timjamesbrennan.com

Show Notes:-

This show was originally recorded on Tuesday 15th April 2008 at 8:00pm EST.

2:55 It’s been a huge week in internet marketing

3:07 That big thing that has happened is Twitter. I really want to strip Twitter back to understand the psychology of it.

(Ed shows Pink Thong Video)

7:24 The Alexa ranking of the thirtydaychallenge.com site has gone through the roof since the start of April. Although, Alexa ranking is fundamentally flawed, because we’re comparing apples to apples they’re all flawed together, so the data is interesting.

8:02 I think that’s down to a combination of three things, although Dan and I would argue about which one. I say it is down to the TV show and the Twitter phenomenon. Dan would say that it’s down to a bunch of scripts and search engine stuff related to the Thirty Day Challenge.

9:04 Twitter has all the characteristics of something that I suspect will turn out to be the marketing phenom of 2008. It is a classic example of a service that couldn’t have existed without the internet. The very first radio shows were just people reading out newspapers – the persuasive medium of the day before radio existed. Then they worked out that radio shows could be more immediate than radio shows.

9:54 The first television shows were dominated by the stars of radio shows; just someone talking into a microphone. It wasn’t until they understood the medium, e.g. the concept of the soap, that TV really took off.

10:23 With the internet, the first thing companies did were to put up brochures and made an online version. It didn’t really impact or take advantage of the internet at all. If you look at things that did take hold, eBay for example, could not have existed… you could not aggregate that kind of audience without the internet providing the interactivity.

10:52 By the way, what is it with eBay at the moment? Are they on cocaine down at eBay headquarters? Some of the moves they’re making are just total bone head moves. In Australia here, they are making PayPal the only way of payment. Apparently, having someone deposited money direct into your bank account these days is not good enough these days. That’s not as “secure” as using PayPal. That’s crazy.

11:30 For people with high ticket items, people have PayPal limits – there’s certain amounts that they can and can’t send through PayPal. It’s really bananarama – I don’t get it. I’m sure there will be a big outcry.

11:45 How did I find out that eBay had done that? Did eBay let me know? No. Ed, aka NextInstinct, did a Twitter on that… which brings me on to this story that Twitter could not have existed without the internet infrastructure. That’s part one of what makes it so exiting.

12:18 Part two, which really hit me about Twitter is following some news events, like the US presidential elections and the Olympic torch debacle at San Francisco. The hot news was not coming through blogs, but from traditional sources, which was extraordinary.

13:13 Let’s have a look at why Twitter is so cool. So the first thing you need to realise is that Twitter takes advantage of two things which I hold dearest to my marketing philosophy heart. The first thing is the Check Move theory that although I didn’t invent it, I am a big advocate of it. Check move theory is a very, very important element. 

14:55 It basically says that your success as a sales person in is direct proportion to the amount of times you have had a contact (aka “a touch”) with that person. The thing about Twitter is that it is the check move machine miracle, because you’re able to do really high touch activities, you’re able to provide real value, and you’re able to talk to so many people so directly. 

16:02 I’d encourage you to go back and look at the check moves video, because that’s really important to the whole thing.

16:48 I want to show you a video example of how one business is using Twitter just superbly. What’s ironic is that when I leaked this video out to people on Twitter of course, I believe Richard actually made quite a few sales. Check out this case study of how someone is taking all these technologies and applying them to a traditional business. Most people wouldn’t actually think would be appropriate, but he does it and does it brilliantly.

17:31 (Video – “How to Use Twitter for Business” runs from 17:31 – 33:00)

17:53 I was thrilled when this guy sent me a tweet about what he was doing. I don’t mind showing this example because what this guy does is so unique there’s no point in competing with this guy. What he does is actually a passion of mine, but not one I ever considered. There are so artisans nowadays that work in their garages and make these incredible hand build custom guitars. Nike are also doing this with shoes.

19:07 This week when we talked about Daniel Pink and his “A Whole New Mind” book, this whole concept of being able to design your own things or have custom, hand made things is such a huge part of society as we move forward. So it’s a real thrill to talk to you about Richard

19:39 Check out this site: RichardInk.com. The guys name is Richard Merritt, and apart from being a guitar super-enthusiast and a great player, he’s also a lover of coffee. So, we’ve a heck of a lot in common. He’s also a bit of a pipe man – that’s not my thing, as you can hear my lungs are completely conkers.

20:03 As you’ll see soon, I think that Richard has absolutely nailed how to use the blog and how to use Twitter and show off. Check out these most astounding fountain pens. That is just superb!

20:38 What I wanted to talk about is his taking the stuff he’s learnt from the Thirty Day Challenge and else where and apply it to his real world business. Something that I really want to emphasise this year is that the biggest successes we’ve had in these past 12 months has come from people applying the 30dc to their real world business.

21:14 This is actually a blog, and each pen that he makes actually has its own blog post. Check out this artisan pencil. Just look at the comments, “I just tweeted you”. Hello, when did that language come into the vernacular? Take it from me, it will become more and more and more. He’s conducting a business using a blog!

23:27 Now the thing about blogs of course is that they are so easy to update and automate. I just think that he has done this so tastefully. When you’re buying a pen, what do want to know? You want to know its construction – he describes it and gives it a story.

24:00 Look at this – fountain pen care tips. This is so cool. For all those people doing eBay products, this is so important. This is what we’re talking about when you start to care for your customers are really bring them in. Remember high concept, high touch – those are the messages from Daniel Pink’s “A whole new mind” This is both of those things.

24:48 We’ve got the workbench here. A brilliant way of doing this type of site. 

25:25 Gary Halbert used to have special pens and I have too. This is the Mount Blanc pen I used to sign the contract when I sold my websites. I feel silly now because Richard Ink are not only better price wise, but are just much better pens.

26:18 Let me show Richard’s Twitter – this is where it gets really cool.  I just love this (reading from Twitter posts) “Taking it easy today. Smoking a Maestro De Paja pipe which was a gift from artist @jasonclaydunn… Maybe head out to the studio…”

27:44 The way he talks to people, and this is crucial, when you reply to people, you need to make it readable to other people. For example, he writes  “No, not a new material. I do pens in several types of resins, acrylics, and celluloids as well as wood burls”.

28:33 You see it’s detail, and it’s engaging. He’s not trying to sell anything here; he’s not pitching. This is my greatest fear for people who have just jumped on to Twitter. If you pitch people, you’re gone because Twitter is the most democratic messaging service ever invented.

