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    • 30 Day Challenge: 1 up, 1 down


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    I have two niches working for me in the 30 Day Challenge right now. The first, which I wrote about previously, rose quickly when hosted on Tumblr, but has gone nowhere since moving to Blogspot. I’m a little disappointed, but this is the less promising of my two niches, and the harder to create new content for. Yes, this is the niche that I was so excited about when I first discovered it. I won’t say I was wrong, but when I discovered Niche #2 I was even happier with it.

    Niche #2 on the other hand, started slowly, then zipped into the top ten. Given that four of the pages ranked ahead of me on Google are the company about whose product I am blogging, this is a very encouraging result. This is also a niche in which I can create my own products someday, which ultimately is the goal of learning how to do all this. Until I am ready to create my own products, however, Niche#2 is a very content rich field without a lot of competition for my specific keywords.

    When the 30 Day Challenge is over, I will finally link to my two niche sites. Not that I am hiding anything (and I could certainly use the backlinks), but I am trying hard to maintain the integrity of the challenge. I am testing the theory that the process works, and driving part of this site’s traffic to my other sites kinda cheats the system.

    On a vaguely semi-related note, I am going to post a page soon with links to all of my social networking profiles. It’s just one of those things… I had no real interest in social network sites until recently, but now that I am interested, I am very interested. I feel just a little silly for admitting this publicly, but I’ve even started using Twitter. Mostly just because my wife started as well, and has me on her follow list, so this is a fun way to send her messages about stuff I’m doing without having to send a full e-mail. (Company firewall blocks all the chat programs unfortunately)

    Aside from the very popular services, anyone have a suggestion of other social networking sites to join? What are your favorites? So far I like Facebook, hate Myspace, and really want more people in my LinkIn network even though there’s not much to it. BlogCatalog is a lot of fun, and I just don’t see much to like about MyBlogLog. The Blog Mastermind group on Ning is too quiet. I want people to follow, and people to follow me on Twitter. I want more people on my Pownce friends list. I don’t much care for Digg, but I’d be happy if people befriended me there and Dugg my submissions. I really like StumbleUpon, and hope more people do the same there as well.

    So what am I missing? What’s your favorite general purpose or niche social networking website?

    4 Responses

    1. Gravatar

      BeachBum

      August 22nd, 2007 at 11:22 am

      1

      I am in the 30DC too. This is my 3rd year. I’m not going to announce my new blogs until the challenge is over either. So far I had 2 AdSense clicks and no product sales. I made top 10 on Google with blogspot, but it took 4 days. I would say join MyBlogLog, they generate some traffic for me.

      BeachBum

    2. Gravatar

      Emma

      August 22nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm

      2

      I’m also in 30DC, Still trying to find the right niches. I too am a huge fan of Stumble they’ve given my blog a lot of traffic.

      I think I’ll take BeachBum’s recommendation and check out MyBlogLog. Emma

    3. Gravatar

      Rich

      August 23rd, 2007 at 12:33 am

      3

      MyBlogLog’s ok, but the BlogCatalog design is much more community oriented, I think. As you can see in my right-hand sidebar, I’m a member of both, and there’s no reason not to be. In fact, I assume most bloggers are members of both. If not, they should be. BlogCatalog sends me about three times as much traffic. Whether that is because it’s a better site, or because I’m much more active there, I can not say.

      I have found a lot of great stuff through StumbleUpon since I first joined it a couple of years ago. I’ve only recently attempted to self-promote with it, and the results are not bad, given the minimal effort I put into it.

      I’ll probably put up my list of social networking contacts this weekend. It’s not long, but I’m hoping to expand it.

    4. Gravatar

      bimmy the bookish

      August 23rd, 2007 at 7:12 pm

      4

      Hi Rich,
      Thanks for all these names and comments - I’m intending to hit the social networking thing as part of my laser beam strategy for promoting my business online.
      Got a lot of books to sell! (and CD’s and CDroms and……)
      My copy of 4HWW arrived yesterday, so am having to allocate specific areas of time in the day to read that and catch up on my networking.
      Given that all of this technically counts as work, the sooner I get the hang of working more efficiently the better!
      This week my morning reading half hour is taken up with Seth Godin’s “Everyone’s an expert”. I am more excited about this than a very excited thing. It is EXACTLY right for me just now, and so is this social networking thing - WOT LARKS!
      Oh, Ive just remembered that I came online to sign up for BlueHost and Wordpress, and got distracted by blogcatalog!
      Ahem, excuse me……


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