TaggZilla has been a long haul in development. It is now launched and live.

Here’s what I got for you:

Right now you can sign up for free for a TaggZilla account and join the community.

Here’s what it does for you:

• brings all 8 biggest social sites together under 1 roof for easy participation in them
• easy to use interface for posting your stories and voting on member stories
• forum to ask questions and find out if your content is deemed to be quality content
• training and instruction from 2 of the top social media site masters on the internet

Here’s what I want you to do next:

Go to social media news tribe and get signed up for free.

Also, to practice what I preach and prove I’m a social media user you can see taggzilla’s

Social Media Marketing MyBloglog Community

Ed talked about market research and I’m looking forward to Market Samurai anticipating a huge shortcut in time required to do market research. In talking with a challenge member named Eric (seo expert) he told me keyword research which was taking him 4-5 hours is now taking him 5 minutes.

He inputs the keyword, Market Samurai runs for 20 minutes which is time you can use to write content, and spits out a report. He can look at the report in 5 minutes and tell which keywords are worth going after.

It may take you a bit longer to look at the report since you’re new but the power of the tool is huge! It saves loads of time.

My niche ideas are listed below. You’re getting my real niche ideas Because my goal with this challenge is to apply the cutting edge training to my 2 current projects. I’m not starting any new ones but if I was these are what I’d go after. So be confident you’re getting the real deal and not something watered down.

Market Research

As Ed said you don’t have to be passionate about a market or your idea but you do have to be curious or at least interested.

He talked about using google news and subscribing to the feed and also google alerts. I suggest you hold off on setting those up until you use Market Samurai to determine which market you’re actually targeting.

This saves you lots of time by not setting up markets/ideas which you won’t be targeting. And you don’t have all the extra clutter in your google reader.

Quick tip: once you setup your blog or website you can copy & paste the web address into google alerts and it will send you daily updates on who’s linking to you (assuming you select the email me daily option). This is what I do for my sites.

Research Resources

http://pulse.ebay.com - great to see what physical products are hot sellers

http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm - great to see what digital products are hot sellers

http://www.mygazines.com – magazines site; as Ed said if there’s a magazine for it there will be ads in that magazine and those ads must be making sales in that market

http://www.technorati.com – up-to-the-minute info on your market because this site covers the entire blogosphere (almost the entire; like 100 million blogs); see what’s heating up in the blogosphere

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers - shows all their best selling products books, movies, etc. See what people are buying now. Also you can click on the category of interest to you from Amazon’s main page to search best sellers within a category once you have an idea what category you want to go after.

Recommended Resource

http://delicious.com – store all your bookmarks online so you can access them from anywhere. No longer do you have to worry about losing your bookmarks due to a hard drive crash. Also you can find the links you need even when you’re away from your home computer or laptop. I use this daily.

Niche Ideas

(I haven’t run any of these through Market Samurai so don’t know if they fit the 30dc mold. Just ideas which might work to give you a jumping off point based on my 30dc experience)

Politics – are hot right now due to upcoming election. You maybe able to target local areas and sell political paraphernalia like buttons, bumper stickers and the like of your favorite candidate. More of a quick profit potential because the buzz and interest will die down after the election.

Pets – pet owners are fanatical about their pets and spend gobs of money on them. You should target smaller phrases. For example: doggy pedicure or dog fur coloring kits. I saw on the news people are paying hundreds of dollars to dye their dogs hair. Maybe you could sell do-it-yourself home dog coloring kits.

Music – maybe you could sell sheet music for blind piano players. That’s the level of market specificity you need to achieve. Selling piano music is far too broad.

Hobbies – things like model toy trains, action figure collectors, stamp collectors, mountain climbing all maybe niches that could work.

Fishing – huge market. Perhaps you could have a guide on how to fish for pike in Minnesota or “the proper way to gear up for your fishing expedition”, or maybe a partner up with a travel service and offer your “Top 5 fishing destination adventures for 2008” and offer special pricing packages

Golf – huge market, rabid spenders. Maybe you could find a golf pro and do a guide for “How to End Your Slice for Lefties” because there are far fewer lefty golf players than those who hit right handed.

I hope this has sparked some ideas for you, saved you time with your bookmarks and refinding cool sites, as well as given you some new research avenues you didn’t previously know existed.

This is a short 3 page guide I created for newbies about internet bookmarking and the value of it to your sites.

It covers the top 8 highest trafficked sites but the concepts can be applied to the smaller bookmark services as well (tools like socialmarker.com and socialposter.com).

Download it at the link below:

Internet Bookmarking for Dummies

These notes are very raw since I didn’t have time to edit and give you the highlights as I’ve done with the past 2 notes.

Getting TaggZilla ready for the August 1, 2008 launch has been keeping me uber busy.

