Day 5 ~ Mary K

Hooray!!!! Congratulations to Jackie!!!

This has been such a GREAT week! ;-) Much learning and much accomplished...FUN!

I find myself wondering how changing the type of product or service I choose to market will impact the 30 Day Marketing Experiment. Since I'm approaching this from the perspective that it's a test of the 'method' and should, theoretically work regardless of the product, I feel very open to changing focus for next week.

This week I've been focusing on a niche I haven't really spent any time marketing to before... things for children/child development. It's an area I'm very comfortable and familiar with so I feel the passion, I just haven't done any marketing in this area before. Although I didn't earn anything yet... I'll bet it's on it's way!!! ;-)

So... here's todays report:

Created a new Squidoo Lens called Homemade Kits for Kids
This took 1.5 hours. I'm getting quicker!!

Blog post - 15 min

Pinged and bookmarked both - 15 minutes

Once again I didn't fit everything in the two hour time but overall, I'm feeling great!

Have a fabulous and prosperous weekend...
I so appreciate you,

--Mary K

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-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Day 5 ~ Jackie Gets Paid

Just a quick note. I checked my email before going to bed, and I had a delightful notice from one of my affiliate products that I had made a sale.

Very exciting. What's even more exciting is I checked where the sale had come from and it was from one of the lenses I made this week for the experiment.

It works, it works, it really works!! I can just feel the snowball leaving the top of the mountain, gaining momentum, pretty soon it will be out of our hands. :)

Let's start the tally:

$12.00 cha ching.

Have an awesome weekend ya'll. See ya Monday. Hopefully I'll have more good news to share.

Jackie Lee :)
(The richest woman in the world)

Day 5 ~ Jackie Lee

Don't you hate it when you get a blast of inspiration late in the evening. I mean I love getting inspiration, but for me it means my brain gets going and going and going, and I can't sleep. I get ideas flying through my head, so much so that sometimes I have to get out of bed and write it down, so I know I won't forget what's running through my head by morning. Last night I called Mary K.

I was thinking about this blog, and how the vibration of it is so different from my other blog. I love writing this blog, I am myself on this blog. I was also looking through some other personal/social type blogs online and realized I could do BOTH.

Anyone who knows me knows I have problems when it comes to either/or/and. I was raised in a family where it was either/or, never AND. So now as an adult I find it difficult to be able to see the picture when it comes to combining two things I usually (wrongly) assume as mutually exclusive.

When I realized that I could talk to people about internet marketing, teach them tricks and tips and help them be successful, while at the same time BEing a MOM, (which is who I am) I felt such relief.

Long story short, one more thing I have learned from this experiment is the ability to come authentically from who I am, even when it comes to blogging about internet marketing.

Woo Hoo!!!

So let's talk about today's tasks. One more aside before we do that.

I have been so excited about having these specific actions to take that I have tried to do it for my other daily activities as well. I was hoping I could find a white board or chart where I could write them all down and check them off as I go. I just LOVE checking things off as they are done.
Yesterday I bought a small white board and thought I would just write it in. Shortly after I got home with my white board I found a blog providing amazing organizational things and one of them was a monthly chart just like I have been looking for. Gotta love LOA, just ask and it's given.

So now back to my action steps:

• Wrote a new article and posted to one directory ~ the other directory I am at an upgrade threshold and will have to wait until one more article is reviewed before I get the unlimited article upgrade. Should happen today I imagine. ~ 45 minutes including keyword search
  
• Made a new lens ~ 40 minutes give or take I did have some toddler distractions
  
• Pinged & bookmarked ~ less than 5 minutes

Done! I worked on a different topic today. I am finding it is much easier to write on topics I have some excitement around, even if the product doesn't have the highest commission, or isn't in the most marketable niche. I think your vibration makes up for some of those things.

That's it for today!!

Have an amazing weekend, and I'll see you on Monday.

Jackie Lee :)

Day 4 ~ Mary K

Today was such a BLAST!!! I brilliantly let myself have fun with not only this experiment but today I allowed the day to flow and quit paddling upstream. Ahhhh.... sweet relief!