29:10 (Reading Richards twitter), you feel part of the creation process. You can do this quickly and easily without breaking your flow. So, if you’re doing any sort of creative endeavour, you can make people feel involved, and they’ll pay much more. When your reading Richard on Twitter, you don’t feel like you’re being sold to, it completely disengages all of the “I’m being sold to” defence mechanisms.

30:03 I don’t know whether Richard’s set out to do that deliberately or not, but he’s passionate about what he does and that comes through with every post. Look at  his response to comments – what has that told a prospective buyer?

30:43 You’ve got to understand the psychology of this and how important it is. It’s not the classic “person buying car vs. car salesman” interaction. It’s like two people discussing my snowball microphone and the third person comes and listens in on this conversation. This is why Twitter is so amazing in marketing.

31:28 Seth Godin did a brilliant post in the last couple of days. He says that if you do want to sell something then there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you follow someone one day and then sell to them the next it’s bad practice.

32:00 Why am I not worried about stuffing up Twitter? It’s because if you are noisy and offer no value, then they can stop following you.

 32:14 Buy some of Richard’s pens, because they are brilliant. More importantly, have a look at how this guy is conducting his artisan business. I’ve never met the guy, I’m just getting this from his website. I encourage you to go and have a look at it and think about how you can use twitter and blogs for your own real world business or your own e-store business.

33:05 The exercise that I want you to do and think about right here is, “How can I take what Richard has done and apply it to my own niche?”  It’s all about high-concept and high-touch (explained in a minute).

33:53 This week, I have been reading “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future” by Daniel H Pink. This book is an absolute must read. It talks about the left brain, the more analytical brain; and the right brain, the more creative side. In truth you use all parts of your mind at all times, but there are definitely biases between the two.

35:05 One interesting fact from the book that I found fascinating is that in languages where they don’t use vowels, and only constantans (Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin, etc) they write from right to left. This is because to make the intuitive leap of putting the vowel sounds, in Arabic and Hebrew, engages the right side of the brain. Whereas in western languages we include the vowel so there’s no need to make a creative leap, so the left hand side of the brain is engaged.

35:51 I found that fascinating, but that’s almost a distraction from why this book is so good. He talks about “the conceptual age”… we’ve had the agricultural age, the industrial age, the information age, and his basic contention is that we are moving from the information age to the conceptual age.

36:33 I thought, “This sounds a bit airy-fairy”, but in chapter 2, “Abundance, Asia, and Automation” he’s talking about how these factors are really going to make a huge ground shift the way we value and pay for things.

37:01 For example, we’re familiar with the whole outsourcing debate and we’re big encouragers of outsourcing. The information marketing area is quite advanced when it comes to outsourcing, because any task that is repetitive or follows a set of rules can be effectively outsourced. You can debate the politics of this in the after show section if you like, but the facts are that people in India (do the outsourced work), where US$650 per month is 25 times the average wage.

37:59 I was surprised to learn that “the knowledge worker” is also in this automation category. It’s startling to learn that 90% of tax returns in the US are done in India

39:00 They did a study of how long it takes until a patient is interrupted by their doctor when they are explaining what is wrong with them. The average is about 20 seconds, because they have a diagnostic process, which they‘ve realised is all you need to cure a large percentage of ailments.

39:44 What makes this book so fascinating for us is that to protect yourself in the next 10-20 years, you need to look at things in the conceptual age (Ed starts to look up the 6 characteristics).

40:12 Dan Pink used to be a speech writer for Al Gore so it’s really, really a good read.

40:20 The 6 Characteristics are:

1.Design

2. Story

3. Symphony

4. Empathy

5. Play

6. Meaning

These are the things that in the conceptual age can’t be outsourced. Think about it. Why does Apple do so well? Yes, they get all their stuff made in Taiwan, but the design of something as beautiful as the iPhone is not something that can be outsourced. In the US, people who are in the creative arts are more increasingly becoming important to the economy. This really, really, is a big, big deal.

41:40 I won’t spoil the book, you’ve just got to read it.

42:15 If you look at those characteristics, empathy, symphony, play and story are the key constructs  of what good information marketing is all about. Then if we overlay Twitter onto all of this… Twitter is a tool for the conceptual age. Let me show you some examples:

43:10 (Ed mistakenly brings up a picture of an interesting looking tomato – whoops)

44:10 How did I find out about Richard (Merritt)? He Twittered me.

44:45 PollDaddy is a cool service that enables you to use Twitter people to do surveys. Twitter is great for utilising people’s brain power, I can’t believe how effective it at helping me when I get stuck.

Nez (Andrew Nesbit) has done a new design for my blog.

45:44 What is so cool about PollDaddy is that I saw that Dan and Lisa Hartwell have already run polls. NextInstinct, one of our favourite Thirty Day Challengers, has had a poll featured!

46:38 Twitter from a masterminding perspective is just huge. It is a torch created for it.

47:09 (PollDaddy) is my reason why Twitter is different to instant messaging such as Skype, iChat, etc. It is the absolute bomb and it enhances your Twitter experience 10 times.

47:51 (Video – “Why I Don’t Follow Many People On Twitter - I choose to follow EVERYONE!” 47:51-1:05:39)

48:15 I just want to show you a real, live, amazing example of why Twitter is so cool. I also want to point out again why I don’t follow many people. One reason is that there are just over 3,000 people following me. If I were to follow them back it would take 12.5 hours to read just one message from each of them. I only follow people that are part of my team or very close friends.

50:15 It’s not a snub. It’s not that I am being rude. Twitter is not an instant messaging where there is 2-way reciprocation. There is no obligation on the part of the person that you’re following than to do anything other than provide interesting information to you. If we fail in that endeavour, then we’re gone, and you lose a follower.

51:06 People think that because I don’t follow I’m being rude and I miss the conversation. I’m going to show you with this brilliant site (Quotably.com) that I can be across far more with a couple of amazing tools than I can could ever be. If followed 3,000 people, my Twirl would be like a Vegas slot machine, it would be continuously going off, making it unusable.

51:35 Let me show you this incredible Twitter tool – it’s going to change your Twitter life.

51:42 This is Quotably.com. We are going to at random pick a username… oh, I don’t know… “Ed_Dale”… and click Follow.

52:09 I did this video on why I don’t follow people much, and I used Seesmic which is this amazing video tool which integrates with Twitter. I can quickly whip off a video message that will encompass much more than a 140 character Twitter message. That’s amazing tool #1.

