Has anyone heard of the 30 day Challenge?

[Emma]

It's a free program, that is supposed to teach bloggers how to monetize their blogs. The goal is 10 dollars a day in 30 days. It starts on August first, so far it's consisted of some podcasts and signing up for all of the social sites. Does anyone no if this is legitimate or have any input. Thanks Emma:rolleyes:

[Jelena]

I haven't heard of it. Do you have a link to it?

[ses5909]

I have heard of it and have considered signing up. I may still. You never know what you will learn:

http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/

From what I've read in forums, it is legit. We'll see though!

[Jeremy]

I signed up a while ago and received a few emails, but been too busy to read them.

[Emma]

I'll give it a shot, and let you know if it's worthwhile or not. The skeptical part of me, thinks it's a lead in for some big sales pitch. There seems to be a lot of that going around.:cool:

[ses5909]

Well i signed up.. but you have to join a team. and have to ask to join teams unless you already have a team together.

[Oliver]

I thought blogging was supposed to be about writing your thoughts on a subject. As long as you write good posts and have some small advertising money will come you don't need to learn and it should never be about the money.

[aquariancore]

Here I am signing up at the last minute because if they can show me a way crank it up it's worth the time.

[Emma]

Actually I just got on a team, and I'm kind of excited. It should be some great networking and exposure opportunities. I agree content is the most important thing. But some exposure wouldn't hurt. Ciao, Emma

[Jeremy]

ok, maybe I'm just dense, but where do you find teams? I'm logged in and I see the forums and blog and such, but no info about what teams are and how to join them.

[Harrison]

I heard it but I don't join it as I know I'm too busy to keep up with them although I know it is a good challenge to join

[Emma]

In the forum their should be a category about teams. I advertised for a team but had no takers. Then I bumped up my post and juiced it up a little. Team Spider Pig, asked me to join their group. I thought this was weird. But then found out Spider Pig was from the Simpson's movie (http://teamspiderpig.wordpress.com/?pwstdfy=cd773050d3a26354e6042a7ca4cac4ee).

After I joined some other teams made me offers but I said I was committed to Team Spider Pig. Next thing you know Team Spider Pig is really popular and everyone wants to join. Don't be shy just make a post. We are all in the same boat. Similar goals, and no idea what 30 day challenge is really going to be. If you want to read about Team Spider Pig do a search on the 30 day challenge forum for "spider". :)

[ses5909]

It was in the forums. http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=3

We should have started our own team.. .although it may be too late.

[swollenpickles]

The whole "challenge" thing has been done to death. One of those guys was behind the www.15kchallenge.com from last year as well. There's also a 60k challenge, and I might be wrong, but I thought I saw someone trying a 90 day challenge as well.

[samwoodfin]

I think challenges, in general, can be kind of fun, so I registered for this. But I'm not so certain I want to install the toolbar. Actually, I'm pretty certain I don't want to install the toolbar. Anyone give it a test spin, yet?

[Dan Grossman]

Smells dirty to me. A get-rich-quick marketing course wrapped in a fuzzy 'web 2.0' site. Day 1, and they're super excited about a revolutionary... toolbar... which does nothing Firefox doesn't do on its own, except send all the search revenue to this site instead of Mozilla (Conduit has a revenue sharing program for its toolbars; the more downloads and usage, the more they pay the creator).

[tater03]

Downloading the toolbar would make me a little leery of it. Curious to see what you all think that do decide to do it. I don't have a blog as of yet. I am just trying to figure out a good topic to do one on. I want to start one on something that I either like to do or know a lot about. Just have figured exactly what the topic will be yet.

[Dan Grossman]

Listened to the first day mp3 and it didn't seem to be related to blogging at all. The most specific example of the whole process they gave was... you could be making $10 a day selling sausage making supplies to sausage making enthusiasts in a month. They'll teach you how!

Given the wording they use pushing that toolbar, and the fact that they're spending money advertising this site (top spot on AdWords!), they're in it for money -- the question is when, where and how they'll try to turn the big profit off all these "newbies" (they used the word first!).

[aquariancore]

The whole "challenge" thing has been done to death. One of those guys was behind the www.15kchallenge.com from last year as well. There's also a 60k challenge, and I might be wrong, but I thought I saw someone trying a 90 day challenge as well.

That was a pub stunt and they show the video where he lost and had to wear a thong. In 24 hours they taught me things I see that make sense. Today Aug 1 was the first day.

[ses5909]

Interesting. I haven't listened to any of it but it will be interesting to watch.

[aquariancore]

Just in catching up they opened my eyes in how to start finetune my marketing.

[BlogBookmark]

Looks fishy to me...

[samwoodfin]

Just a question, and I don't mean to sound rude (just in case it does), but who are these people? I mean, I get why people are willing to pay attention to what Darren Rowse says, and, on a different level, why forum members listen to each other, but am I missing something? I'd never heard of the people behind the 30 Day Challenge until reading this thread.