A simple rearrangement in how I used my time brought about far greater efficiency and a heightened sense of accomplishment. Sometimes I can be so silly, like when I work at cross-purposes with myself. One of my good friends and respected mentors, John Milton Fogg, is often know to say that "your business grows only as fast as you do". (Perhaps I'm paraphrasing but you get the gist) And in my case sometimes that rate is a dance of two steps forward and one step back... but at least I'm moving forward! ;-)

Okay... Here's today's truth:

• Wrote an article - 2 hours

(Finally got an article written and don't know if I'll have any luck getting speedier about it. Today I can accept that and realize I may have to accept that I simple need more than 2 hours to accomplish my list of actions.)

• Submitted article - 10 minutes

• Posted to PI Blog - 15 minutes

• Added to Squidoo lens - 15 minutes

• Pinged and Bookmarked - 15 minutes

Total time: 2 hours 55 minutes

Not bad at all... especially considering that I accomplished other things on other projects today and didn't feel preoccupied and weighted down about the 30 Day Experiment. I discovered that I was 'thinking' I should accomplish this all first thing in the morning. The interesting thing is that most of the actions on each of the past four days were accomplished in the evening. But today, I gave myself permission early on to leave it until evening. The result was that I found my rhythm and was allowing the inspiration to flow... so I could actually act on INSPIRATION rather than 'shoulding' all over myself like I did the first three days! ROFL!!!!

Thanks, I so appreciate you,
--Mary K

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((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Day 4 ~ Jackie Lee

Good Morning, Good Morning,

This morning Hanna was up bright and early, grumpy and bored. Wanting to nurse every five minutes, needing to be on my lap, stealing my pens, banging on the keyboard and opening windows I didn't even know I had when I went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. ARGH. Her mood has kind of rubbed of on me and I'm feeling a little grumpy myself.

There was one funny moment this morning. Hanna was standing at the table with her "cell phone" crooked on her shoulder a pencil in hand taking notes on a notepad. I couldn't get to the camera fast enough, but just a few minutes later she started "writing a letter" on her "computer". Can you tell her mom works from home?

Anyway, here's how the plan shaped up today. Even with my happy shiny toddler my specific actions took less than an hour again today. I am using some articles I wrote about myspace because I noticed a sharp spike in traffic on my blog after I posted them. I now get a lot of traffic from myspace search terms and my blog is ranked on the first page of google for a number of different myspace related keywords. I thought this would be a nice niche to work in for a bit. I actually use the product I am promoting and really like it. It pays me $15.60 for each one I sell, so it adds up fairly quickly.

I can't tell you exactly how it's going so far, because there is some lag time waiting for approval at the article directory and none of my myspace articles are live yet. I'm expecting at least one to go live today. It will be interesting to see the conversion from the squidoo site. I didn't follow the "make is simple" rule for squidoo, and have added more information each day on different aspects of marketing with myspace. So we shall see. If I don't get conversion I may try to make more myspace lenses at Squidoo with one piece of the puzzle in each. Time will tell on that I guess.

So anyway,

• Rewrote, submitted an article ~ 20 minutes ~ including interruptions
• Added relevant info to squidoo lens ~ 20 minutes ~ got a little sidetracked looking through other lenses.
  
• Pinged lens ~ I'm not sure how much good continually bookmarking a lens is doing so I didn't do it today. I think it would be better suited for blog posts which are new content in and of themselves each day.
  

So there ya have it. Work done, less than an hour, with a crabby toddler, and a husband sanding and repainting a new desk to boot.

Have an amazing day ya'll !
See ya tomorrow.

Jackie Lee :)

Day 3 ~ Mary K

Alrighty.... It was an interesting day this day 3. I think I was expecting too much of myself and found myself needing to re-center over and over again. Some days are just wonky that way!

Ommmmmmmmmmmm

I'm doing a better job with my time but lost close to an hour today around placing an ad. I haven't personally seen great results from running classified ads of any kind online (although I know people who have great results from Craigslist) but I had hear that there is one classified ad place that Google seems to like.

