What A Twit......

Yup, I'm feeling like quite the Twit. I've added about 50 new twitters to my following list. Whew! I look forward to Ed telling us of how twitter will be beneficial to us from a marketing standpoint. I like that it can boost traffic to my site, potentially. I'm seeing the hope but waiting for the fog to clear. Feel free to add me to your twitter list, if you like.

Loading up the day 3 video. Was late in coming due to the server bog but I'm sure it will be worth the wait. I never fail to learn something valuable every time I listen to Ed speak. I get excited just knowing it's loading. Grandma always wanted to know before we went to bed... "what did you learn today?" Every day is a learning experience. And every day is a memory waiting to be made - strive to make each one something worth savoring later on.

I also worked on updating my dog breed related cafepress store. Let's see if I can't also do double duty and get that going well as we go along in the challenge. I hope to implement the marketing aspects as we go along. A form of 'practice'. Seriously, I've had this store for over a year now and it's really doing nothing despite my hard work on the graphics. Let's see what the TDC secrets will do to spark my traffic. :) And maybe even my income!

In addition to adding several contacts to my Twitter list, I also worked on adding more Skype contacts. I've got over 50 contacts now. :)

Day 3 - Too Much Of A Good Thing

Yup, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. We will be waiting on Ed's instructions for Day 3 of our challenge until tomorrow likely due to such a large crowd of fans beating down his door to get in on this golden opportunity. Another server will be added and we will be ready to once again, rock n roll!

I didn't let this get me down though. I used my day to further research niche's, make new contacts/friends on Skype who are also participating in the TDC and worked on boosting the search engine optimization of my website that showcases my coonhounds (they don't call me showpup for nothing). Wanna see? C'mon.. humor me! http://www.ironwoodkennel.com

I also find my hands full in caring for an orphan boston terrier puppy of my Mom's while she is out of town at a dog show. (she got a blue ribbon at yesterday's show!!) Since I have dogs who are currently nursing puppies, we had hoped this youngster could get some fresh doggie milk. Have you ever tried to milk a dog? ROTF!! drip-drop-drip... no thanks. I used to have about 50 head of dairy goats (I showed nationally) and there is no way in God's green earth that I can milk a darn dog. LOL So feeding this little girl with a syringe. She's only 5 oz. - can't put her in with a coonhound litter that are now 2-3 lbs a piece. She nearly died right after birth so wish us the best in seeing her through.

Now, I'm going to see if I can make sense of Fire Fox add on called session manager. Low on sleep and white matter cells right now so no guarantees I can come close to grasping the info right now but I'm going to give it a good gung-ho try.

This $1,000 propane bill I just got in the mail should serve as sufficient inspiration... *sigh*

Day 2 - Lucky Number 7

Day 2 of the challenge and things are warming up.

In today's podcast, Ed instructed us to pick 7 niche ideas. No more, no less. We are told the reason for this number will be explained later.

I have many more ideas than 7 so I'll have to figure that out. Seems I have many that would fit into one topic or another so perhaps I'll do that. Looks like I have more sub-niches than niches.
One of them is a topic Ed says he will take a baseball bat after us if we even think of using it. uh-oh!

Then Ed went on to show us 4 of his favorite places to hunt for niche's.

• Ebaypulse.com
• technorati.com
• google groups
• Google Trends
• Yahoo

You'll have to join the TDC in order to learn all the tips and pointers he made on the best way to do these things. If you're interested enough to read my blog, you should really join us at www.thirtydaychallenge.com and gather up all the tasty tid-bits Ed Dale is handing FREELY out to everyone who joins. No strings attached!

Even though I have more than 7 niche ideas, I'm heading over to see what I can find. If you're going to take the challenge, you need to follow all the steps one by one so that's what I'm going to do. :)

Day 1 - Me Go to Meebo

Day 1's assignment was pretty easy. We were to review all the pre-season goodies to be sure we were ready for the big challenge with all our tools and add-on's in place.

