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Obviously, I am starting a little late but I’m sure I’ll catch up. The post is a summary of the concepts presented on Day 1 of the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

Market Research, Traffic, Conversion and Product

Ed calls these four elements the “Magnificent Symphony in Four Parts” and stresses that it is vital to follow it in sequence.

1. Market Research: The first step is to test an idea of a product or service to determine whether a market for it exists or not. The research (mostly free) can help identify the product, its demand and the price point among other things.
2. Traffic: Traffic is the lifeblood of an online business. The Thirty Day Challenge training shows you how to get free or cheap traffic.
3. Conversion: Conversion is the art of translating traffic into dollars. The Thirty Day Challenge training shows you different methods of conversion and how to make money while testing.
4. Product: Product comes last because the market will tell you what product or service they want. The key is engaging them interactively.

Getting Ideas

1. Amazon: Amazon is a treasure trove of ideas. Go to Books -> Magazines & Newspapers. Scroll down to see the Categories section and look at the best-selling magazines in that section. Firstly, two caveats for choosing a niche 1) topic that interests you and 2) a small niche to start off with. Secondly, take note of how many magazines are in this category and how frequently are the magazines published. I choose scrapbooking as a topic and there were 15 magazines most of which is published on a monthly basis. This tells me that there must be a sizeable number of advertisers spending money in the marketplace and there is money to be made here.
   
   
2. Google News: Now do a Google news search on the topic you have identified. Thereafter, click the News Alert icon (highlighted in red) to receive news alerts within your niche via email daily (recommended), weekly or as it happens. Alternatively, you can add this into your RSS Reader by clicking the orange RSS icon on the address bar (highlighted in blue).
   
   
   
   

Action Items for Day 1 - Getting Ideas using Amazon and Google News

1. Understand the concept and sequence of marketing research, traffic, conversion and product.
2. Use Amazon to generate 5 to 10 ideas for various niches.
3. Use Google News alerts via email or RSS to stay on top of the niches.

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Part 8 is the last of my pre-season post series and it covers the video tips and forum guide for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

Video Tips and Forum Guide

1. Log in to the Thirty Day Challenge Dashboard and click on any training link. You’ll see a YouTube video embedded and the video can be watched directly by clicking any of the two play buttons (highlighted in red). Alternatively, you can download the video in SD (low res) or HD (high res) by right-clicking the icons (highlighted in blue) and saving it on your local drive. The T icon (highlighted in blue) stands for the transcript of the lesson in PDF.
   
   
2. Personally, I download the HD videos and the PDFs. I read the PDFs and watch the videos only when time permits or when the transcript is not available. Get iTunes or VLC to play the videos and good old Adobe Reader is needed for the PDFs.

Action Items for Video Tips and Forum Guide

1. Register for the 30 Day Challenge 2008 Training.
2. Register for the 30 Day Challenge 2008 Forum.
3. Download training videos and PDFs. Take action and follow along.

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Normally, index.html or index.php are the files that are retrieved when a client requests a directory. For example, when a user types http://www.kuzzuk.net/weblog the browser looks for and retrieves files like index.html, index.php or default.html but lets say I want to show a Flash page first (dreadful idea to have Flash page) then I’d add this line on my .htaccess file within the weblog folder.

DirectoryIndex flash.php index.php

This means that the browser will first retrieve flash.php before the default index.php.

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Scrabulous, a HUGE time suck from FaceBook is GONE but…

Why am I feeling AMBIVALENT?

I’ll never know…

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Part 7 of my pre-season post covers Google Subscribed with setup and tips for FriendFeed for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

Google Subscribed and FriendFeed Features and Settings

1. Log in to the Thirty Day Challenge Dashboard and click the icon “Add my expertise to your Google web searches” (highlighted in red below). Thereafter, confirm the subscription.
   
   
2. Google Subscribed Links allows you to create custom search results that users can add to their Google search pages. This service can be used to create custom pages for your niche and add value to your customers’ search results. The possibilities are endless.
3. FriendFeed allows you to discover what your friends are sharing and allows you to share your things from the sites like YouTube, Flickr while providing a central place to comment and discuss.
4. Create an account with FriendFeed. The second step allows you to find your friends either via FaceBook or by importing the address book from GMail, Yahoo, MSN etc… The recommended step is to install the FriendFeed Facebook application that automatically finds your friends in Facebook who are using FriendFeed. Skip the importing of address book as well as subscribing to other recommended feeds. My FriendFeed is at Dipankar.
5. After creating an account, log into FriendFeed and click the “spice up your feed” link and check out the 43 services that you can connect to and import feeds from.
   