Well, it's called UsFreeAds but I can tell you, after 50 minutes of reading and researching the site, for what I'm up to the truly 'free' ads are virtually useless! Don't want to belabor the point but I'm really invested in seeing if cash can be generated by anybody just using FREE tools so I couldn't even place the ad!

The good news is the AD itself only took about 5 minutes because I was able to lift copy already in place about the product.

I'm already tempted to change course about the particular product line I'm promoting for this week but I had decided to focus on one line or 'category' of products for at least a week so I'll stay the course!

The way the day shaped up around the 30 Day Marketing Experiment was as follows:

• Writing and submitting AD - approx. 1 hour (with no ad actually submitted - blech!)

• Added a section to yesterdays Squidoo Lens and promoted it - 1 hour (well spent, rank already rising which often indicates a higher position in search engines meaning more eyeballs searching on my keywords are likely to find my lens and (ideally) buy my stuff! ;-)

• Posted to Blog - approx 1 hour (discovered a new, at least to me, thing called 'video units' that allow you to set up a customized YouTube screen on a blog or website that is responsive to your keywords. This means the videos streaming to your site will always be fresh and changing and theoretically on topic. Pretty cool! Have to admit, I got a bit mesmerized watching the different videos right on my own blog. Some might call that a time waster? ;-))

Again... I didn't write or submit an article. I am applauding that I took the time to check out the classified ad thing. I don't have the energy desired around posting classifieds so I can drop that element all together and tomorrow focus on writing and submitting an article or two!

I'm also realizing (primarily from reading Jackie's posts, LOL) that it will be more valuable for me to get up early and sit down for a couple of hours and get the tasks done. I'm excited about this now because I have more clarity about the specifics of the tasks I'll be doing. The way I've approached things these first three days was that I would do a little bit, then something would come up to pull me away or I discovered I had to do some exploring in order to use the tool I was working with... and meanwhile, the fact I wasn't reaching completion with the task was weighing on my mind.

This had the effect of making me feel as though I was putting a LOT more time on all of this than the actual measure indicates. It also got in the way of me completing some other things that I enjoy spending time with and/or have committed to completing. By being clear about the steps to take I should be able to eliminate that 'hangover' feeling that drained my energy today. ;-)

I'm gonna go take an alka seltzer, c'ya ====> ;-)

--Mary K

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((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Day 3 ~ Jackie Lee

Good Morning!!

I'm finding it quite amazing how LITTLE time it takes to get this stuff done, when I know exactly what I need to do.

Today's tasks took less than an hour.

• Article ~ I used another myspace article I had previously written, changed it up a little for this purpose.
  
• Squidoo Lens ~ I added a module about the new myspace topic to the lens I started yesterday and republished it.
  
• Pinged and Bookmarked

All in less than an hour.

I'm seriously surprised by how much time I have been wasting in the day. Now don't get me wrong, I'm still probably frittering away the same amount of time, but now I do it AFTER I get my specific tasks done.

This has done two things. Decreased guilt over "not getting anything done" and Increased, "woo hoo I rock, Look I got all my stuff done!!". With that good feeling it's easy to go about the day.

I noticed Mary K, put adding a relevant post to a blog as part of her plan. Since I am doing this "full time" and it seems to be taking so little time, I think I am going to add a blog as well.

So added to the plan is:

• Make a relevant to article post on appropriate blog
  

Ok, today I'm going to do a little blog research, and probably get my parenting/spirituality blog tidied up and ready to go again. (poor thing just left for a while to collect dust.)

I can't wait to see what the other ladies are up to!!! See ya'll tomorrow.

Jackie Lee :)

Day 2 ~ Mary K

As you may have guessed... Jackie is our 'early bird' -- Hmmm, maybe that's why she seems to catch the worms!?!! ;-)

I, on the other hand, have a body clock that insists 6,7 and 8 o'clock only occur once a day. (I have been known to still be up at 5am so I'm quite sure that the other numbers occur twice a day. :-)) One of the beauties of working from home on the Internet is that it gives me the flexibility of "working" (and I use that term loosely) with my body rhythm rather than against it!

