The Displaced African

This is day 12 (well in truth much longer, probably 3-4 months now but my 12th post) of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

In the previous edition, we discovered the niche that I had selected: the bloggers and podcasting niche. On this episode, I walk you through how I selected what products to test and what ultimately got tested.

It All Started with Adsense

Around the time that I was going through the 4 hour work week journey, I was also at the stage where I was about to begin optimizing my Google Adsense on this site, theDisplacedAfrican.com.

For the unitiated, or for those who hate fluff talk and want to know exactly what I mean, optimization means:

The process of getting the maximum results possible for the minimum amounts of input.

In the case of Adsense this meant changing the position, font, colours, shapes etc etc of my Google adsense untilI had ads which were consistently getting clicked on the most and therefore bringing the website the most money.

Necessity is the Mother of All Invention, Innovation and a Whole Lotta Businesses

I realized that nowhere on the web did there exist a guide that taught solo WordPress bloggers such as myself how we could optimize our Adsense step by step. Specifically I wanted information on:

a) Just what ad blocks I should test and what elements I should test out of the infinite number of elements that can be tested.

b) How to automate the process.

c) A step by step by step guide.

The only guy I could find who was doing this was Joel Comm, but I felt that Joel was far too general, didn’t focus on WordPress, didn’t have a system of automating it.

A Little A-ha Moment

So I thought to myself, well since I am a WordPress blogger, a graduate of Blog Mastermind and am kinda frustrated with just how to optimize my Adsense, surely other people must be having this problem too. So, after deliberating with Yaro Starak my fellow Blog Mastermind members, I thought:

Killing 2 Birds with One Stones

Why not go onto a site like Rentacoder and get a coder to:

1) Research the best performing ad blocks for WordPress blogs.

2) Discover how to automatically test the infinite number of success elements.

3) Automate the process

4) Optimize my Google Adsense

5) Record all that into a book

6) Include a step by step guide so people can do the same

7) Mint money off of that.

Test Number One

And so, I went to Rentacoder and got a coder started on optimizing my Google Adsense and recording the results while I went onto performing research to see if any self-hosting WordPress blogger wanted to learn how to make the most money they could from their blog’s Adsense.

Tools Used

I made use of 3 tools to do my research:

1) Google Keyword Tool

2) Ask.com

3) Free search term suggestion tool which I first heard about from the Andrew and Daryl Grant website

Quick Digression

Andrew and Daryl Grant are a couple who made $250,000 in their first year as Internet marketers selling ebooks.

When you visit and opt-in to the site , they give you FREE, clear step by step instructions on how they did this.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you see yourself making your online fortunes via ebooks (sadly I don’t make a dime in affiliate commissions ofF this recommendation, but it definitely still stands).

The Research Began

And the results were not good. There were no people searching for information on how to optimize Google Adsense for self-hosted WordPress blogs. I didn’t get much better results when I tried variations and creative ways to express the term.

And So I Thought

Let me put that to the side and I will try to retail “My Adsense Guide” later using my existing connections in the Internet marketing world once that is ready.

Definitely not enough demand for my maiden voyage, though.

I wanted my maiden voyage to be an area where there is high demand, and hopefully an area in which I have expertise.

Outsourcing

Next, I moved on to outsourcing. I have been outsourcing all sorts of things for the last 8 months. A lot of the work that I do is actually dependent on outsourcing i.e. someone gives me a job to do, I outsource some or all of it while I supervise. So, I know quite a bit about outsourcing using sites like Elace, Rentacoder and GetaFreelancer.

Keyword Research Take 2

My problem when I went to perform keyword research is I didn’t know how to narrow down from the HUUUGGGGE topic of outsourcing to what it is I do:

Outsource Internet marketing related processes using freelance sites such as Get a Freelancer, Rent a Coder and Elance

Well Around That Time

I got one or two questions on my blog about podcasting. Me thought, why not?

KeyWord Research

Specific enough: Check =  When you search for podcasting you are looking for information on a very specific process known as podcasting as opposed to a more broad category like content creation or audio production.

Traffic= Check = The search traffic for terms related to podcasting were enough to at least give it a shot.

Experience and Expertise = I have my own podcast and have been podcasting for 5 months. I also have some contacts in the Internet marketing world who I knew could probably connect me to other experts. I am also part of the Blog Mastermind where we have our fair share of podcasters. So it definitely seemed like a good bet.

Keyword Research

So I set up the site www.mypodcastingtutor.com, began working on my email autoresponder sequence which includes content rich Camtasia videos. (I currently have 7 emails that go out over a month)

And I began my test.

In the next edition, of my 4 hour work week journey, I walk you through my testing process.

How goes your journey? Well, I hope?

Mwangi

Tags: 4 hour work week, 4 hour workweek, cashflow muse, Four hour work week, lifestyle design, Tim Ferriss, Timothy Ferriss

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 3:04 am and is filed under My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.