CC9 -- Kaylee

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04/01/2015 (3 hours)

Okay so I've been slacking and haven't been 100% focused on my site but I'm back in the game now and daily updates will resume.

+ 600 word blog post written
+ Weekly twitter posts scheduled
+ Blog images sourced
+ First 10% of ebook edited/designed
 
05/01/2015 (3 hours)

Another solid block of 3 hours spend on the website. Today was all about writing and publishing.

+ Published yesterdays 600 word post
+ First post by following the compelling content outline complete and ready for editing
+ Another 10 pages edited/designed for the ebook

Today I'm back on the road with my 9-5 so that'll mean I can really focus tonight.
 
06/01/2015 (1 hours)

Only managed an hour today but did manage to edit and post yesterdays blog post.

+ Edited and published blog post
+ Researched more compelling content ideas.
 
07/01/2015 (0 hours)

Today was a poor day where I spent most my time in meetings and by the time I got in from work I was pretty beat. It's a bad excuse I know!

I did manage to plan what I need to do over the next 7 days.

- Add new feature to newsletter signup script
- Fix an issue with the affiliate 'jump' page
- Produce and publish 10 pieces of compelling 'skyscraper' content.
- Seed some posts with fake comments
- Flesh out Facebook page with backdated posts (mainly images)
- Analyse how 1 traffic source works
 
08/01/2015 (4 hours)

Yesterday was a big day in terms of getting things done.

+ Outlined 3 compelling content ideas
+ Edited down my ebook (now 85 pages)
+ Started sourcing images from shutterstock
+ Downloaded a landing page template and have started to write the copy.

I've realized that I have a lot of "in progress" stuff going on such as editing the ebook and outlining content ideas. A friend recommended I look into the Kanban work management method which I think focuses on moving individual tasks across the line rather than trying to juggle 10 different things.
 
09/01/2015 (2 hours)

Today's been the first day of playing around with the Kanban work management system and it really seems like an effective no brainer!

+ Completed all 3 ideas that I outlined on Thursday (not posted yet as they're being kept in reserve for forums etc.)

11/01/2015 (2 hour)

+ Added all the major sections to the landing page (headline, sub headline, into text, call to action, image, about the author, fake social proof)
- Didn't manage to get the copy complete so that's the first task for tomorrow.

I realised today that something is better than nothing and I don't have to produce a perfect ebook before I get it out there to download.

The most important thing is giving them something to download!
 
ModernMarketeer said:
I realised today that something is better than nothing and I don't have to produce a perfect ebook before I get it out there to download.

The most important thing is giving them something to download!
Click to expand...
I would have to agree.

I wrote a niche specific ebook to help promote my information site, selling it on amazon exclusively. It was quite short compared to the one you are working on, but it ranked early and continues to pull in a sale or two per day.

When I published the book, I knew nothing about ebooks and had a limited grasp on the subject as a whole honestly. Learned it all relatively quickly, ended up taking me about 4 days start to finish. I would have to say the most important part of a successful ebook is the cover design, a half decent cover graphic will put you ahead of 90% of the competition.

Also, I joined the amazon KDP program for the first 3 months (they lock you in for 3 months), but it allowed me to run free campaigns which I could promote on ebook forums etc. Ended up getting some quality links to my ebook sales page as well as my homepage. I felt this was one of the most beneficial things that came from my ebook. So I would suggest looking into these ebook forums and getting a handle on where you can promote it / your site effectively.

Keep up the awesome work! :D
 
drsmiley said:
I would have to agree.

I wrote a niche specific ebook to help promote my information site, selling it on amazon exclusively. It was quite short compared to the one you are working on, but it ranked early and continues to pull in a sale or two per day.

When I published the book, I knew nothing about ebooks and had a limited grasp on the subject as a whole honestly. Learned it all relatively quickly, ended up taking me about 4 days start to finish. I would have to say the most important part of a successful ebook is the cover design, a half decent cover graphic will put you ahead of 90% of the competition.