52:20 (Referring to Quotably conversations) Do I follow these people? No, all of these people used “@Ed_Dale”. Here’s the thing, if you use “@Ed_Dale” I will get that message and I’ll respond.

52:35 Now check this out. I follow John Reese. Why? Because he’s a good friend – not that he’s got anything to teach, I taught him everything he knows (joke).

53:55 The first thing that quotably does is that it brings you the entire conversation, which is so cool. I can laugh at John being stuck on a runway in Orlando, how cool is the world when you can do that?

54:29 Then I saw something: “Anyone know why @Ed_Dale doesn’t follow his followers back?”

55:25 You should be doing everything that you can to provide magnificent content so that people will be desperate to follow you. YaroStarak does that, he’s a really interesting blogger. Gideonshalwick is also someone who I’ve got some time for.

55:50 (Referring to Quotably conversation) I can see that Mari and Gideon are doing a bit of business. Would I have known that without (Quotably)? Would I know that Gideon was doing interviews with people? No. Am I inclined to do a video interview with Gideon now I know this? Yes, because it’s over the shoulder, it’s shoulder to shoulder marketing, not face to face marketing.

56:45 Now here we are. This is where we get into the meat. I wouldn’t have picked up that SethGodin and Jason without this Quotably tool.

57:05 I would use Twitter differently if it was just a group of friends instead of me as a character if you will… people follow me, I hope, because I’ve got some interesting insights in the use of technology, and marketing, and so on. It’s either that or rampant sex appeal.

37:38 (Referring to Quotably conversations) Jason said “But it certainly sends a message”. What’s going on here? I want everyone to like me, now of course that’s not going to happen in any world.

57:55 I wouldn’t have known that Jason has a negative view of me except for this use of this amazing tool. I’m way more over everything, and so can you be, by using this tool. It just shows you how powerful twitter is. I can literally put a hose on the bush fire before it gets out of control.

(Ed demonstrates how to reply to people directly using the @username trick.)

1:01:02 (Reading from Quotably) “ DonEttore: @marismith doesn’t practice what he preaches. Most of his inner circle just follow each other. One way marketing? Not very social.”

(Ed replies) “Ed_Dale: @DonEttore Mate - not true - this is I Dont Follow People much on Twitter - Redux http://seesmic.com/v/6C87sPJcYB”

1:01:31 The cool thing is that I know that Don is going to get that. How long has it taken me? 5 Seconds? For me I jus think that’s brilliant.

1:02:23 Now this has all been about me, but if I was a trout fisherman and I typed in trout fishing in the search all of a sudden it becomes fantastic.

1:02:47 This has turned into a much longer video than I hoped, but here’s the pièce de résistance. Look up here;    R – S – S  FEED. I can click on this… in this particular case I’m using Safari not Flock because I’m upgrading from Firefox to Flock which is another video I’m going to show you guys.

So anything to do with me – I’m across it.

1:03:29 I’m going to go through (Quotably) and respond to the rest of these people just to make sure they know I’m watching and that I do care. This is better than a two way conversation, because with instant message we feel obligated to reply all the time, instantly, and that’s why it becomes such a time suck. With Twitter, you answer on your own terms. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it means you’ve got to balance it out. If you want to go live online, do World of Warcraft. I’m not saying that’s wrong.  I love World of Warcraft. I love all of these things, but you’ve just got to understand what you’re using them for. Please don’t mistake the fact that I don’t follow you personally as being a slight against you. It’s just not.

1:04:23 You can always contact me. This is why I love Twitter so much. If you just use the good old “@Ed_Dale” like Dustin has, I’ll get it. If Dustin sends me some interesting info, then I’m going to go, “Wow, I want to see what this guy’s doing”, and follow him. You’ll see in a new video I’m going to release very shortly, that’s how I found someone who’s doing amazing things with small business on Twitter.

1:04:53 For a whole philosophical discussion on Twitter, you want to tune in to this Tuesday night 8pm EST. We are going to dedicate the entire Thirty Day Challenge Show to a discussion about the ins and outs, the etiquettes, and the perspectives of utilising Twitter.  

1:05:45 (Ed singing “Don’t Ya Wish Ya Blog Was Hot Like Mine”)

1:07:20 What I love about Twitter is that it’s a completely permission based system. If someone sends you some links that you don’t like, or indeed if I start using Twitter in a way that is not comfortable with you, then one click and I’m gone. That’s the way I think it should be.

1:07:48 It’s about you having great information so that people are interested in following what you’ve got to say.

1:08:46 (Responding to Chat?) That Twitter launch stuff… Justin Brooke… It’s already happening. Don’t you worry about that.

1:08:53 (Ed demonstrates TweetScan feature in Twhirl) If I just type “Ed Dale”, every time anyone has mentioned “Ed Dale” I can see it which a very, very cool thing. The reason why I like to use it in Twhirl as opposed to the Tweetscan (site) is the ability to click on the photos.

Thank you guys and I will speak to you next week.

Show Notes:-

This show was originally recorded on Monday 7th April 2008 at 8:30pm EST.

00:06 This show is dedicated to the memory of Gary Halbert, who passed away one year ago tomorrow. Rest in peace, alpha shit weasel (as he affectionately referred to himself).

03:55 Welcome to our new home at thirtydaychallenge.tv. As you might have noticed we have moved from justin.tv to ustream.tv.

04:19 I’ve been doing a lot of live testing and later on in the show I will be talking about my findings. There are three major transmission environments, and each of them has some positives and some negatives.

4:42 Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Gary Halbert passing, so I wanted to show you some of my favourite Gary Halbert lessons.

5:03 Twitter has become hot, hot, hot, and dare I say it, but I told you so. I want to talk about some testing on Twitter we have been doing in the lab.

6:02 The show is structured with content, lessons, news etc of the week in the first part, and then in the second part we turn off the recording and we go into questions and answers. Not only do you get to ask me questions, but you can see from the chat window we have a who’s who of internet marketing in the 30dc world – so there’s a lot of people here who can help. One of the awesome things (about ustream.tv) is that I can bring you on live. If you want to do that, you do need to have headphones, and you have to feel comfortable with your webcam. We can also use the chat window for questions and answers.

7:08 Finally, we will have the after show section which is completely without merit.

7:48 Some of you will have already noticed some of the benefits of Ustream. The quality of the picture and the sound will be much better. You also will have noticed that you get proper sound from (pre-recorded) videos as well.

