Keith Goodrum

There’s this bloke I met from Australia named Ed Dale:

Me & Ed Dale In NYC

And every year he has this thing called the The Thirty Day Challenge. During the month of August Ed, Dan Raine and the rest of the crew put on a day by day, step-by-step training to start an online business.

It is also for anyone who has a “brick-n-mortar” business, and wants to create a online presence. There are plenty of small business owners, artisans, musicians and others who have used this training to get themselves online.

This is ideal for anyone who has no idea how to set up a business online. They take you step by step from the very beginning all the way to up and running. Now, it does require you to actually do the work they ask… but there is plenty of support from the forums, and the training is very easy to understand.

The best part? It free… gratis… complimentary. Or as Ed likes to say: “There is no charge for awesomeness!”

I’d encourage you to head on over there and join, check out the different sections and start on the pre-season. It kicks off on Saturday, and it’s something I highly recommend. In fact, I’ll be going through the challenge myself.

Here is the site again…

http://www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com

See you there!

Ed Dale twittered about an article titled The Growing Frustration Of Ebay Sellers at Business Week online. It looks like Ebay is shutting down seller’s accounts for falling below a 4.3 on their new rating system.

Business Week profiled a couple of folks who are relying on Ebay as the overwhelming majority of their business, and in some their only source of business. The story went on to explain what these people had to do to get back into favor with Ebay.

However, this points out a major flaw in their business model.

It’s sad to see these folks getting shut down, and have their sales grind to a halt. However their fatal flaw was getting comfortable with the huge amount of business Ebay was driving to their business. They found out how vulnerable this position can be after one policy change. The old all your eggs in one basket came back & bit them hard.

Back in March I talked a little bit about the danger of relying on a single source for your traffic, business, customers. eBay’s Latest Policy Is An Important Marketing Lesson

Relying on 3rd Party’s for traffic generation is a risky strategy.

This is especially dangerous when a 3rd party like Ebay, Google or even the latest traffic darling Entrecard controls the method. When you rely on a 3rd party you are one policy change from being locked out.

It is fun and exciting to see a bull rush of traffic coming from one place like StumbleUpon, Twitter or Entrecard. It’s so easy to pour all your efforts into this traffic source, while ignoring others… But, that is a huge mistake.

Think of traffic tactics or strategies like investing.

You have to spread your risk. You don’t want your portfolio concentrated in one industry, stock or even in a single type of investment. The meltdown from this past September is an example of not spreading your investment risk. To many people thought the real estate market would always boom, and got burned when it collapsed.

The same can be said for traffic sources. One can work like gangbusters producing a large number of visitors. But, eventually something will happen. Either the traffic source will fall out of favor… Myspace comes to mind. Or, the traffic source will make a policy change, and possibly lock you out… can anyone say Google slap!

The solution is simple; make sure you have many traffic sources going at once. Not one or two… but 7, 10 or more. Having this many going at once spreads your risk. The more you have the better protected you will be when one source hits a snag, and stops producing.

It’s always better to have 100 ways to send you 1 visitor vs. 1 way to send you 100 visitors.

OK, so I check my email today & there is an email for the million dollar napkin for Ryan Deiss’s new product the continuity blueprint. And I’m thinking to myself… “Oh, boy another product launch… WEEEE!!!”

Well, maybe I wasn’t that enthused.

Anyhow I go head & click on the link to check it out… and I have to say I’m very impressed with the videos Ryan has recorded. In the 1st video he tells you the story behind the million dollar napkin. Where it came from, who was responsible for the idea and how much it has done for his business. In fact, he says that if any business idea does not fit in the napkin… he will pass. He ends the video by say if you optin, he will show & discuss the million dollar napkin in the next video.

Now I’m intrigued, and sign up to get to the next video.

The 2nd video does not disappoint. Ryan spends the next 30+ minutes laying out in detail his business model. He shows you step-by-step his marketing funnel, and tells you why each step is taken. He also discusses percentages, price points and the sequence each customer can take. He covers a lot of ground in the 1/2 hr.

The 3rd video titled The Continuity Snowball Effect is 28+ minutes of solid information. Ryan further goes in depth on the continuity model. He runs some conservative numbers to show how income projections. This model is a great way to create stable income.

The last video titled The Continuity Publisher Model Ryan shows a couple of his sites, plus he tells how he came up with the ideas. Of course this video is 46 minutes… so he does cover a few more things. But, I don’t want to give it all away!

Head on over to his million dollar napkin site, or to his blog the Internet Traffic Report to watch these videos. I believe it will be an eye opener for you…