Presenter: Ed Dale
Most important thing to do is “fuel up”. So Ed is presenting a cross platform solution that works everywhere – Evernote.com. This allows you to take notes, clip webpages, and add photos (and it can read text inside the photo). Once you have an evernote account, you can access your account from any computer and smartphone.
Download the right software for your computer, and create a new account. It is free! Then install it on your machine and also install the extension for your browser (it will give you this option).
If you need a different browser extension, go back to Evernote and go to Extensions, then select the one for your browser.
Once you have the extension installed, on any web page, you can click the Evernote icon and store that page for later. Make sure that you add tags and notes both to help you when you come back to write about that web page and also it embeds the info into your memory. Tagging is important as it helps you to find the right content when you go looking for it.
Your info will then be accessible from all copies of Evernote (once you sync them to the web server 
).
The point of this is to build a repository or archive of information that you can draw upon at any time for content.
Creating notebooks enables you to organise your content easily.
Evernote also has a stack of other Extensions that work brilliantly with other tools (such as Twitter, RSS feeds etc).
For those of you on a mac check out macpowerusers.com for some other useful tools.
Action: Get set up with Evernote and start using it!
Tags: ed dale, Internet Marketing, the challenge
Presenter: Ed Dale
The Julie/Julia Project
From a humble blog came a bestselling book, an incredible movie (with Meryl Streep & Amy Adams) and a career of food journalism. This is a brilliant example of market leadership.
365 Portraits
Bill Wadman, a portrait photographer, started in January 2007 to take a portrait every day for 365 days. This bought him critical acclaim and his portraits got better and better over the course of the year. He then went to work for Time Magazine, Newsweek and others.
But I don’t know anything about my niche!
Doesn’t matter! Doing a project is one way of doing this, but the formula never changes – it is consistent work on a daily basis. If you don;t want to practise on your niche, then practise on your hobby.
This is about serving your market as your primary objective.
Action for the Off Week:
Tags: ed dale, market leadership, the challenge
Presenter: Ed Dale
Ed says this is the most important of all of The Challenge training.
What is it?
Consistency in the long term is crucial in the market place. It does not happen over night.
It can be fun – Ed says it is the most fun part of the process (which is good, because some other parts are very dull!”.
It isn’t easy and for some people it doesn’t come naturally.
Oh yeah, and it won’t make you a cent! But, it makes you a market leader and you can then make a lot of money.
The “Negatives” of Market Leadership
- There can be a negative connotation of being a “leader”. But the greatest leaders are the servants to their markets (eg Mother Theresa and Ghandi).
- You have to put your views, opinions, thoughts “out there”. You can be anonymous, but when someone comes along in your niche who practises market leadership, you will be hammered.
- As soon as you “stick your head up” and have an opinion, people will disagree with you. Some people will do this in a very personal way, which will ruin your day! You just learn to deal with it though.
- Market leadership can become all consuming.
Actions:
- Do 10 minutes of free writing.
- Do 10 minutes of editing an article from last week.
Tags: ed dale, market leadership, the challenge
Presenter: Ed Dale
Ed says the difference between businesses that make money online and those which don’t is “Market Leadership”.
Google has recently (May 2010 – Caffeine update) changed its algorithm to include elements that reflect a person’s position on the internet (such as no of Twitter followers, ratings), and then it ranks anything that person says more highly. So this is”Google clout”.
To achieve this, you need to build a tribe and demonstrate market leadership. .
Tags: ed dale, market leadership, the challenge
There are many different services that can be added through Posterous:
On Twitter – make sure you add your web address to your profile.
On Facebook – add a Facebook PAGE, using the Facebook Page Quick Start Guide found on Facebook. Can add websites to your Facebook page – which gives more banklinks.
On LinkedIn – you can add “My Company”, “My Blog”, “My Websites” – all of which give you links.
To manage all of these, add services via Posterous. So, add Twitter, Facebook Page and LinkedIn.
Take home message – always put your link into your profile on ALL services.
Tags: ed dale, posterous, SEO, the challenge
To set up: just send an email to post@posterous.com
Posterous will then reply and then you can choose a name for your account and set up a password. Add a photo (Ed says this is a good idea).
BIG TIP: In the description field, include your domain name and anchor text (main keyword phrase) by doing this:
<a href=”http://yourdomain.com.au”>Replace this with your Anchor Text</a>
It will then look like this:
Replace this with your Anchor Text
Skip the find and invite friends and then you are done 
You may need to confirm the email address (just click on the confirmation link in the email that Posterous sent you).
Set Up Auto Post
Click on “Add a Service” and then click on the icon for the type of service you want to set up (eg WordPress). Then enter your blog URL, username and password.
Repeat this for each of the Services you want to post to.
Once the Services are set up, each time you post to Posterous, it will also post to your other accounts.
Tags: ed dale, posterous, the challenge
Ed Dale says “This is the missing link!”
Go to www.posterous.com – it is a micro-blogging service. But, its best feature is that you can email in your posting! So you can take a photo with your smartphone, type in a few lines and send it to Posterous – and it is posted instantly!
Auto-post function – you can set up various blogs to receive your Posterous content. It keeps all the formatting, anchor text, links, media etc.
Facebook posting – Posterous will also post it direct to Facebook.
Tumblr – posts direct to Tumblr.
So, with one post from your iphone, it updates various blogs, posterous, Facebook and Tumblr.
Advanced Question – but what about the “duplicate content penalty”?? This is where Google does not display more than one version of the same copy in its results. BUT – Google still indexes the content AND it still counts for backlinks!!
Tags: ed dale, posterous, the challenge
A backlink is an external link back to your site.It has two components:
- the URL (ie the page it is leading to
- the text (which should be your keyword phrase) that is “hiding’ the link itself – it is called “anchor text”
It is crucial to understand “anchor text”.
Here is an example of anchor text and a link:
my keyword phrase
The anchor text is – “my keyword phrase”
The URL is “http://www.challenge.co”
Another factor in building backlinks is the “authority” level. In this lesson, Ed is using the example of “Ed Dale is the sexiest man alive”. It matters who makes the statement – if Heidi Klum or Jennifer Aniston said it, then it would carry more weight than if Joe at the pub said it! But “authority” for backlinks is not the huge factor that some people think it is.
Action: spend 10 minutes (set the timer) of “fueling”. Then set the timer again and do a 10 minute “free writing” session. Then, spend the final 10 minutes editing a writing effort from a PREVIOUS day.
Tags: ed dale, SEO, the challenge
This lesson suggests creating an account with Traffic Bug.
There is a 40 day trial for The Challenge:
www.traffic-bug.com/TC/
Note from MLM: I have used TB before and was not stoked with the results, so cancelled my subscription (it is about US$20 per month). I’m not going to report how to use TB in this post.