9:28 One of the things that has been going on a lot this week, especially on April Fool’s day, were a lot of links that went to a YouTube video of Rick Asley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”. If there’s one video from the 80s that should be dead and buried, it should be that. This is basically a prank that has gone around in the Web 2.0 world. (Referring to chat) That’s right “Rick Rolled”. A lot of people have been sending their video streams, their podcast streams, their tv shows, etc to this Rick Asley video and it may have happened to you. I have posted that Frank Ucayali video, and as internet marketers I suspect that we should try our own version of being “Rick Rolled” - called “Uc-Rolling”. I posted up a Twitter message saying “Check out this new video on the 30 dc”. When you click on the link you instead go to the Rick Asley video. I just wanted to explain this internet phenom.

11:41 This photo (of Gary Halbert) was actually taken from the very last public appearance that Gary ever made. It was, I’m very proud to say, from Frank and my Underachiever conference in 2006. Gary, as some of you may or may not know, was a huge, huge influence on me. I actually lived with the great man in Miami. What I got out of that wild experience was not only the “hows” of how the greatest copy writer the world has ever seen worked, but it also gave me an insight into the little things, the mechanics. That was what made a huge impression.

12:39 For those who don’t know Gary Halbert at all, Gary is in my opinion just the greatest copy writer of all time. Fortunately, the Gary Halbert newsletters are available on line and they are completely free. One of the best possible copywriting educations that you can get is to go right back to the start from newsletter one and just go through them. There are so many great pieces of information buried in there – it’s just totally brilliant. If there’s just one set of newsletters that I can point you to it’s the Boron newsletters. These were actually written when Gary was in prison for mail fraud. He told me that he didn’t deserve to go to jail for that, but there was plenty in the past that he did deserve to go to jail for, so it probably added up.

14:10 Gary wrote a series of letters to his son, Bond, from jail. These letters are the most extraordinary letters that I’ve ever seen. I want to show you one of my treasured possessions. This is not the original, but it is one of a few bound copies that Gary had made up which is the actual hand written version. It’s one of my most treasured possessions.  This to me is unbelievable.

16:11 This content is available to you online. It’s an extraordinary education. It was written for direct marketing, but it is also applicable online.

16:34 There’s one particular lesson that I want to bring you today which is one of my absolute favourites that I did last year – “Golden Nuggets”. Golden Nuggets is such an incredible strategy, because if there’s a mistake that people make when starting the 30dc or internet marketing, it’s that they only get into a topic to a certain degree. They don’t really understand it. This is something that Gary was brilliant at doing, and John Carlton today is brilliant at doing it, and I like to think that I’m pretty good at it too. This strategy some academics out there might recognise as study, but there’s a certain way to it… a physical element to it.

17:54 My book recommendation of the week is “The Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam, which is absolutely brilliant. Seriously, this is one to get. What’s fascinating to me is that it’s a major element of what Gary did with the Golden Nugget method.

18:49 **The Golden Nugget Method – How To Become An Expert In 48 hours** (presentation made in iWork Keynote) I wanted to add a voice recording to the Golden Nugget pdf which I produced – it’s a great way of using one created piece of content and reformatting it for different distribution methods.

19:23 I wanted to teach you about The Golden Nugget Method, which Julie jokes, “Hey Ed, that’s just good studying”, but it’s always nice to give something a good title. You may not have the time right now, but you should try to read one newsletter a day.

20:37 Don’t let the fact that Gary did time put you off reading it. I think I’ve learnt from my mistakes than any successes, it’s just the fact of life. In fact for anyone that’s successful, I can guarantee one thing - they’ve made more mistakes than you. They’re not afraid to make mistakes.

21:02 Gary was a huge inspiration to me, he was very kind to me, and I went to live with him in Miami while he was teaching me the ropes. This newsletter really is absolutely brilliant. It’s completely free, and a big thank you to his sons, Kevin and Bond for continuing the site and continue it going.

21:30 As you’ll learn over the course of the rest of this month, content is everything. That’s going to be your job from now on – creating content or paying someone to do so. It’s the most important skill and I learnt all my chops right here.

21:59 Gary came up with this strategy to help write Direct Mail letters, but the technique applies to anytime you’re going to be creating content, whether you’re doing an interview or recording something like I am now, or writing a blog post. It’s just the degree to which you go.

22:17 People ask me, “How can you continuous talk about all of this stuff?” The truth is, it’s because of the study elements. I’ve already shown you my Bloglines secret and effectively what I’m doing every day is Golden Nugget theory. I’m looking round the net; everything makes me go, “Oh wow!” or “That’s interesting”, I make a note of it. It’s the act of physically recording that note and believe it or not I actually use a Moleskin notepad. You can also you Google Notebook, which you can cut and paste things. Which ever way you do it, the important thing is to do it.

23:19 When we started doing all this niche marketing, we grabbed those 3”x5” index cards and every single time we saw something we would write it down. Gary did it for headlines, “Wow-facts”, or anything makes you stop and go “Huh?” or “Interesting!”

19:49 As we go forward, you’ve got your phrases and you need to produce content for those. That can freak people out a bit, but I’m going to show you how to make it really fun. Some of you might be flashing back to school assignments and thinking about how horrendous they were. Folks, they were horrendous because of the way they were taught; it’s a crime that it’s still taught in that way. It’s a real shame, because it’s a joy to do. I used to hate it and now I love it. You should love it too, because it’s the thing that will set you apart down the track.

24:46 First of all, I want you to type your phrase into Google. Look at the top 10 sites (20 is better), and I want you to take heaps of notes. You should put one idea on each of the 3×5 cards so you are able to “fondle those facts” as Gary put it.

25:29 The reason people have so much problem with reports is that they just don’t have the information to hand. Writer’s block is caused by a lack of information. Another great book that I love is “Story” by Robert McKee which talks about screenwriting. Robert McKee is a very surly gentlemen as a general rule, but the book is still worth learning from. He talks about it in very frank language that writer’s block is caused by a lack of information, and nothing that a day spent doing golden nuggets won’t fix.

26:22 I want you to adopt a state of curiousness, because that is the state that will make you money. It is our natural state to sort, judge, and edit at the wrong times – something that is so badly taught in our schools.

27:17 The other thing I want you to do is join all the mailing list for the sites in the top 10 results. You may want to set up a Gmail account especially for doing this.

28:07 Bottom line is that as you take these notes your brain will start to sort it and work through it. A key thing is that if you take a break, then when you come back all of a sudden it just flows and you can just write. The best writers, Steven King, Amy Tan, Tolkien, Hemingway…. it’s very rare for them to have a specific idea of what’s going on. Steven King used to start of with nothing more than an idea, like what would happen if cars ate people? (Christine)… what happens if a dog goes bad? – (Cujo)… or what happens if you spill pig’s blood on a sophomore? (Carrie) – the rest of the story came out of that little idea.

