Business

I’ve joined ranks with the $million Dollar Project and have taken up the challenge.

This is the fist update. I’ve included some background as an explanation as to what this is and why. Future updates will jump straight to the action of What I have done and some stats.

Why am I doing this?

Firstly; I have for quite some years watched the internet change and develop. I can’t say I feel its all for the better, but in the main its progress. I have read almost all of the SPI blog from Pat Flynn. Quite an inspiration. Take a look at his Income reports!

I then found the MDP… and again thought I want a slice. When you look, you can find quite a few of these ‘challenges’ posted and ongoing all over the place, all showing you how they are doing it (to differing degrees of transparency). I thought I’d like to have a go and see if I can as a ‘normal guy‘ replicate, even in a small part what I see going on.

Whats my AIM?

My aim is to learn. I’d not be truthful with you if I said I wouldn’t mind making some income along the way, but to start with I just want to see if I can do this. So the Aim is to build a site that pays for itself in 12months which just needs to cover the domain fee, and to use a round figure lets say £10 (about $17 depending on exchange rates).

From there I will review the amount of work and my knowledge point and see if I have bridged the knowledge cap I currently have to do this as a day job -> that’s the end game! Simply get this one profitable then replicate it until an income can be achieved full time via a portfolio of websites, blogs, maybe a bit of site flipping, domain name trading and freelance work her and there. But I first need to prove that I can build a profitable site.

So in simple terms: Use this as a live education to learn the skills to build an online career.

Lets get started.

I need to build a blog. Ok I thought. Nothing hard there… I have one already that I use for my personal ramblings. I run my own business which has a website and have always dabbled in HTML (not that I can code to save my life). I have an interest in Digital Graphics etc. Am no novel writer, but could string a sentence together well enough in the past to get me through University and Post Graduate courses, so I think I have the bones to work with… i.e I’m not running for the hills just yet. I understand the concepts (I think… we’ll see), so I’m game. First we need a subject which is where I started to deviate from how I worked, or should I say thought previously.

I used to think that you picked a Domain like a ‘Brand’ rather than something to assist Rankings. It seams that I need to update. The present game is all about Google Ranking. Google is King they say… and over the years Google has grown and woven themselves into our lives so deeply god knows what we’d do without Google now. Unless you want to be either buying traffic in (bit pointless for me at this stage), or constantly creating traffic then your hits needs to be ‘passive’ and therefore come from organic search engine traffic. The way I got my head around this is that organic traffic is natural. Its the natural searches people do every second on Google. Now. Do you ever click on anything or even get to page 4, 5 or six on the search results? I do, but not very often… so that’s where the rankings come in. You need to expose yourself as often as possible to this natural ’organic’ traffic. And where best than Google #1 against a specific search term.

So – I recalled my thoughts. Need a blog and #1 ranking against a keyword(s). Best I pick a subject then. Anyone or logical? Pick a subject that you have interest in (makes it easyer to maintain momentum) and something you know somthig about (assists with content) that is searched by others (so its of value to others) then we just make monney off the adds.

Keyword Selection:

I though quite long and hard about this. I started making a list of 5 things I had an interest in, 5 things I see as problems people have and 5 solutions or skills. This then gave me a subject to look for searches around it. I did think about the keywords to start with at one point, but with so many – my brain started melting and I found I lost track a little and needed to refocus.

My list went way past 5 on each and on interests ended up at about 20 or so. All quite general, and if I’m honest too general. I needed to find a way to cut them down. How did I do it? I asked the Wife.

I ended up with Close Protection which was latter developed into Close Protection Training. More on that further on.

I knew this would develop in the keyword process so at this stage didn’t mind having just a 2 word keyword. I know a little about the subject, am interested in it and seeing as the intent was to gain income from Adscense mostly, I didn’t worry too much about products to sell. But I do have plans for my own Guide, using CPA’s if appropriate and using Clickbank on my support sites (more on this latter on). I am also looking at seeing how I can promote Training Providers either via course evaluations or via advertising. These courses are not cheap and even a tiny commission would add to the end result.