Also, I joined the amazon KDP program for the first 3 months (they lock you in for 3 months), but it allowed me to run free campaigns which I could promote on ebook forums etc. Ended up getting some quality links to my ebook sales page as well as my homepage. I felt this was one of the most beneficial things that came from my ebook. So I would suggest looking into these ebook forums and getting a handle on where you can promote it / your site effectively.

Keep up the awesome work! :D
Click to expand...

This is great advice - thanks for the tip regarding the cover! I might have to spend some cash to get something professional created.

I've been using this template on the landing page and it seems pretty easy to play around with so if I can get a nice design then I'm sure it'll be easy to drop in.

12/01/15 (1 hour)

Today was all about copy as I didn't have a lot of spare time so wanted to focus on doing 1 thing well. I've got a first draft complete and later today I'm going to edit it and get it dropped into the template.

+ Landing page copy - 1st draft
- Adding copy to page
- Working on headline
 
It's been a rough couple of days where I've felt unfocused and unmotivated. I guess these are the days that test you to see how badly you want to succeed!

13/01/15 (4 hours)

+ Landing page complete (again not perfect but just want to get it live)
+ Chased my dev on affiliate tracking update.
+ Fixed broken analytics code.
+ Created 4 profiles on 2 forums - 2 x non branded & 2 x branded. I figure I'll learn/leak with the non branded before jumping in with the branded authority account - This was a mini task to get myself working.
 
@ModernMarketeer
Are you using different IP's for the branded vs non-branded accounts? It might not be a bad idea to create another set that can't be easily tied to your brand.
 
@MetaData - I never even considered using a different IP but makes total sense!

Added "re-register using proxy" to my afternoon task list
 
14/01/15 (6 hours)

Yesterday was a bit of a rough day - my web dev emailed me back saying he didn't have time to work on the two scripts that I needed and it seemed too tempting to just sit and watch trash TV.

I thought about why I was doing this, how if the site is a roaring success I'll be able to tour New Zealand an how the climb is always worth it for the view.

Basically I nutted up, put on some Rodrigo y Gabriela and started to grind it out.

It worked!

+ Wrote a product review
+ Hacked together an affiliate tracking script (with a little help from StackOverflow)
+ Produced 2 x articles
+ Re-registered 2 x non branded but through a proxy this time
+ Uploaded my landing page to the server
+ Installed WAMP on my laptop for local development
+ Setup the website on my laptop
- I didn't manage to get the graphic banner created for the ebook

I'm pretty happy with how much I managed to get through, especially as I'm still battling with HTML/PHP.
 
15/01/15 (4 hours)

Today was a good day. I was able to get my head right and effortlessly slipped into the CC9 zone!

+ Added a new site post
+ Added banner linking to landing page from the main site
+ Added tracking code to landing page (must be more on the ball with this)
+ Derped around adding a couple of comments to make my first Reddit profile more believable.

The traffic is still awful, but it's nice to see some traffic - especially now that I've excluded my IPs from being counted.

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I'm quite impressed at how a consistent effort is starting to build up. 27 posts, a downloadable resource, a handful of pages and I've started to dabble with monetizing the site (2 posts).
 
16/01/15 (2 hour)

It feels like I've turned a corner with my motivation. I now know that even if I feel super unmotivated to grind it out, if I just sit down and type I can almost always work through and get in the zone.

I didn't get as much work done as I'd hoped but with travelling home from my 9-5 week away I was keen to start getting some family time in.

One thing I'm annoyed at myself over is my lack of traffic leaking. I messaged @CCarter to see if we should be starting this process and it was confirmed I'd forgotten one of the first rules - never wait for anyone.

+ Tested landing page download script out (seems to be working)
+ Researched and drafted a site article

Next week my 1 focus will be starting to bring some traffic to the site through forum/reddit leaks.
 