   
6. Familiarize yourself with the FriendFeed tabs. The “friends” tab shows an aggregation of all of your friends’ feeds, the “rooms” tab gives you access to the rooms that you have created or joined, the “me” tab gives you access to things you have shared and allows you to interact with people who have commented on your feed and the “everyone” tab shows all the public feeds.
   
   
7. Join the 30 Day Challenge FriendFeed room and it gives you an option to share with the room. Add the room into your Google Reader.
8. FriendFeed “friend” feeds can be filtered by the best of the day, week or month. Alternatively, search can be used to narrow down the list (highlighted in red).
   
   
9. FriendFeed “room” tab gives you access to all the discussions in the room, you can check out the members in the room with options to subscribe or block them and search through the feeds in the room.
10. FriendFeed “me” tab gives you an overview of all the sharing, discussions, subscriptions and rooms.
11. FriendFeed “everyone” tab gives you an overview of all public feeds which can be narrowed down via search. The FriendFeed Advanced Search is quite powerful.

Action Items for Google Subscribed and FriendFeed Features and Settings

1. Add Dan’s Google Subscribed Link and familiarize yourself with Google Subscribed Links and how you can use it for your niche.
2. Create an account with FriendFeed and import FaceBook friends.
3. Familiarize yourself with FriendFeed and its search and filter functions.
4. Join the 30 Day Challenge FriendFeed room.

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Part 6 of my pre-season post covers StumbleUpon and YouTube with its features and settings for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

StumbleUpon and YouTube with its Features and Settings

1. Sign up with StumbleUpon and install the StumbleUpon toolbar for the Flock web browser.
   
   Note: Do not spam StumbleUpon and use it as it is intended.
2. Login to StumbleUpon by clicking the “Sign In” icon on the toolbar (highlighted in red) and check the “Sign out when I close the browser” (highlighted in blue) if you are sharing the computer.
   
   
3. Familiarize yourself with the StumbleUpon toolbar. The “Stumble” icon (highlighted in red) allows you to save settings for topics of your choice and then allows you to find interesting sites recommended by people who have similar preferences. The thumbs up and down icons (highlighted in yellow) allows you to rate whether you like or dislike the current page you are browsing. If the current page is not within StumbleUpon then clicking the thumbs up icon allows you to add a review with an option to categorize the current page. The “Send To” icon (highlighted in blue) allows you to send the current page to a friend and the blurb icon ((highlighted in green) allows you to view the review of the current page.
   
   
   
   
4. The second set of StumbleUpon icons is Channels. The icons from left to right are as follows. The globe icon allows you to stumble through everything randomly. The friends icon allows you to stumble favorites of your friends. The images icon and video icon allows you to stumble through images and videos. The websites stumble icon provides a list of sites like BBC, YouTube etc that you can stumble through. The news icon allows you to stumble through news items and the all drop-down menu allows you to specify the channels and language to stumble upon.
   
   
5. The last set of StumbleUpon icons from left to right are as follows. The favorites icon gives you access to all pages that you have given the thumbs up to. The people icon gives you access to you friends and fans. The mailbox icon shows your inbox and the tools dropdown menu allows you to configure my StubmleUpon preferences as well as sign out.
   
   
6. Sign up with YouTube or login via your Google Accounts password and subscribe to Ed’s feed on YouTube.
7. YouTube integrates into the Flock web browser seamlessly. Remember to click the “Remember Account” (highlighted in red) to keep your friends in the Flock people sidebar.
   
   
8. Add YouTube search into the Flock web browser’s installable search engines by clicking the yellow magnifying glass icon on the address bar.
   
   
9. Familiarize yourself with YouTube. For example, you can Subscribe to a channel (and read it within Google Reader), within the Flock browser it allows you to e-mail, blog and view stream options for the video, YouTube allows you to rate videos, StumbleUpon the videos and share it on social networks.