This is a training video you can find on Frank Kern’s mass control blog where he’s interview PPC campaign manager and expert Matt Trainer.

what 3 keyword tools do you prefer?

keywordspy.com, keycompete.com, hexatracker.com

will use Google API to find competitor ads which are running, tracks ad in the top 5 positions and will track it over time, do for 21 days and see which ads are running all the time, uses google keyword tool to expand the related phrases and monitor the ads for those terms

hexatrack.com –> does all this and is Matt’s favorite tool

get 1 keyword working, expand it from there

wordtracker.com, speedppc.com (takes root keyword and expands on it by adding cities; “how to buy used car” “los angeles how to buy used car”), keyworddiscovery.com (uses wordtracker API)

spy on comp, discover what’s working for them, expand on it, do further market research (type in targeted keyphrase, look at top 2-3 results in unpaid listings, see if they do adsense and then do site targeted advertising & content network on those)

adsensefinder.com (shows which of the top 2-3 sites does adsense)

PPC:

compose 1st ad - look at comp, model the top ones, goal is high click-thru, must get qual. score high enough in order to get cheap clicks; at start want the visitors and to build the quality score

run tests - split test only 2 at a time, after 20 clicks if one is killing other run with it; when they’re close run more clicks

grand theft ads - watch others to model the best ones; ninja tools which help will show the ads running alot in high positions and the landing pages they go to; tools give idea which ads are profitable undercoverprofits.com (expensive) adspotpro.com (cheap, gets info you need) give it the keywords and it runs the reports

Next is launch preparation, so far it’s all been pre-game; $5/day

select top 10 keywords from the testing (most targeted, best ROI keywords)

Kern has about 100 keywords which bring 80% of his volume in his niche businesses

10 keywords per ad group, start with 1 ad group per campaign; start with only 1 campaign

take out negative keywords (free, guide, article, free download, free software)

setup account in google friendly fashion, then get max click thru

load campaign using adwordseditor which is a free tool google provides

edit campaign settings: set max bid at $5/click

google sets min of $.30/click up to $5/click for unproven terms, must prove yourself to google; set maximum at $20/day spend (must set it at least $10 in order to get the clicks); never been charged the full $5, has been charged max of $2.20/click, only do this for max of 1 day

turn on position preference to #1, want that top position so you can get super high click thru rate, can get 40%-50% click thru rates and only do this for 1 day; next day drop bid down to whatever they charged you (or even 10% below that number), then they may only charge you $1 for that day, repeat the reduction process for the 1st 7 days, maintain the high click thru, relevancy, and stay in the #1 position to show google you know what you’re doing

within 4-5 days has gotten it down to .$10-$.15/click and stay in that top position for when Matt Trainer has been doing this; purpose of the ramp down is to drive click costs thru the floor

Set this for all traffic except U.S. & Canada; once ramp down process is completed then can open it to US & Canada; goal is 5%-15% click thru rate on day 1, the minimum is 2.5% click thru; if it’s below 2.5% then delete the whole campaign because the quality score will be so low you can never redeem yourself in google’s eyes

Keyword tracking, institute this fast because you have to know what keyword ROI is; use hexatrack.com to track ROI on each individual keyword

Put all your keywords to work; expand your universe as much as possible; get into site targeted and content network advertising; get cheap clicks from these sites by advertising best keywords on these sites (only bid on sites that show the ads above the fold); can still get $.01 clicks on the content network; do this after proving yourself on the search network; this is where you really ramp up your visitor volume

double listings - emulate something that works, clone site by doing a review site, don’t do a word for word, knock yourself off, setup whole new domain with different content and look under a different adwords account; create a similar site to promote the same product, now will have 2 listings instead of 1, review sites work well for this strategy

Ryan Deiss –> sneaky way to get around google quality score

Video demo –> http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/?p=31

go to google’s keyword tool, “free google keyword tool”

paste url into ‘website content’ button to see what google, Perry Belcher told Ryan about it, and google will tell me what they think the page is relevant for, then click ‘get keyword ideas’; then just look at the list of keywords that are relevant

does multiple keywords for you and lists them in order of rank

can show/hide columns to see what bids must be to rank highly

human review could slap you if you are just directing them to an affiliate page

he sets up 10 day mini businesses to sell an aff product from clickbank, tests the market, then decides if he wants to create own product

Eben did a great video about time management at his gurumastermindvideoblog.com and you can check out his ‘Time Management’ Video if you want to watch. I believe it’s about 25 minutes long.

Bottom line, here’s the highlights:

1. Knowledge workers (yourself as an entrepreneur) are hardest to manage because it’s difficult to know what activities add the most value

2. Law of Value - value isn’t what you say it is, it’s what your customers say it is

3. There are common things which cause you to lose focus AND common patterns which you must get working for you to be successful

4. 3 C’s of Business - customers, conversion, content. How you should allocate your time to these different areas to insure maximum success.