[Emma]

I am skeptical too. I'm sure the hook will come at the end. But a lot of people are doing it. Plus this is the 3rd year. So if it is a complete scam someone would speak up by now.

The networking and the tips on the forum seem like they might be useful. I use IE7
so I downloaded the toolbar and all of the extensions they suggested, onto firefox.

Don't know what the toolbar will do. But I won't be using this browser for much. And definitely nothing mission critical like banking. Not much info has been given yet just download everything, sign up for social sites, and research possible niche markets.

Harmless so far. I am not defending this program. The reason I started this thread is I wanted some opinions. Talk to you soon. :rolleyes:

[Cedric]

Crap! I signed up! But nah it's okay, I can ignore those emails by the way! LOL, plus if they require us to form a team, I'm not sure I can find any teammates.

[aquariancore]

Crap! I signed up! But nah it's okay, I can ignore those emails by the way! LOL, plus if they require us to form a team, I'm not sure I can find any teammates.

Teams are not a requirement but they help you through the program. I still haven't joined a team myself. I don't know if I will. Last years winner was not on a team and they point that out. The object is not teams or winning or losing. The object is to find what works and break the ice. This is not About the money but the learning. Yes, I am expecting an after program flood of amazing once in a lifetime offers. Still I do see the positive already as it open my eyes to several new things.

[samwoodfin]

Is anyone still doing this?

[ses5909]

No i never did anything with it. From reading Emma's blog though, I think she still is. Would be great to hear a report back from her. I think she is slacking off on the beach or something ;)

[Emma]

I have been slacking off a bit. But, I'm not going away.

I was very skeptical of this 30 day challenge thing. But I have to say I have learned a lot.

The premise is, making money online consists of 4 parts:

Market Research
Traffic
Conversion
Product


1. Try to avoid the most popular niches and use a keyword tool such as word-tracker to narrow your niche down to an "umbrella phrase" which would consist of a phrase with competition of less than 30,000 and at least 100 searches a day.

In order to do this they have come up with a combination, of a keyword search in Word-tracker, and then using a comparison phrase in Google trends to measure the accuracy of your keyword search.

The videos showing how to do this are on You Tube. They are kind of long so sitting through them requires some patience. Also Mike Mindell has a blog that explains everything.

2. Once you have your "umbrella phrase" do a little more research in Google to see if there is any competition and if people are making money through affiliate sites.

3. Do some more research subscribe to Google news and Google blog feeds, about your umbrella phrase through bloglines. Use this research to create some worthwhile articles and set up a free blog.

4. They suggested using Tumblr, but the owners of Tumblr thought they were being spammed and closed all of the 30 day challenge blogs. So the suggested blog platform is a little up in the air right now.

5. Try to set up useful information about your "umbrella phrase", set it up on some blog platform. Work with your team to create natural social bookmarking, don't just spam stumble upon 1000 times.

6. If your market research was correct and you've set up an affiliate site, after every 200 hits you should make a sell. Apparently 200 is the magic number in marketing.

7. They suggest finding an affiliate site on clickbank or just using something from Amazon. The affiliate site will make you, your first 10.00$. But it's supposed to be more about finding out if there is a potential market in this area. So you can eventually create you own information product.

8. I've yet to set up a site promoting some affiliate product. I have this thing about ethics.

9. Since I knew nothing about these techniques the information has been useful. And I do think it is possible to use some of this information for legitimate money making purposes.

10. They are only on day 17 so I'll let you know when I find out more.

11. I think I'm starting to trust these guys. I hope they have a product to sell me! Just Kidding!

So far that's all I know, but I did learn a little bit since I was totally naive about Internet marketing. Take Care, Emma

[ses5909]

Awesome post Emma, thanks for the detailed feedback!

[smittenbite]

wow thanks Emma for the feedback! very helpful about the program

[deronsizemore]

I signed up but under my spam email address, lol. Thankfully so, because it looks like spam to me. A couple videos I saw were like 40 minutes a piece. No thanks!

[ses5909]

I found it funny that today someone came to the site by googling for "thirty day challenge affiliate crap"

[Dan Grossman]

I find it funny that back when this started and I posted skeptically around the web like I did here, these guys personally e-mailed me to assure me they didn't intend to make any money off this. It was just about teaching, or something.

Now they're using the member list to spam their paid newsletters and crap at $97 a pop.

[SarahG]

I've not looked at it myself but I do read a blog from someone who went through this, who I trust too, and ripped them apart a great deal. Apparently the product they do sell they hiked the price up for it right before the challenge started, most of the methods taught have been spammy methods (eg. using tumblr).

From what I've read it seems like for true beginner bloggers it's a good learning platform but it could be done a lot better. It seems like it's a case of learning what you can do but clearly shouldn't rely on.

Of course I'm only going by 3rd party info ;)