However, that doesn't seem to take away my capacity to spend time in 'non-specific-result-producing' endeavors!!! But it sure is FUN!!!!

So here's what I accomplished:

• Put up a Squidoo lens - roughly 2 hours (Please go take a peek and leave a comment :-) Baby Signs ~ Powerful Language
  

• Posted to my Unconventional Parenting Blog - 30 min

• Pinged and Bookmarked - 10 min. (didn't need to take that long...but hey, there are interesting things there *sheepish grin*)

Didn't get the article written and submitted
Didn't get the Ad written and submitted

AND went over the 2 hour time limit I'm aiming for so I definitely need to tighten things up and smooth things out because I've got other projects to attend to in addition to this wonderful 30 Day Marketing Experiment!

Wheeeeeeeee... can't wait to see and feel how tomorrow goes!!!

Oh... just a sec, gotta go check my email ===> Nope, no cash yet, though it seems I have $400 gone missing. Don't be alarmed and have no fear... the games have just begun!!! LOL

Over and Out,
I so appreciate you,

--Mary K

¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:-
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((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-
-:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light

EXPECT MIRACLES!

Day 2 - Jackie Lee

Welcome to Day 2!

This morning I woke to a bit of some shocking news in regards to another project I'm working on. It had the potential to completely knock me off track for the whole day. In fact, it started to. Then I remembered I had specific daily actions I needed to take. Wow, right back on track. There's time to deal with those issues later.

So I got on track and managed to get through my specific actions pretty quickly today.

• Write an article ~ today I rewrote an article I had written a while ago so it only took a few minutes
• Make a short squidoo lens for keywords. I kept it short today and it took less than 30 minutes today. (Hanna has been super fussy today, and my husband's got the "organize the house bug" so I've had a lot of interruptions, and found it difficult to really track the time I spent on each thing)
• Posted article to two article directories
• Pinged and Bookmarked.
  

It all took way less than three hours this morning, even with all the interruptions.

It was great that I was up early again today and was able to get this all done. Now I have the afternoon free to deal with other issues, play with Hanna and organize the house with hubby!

See ya tomorrow~
Jackie Lee :)

Day 1 ~ Mary K

=====> sliding in at the end of the day... whew! LOL

It's been an exciting and revealing day! I've learned a lot about how I get side-tracked and how to get myself back on track. If it weren't for this experiment I don't believe I'd be on track yet! ;-)

I want to share my intentions for this venture --

• To make $1000 in the next 30 Days
• To engage in clear, specific actions around this project for a maximum of 2 hours daily
• To share my results honestly and in a meaningful way so that others can expand on my experience to attain their own success
• To become more consistent and disciplined in my writing
• To create a system that can easily be duplicated by myself and others for sustaining the flow of cash

Okay... Since this is Day 1 I was going to confess that the day was a wash for me. Not true! As I went to write up my list of daily actions I realized that I didn't have the clarity I needed. So, today was a learn as you go kind of day.

Man... I now realize what a challenge it will be for me to share with you how long things are taking. I am appreciating the new clarity I've gained about how I actually take action in order to feel my way through to the clarity of what action to take! :-) Lest you're totally confused by that statement let me just explain that as I started writing up the 'Action List' I realized I had some prep work to do, like gathering links together and creating logins for various social bookmarking sites that I had previously overlooked. This took me hours... I don't know exactly how many because there were many interruptions and various distractions. As I move forward with this experiment I am going to set aside a couple of hours each day where I won't answer the phone or let myself get side-tracked by IM's ;-)

Now that I feel as though I have my feet on the ground I've come up with a plan that feels good.


For the next 30 Days I will:

• Create a simple Squidoo lens based on chosen keywords
• Write an article based on those chosen keywords
• Submit article to directories
• Ping and Bookmark the Squidoo Lens
• Post one Ad
• Post to one of my most relevant blogs

That's it... that's all. Six simple actions performed consistently that will result in my earning $1000 over the next 30 Days!!!

Wish me luck!!! See ya tomorrow!!