I need to go to Meebo.com and sign up there. A browser based program that allows you to use all your instant messanger programs from one place.. and ANY place. As I'm using Skype quite heavily for keeping up with my team members, I can now be sure to be able to contact everyone no matter where in the big, bad world I am as long as a computer is handy. Very cool!

The TDC toolbar was unveiled today. What a great tool! Thanks to Dan Raine for this cool toolbar gizmo that sits up there just waiting to alert us to new blog posts, messages and more. I'm loving it already.

Through today's podcast, I discovered the joy's of the Fire Fox add on called Twitterbar. This is fabulous! You can actually update your twitter by typing your text right into your address bar. It will automatically place 'currently browsing www.whatyourviewing.com and then your text. FUN! And so much nicer than having to scoot over and load up the Twitter page. Awesome!

The Big One!

Well, tomorrow is the big day!
Official kick off day for the Thirty Day Challenge.

I hope you will all wish me luck as I strive to learn as much as possible during this experience.

One of the things I'm looking forward to is that TDC this year will have a toolbar we can download which will automatically let us know when new TDC tools, updates to the blog and forum, etc are available. That is way cool!

I'm getting ready to run over to Meebo.com. A great application that lets you track all your favorite instant messenger type chat programs via your browser. This means, even if you're using someone else's computer, you can still access your contacts.. particularly my TDC contacts! Yeah!

Ed just posted a direct url to all the contestants for the TDC contest. The participants are entering various Youtube videos which advertise the Thirty Day Challenge. Some of these videos are just plain hilarious! You should go take a peek. http://tinyurl.com/3dv8fw

I uploaded my coonhound website. If you all are curious about me, go there and check it out. There are lots of photos and other good stuff and hey, my doggies are gorgeous! You need to see that for yourself! :) http://www.ironwoodkennel.com And while you're there, please click the digg icon at the bottom and if you have stumbleupon account, please give it a thumbs up, will ya? Thanks ever so much. My dogs deserve to be ranked #1. :)

Lions, Tigers and BEARS... Or at least ONE!!

My 16 yr old son got chased... yeah, CHASED by a black bear while riding home tonight from a heavy metal band concert on his Zuma. He was on E and the bear followed him for quite a ways. Poor kid was traumatized.

Maybe there is a niche' idea in here somewhere? LOL
Why you should always keep your gas tank full, perhaps?


As a Mom, maybe I'm more traumatized than he is. We do live out in the boonies and bears are no rarity to us but they always (or so I thought for the last 30 yrs) would see you first and take off in the other direction. Maybe it was because Brian nearly hit the silly creature and Mr. Bear maybe took offense at that. ?

Pep Rally was Today

Met up with 3 of my team members on Skype today.

We are planning to meet up for an official team meeting on Thursday - the day after the challenge officially kicks off.

I guess this means that will be our official Pep Rally, too. ;-) But it was nice getting this team truly underway. Now I'm off to inform the other two members of the team who weren't with us on Skype today.

Pimping The Forum

Today Ed Dale turned his focus on teaching us to get the most out of the 30 Day Challenge Forum site. So I spent some time tweaking it. I don't spend too much time reading a lot there. I'm pretty picky there. I found out the hard way last year that you can become much to easily distracted by the many suggestions of others and it can really eat up your time.

I'm going to concentrate on what Ed and Dan have to teach us.

I'm also trying to bring our team closer together. I've proposed that we have a weekly meeting via Skype chat. Last year, I was not on a strong team and it's my goal that this year will be different.
Through support of one another, I want to see that all of us make it through this 30 days and get the most out of it that each of us can. Such a fantastic resource that Ed and Dan are offering us. This can be life changing and I'm super thankful to them for this chance.

I am setting up a Google Notebook page where our team can have our links all listed and each of us can then view it and use Digg and Stumble to help each other out. And it makes for good practice in using these tools that Ed has taught us about.