18/01/15 (3 hour)
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Abraham Lincoln
Click to expand...
Today was all about planning and preparing. I've read and reread all the traffic leaks post and I'm confident I understand the principles just need to master the application.

I didn't actually get much stuff done but did find a pretty interesting tool called Reddit Later - this tool allows you to analyse a subreddit for best day/time posting. It also lets you schedule a post (meaning I don't have to stay up until 1am on a week night to hit the sweetspot).

I've made a list of some tasks to do tomorrow before attempting my first leak.

Update: RedditLater seems to have a few issues posting!
 
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19/01/15 (1 Hour)

Whenever I've tried to play the IM game in the past I've failed for 1 reason - I didn't put the theory into action.

Well today that's all changed - I sat down over lunch and wrote what I hope will be a successful traffic leak post, I added the 2 links that @CCarter talks about here and I've cleaned up the leak destination (formatting, seeded with comments).

The posts now loaded into RedditLater and ready to go out at the peak time.

+ Wrote Reddit post
+ Cleaned up leak destination

Fingers crossed I have some numbers to post tomorrow.
 
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20/01/15 (1 Hour)

Damn I messed up! It appears that RedditLater is having some kind of issue so my post didn't go live.

My mistake - I should have tested the script before attempting it live. Life goes on.

My next window is tomorrow and I'm sure as hell not going to miss that one. I'm going to manually post it on the subreddit rather than putting all my trust in something outside of my control.

Anyway back on point - today I decided to test my landing page and the only real way to do that with no traffic was to purchase some.

I decided that I wanted to test Facebook ads as it's something I can use in my 9-5 too so I went about creating a campaign. It's been running less than a day but so far the results seem pretty good...

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My ebook has had 9 downloads from the campaign which I don't think is too bad so far.

I think I needed a positive today to get me back on track after the let down of last night.

+ Created Facebook ads campaign
 
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21/01/15 (2 Hour)

Okay so yesterday was a tough day with the 9-5 gig, one of those days that really hammers you... it was a day where I looked forward to my IM grind.

Firstly an update on my Facebook Ads experiment...

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This was just a small campaign over 2 day, mainly to get people onto the landing page. I spent £20 which I think was a good investment.

The campaign managed a 2.83% click through rate and resulted in 32 email signups 16.93% conversion rate.

I'm really happy with how this went.

What I'm not too happy with are the results of my Reddit traffic leak...

I manually posted on Reddit during peak time and expected to wake up to a few hundred visits and a dozen comments but the real numbers were down... way down!

Despite reaching 12th on the 'hot' list it only received 2 comments (4 when I replied to them both) and only sent across 7 visitors with 100% bounce rate.

Driving into the office this morning I had to have a bit of a postmortem with myself and I think I know where I went wrong.

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Firstly I made the mistake of thinking. I thought I knew what kind of self.post would go down well without looking at how similar posts performed previously. This brings me on to mistake number 2...

I positioned myself at the wrong level - the subreddit is like a forum and I made the classic noob mistake of asking a "how do I make money online" style question.

Finally there was no reason for anyone to really stick around AND I didn't have any goals with the leak apart from the vague notion of tonnes of traffic.

I'm ready for the next one, I'm going to join in the community chat first and then try again with a different angle.

+ Started prioritizing my compelling content
+ Read through the latest CC9 post (not that this counts as grinding)
+ Drafted a post for the website.
+ Identified more post ideas that I can write to drop affiliate links into.

My next little project is to read and reread the notes from @CCarter and come up with an action plan based on them.
 
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ModernMarketeer said:
zk807F3.png

This was just a small campaign over 2 day, mainly to get people onto the landing page. I spent £20 which I think was a good investment.

The campaign managed a 2.83% click through rate and resulted in 32 email signups 16.93% conversion rate.
Click to expand...

Nice conversion rate, but you should work on getting a higher CTR as well. I'd aim for 5% CTR in social news feed ads and even higher for mobile.

