Day 1 – Symphony Of Four Parts, Our Tools, Ideas

Are you a Thirty Day Challenger from last year? If so, then you most assuredly already know the Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts!

I’m excited to be a part of my first Thirty Day Challenge. Actually I did go through last years challenge, but not during the official start and end time. I’ve been preparing for this years challenge, brushing up on my skills, reviewing the preseason, using what I learned at last years challenge…etc.

As I mentioned in my Thirty Day Challenge Launch post this year I plan on putting together a blog article each day to document 2 things:

1. Important points from TDC training lessons
2. What I’m doing for the TDC

These writings won’t be as extensive as Mike Mindel’s blog from last year. After all there will be text transcripts of all of this years videos (check out the TDC website for that). However, I do want to pull out key points that I pick up from each days lessons. This way I can just review my blog post and not be forced to sift through the videos a second time.

Without further adieu…Day 1 of the Thirty Day Challenge (4 videos (including the intro) a little over 30 minutes of content):

The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts

As I said earlier, if you went through last years Thirty Day Challenge then this is not new for you. For my notes and for those of you who are new to the Thirty Day Challenge the magnificent Symphony of Four Parts:

The order is very important…follow the order below. DO NOT TRY TO CREATE PRODUCT FIRST! You need to make sure there’s a market before you decide on your product

1. MARKET RESEARCH - 95% of mistakes are made at the market research stage. You can find out exact data on who your customers are. This stage used to take 6-10 days now will only take a few hours.
2. TRAFFIC- Without traffic you’re not going to sell squat. We know whether we will get any traffic for your product. You need to get traffic free or at the cheapist possible price.
3. CONVERSION- Turn the traffic we are producing into money!
4. PRODUCT – If we do all the stuff (Market Research, Traffic, Conversion) before this then the market will tell us exactly what product or service to sell.

These things will allow us to conquer and create a small business online.

Tools Of The Trade

We mentioned these in the Thirty Day Challenge Launch article. The two most important tools are Twitter and Twhirl to keep in touch and communicate. If nothing else try to watch the Twitter and Twhirl videos.

• Flock – a secondary browser would be firefox
• Twitter
• Twhirl
• Google Reader – watch the video and save an hour a day
• StumbleUpon
• YouTube
• Google Subscribe
• Friend Feed – good to use for teams and sharing information
• Video Tips

All of this stuff is posted up in the Thirty Day Challenge Preseason videos.

The Getting Of Ideas

Try to get 5-10 ideas that we can test new software to find if there’s a market. You can use your own business, but it’s also recommended that you come up with other great ideas that may complement your existing business.

Two things for your ideas

1. Find a topic you’re interested in. In the future when you’re an expert you can just go through the process to find any ideas, but for now go with something your interested in.
2. Choose a small niche. Don’t go for a huge market.

Idea Generators:

• Amazon – this is a great place for finding ideas. – go to books | magazines and newspapers. Check out the categories section. Take a look at the best sellers.
• Google – type your keyword into google, click search, then click “News” on the filter toolbar.
• Google Alerts – Scroll the the bottom of your News search and click on the hyperlink: latest news on keyword with Google Alerts
• Google Reader – You can add your Google News as an RSS feed to your Google Reader.

I liked this quote: “The great way to start a small fortune is to begin with a large fortune and start a magazine business (or insert whatever money losing venture here)”

Steps To Take Today:

• Come up with 5-10 market ideas
• Go to Google News | type in your market ideas | Take the RSS feed and put it in your Google Reader

Hint: Go with smaller markets. People who’ve taken on smaller markets have done better with the Thirty Day Challenge in the past.

Did I leave anything out? Do you have any great ideas you’d like to share with me?