I started by using Google’s own Keyword Tool. Honestly…. Its fine, a bit clunky and dull, takes shed loads of time from your life, but a free tool that gets the job done. I then found Market Samurai which still uses the Google tool and provides the same data but displays it such a way via the visual click and type interface it just makes life so much easier. It does cost, but you get about 12 or 14 days of free trial. If I buy anything to assist me in future it will be on the list.

I looked at Close Protection and found it was searched quite some times during a month but the other sites where quite strong and were going to be too hard for me to out rank.. so I kept looking and found (I say I. Market Samurai) found Close Protection Training which had little competition, what was showing as competition was not that strong (or so I thought. We;ll see how this develops if I’m correct or not). Its monthly search is less than I was looking for but good enough to get started with at 3k per month exact match.

I went with Close Protection Training for the domain name as well and needed to add ‘hq’ to the end to get it which I was happy with as that’s what Pat does in his challenge and it fits the type of site I wanted to build anyway. The keywords drop out under the widening subject with relating topics that underpin that of Close Protection like First Aid, Firearms, Fitness, Security, IED, Self Defense, Driving etc etc, all Close Protection related. I knew I’d be creating content on those subjects so it just made sense. Add all the little keyword searches for all the tops together, and your organic pond of traffic starts looking like a swimming pool.

Domain Name

I have a host already so I just registered the domain name I wanted and installed WordPress via the control panel and was ready to rock in about 20min at a grand cost of £10 all in. I’m now the proud owner of http://CloseProtectionTrainingHQ.com

Actions Taken

• WordPress installed inc all the boxes with tile, description etc
• Installed All in One SEO Pack which allowed me to add Keywords to my site
• Installed Google Analytics for WordPress and linked it to my Google account to track stats
• Installed Google XML Sitemaps
• Installed Awesome Ads and inserted my Adsense publisher code
• Installed Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share and linked to my Twitter account etc as needed
• Set the theme to Ping 1.06 although I’m not happy with it, it will stay until I find something more suitable that’s free
• Created and posted the first post. Ended up much longer than I wanted or expected. 1300 words. My aim was for 600
• Installed the Clicky code for alternative site tracking
• Set up the Feed Burner Feed and reset the WordPress Dashboard to point to it
• Uploaded first Spun Article to EzineArticles – takes some time but accepted
• Uploaded spun article to GoArticles – Instant acceptance
• Created a WordPress.com supporting blog to link back and posted a spun version of the first article. Read Pat Flynns brilliant article on this here about Back linking using two tiers.
• Created a Blogger supporting blog, again to link back with spun version
• Opened a Clickbank account and inserted a product add into the blogger post as a test
• Created a Tumblr supporting blog
• Created Facebook Supporting Page. Apparently you can’t have more than one page on your Facebookaccount – I’ll provide a tut on this at a latter date
• Linked back from my Gravatar profile
• Pinged the main site (using site check sites that create a profile page of your site when checking it) to help get the site indexed
• Found a tonne of new material regarding skill sets I need to develop this project.. bookmarks full of pages to re-visit and read through
• Content plan for the next 12 or so posts done and post structure
• Sites Backlink Strategy created and planned
• Work flow process updated to reflect experiences and knowledge.

Stats (Week -£10 (-£10 Total) / Week 30hrs (30hrs Total) / Google indexed pages x43 / PR0 / Back Links x7 / Main Keyword Rank #76 / Visits x90 Unique x63)

• Domain Name Registration £10

• Self Education (reading around stuff) about 12hrs
• Opening Accounts and setting up initial blog setting (keywords etc etc) plus rank checking and analysis 4hrs
• Creating Content, Spinning content (using Free SpinChimp), checking copyscape, uniqueness and submissions / posting 14hrs

You must remember that I’m learning as I’m going here so EVERYTHING takes twice as long as it needs to. I’m also finding out how I need to organise things to accommodate the long list of bookmarks etc being created by all this. Opening accounts etc takes far too long. Content spinning takes time but worth it as I now have a preferred free software and know how it works,