Also try how mobile traffic converts with your funnel... you might be surprised how many people actually use their phones for surfing, shopping and getting information (stuff I'd never personally do with a phone as I'm far too lazy).
 
@Satvrn this is great advice!

I wasn't sure what a good click through rate was and what a poor rate was - now I have a good goal to aim for!

I'm planning on making the landing page more mobile friendly so I'll make sure I look into mobile traffic more.
 
22/0115 (4 Hour)

The main aim of my time in the mines today was to implement some of the changes that @CCarter PM'ed me about.

One of the biggest issues was that my mailing script was being flagged as spam - this was something I didn't even consider! I fired up Mail Tester and received the following results...

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Oh - it seems like there could be a problem!

Anyway thankfully CCarter also included a few tips on how to fix this...

3 hours of tinkering with Mandrill and my PHP script later and the results were looking much better.

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+ Installed and configured Mandrill
+ Edited PHP script to use the api
+ Edited landing page form form to include some basic validation
 
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Damn. I never considered that either, because my open rate was pretty high. I ran one of my campaigns through it and I'm getting scores between 3-4/10 due to some wording (guarantees, etc.). Time to start tinkering. Thanks!
 
23/01/15 (1 Hour)

One other area where @CCarter thought I could improve was by adding more images to my ebook so I've signed up for shutterstock/istock and I spent the day downloading a few images.

+ Downloaded 8 images from istock/shutterstock.

25/01/15 (4 Hour)

Sunday needed to be a big day as I felt that I was slacking a bit on Friday and thankfully I managed to grind out a few productive hours.

+ Started building up authority of new Reddit account by answering some questions and linking out to sites (not my own)
+ Researched 'hot' content ideas
+ Pulled together 6 links for next traffic leak experiment
+ Wrote a blog post for the next leak traffic
 
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26/01/15 (2 Hour)

This week will be a true test of my commitment to my project; There's going to be a lot going on at the 9-5 (14-15 hour days) so my plan is to push through even when I don't feel like hustling - an hour of productive work is better than sitting on my arse watching TV. 2 big goals this week for me - update the ebook and let the list know (an excuse to make contact with them), fix the final issue that @CCarter mentioned to me and run another traffic leak play on Reddit.

+ Downloaded stock image
+ Started photoshopping images to fit the ebook

27/01/15 (3 Hours)

I realized that I'm not as switched on as I thought I was. My last traffic leak was on a small sub 10,000 subreddit but with a little tweaking I could target a much more active 100,000 subscriber board that is still interested in my niche topic!

I didn't have a tonne of time today but as I'm keen to hit the window of opportunity again I focused on getting something done.

This time I'm going to craft a post that appeals to the target market and I'm going to try linking directly from the subreddit to the site rather than a self.post.

+ Researched popular content
+ Pulled in a few similar articles
+ Rewrote the content
+ Downloaded a few images
 
28/01/15 (3 Hours)

I crafted a great post, downloaded the relevant images and researched the comments on other similar posts... and then I realized how foolish I am!

We've all seen how to produce compelling content yet I wasn't following the steps.

I grabbed a coffee and reread the post and then I reread it again and then once more for good luck.

Using the steps outlined in that very post, I created my compelling content and posted it on Reddit.

A note on compelling content.

Once I'd found a piece of content that had previously done well I set about rewriting it. I got about 75% rewritten before I thought "do I really need to make this post a beautiful and unique snowflake?". After that I pretty much just copied and pasted from the original source. It's all about getting something live - I can always tart it up for Google at a later date.

Did it work?

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Okay, okay so it wasn't thousands of visitors (it was just under 500) but personally I feel that it's a massive improvement from the 7 visitors my last traffic leak received.

The next goals are to cross the 1000 visitor mark and to get a signup from the traffic leaks.

+ Wrote new blog post
+ Posted to Reddit
+ Responded to a couple of comments

It's these little victories that make me walk a little taller and keep me pushing on.

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