Action Items for StumbleUpon and YouTube with its Features and Settings

1. Signup for StumbleUpon and install StumbleUpon toolbar in Flock.
2. Familiarize yourself with StumbleUpon features.
3. Signup for YouTube and subscribe to Ed’s youTube feed.
4. Integrate YouTube into Flock web browser and add YouTube in Flock’s .installable search engine.
5. Familiarize yourself with YouTube features.

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Part 5 of my pre-season post covers Google Reader and its features and settings for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

Google Account, Google Reader and its Features and Settings

1. Go to Google Reader and sign up for a Google Account (if you don’t have on) or log in to your existing Google Account.
2. Set Google Reader as the default RSS feed reader by following step 1 of my post on Pre Season Part 2 - The Flock Browser Settings.
3. Add www.tubbynerd.com and www.thirtydaychallenge.com/blog/ to Google Reader by clicking the orange RSS icon (highlighted in red).
   
   
4. Add Ed and Dan’s Twitter feeds to Google Reader
5. Add Twitter search on 30 Day Challenge to your Google Reader and add this also to your Search Elsewhere list on your Flock browser (highlighted in red).
   
   
6. Within Google Reader, view the feeds by clicking “All Items” link and viewing it as a list (highlighted in red).
   
   
7. Click any of the headlines to expand it. Add Star (highlighted in red) allows you to access all starred items via the Starred Items link, sharing wit or without a note (highlighted in blue), you can email the post to a friend, mark it as unread or add tags for easy searching (highlighted in green).
   
   
8. Click on the “Settings” link and leave the “Preferences” as default. Next click the “Subscriptions” link where each feed can be renamed (highlighted in red), a folder or tag can be added to a feed(s) (highlighted in blue), feeds can be filtered by tags or folders (highlighted in green) and feed(s) can be deleted (highlighted in yellow).
   
   
9. Click on the “Folders and Tags” link and you’ll see a list of your folders and tags to be managed. Familiarize yourself with the various options.
   
   
10. Click on the “Goodies” link and it gives you options to Add Reader to your Google Personalized Homepage, Put Reader in a bookmark, Use Reader on your phone and Subscribe as you surf. Familiarize yourself with the various options.
11. Click on the “Import/Export” link and you’ll be able to import or export your current feeds in OPML format. This is useful for moving from another provider like BlogLines. For example, from BlogLines within the My Feeds page, click the Edit link at the top of the left panel. There will be a link to export your subscriptions in OPML format. This OPML file can be imported into Google Reader.

Action Items for Google Account, Google Reader and its Features and Settings

1. Signup for Google Account.
2. Set Google Reader as the default RSS feed reader in the Flock browser.
3. Add 30 Day Challenge RSS and Twitter feeds into Google Reader.
4. Familiarize yourself with the features and settings of Google Reader.

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Part 4 of my pre-season post covers Twitter, TwitterBar and Twhirl for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

Sign up for Twitter, Setup TwitterBar and Configure Twhirl

1. Signup for Twitter and familiarize yourself with the Twitter interface.
2. Follow Ed Dale and Dan Raine on Twitter.
3. Twitter can be used from the People sidebar in Flock but there are a couple of limitations like not being able to see the entire tweet of people you are following (unless you hover) and the inbuilt Post Link feature not being able to shorten URLs. Fret not as TwitterBar overcomes these shortcomings. Configure TwitterBar by clicking Tools -> Add-ons in Flock and then clicking the “Options” button (highlighted in red). Choose “Safe” mode if you are not sharing the computer with anyone else choose the “Secure” mode. Leave other options as default and click the “OK” button
   
   
   
   
4. Now the TwitterBar is setup, type your tweet on the Flock address bar and click the small + sign (highlighted in red) to post your tweet.
   
   
5. Install Twhirl automatically by clicking the “Install Now” link on the right column. Twhirl can be used for other social software apart from Twitter.
6. Log into Twitter via Twhirl by inputting your twitter username and clicking the + sign. Thereafter, click Connect and enter your password.
   