29:19 The hook, the catch, everything that’s important about any piece of content that you write will magically appear.

29:52 Make sure you have your Bloglines setup. Your Firefox browser should default to Bloglines when you click the orange button in the address field. Subscribe to those blog feeds like I showed you and read them and take notes as I did with speed reading – it’s really, really important.

26:20 99% of people will just sit there passively reading Bloglines. There are two sorts of piles in your brain. One pile is like my desk at the moment, stuff is just thrown on it. You can find stuff, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot of time. The mere act of you taking active notes activates the part of the brain that acts like a filing cabinet. If you’re going to read it, why not take three extra seconds and make information 100 times more useful?

31:35 Make sure you do a search on FaceBook, Google Groups, MySpace, Yahoo, for the phrase. In most cases you might not find a group for your specific phrase so you’ll have to go to the core market. For example with “Free Speed Reading” you may have to look for “Speed Reading” groups. If it was “Sausage Making Tips”, the core market would be “Sausage Making”.

32:15 Reading is not enough – you must take notes.

32:30 There is a sort of part 2 to this which we’ll explain as we go through this next week of the challenge. At the moment I want you to be storing stuff in your filing cabinets, and then I’ll show you how to bring it out of the filing cabinets effortlessly and easily. If you always thought, “Oh, I can never create content”, I have had a 100% success rate with people who have followed these instructions. It just works, because its how your brain works.

33:01 If you market the way the internet works and use your brain the way it’s been designed to work, it’s funny how much easier things are.

34:48 I don’t know if you’ve been following Twitter, but if you have you might have seen that we had a big announcement. It is the peer to peer social bookmarking, and it’s been extraordinarily successful. We only put this out via Twitter for the first few days, but we’ve had 5917 people sign up.

35:59 In a nutshell, for the thirty day challenger, this site does one thing and it does it beautifully. Once you sign up with fresh accounts, over the next few days, you will be able to past in your URL, your tags, your phrase, and statement, press a button and all your social bookmarking will be done. It will save you an extraordinary amount of time or money. You might even find that Anil Feltcher in India might be out of business.

38:06 OnlyWire used to purport to do this, but it never actually did; this actually works. This has been 7 months of hardcore programming by Dan. Dan is an absolute genius.

36:11 There’s only one way to celebrate Dan’s genius (– the Pink Thong Video)

42:05 Now I wanted to talk about live tv. I’ve been doing a lot of research and a lot of testing. One of the cool things about being able to Twitter is when we wanted to test we would get anywhere from 15 to 25 people to help. This time last week was a disaster, Justin.tv just blew up on me. I don’t want to bag Justin.tv because it’s where we got the start. It has some really nice features, but I think the difference between Justin.tv and Ustream.tv is analogous to MySpace and FaceBook. Ustream has some very nice exporting options, I save as a movie, and it also has a submission engine to put it on YouTube. Most importantly, it allows really nice audio visual streaming of other (pre-recorded) videos.

45:04 It also allows you to have a co-host. It you have a webcam (or mic) and headphones you can come on the show. It’s vital to have headphones to avoid feedback.

47:36 The tools at Mogulus.com are just extraordinary, it’s like your producing CNN, you can have people jumping in backwards and forwards. You can have multiple producers, so you can have people doing the switching for me between videos. However there are a couple of things that it doesn’t do that I think are vital. It doesn’t allow you to export a video of your show and that is very important. The quality is superb, but can really tax your computer and can crash Firefox on old computers.

49:18 Mogulus are one to keep an eye on. You can half a dozen people that you switch between for segments, and you can have people queuing up everything for you. You can also have clickable links appear at the bottom of the video screen which for internet marketing is just superb. It’s going to be great for launches, because you can make your own infomercial show and have it running 24 hours a day.

50:35 What you should do is just like we’ve done is go and register yourself a .tv domain for your niches.

52:04 Twitter has got a bad wrap, but it has become huge and is becoming vital. It’s where things happen first and it’s a more reliable method than email if it’s used properly. The thing that makes people’s experience of Twitter not good is because they use it for the wrong things. There are three types of Twitter user, the first is groups of mates. I would love to do this, but I can’t really use it like this because of the position I’m in. When you hook it up to your mobile phone, or use it with Halo (if you know the link please leave it in comments below – thanks, Tim) it’s just brilliant. If you’re using it for marketing, you can’t use it for private conversations because it comes across as being rude – people feel as if they’re being left out of a conversation.

54:29 The whole micro blogging aspect can’t be underestimated – the leverage possibilities are extraordinary. To be able to type once for it appear on FaceBook, and loads of other social networks are going to make it indispensible in the marketer’s armoury.  We are going to make it a big part of the 30dc this year.

55:05 Can someone please Google for me “Frank Kern’s VW”? Look at this, Frank Kern’s VW page didn’t exist before Friday. That’s nuts.

56:21 We are going to be using Twitter enormously in the 30dc both as a communication tool amongst all the Thirty Day Challengers and as part of the methodology. I’ll be publishing some lessons going forward which will make Twitter much more useful.

56:50 Rob Summerville (head of the 30dc labs) was the biggest sceptic and critic of Twitter – he thought it was a load of toss. @Rob: Any sort of acknowledgment of genius in the chat window will be fine.

57:34 What I want to close out with is a presentation about Twitter and why it is so important.

58:30 **The Tao of Twitter** Here is an explanation of why I believe that twitter is such a cool thing for internet marketers. I’m using the Pecha Kucha style of a 20 second per slide, 20 slide presentation.

58:54 A lot of people wonder what’s the point of Twitter – why would anybody be interested in little snapshots of people’s lives? It doesn’t seem at first glance to make sense, but it does. It can be used for link building, selling without selling, and something that I think everybody has missed.

59:13 To make my first point about what makes Twitter so successful I need to show you an amazing book written by Paul Zane Pilzer called, “Unlimited Wealth”. When Paul was writing this he had one rule: a new technology will become accepted once it has become better and easier to use than the preceding technology.

59:36 If you have a look at Twitter it fulfils all those rules beautifully. Here’s a screen shot showing 4 different ways in which I can access Twitter.

1:00:00 Now the most important reason (except for the secret one coming up) is the bottom line formula: More Contact = More Sales. The person who makes the most contact will make the most sales – every internet marketer I know is in that position.

