If you want a chance to win a trip to Australia, just make a dollar this weekend and see Ed. You’ll be entered and you might win! Well, I’m not expecting to see Australia anytime soon.

I checked on my blog that was ranked 220th yesterday and today it was up to #78. I didn’t do anything differently. Interesting.

Ed’s teaching today centered around making the “go, no-go” decision. If the keyword phrases are not pulling the traffic, it’s time to move on. I can say that mine haven’t pulled the traffic and the odds of me making 10 bucks by Aug 31st are slim.

Just to show that I’m a glutton for punishment, I started yet another blog today on another keyword phrase. I’m using Amazon as the affiliate and they have a GREAT price currently. If I get some traffic, it might just convert! I really dig the blogger blogs. Lots of great features out of the box and extremely easy to set-up.

I have four items on eBay. Three of them start at 99 cents and one of them is a “buy it now” at 22 dollars. Nothing yet. Auctions end on Sunday night. What’s funny is that even though I want the auctions to succeed, part of me doesn’t because I don’t want to have to find packing materials, box it up, and take a trip to the post office. Can you tell eBay isn’t my gig? Here’s my promise though. If nothing sells I will relist the items and write stupid stories (like Ed showed) for each one of them.

Designer of the Day: Check out Nate Whitehill’s site. He’s done a great job redesigning John Chow’s blog. Nate, you’re a talented designer. Nice work.

Frustrating day. I’ve been working on my keyword blog for the 30 DC and today noticed that someone snagged my phrase and is ranked #2 in Google while I’m at #220. To add massive insult to my injury, they did it with a tumblr blog that has an affiliate link. I’m half-tempted to E-mail tumblr and get it banned…. God has a sense of humor.

So, that just sucks and I’m getting zero traffic to my blog. The 30 DC is looking like a fat bust so far like many of my other attempts at Internet Marketing. Don’t let anyone lie to you, playing the affiliate game is tough and takes lots of work. Of course, you can always look to pay per click when the challenge is over.

Ed’s teaching today was about writing stories for marketing copy. He used some eBay examples where people told stories (I’m skeptical they are TRUE stories) on their auctions and created viral effects with massive traffic. So let me get this, I’m supposed to make up some really great personal stories that somehow tie into my esoteric keyword phrase? I’m dead.

At times you definitely feel like the outsider looking in. I doubt I’m alone on this. It’s really hard too because you want to succeed so badly, yet it seems so elusive. It feels like running as hard as possible toward a finish line that keeps moving.

So is it

Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.
Thomas Edison

Or

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields

Today’s teaching is all about tracking. Study Internet Marketing long enough and you’ll get it drilled into your head that you must track your traffic. You’ll never know what’s going on without it. I use two programs for my sites. The first is statcounter.com. It’s super easy to set up and is easy to use on a daily basis. It offers enough information at a glance to get the job done.

When you need more data, the best tracker is Google Analytics. It’s not only the best, it’s free!

Dan coined a new phrase today: “slippery content”. Slippery content is content that effectively leads your visitor to click the affiliate link. So, not only do you write “quality” content, you need to write slippery quality content. This is where the marketing artistry comes in and why some guys get paid the big bucks. If you suck at marketing, you should consider copying the style of any Internet Guru you can find.

I finally set-up a blogger page with some new content. The site looks great and I like the poll feature you can easily add to the blog page. I made a bunch of template mods and it’s ready to go.

Almost forgot a biggie. Dan did a video on a new tracking link the 30 Day Challenge team is providing. With this link you can now track how many people click your “evil” affiliate link! Really a great feature to have. It’s another essential piece to the tracking puzzle. You need to track your visitors, your affiliate clicks, and your product conversions. The key moving forward will be to optimize each step until you are getting the most money possible from your site.