Chris Free: How Today's Smartest Businesses Prot by Giving Something for Nothing. Hyperion 2010. Ariely, Dan Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. HarperCollins 2010. Ariely, Dan The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benets of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. HarperCollins 2010. Batelle, John The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. Penguin Group (USA) 2005. Branson, Richard Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. Crown 1999. Buzan, Tony How To Mind Map. Thorsons Publishers 2006. Buzan, Tony The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain's Untapped Potential. Plume 1996. Buffett, Warren E. & Cunningham, Lawrence A. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America. The Cunningham Group; 2nd edition 2008. Cialdini, Robert [Highly Recommended] Inuence - The Psychology Of Persuasion. New York: Harper Paperbacks; Revised edition 2006. Cialdini, Robert, Goldstein Noah J. & Martin Steve J. Yes!: 50 Scientically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. Free Press; Reprint edition 2009. Ferris, Timothy The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. Crown 2010. Ferris, Timothy The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. Crown 2009. Fried, Jason & Hansson, David Heinemeier Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application. 37 Signals 2009. Fried, Jason & Hansson, David Heinemeier Rework. Crown 2010. Gerber, Michael E. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. HarperCollins; First Edition edition 1995. Gladwell, Malcom Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. Little, Brown & Company 2007. Gladwell, Malcom Outliers: The Story Of Success. Little, Brown & Company 2009.
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www.challenge.co Gladwell, Malcom The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Little, Brown & Company 2002. Gleick, James The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Pantheon 2011. Godin, Seth Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?. Penguin Group (USA) 2010. Godin, Seth Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Penguin Group (USA) 2009. Godin, Seth Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers. Penguin Group (USA) 1999. Godin, Seth [Highly Recommended] Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us. New York: Penguin Group (USA) 2008. Greene, Robert The 48 Laws of Power. Penguin Group (USA) 2000. Hansen, Mark Victor The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth. Crown 2009. Heath Chip & Heath, Dan Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Random House 2007. Hewitt-Gleeson, Michael W.O.M.B.A.T. Selling: How to Sell by Word of Mouth. Hardie Grant Books 2006. Hewitt-Gleeson, Michael New Sell: The Heresy of NewSell. Wrightbooks 1990. Issacson, Walter Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster 2011. Johnson, Spencer & Blanchard, Kenneth [Highly Recommended] Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life. G. P. Putnam's Sons 1998. Kennedy, Dan S. The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales. Adams Media; 4th edition 2011. Kiyosaki, Robert T. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. TechPress Inc 2002. Kirkpatrick, David [Highly Recommended] The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. Simon And Schuster 2011. Levitt, Steven D. & Dubner, Stephen J. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. HarperCollins 2009. Levitt, Steven D. & Dubner, Stephen J. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. HarperCollins 2009. Levy, Mark Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content. ReadHowYouWant 2010. Levy, Steven [Highly Recommended] In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. Simon & Schuster 2011. McKee, Robert Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting. HarperCollins 1997.
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www.challenge.co Napoleon, Hill Think and Grow Rich. Aventine Press; Revised ed. edition 2004. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. Penguin 2009. Presseld, Steven [Highly Recommended] The War of Art: Break through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Grand Central 2003. Presseld, Steven Do the Work. The Domino Project 2011. Renvoise, Patrick & Morin, Christophe Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer's Brain. Nelson, Thomas, Inc 2007. Sinek, Simon [Highly Recommended] Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Penguin Group (USA) 2009. Strunk, William & White, E. B. The Elements of Style. Longman 1999. Surowiecki, James The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Knopf Doubleday 2005. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. Random House 2005. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House 2010. Tharp, Twyla The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Simon And Schuster 2005 Vaynerchuck, Gary Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. Harper 2009. Vise, David A. & Malseed, Mark The Google Story. Delacorte Press 2005. Wiseman, Richard Did you spot the gorilla. Arrow (Rand); New Ed edition 2004. Young, William L. Simon Icon. Wiley, John and Sons 2005.
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RECOMMENDED SOFTWARE & SERVICES

This section is split up into software and services for beginners (many of which have been referenced through this guide) and for intermediate to advanced Internet Marketers which may be of interest as you continue your online journey beyond The Challenge.
Software & Services For Beginner Internet Marketers

Domains and Hosting
Hostgator - A US based discount web hosting service recommended within The Challenge.
Keyword Research
Market Samurai (Free Trial) - Built on the Adobe Air platform (multi-platform) and featuring a simple interface, Market Samurai is an all-in-one marketing tool with features that include: Keyword Research, SEO Competition analysis, domain search and acquisition, publish Content to Wordpress blogs, nd (keyword specic) content, promotion module for nding keyword specic authority sites and a monetization module for creating and publishing afliate product ads. Google Adwords Keyword Tool (Free) - is intended to help you evaluate and discover the performance of different keywords and phrases, but evaluation data revolves around volume, advertising competition and trends.
Blog Creation (Wordpress) & Management