1:00:27 This is my Twitter screen and I use it to keep in touch – like micro-blogging. A lot of these conversations you can see were made via SMS when I was stuck on a plane.

1:00:45 One of the main benefits is that if I type in a post in Twitterific, the feed can go to up to 16 or 17 places.

1:01:07 Twitter and Google have a very good relationship. Twitter is indexed by Google, which makes it very useful, particularly with low competition phrases.

1:01:30 The most powerful lesson of all is one that people completely miss. Anytime we are communicating with a sales letter or an email, the reader has all their sales defences up.

1:02:13 The cool thing about Twitter is that it’s “fly on the wall” communication. You are side by side with your followers – here are some specific examples.

1:02:43 Here’s Twittervision on FaceBook – it shows that I’m located in London.

1:02:58 Hands down, the biggest mistake that people make with Twitter is using it for instant messaging. If you use it for IM, from an internet marketing perspective you’re dead in the water. There’s nothing more annoying for your followers than seeing conversations they are not part of.

1:03:21 Don’t sell! I saw a list of sales phrases you can use with Twitter – that’s just so stupid. If you sell to people then they are no longer a fly on the wall, you are going head to head with them.

1:03:44 If you’re ever wondering what to put up on Twitter, just answer the question, “What are you doing?”

1:04:05 I’ve run out of time this morning, but I’m going to do a video showing how to set up Twitter. If someone in the 30dc can beat me to it then send me a link and I will send it out to everybody. They have made it a lot easier to set up in the last few days.

1:04:27 When I’ve found someone who’s having a lot of success I just copy and follow along with what they are doing. So you might want to go to twitter.com/Ed_Dale and twitter.com/DanRaine to see how Dan and I are using Twitter.

1:05:35 The next lesson is about Check Moves, or How to Sell Without Selling created by Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

1:06:49 Thanks for joining us. Don’t forget, the next show is at 8pm EST on Monday - I’d love to have you there. Make sure you blog about us, you are more than welcome to put the video on your pages, you have all the permissions required - Anil Feltcher will be having a heart attack. Now we are moving to questions and answers, so bye to all the folks watching the recording. Make sure to join us live because it’s so cool. Thanks very much for being with us and we’ll see you next week.

Show Notes:-

N.B. If you would like to make use of the time-codes below, this version on justin.tv has a time-code displayed with the video.

This show was originally recorded on March 18th 2008

1:02:08 Just to give you an idea of the technology I’m using, I’ve a Mac Pro tower with a Logitech USB camera. The picture is OK and the lighting is zero professional, but this hat is mediating the light on my face.

1:01:11 I’m not trying to look like Michael Moore as some said. Hello Alison.

1:00:59 I’m using a snowball condensing microphone. The snowball has a little more flexibility for moving around.

1:00:00 Now, I can do some pretty spiffy things that I can’t normally do - like showing a photo. I can use Skitch to grab a picture and throw that up.

59:24 I can also show you movies. The movie I am about to show you hasn’t been shot for this - to make a video for this, I would have to blow it up very, very large.

58:16 The program that allows me to do these (effects) is called Cam Twist. I can call in Flickr streams,  my twitter feed is down there scrolling, and I can do thought bubbles.

57:11 You can do this anywhere, any place, which I think has got huge ramifications in your niches. Where this is really powerful is in good old normal Joe and Jane Smith niches, because they’ve never seen anything remotely like this. With the sense of community, it just works really well.

55:45 One of the things about Justin.tv is that it’s public access, so anyone can come along which can cause some excitement. There are moderators so everyone plays nicely.

55:10 Imagine if your niche was trout fishing and you could show a movie of landing the latest trout.

54:52 The other thing I can do is make this all available for recording. Not only can we do this show live, but we can have the show recorded for later.

53:06 I want to now talk about The Thirty Day Challenge; we’ve already starting testing. In 2008, the challenge will be completely different to the one in 2007. Does it mean that the 2007 information is not any good? Absolutely not. It’s not only good – it works brilliantly.

52:06 For the newest people, here’s briefly a 30 second overview. The 30dc was created in 2005 when I had just sold a bunch of my little niche marketing businesses. My business partner at the time, Frank Kern, was busy being daddy for the second time and I was sort of twiddling my thumbs a bit. In all the stuff that we taught, there was one element that we had really forgotten to talk about during our training. And it was the concept of teams and team work.

51:23 Because when I first started doing niche publishing way back with Amy Roberts, Mel, Ugene Ware and Anthony Fernando, the thing that made that all work was the fact that we did that together as a team. And we met every Wednesday at the state library here in Melbourne.

We would work on each other’s project. And hopeful that we would get a product up for sale and make the first dollar (it took us 93 days). The team was really a critical part of that, because the team motivated. If someone got ahead the others would try and catch up, so there was a bit of friendly competition within the team.

50:40 There was an accountability – even if it wasn’t people saying, “You must finish this!” I’ve found that when you’re in a group and you’re all committed to an outcome, you don’t need to say anything a lot of the time. It’s very obvious who’s falling behind and who’s not falling behind.

50:18 Unfortunately, our brain in an effort to protect us usually causes people to drop out. They would rather drop out than subject themselves to having to front up - which is a bit of a shame.

50:00 Therefore, the Thirty Day Challenge was created to literally prove the concept that if you’re in a team, as a general rule you will do better than if you were doing it solo.

49:42 Now of course, Tom Tate, the first ever person who made a dollar with the Thirty Day Challenge, he did it as a lone ranger, didn’t he? He was the exception to the rule. But I’ve got to say that the vast majority of people who have been successful since were involved with teams.

49:17 Of course with social marketing, teams have now become even more important. I don’t think that in 2008 the internet is a solo sport anymore. The days of Frank, or I, or Dan Raine,  trying out little projects on who knows… growing tomatoes or whatever it happened to be… and making a real lot of money out of them… I wouldn’t say that they’re over, because I’m sure that right now there are people who are doing exactly that. I’m just saying that the balance of probabilities and likelihood of success would go towards people who are in teams.

48:34 They don’t have to be big teams either. I think that there’s an efficiency curve if you will – once you get past 4 or 5 people the efficiency goes down hill.

48:08 There are some video sites that are not designed for multiple broadcasts with hundred of people as we have now. 335 (viewers) – that’s fantastic. Your average teleconference call might have 100 listeners.

47:44 So that was the original idea behind The Thirty Day Challenge and who would have believed that it would grow as big as it has. It’s an insane time. For a month Dan Raine and myself … if someone could email a picture of Dan Raine in his pink thong that would be awesome, I think the broadcast needs that at some point.