Free Hugs Campaign. (music by Sick Puppies album out April3)

Ed Dale referenced this video in today's podcast. It made me cry! In a world that is so full of hate, prejudice, jealousy and rage, it is heartwarming to see true love... true humanity.

One person really can make a difference. Who have you reached out to today?

Enhancing Firefox

What a full day!
On top of trying to launch myself into the 30 Day Challenge, I'm also lovingly tending to some newborn puppies. My husband, John, and I raise, train and show Coonhounds (Redbone and English varieties). John is a 3rd generation coonhound fancier. This year we really outdid ourselves and are caring for not one but THREE litters of coonhounds. Two litters born the same day - 7/11 (shown to the right here) and one just born 7/18. I'm very busy with them but I'm here to prove even those of us with very little time (or sleep!) to spare can successfully complete the 30DC.


Today Ed Dale instructed us - via his explicit video teaching style - to download various add on's we would soon be finding useful to us during the challenge. The browser of choice he's asked us to use is Firefox. I won't list all the ad on's here. If you want to learn all the details and goodies, you will need to join us for the challenge. :) www.thirtydaychallenge.com

I also made sure to visit the blogs other participants are doing for the 30 day challenge so I could stumble and digg and just keep up with how they are all doing. Love their blogs! I have the Google Feedreader which makes checking out the blogs SO much easier. I love it. Ed Dale has asked us to download another reader so I will be doing that as well. Who knows, maybe I'll like that one better...

Stumbleupon

There is a current thread on the 30DC which suggests we sign up for Stumbleupon and check out each other's sites. I'm new to stumbleupon but it looks like fun. You rate sites you visit via the toolbar you get when you download stumbleupon. Then you can leave reviews if you wish to.

Interesting!

Check it out at http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Google AdSense

I decided to use today to insert Google AdSense to my blog. Let's see if it will generate any income, shall we?

hint.. visitor's click on them and I get paid... *wink-wink*

Seriously though, AdSense is pretty much a given to any content sites and that includes blogs. If you have one, you should sign up at Google and take 5 minutes to give it a whirl yourselves. It's not hard and Blogger makes it twice as easy if that's what you use.

Preseason Day 2

The official launch of the challenge may be Aug. 1st but we are already busy at work creating teams, networking and downloading some (free!) useful tools such as digg and stumbleupon.

Teamwork!

For the 30DC, we are asked to get into teams of 4-5 people.
As of today, our team has been formed! We will now be known as 'Team Tenacious'.
Michael, Andrea, Ryan, Sean and myself (Janet).

Go Team Tenacious!! Hoorah!

Thirty Day Challenge 2007

I'm happy to announce that the 2007 kickoff of the 30 day challenge is just around the corner - August 1st to be exact.

The 30 Day Challenge was started in 2005 by Ed Dale and Frank Kern; gurus of the infomarketing world. I'm sad to say that I missed the 2005 run but I did run the race in 2006. In 2006 the goal was to learn as much as we could from Ed, Frank and the rest of the participants and attempt to earn $1 by the end of 30 days with an original idea created during the 30 day challenge time frame.

While I didn't make my $1 within the 30 day time frame (death to dial up!), I did go on to use the information I gleaned there to write, publish and successfully sell my own ebook; which I lovingly refer to as 'my electric bill' as it pretty much pays that every month. It's not a lot of money but when you put it in those terms, it has the ring of sweet success to it now doesn't it?

2007's Challenge is going to be exciting and new. One big change is this year, our challenge is to make $10 (since we are told it's going to be even easier to do!) and get this... we won't be expected to spend a single red cent for ANYTHING to do it! Ye-haw!

My personal goal is to come up with a project that I can dub with the name 'my mortgage payment'. *big smile*

This blog was started to share the process I go through from start to finish. Encouraging comments welcomed! Better yet, why don't you join us? Go to http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com and sign up. It's free, it's fun and it's life changing!