Here are the full notes:

Peter Drucker - The Knowledge Worker

Hard to figure out what part of knowledge work creates the value; not like a tire maker where you can look in their bin and see they created 32 tires today and had a productive day

harder to manage knowledge workers - must manage self

Law of Value

isn’t what I say it is, what cust says it is

Use time and knowledge to create things cust. think are valuable.

————————————–

No one looking over shoulder to tell you, you are doing valuable money making stuff

Key Areas Where You Lose Focus

Multitasking - very bad, never do, tim ferris talks about how multitasking study showed multitasking lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana; stop it immediately, focus on 1 thing at a time

distraction, interruption - when distracted it takes 20 mins to get back to the point you were at; stop allowing self to be interrupted & distracted

Friction - inefficiency caused by something not working smoothly or something not supporting you; ex: writing content and you had a fight with a family member earlier causes emotional friction inside you which hinders your ability to create & focus; where do you have friction in your life? where is it around you? eliminate those things; have a comfortable workplace; eliminate physical, emotional, psychological friction

Monkey Mind - most difficult to get rid of, monkey mind and monkey emotions; a thought inside of us triggers a domino effect about all these other things, your mind ‘runs away’ in a thousand different directions

Let go of these 4 things

There’s no time management — only self-management

Effective People Have Patterns

Create Desire within - allow it to fuel your perseverance; create your own faith in yourself, do the right things 1 step at a time eventually you’ll reach success; determination, persistence; am i going to really do this? yes. how long is it going to take? i don’t know but I’m going to see it through to success; waking up every single day and keep marching toward your goal, keep doing the things you know you need to do even if not seeing instant results

Clean Focus - The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker; most important point is ‘work in focused blocks of uninterrupted time…minimum of 2 hours’; if you don’t you’re making all the mistakes of ineffective people; critical to focus on 1 thing and 1 thing only without distraction or interruption

Human Rhythm - Tony Schwarz The Powerful Engagement talks about it; body operates in a rhythm (ex: day and night rhythm); have other rhythms happening subconsciously; the altradian rhythm every 90-120 mins we experience a bit of loss of energy & focus; have to chill out for a while then it gets refreshed for more focus; take a break and renew, don’t drink caffeine or shooter; work for a couple hours then take a break (breaks must be completely detached)

Create Routines for Everything Important to do - structure is paramount for humans; do important things at same time everyday; create on-ramp to the activity and an off-ramp for it; 99% of what we do everyday is a habitual routine; most thoughts, feelings, actions are the same everyday; take control of that and do a routine that gets lots of great results

Renew Yourself - John O’Neill The Paradox of Success; we get so overworked we become addicted to it and lose touch of who we are and why we got into it in the first place; unplug for a day or 2 at a time

Do these 4 things and all you do will be more valuable

3 Pillars - avg workweek 5 days at 10 hours per day

Customers - getting new customers, affiliate getting, traffic getting; spend at least 40% of time on this; 4 hours per day spent on this

Conversion - 20% of time spent here, 2 hours per day; everything which happens after the visitors show up

Content - products, promotion articles, press releases, blog posts, etc; 10% of time spent here, 1 hour per day

Spend the most time where you get the most leverage

Management - 3 Pillars, 30% of time

time

people

business

Stephen Covey “Time Management is a misnomer the challenge is to manage ourselves.”

Learn how to manage selves, thinking and actions

Most important time to manage is first hour or 2 of your day before you go to work; you are highest leverage in your business; must have strong, healthy body and mind

Bill philips Body for Life #1 selling fitness book of all time, the 1st meal is the key to your day; if you don’t eat a great, healthy meal you are going to think about cheating on meals the rest of the day; the 1st meal sets the context for the rest of the day; works the same way for exercise

Eben’s morning ritual: wake up, drink 1 liter of fresh, clean water; do some exercise for 30 minutes; does heart rate raising exercises which resets & renews emotions, blanks the emotional slate and makes you feel better emotionally; gets best ideas when exercising; 5 mins of meditation just sit down and breathe for 5 mins to calm mind; then have really healthy meal; reads for 10-15 mins of really inspiring stuff

this sets you up for a really healthy day

setup routine for the 1st hour of my day

#1 List all things in life and biz which create distraction, interruption, friction; list the things I do which create friction in my life & in others; figure out the top 3 friction and eliminate them; eliminate constant email checking, only check it twice a day

#2 List top 3 things which create value in my business; spend at least 1 hour per day in clean focus on that 1 activity

#3 Create a morning routine for the 1st hour of everyday; make self strong first