WordpressDirect (Free Trial) - A Wordpress blog installation and management tool.
Automated Social Media, RSS, Directory and Search Engine Submission

Ping Kaching (Free Trial) - Ping Kaching is a powerful SEO Software that completely automates such important tasks as Social Bookmarking, RSS Submissions, Directory Submissions, Search Engine Submissions, Pinging and more.
Membership Program
Challenge Plus - A paid Internet Marketing education program created and maintained by the people behind The Challenge. Recommended as the natural place for graduates of The Challenge looking to extend their Internet Marketing education.
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Software & Services For Intermediate To Advanced Internet Marketers

Domains
Domainface - The most powerful domain search engine online which allows for nding keyword specic domains about to drop or become available. Has auto-bid functionality for buying dropping domains and the ability to store and manage your domain portfolio.
Hosting
Rackspace - Rackspace is a high-end cloud hosting solution that can automatically scale based on load and bandwidth requirements. Amazon S3 - Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, secure, fast, inexpensive infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benets of scale and to pass those benets on to developers.
Online Marketing Platform

Market Pro Max - All encompassing hosted blog platform (Wordpress) with integrated online marketing functionality including squeeze pages, easy sales letter builder, product launches, membership area and webinars.
Email Autoresponder Services

Aweber - Aweber is a complete Email marketing program that allows you to send out mass newsletters, create stylish opt-in forms, manage subscribers, use auto-responder follow ups & more.
Blog Management
Manage WP (Currently in Beta Trial) - ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one dashboard, keeping them updated and secure.
SEO and Link Analysis

SEO Moz - An online membership program with a number of SEO related services and features. Along with Majestic SEO below, they have the best link checking index (for establishing link numbers, anchor text spread and PR) now that Yahoo is beginning to shutdown the service they previously offered for free. Majestic SEO - Has largest index of links online for analyzing links pointing to a particular website and the characteristics of those links.
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SEM Rush - An online service that allows a user to reverse engineer the ranking of a website for various keywords for both organic and PPC searches. Very useful for identifying which keywords your website is ranking for in the search engines.
Article Spinning
The Best Spinner (manual spinning) - Software for spinning article content based on automated synonym replacement against a large and growing user dictionary which allows for manual spinnng at the word, phrase, sentence or paragraph level. Spin Robot (automated spinning) - A simple low-end automated content spinning service that has a low annual fee and where you pay only for the spins you use. Made by the people behind Content Boss (see below). Content Boss (automated spinning) - An automated online service for spinning article content (they call it content wrangling). Monthly membership model. Content Boss probably has the best natural language technology on the Internet at present.
Content Syndication
Article Marketing Automation - An automated content syndication services for submitting spun article content to a huge network of blogs for the purposes of gaining backlinks to a user-specied website(s). Unique Article Wizard - An automated content syndication services for submitting spun article content to a moderated network of article directories (and some blogs) for the purposes of gaining backlinks to a user-specied website(s). Article Samurai (Not yet on general release) - An upcoming software platform from the makers of Market Samurai for syndicating and spinning content. Integrates many of the features or Article Marketing Automation, Unique Article Wizard and Content Boss into one, easy to use package.
Video Encoding
Encoding.com - A fast, efcient online service for automatically encoding video content into a range of formats, bandwidth and resolutions. Allows for watch-list functionality to monitor an FTP location, automatically download and encode videos (based on user specied parameters) and upload to another location (including Amazon S3).
Wordpress Plugins
Wp Syndicator - A Wordpress plugin for automatically syndicating content published on a blog to a range of Web 2.0 sites. A more automated version of the Posterous linking strategy taught in Module 3.
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Premise - A Wordpress plugin for easily creating landing pages on a Wordpress blog. Incorporates integrated split-testing functionality and SEO tools
Wordpress Themes
Woo Themes - A premium Wordpress theme membership program containing over 100 highly exible and customizable Wordpress themes. Thesis - A highly exible Wordpress theme that can be customized to cater for almost any requirement. Highly popular amongst Internet Marketers.
Membership Program
Immediate Edge - A membership program for intermediate to advanced Internet marketers from the people behind The Challenge. Offers both cutting edge marketing techniques and reviews of latest strategic and product/service releases on the Internet. Allows offers stepby-step instruction for implementing certain marketing models through the blueprint series.
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The Challenge Manifesto

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The Challenge Manifesto

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THE CHALLENGE MANIFESTO

A SUPPLEMENTARY GUIDE TO THE ONLINE VIDEO TRAINING PROGRAM LOCATED AT

Robert Somerville (GuruBob)

All rights reserved 2011.

Copyright 2011, Robert Somerville