   
7. The main icons of Twhirl and its meanings. Within the area highlighted by the blue box, the funnel icon is the filter toggle, the checkmark with list icon marks all as seen, the curved arrow icon will refresh, the trash can icon clears everything, the camera icon allows you to post image to TwitPic and the URL of the image will be posted on your tweet, the link icon shortens long URLs (use twurl.nl for shortened URLs as it supports click tracking) and the tick icon sends the tweet and the number above it denotes how many characters are remaining. Within the area highlighted by the red box, the blurb icon toggles the input panel, Home is self-explanatory, the @ icon allows you to direct messages to other users whether they follow you or not, for instance, clicking the @ symbol will allow me to see all the messages that have been directed to me using @dipankarsubba, the envelope icon gives access all of your direct messages which can only be sent to people following you, the heart icon gives you access to all your favorites, the people icon gives you access to your friends and followers, the person with a question mark icon allows you to lookup any Twitter user and the magnifying glass icon allows you to search through Twitter posts.
   
   

Action Items for Twitter, Twitterbar and Thwirl

1. Signup for Twitter and familiarize yourself with the interface.
2. Follow Ed and Dan on Twitter.
3. Install and configure TwitterBar
4. Install Thwirl, configure it and familiarize yourself with its interface.

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Part 3 of my pre-season post covers the Flock web browser extensions or addons for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008 followed by a checklist of action items.

Note: While installing addons, Flock prevents popups by displaying the yellowish bar. Just click the “Edit Options” button and enter that site’s URL by clicking the “Allow” button.

Flock Web Browser Extensions and Add-Ons

Download the PDF for the list of extensions and add-ons for the Thirty Day Challenge.

1. Install FasterFox.
2. Install Google Global, an extension that allows viewing of Google search results from anywhere in the world.
3. Add Google Global to the toolbar by right-clicking on the flock toolbar and choosing the Customize option (highlighted in red).
   
   
4. Now click and drag the Google Global to the toolbar.
   
   
5. Add Google Notebook that allows taking notes from within the browser. Highlight content on the browser and add to the Google Notebook.
6. SEO for FireFox is from acclaimed Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com fame. This add on show useful SEO data within the search results page. Just click the icon on the status bar to toggle the tool on or off.
   
   
7. Download and install Search Status which displays the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and much more. The information appears on the status bar and shows the page rank, alexa ranking and other contextual information.
   
   
8. Add the StumbleUpon extension which allows discovery of web sites based on your interests, learns what you like over time and suggests sites that may be of interest.
9. Although the Flock web browser has Twitter integration, it is better to use TwitterBar extension because it shortens URLs and does not take the poster away from the page.
10. Install the 30 Day challenge toolbar which allows access the links, tools, and everything related to TDC.

Action Items for Flock web browser extensions and addons

1. Install add-on FasterFox.
2. Install Google Global and set it on the toolbar.
3. Install Google Notebook extension.
4. Install SEO for FireFox addon.
5. Install Search Status extension.
6. Install StumbleUpon extension.
7. Install TwitterBar add-on.
8. Install TDC toolbar.

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Part 2 of my pre-season post covers the Flock web browser settings for the 30 Day Challenge in 2008. As usual, at the end is a checklist of action items.

Flock Web Browser Settings and Tips

1. Go to Tools -> Options and under Feeds tab, change “Subscribe to the feed using:” option to Google (highlighted in red).
   
   
2. Under the Searching tab, change default engine to Google (highlighted in blue) and “Live results…” to Technorati and Favorites and Recently Visited (highlighted in green).
   
   
3. Sign up for a Google Reader account and add www.tubbynerd.com and www.thirtydaychallenge.com/blog/ to Google Reader by clicking the orange RSS icon (highlighted in red).
   
   
4. Type “about:config” into the address bar of Flock (highlighted in red).
5. In the filter type network.http (highlighted in blue).
6. Locate the setting network.http.pipelining and double click it to change the value from false to true (highlighted in green).
7. Do the same as above to network.http.proxy.pipelining (highlighted in green).
8. Double click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and change the value to 30 or higher. I put mine as 36 which is my age :) (highlighted in green).
   
   
9. Restart Flock for the settings to take effect.

Action Items for changing Flock web browser’s settings

1. Change feed reader in Flock to Google Reader.
2. Change search settings in Flock to Google.
3. Sign up for a Google Reader Account.
4. Subscribe to www.tubbynerd.com and www.thirtydaychallenge.com/blog/ via Google Reader.
5. Change network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to true.
6. Change network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 30 or higher.
7. Restart Flock.

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