47:08 Uh oh, Dan’s online. Hi Dan. Notice his username is pink which is lovely.

46:52 There’s one other thing about the Thirty Day Challenge which I really wanted to emphasise to people. I think a lot of people are excited by the sexy big numbers that people throw out, particularly in internet marketing. Frank for example has done some extraordinary things in terms of the success that he’s had, but sometimes those numbers distract people.

46:14 Here’s the problem – you go to a seminar and you see all these speakers who have done really well. Your enthusiasm bank account is overflowing and you go, “Right, I am going to make a difference. This internet stuff is going to be the thing that changes my life”. Great, you’re enthusiastic – and off you go.

45:41 You work hard at and all of a sudden you haven’t made $10,000 in your first month. Subconsciously, your brain’s going, “Oh, this is not very good. I think we might have to come up with a distraction because I don’t want poor Ed to feel like he’s a failure”. Your brain will do that, it’s very powerful - it doesn’t want you to feel like poo if it can possibly avoid it. So it will avoid rather than confront.

45:06 That’s why people often joke, “A dollar. Just a dollar. I’m going to make hundred’s of dollars”. A lot of those people aren’t here at the end of the thirty days. The reason why we focus on the $1, or $10 now, is because it’s achievable.

44:25 People forget that the first time I did something online it took 38 attempts. To make Wedding Planning Secrets profitable took 38 attempts. So I wanted to prove that people who start slow with small steps and set easily achievable goals and going to do a lot better. That’s a key part of the 30dc.

43:37 We are up to 344 viewers which is fantastic. 

43:13 The other piece of news is that we want all of you to help promote the 30dc. We want to do it in a really cool way by showing you the behind the scenes work. People don’t realise that in terms of traffic and participation the 30dc was bigger than anything that was done on the internet at that time. And the reason was that we were using social networks for marketing for the first time.

42:11 We thought that it would be really cool to show you guys how to do that to help us get the word out about the 30dc and have some really cool prizes. In fact we’ve had to create a whole new system to reward people for social networking activities. In showing you the process (behind the 30dc) you should be applying these to your own niche.

41:10 (referring to chat) Jason Moffat’s first year’s effort was that dread-lock site which was very cool.

40:53 One of the most frustrating things about internet marketing is looking at the list of the things that you should be doing and the list of what you are actually doing. And it’s the same for us.

40:20 Did you realise that there are over 15,000 unique visitors to the 30dc blog every day. Not during the challenge – that is now.

39:35 ScreenFlow is just absolutely amazing. I’m going to play you a little bit of video to show you the power of ScreenFlow.

38:07 I am system agnostic. All I am passionate about is great software. If I had to hand on heart coach someone who wants to make money online, what I give them to do it?

37:09 You have to account for the software as well. How much is CamTwist? It’s free. How much is VisualHub which hands down professionals across the board give the best produced .flv files? $29. Compared to Sorenson Squeeze which is around $400-$500.

36:32 If I look at my fellow internet marketing teachers, all bar Jeff Johnson have gone to Macs. Some have always used Macs like John Reese and Frank. It’s the best platform for producing internet marketing content. I am after the best possible tools for the job.

35:35 One of the biggest fallacies is the expense of a Mac compared to a PC. I’ve blogged about the alliced reports of a comparing a Dell PC to a Mac.

31:50 One of things that has happened that is really interesting is the eBay and Commission Junction situation. I don’t know if you’re aware but eBay had an affiliate program (ValueClick) that was run through Commission Junction. EBay have now taken that in-house (eBay Partner Network).

30:24 Another thing is Facebook. If you listen to Twitter and Blogs about Facebook they are getting punched left, right and centre.

29:50 A lot of posts say, “I will never click on a Facebook ad”, and this was funny to me because I recall in 96-97 when people said “I’ll never click on those!”. You might not have, but millions did. The challenge is to make it a seamless experience. The guys who get and understand it are making a killing

28:42 The other thing is the whole applications side of things. If you see my Facebook applications page you will see how many invitations I get. It is crazy.

27:58 (note to self) Use a separate browser window (during broadcasts). I’m also using Flock as well.

27:53 It’s very important online when your looking at so much data to sort the wheat from the chaff. Make no mistake, there are people doing super, super well using Facebook demographic marketing. For example, with wedding planning you can target users who are engaged. I am getting 1-2% click through.

26:40 People are trying to take the same techniques they are using in Google (Adwords) and apply them in Facebook, and I think that’s a mistake. Phrase marketing as opposed to demographic marketing are two different kettles of fish. The way people make decisions are identical, but the way to get them to make the decision you do have to think about.

25:55 One thing that I think is a huge opportunity is the iPhone software platform (aka iPhone SDK). Software programs is a really interesting area. Don’t turn off. People think that you have to be a coder – you don’t. You just have to be a user. Steve Jobs doesn’t code.

24:08 The way in which the world has opened up in  terms of out-sourcing and screen capture programs (e.g. Camtasia for PC or ScreenFlow for Mac) means that it is much better to show the programmers what you want instead of writing it down. I have had much better success since I have started shooting ScreenFlow screen capture of what I wanted rather than trying to write it down.

23:38 I have dealt with people from Lahore, Pakistan to Romania, to all over the place and if people can see what’s going on it makes a big, big difference.

Questions & Answers Section

22:36 So,what do you want to know about the Thirty Day Challenge in 2008?

22:28 (Someone types “I love John Crowther”) I love John Crowther too, but in a brotherly sort of way.

22:18 I think that there is so much in terms of the iPhone. If you’re in trout fishing, what kind of trout fishing what kind of iPhone application could you come up with? You could do a whole weather and trout fishing report. Then there’s the opportunity of selling of services and ads for that.

21:37 Of course the Thirty Challenge will be free. It wouldn’t be the Thirty Day Challenge if it wasn’t free. I must point out to people that the 30dc 2007 edition is by no means superseded. It is a brilliant course with strategies that work right now, today. If you into the forums you will see people virtually on a daily basis getting rankings and making their first $10.

20:57 (Viewer asks) “Ed I want to set up a membership site with video upload facility”. That’s way too complex to answer here today.But is it possible? Yes it is.

20:40  Thank you for the segway to the YouTube API opening up. Now, non-propeller heads are probably going, “You’re talking Latin to me again”. But it’s a big deal because Google/YouTube wants to host your video. You might have noticed that as of 10 days ago, you can upload files up to 1024MB in size.