Mary K

Day 1 Jackie Lee

Hello,
I'm Jackie Lee. I've been involved in internet marketing for about 5 years now, with off and on success. I'd like to be able to see consistent and measurable results from the time I spend on marketing. I have a tendency to jump from one thing to another, never allowing any ONE thing to work. I am excited about having a plan and some action steps to follow through with each day to keep me on track.

I have an 18 month old little girl named Hanna. Having a little one around brings its' own distractions and challenges. I'm hoping this experiment will help me show all the stay at home moms out there, that it really can be done!! So on with the experiment.

Well I woke up this morning at 6:15a. Partially because of daylight savings time, and partially because I am soooo excited about this challenge.

I beat Hanna out of bed,(which NEVER happens) and therefore had some time without distraction to work on my plan.

Let me outline my plan of attack and then I'll tell you how it went today.

For the next 30 days I will:

• Write an article based on chosen keywords
• Create small squidoo lens based on same keywords
• Post article to directories linking to lens in resource box
  
• Ping lens
• Social Bookmark lens

Wow, it feels good to have a plan.

Here's how the plan shaped up today.

• Writing article: 1 hour including research
• Creating the lens: 2 hours ~ the lens ended up being a little bigger than what the method calls for, but I think it will work out well in the long run.
• Posting article: 2 minutes
• Pinging lens: 30 seconds
• Bookmarking lens: 30 seconds
  

Total: 3 hours 3 minutes.

This time includes getting Hanna breakfast and few other distractions one has with a toddler around.

If you'd like to take a look at the lens I created here it is.

How to Create Backlinks

It feels really interesting to know my marketing is done for the day. I'm already starting to notice where I have been wasting time and energy. Having a list of actions is making it easier to stay on task. Let's see how I'm liking the list in a week or two. :)

That's it for me today. Please feel free to leave me a comment in the comment section. I'd love to hear from ya!!

Jackie Lee :)

Technorati Tags:
30 day challenge, marketing with a toddler, stay at home mom, work at home mom, backlink, how to create backlinks, 30 day plan

Bum Marketing 30 Day Experiment

Hello!! Welcome to the 30 day marketing experiment. We are Mary K, Kat and Jackie Lee, three friends and co creators who have been working online for various amounts of time and having various amounts of monetary success. We will each introduce ourselves here shortly.

We were talking and wondering what gets in the way of success online? The three of us have loads and loads of information, that can't be the problem. Well. . . maybe it is part of the problem. We have too much information.

Jackie is an information junky. She gets ebook after ebook, reading and reading, learning new things and thinking, "OH this might be just the thing I need to be successful." Just when she starts getting involved in that she learns something new and jumps ship because this might be just the thing.

She knows so much but doesn't keep at any one thing long enough to see if it really IS THE THING!!

Mary K takes an eclectic approach to everything! Vulnerable to analysis paralysis in her efforts to discern the best method, tool, style or approach she's been known to get sweaty palms at the mere idea of a 'timed' event. Will the Bum Marketing 30 Day Experiment be just edgy enough to move her toward the goal, proving that virtually anyone can earn $1000 in 30 Days, or will she cave and fall off that edge?!?

Kat is an idea machine who dives into things with out a second thought - which is wonderful and in the long run will serve as abundance machines - however, this often leaves her scrambling for much needed capital to create the next part of her masterpiece. Slowing down long enough to focus on some marketing that will produce capital now might just be what the doctor ordered.

Knowing, intellectually, that we should be experiencing way more success we decided to try an experiment.

We decided to pick ONE THING and do it for 30 days and see what happens.

We chose to focus on Bum Marketing for this challenge because

• It seems really doable, whether you are a pro or it's your first day online


• There are enough variations we could each do something a little different


• There is no financial investment necessary to get started and to follow this method

If you aren't familiar with the "Bum Marketing Method" it involves writing articles to market affiliate products.

The three of us will each be taking a little different tack to the method, and we'll see what works and what doesn't. For the first day of the challenge we will list what our daily action steps will be, and as we go on we'll be accountable to each other, and to you, to make sure we are following our plan.

You READY? I know we are. Let's get started on this

Bum Marketing Challenge for One thousand in dollars in 30 Days!!!

The 30 Karat Team