Can you believe it’s Saturday already!
Commitment!
If there is one thing i’m taking away from this challenge, it’s that it is super hard to commit to anything that requires more that 10 days effort. One of the components of this challenge is that I blog about my experiences daily for 30 days. I’ve actually found that really hard. It seems simple right? just sit down and whiz up a post. I’ve discovered it’s not quiet that simple. If my 9-5 job is really busy I can’t draft up a post during the day. If the traffic is a killer on the way home I don’t get home till late. After walking the dogs having some dinner or going for a swim it’s even later. With the exception of a post I forgot to send home i’ve managed to blog for 25 days straight. It’s not a complaint, it I’m simply finding that if I’m not committed to something it’s VERY easy to find excuses not to do it, and I suspect it’s like that for a number of things.
Moving on,
Free Tools
I use a number of tools to help me create sites and content for this challenge so I thought I’d share a few. None of the links are “affiliate” links by the way so these are actually things I use not paid ads.
I’ll start off with evernote. I’ve mentioned it before because for me it’s the best system to keep all my ideas, random scribbling and notes in one place. My stuff available wherever I can get internet access, very very cool. I use this to make random notes and I review my stuff a few times a week. I also write down blogging ideas and sometimes take pictures of wine labels and so on.
I like to put pics into my blogs and while most are from my collection I also use a free photo service called Stock.xchng. This place has thousands of pictures of which most are free to use any way I wish. I’ll download the pic, resize it and paste it into the blog post.
Tools I pay for
I’ve mentioned this before but one of my most used tools for internet marketing is market samurai. The way I use this tool is a whole separate post so i’ll just go over the headlines. I do my keyword research it in, I use it to track my sites performance, I use it to find content, and I use it to find places I can investigate for backlinks. It’s not a one stop shop but it’s critical to my little setup at the moment.
One of the tools I’m testing as part of this challenge is article marketing automation. This tool takes articles I create and distributes them to various article websites. I’m yet to fully understand if this is really working the way I want however that’s all part of the testing.
Finally if you’ve been following along you would have seen me write about spinning. I use a program called the best spinner which helps quickly rewrite articles. It takes a little bit of work to use but greatly helps in creating unique content.
These tools all help, however most of the work for me at the moment is still very “mandrolic”, or very manual. I research the niche, I spend time writing the articles, I find places to submit the articles to, I spin the articles, I find new places to send them to, and so on.
Because i’m a tight ass and still have no idea what i’m doing it’s just the way it is. Ideally i’d love to make some decent money so I can start paying some higher quality people to do things however based on my outsource experience thus far, it’s just easier for me to do everything.