19:55 With YouTube opening up this will allow you to build in video upload and hosting capacities into any site using the API. This might freak out a lot of you, but don’t. All you have to do is tell your programmer, “I want the facility to upload a video, I want people to be able to play and search”.

19:07 Question: Is successful internet marketing possible without mailing lists and squeeze pages? Answer: Yeah. Of course it is, but seriously, why? The mailing lists that your develop is a huge asset and if you look at all the big internet marketing launches, they’ve all been driven off email. This comes back to (that) it’s not about email. This is about a strategy I call “check moves” which I taught in the 30dc. So, if you want to refresh yourself, go and look at the whole video on check moves by a brilliant guy out of Melborne, Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson .

18:15 A lot of professionals highlight that lesson as the key lesson. It’s all about how often you contact people, which is why Justin.tv is absolutely brilliant.

17:34 (Referring to chat) Thanks for that really useful Wikipedia definition of “API”. It’s brilliant that people can chip in with some URLs.

16:49 Question: Can you give us a newbie guideline. Answer: The best advice if you’re just starting out is to go through the steps of the 30dc. By doing things is the way that you absorb and learn things.

15:50 There are a million other strategies such as Frank Kern’s Mass Control or Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula. The most important thing is that you just focus on one thing first – you need to walk before you can run.

15:05 I personally would go and have a look at 30dc 2007 because in 2005 you could pay 5 cents per click for pretty much any phrase in Google. You can’t do that anymore and in fact Google are penal if you don’t put things exactly they way they want. It’s harder get it for 5 cents, unless you have a little secret trick which you might have to stay tuned for.

14:08 With the older challenges the market research strategies still hold, but 2007’s Gtrends strategy is worth its weight in gold. That’s still the world class way of determining traffic; everybody I know who’s big in internet marketing is using that exact method.

12:50 Question: Will you post show notes? Answer: I’ll post the actual video, but if someone wants to post notes I will come up with an extraordinary way to compensate you.

12:15 Question: Is the Immediate Edge a natural progression to the 30dc? Answer: Yes, absolutely. We’re trying to make changes all the time to make it even better.

11:45 Do you think that YouTube has become a much more valuable traffic generating tool as opposed to other web 2.0 sites since the last 30dc? The answer to that is a big fat YES. YouTube is the biggest attractor to the 30dc by so far it’s not funny. Video is where it’s at.

11:20 For a lot of people (broadcasting themselves) is worse than public speaking, but the traffic on YouTube is astounding.

10:21 Apple TV, Tivo, Xbox & Micosoft Media Center are making YouTube an extraordinary platform. This is why they are releasing their API so you can custom build your own YouTube. You will be able to build the front end, in other words what people will see, and YouTube will provide the back end.

9:48 Question: Is Social Marker working for everyone? I presume so, but may I tell you that very soon you are going see a social marketing tool that will be released first to the 30dc people. It will change the way you socially bookmark forever

9:18 Dan’s been a bit quiet recently because he has been programming something fabulous. And it will be free of course to Thirty Day Challengers.

8:36 Question: How often do you put new posts on a new niche site that you’re testing? Answer: I tend to let the stats tell me, according to how well that post is bringing me in traffic. As a general rule you want to be updating it at least 5 times a week. I know in the old days of blogging it used to be the case of posting 3 times a day, but I don’t know that that is necessary with social bookmarking because it changes the whole dynamic.

7:56 What I do and what you should do as a Thirty Day Challenger is be stats driven. Using software such as Google Analytics you need to think about where is your traffic coming from, in terms of what phrases are coming up. Also, “Is the traffic continuing, or is the traffic dropping off?”

7:18 When the traffic drops off you need to investigate. It’s a bit like triage. You have to decide where to put your effort because you can’t do everything all the time

5:55 Question: Any chance for some interaction for those who are starting the 30dc from scratch? I see a lot of new people looking for direction. Answer: If this (the TV show) has worked, then I think this is perfect, and we’ll do this on a weekly basis. We can be driven by you guys (the viewers). This works for me, because this is great leverage of my time and I can maintain 300 people right the way through.

5:25 Thanks Dan for that URL (URL is missing, but if anyone has this web stats software link please add it in comments below – cheers, Tim)

5:02 Question: How do you market a paid PDF report without a website? Answer: Dan will tell you to sell them on Amazon. I know a lot of people go to eBay, but Amazon has so much more credibility, it has the whole engine and everything is ready to go. I know some guys, Fred Gleeck is one, that are doing very well selling on Amazon. Side note: all those buggers in Romania who are selling our stuff on eBay they do well, but we know were you are, and we’re comin’ to get ya, I .

4:14 Question: When you test a market on free content hosts, if find that it’s a good product do you abandon free site and start own site? Answer: No, you do both. It’s a great misconception of the 30dc that it was all you had to do, but really it’s just to get you started with their first $10. Once you’ve got a profitable site you really want to start looking at pay per click (PPC), product launches, and other strategies as shown in the Immediate Edge. It’s getting you going with the least amount of risk, and the least amount of money, since most people don’t have a lot of money to put together.

3:08  Question: Will you do another discounted offer for the Edge? Answer: I will have to ask Dan about that.

2:52 Question: Ed, is it better to have a dozen sites, or concentrate on one from the beginning? Answer: Again this has changed a lot from 2005 to 2008, because you really need to start focusing on one niche. Notice that I didn’t say one site, I’m saying one niche. It’s fair enough to spread markets until you’ve found a niche that you love and is profitable, but then you need to go deep.

2:25 Where as in the old days, Dan, Frank, and I would just go wide because it was easy. With social networking the danger is that if you don’t go deep and own your marketplace, someone can come in and “back-door” you. For example, they could use pay per click and come in through the back door that way, or they could use say search engine optimization. In other words where ever you’re not, they will be. (If you go wide you can’t cover these back-doors.)

1:38 Amazon has also video ad applications and Dan is actually in the process of testing that on the edge.

1:23 Question: What do you teach in the Immediate Edge that’s not in the 30dc? Answer: 30dc gets you started, gets you comfortable, and gets you your first $10. It gets you going with a strategy that if you really max out will make you do very well. To take that next step, in the Edge we try to show you all the other things that you can be doing in a theme based way. We just did a Facebook theme, a video theme, and a couple of project themes.

0:21 Question: Could you sell a PDF report through Squidoo? Answer: Not directly through Squidoo, but you could certainly set it up on Amazon and then use Squidoo to promote it.