The funny part is other people who were watching this back and forth between the three of us started joining in on our little challenge. Pretty quick is seemed like we had hundreds of people tweeting about the challenge. It was going viral right before our eyes.

I created the hash tag #HAHD. This would make it easier to follow everyone’s progress on Twitter during the challenge. Jeff tossed up a website. And Felicia came up with doing a 100 Article 100 Days launch teleseminar.

It didn’t take to long to get the attention of Chris Knight

I wonder why? There were only hundreds of people tweeting about submitting an article a day to Ezine Articles…

So, Chris decided to provide some swag to anyone who completed the challenge.

The challenge ended in July, and it was a huge success. It was also fun to complete the challenge.

The 2nd #HAHD challenge started in August and finished in November. I skipped this one, and now wish I hadn’t. I had stopped writing all together… big mistake.

The 3rd #HAHD Marathon Challenge is starting today

You can get all the details by clicking here.

It’s the perfect time to have this kind of challenge. What a better way to help you with your new year’s resolution of creating more content for your online efforts. You get to have a bunch of other people helping, encouraging and participating along with you on your own challenge.

I’ve always found it easier to complete goals or challenges with a group of like minded along on the same journey.

See you on the way to 100 articles!

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I’m doing the usual things… setting up blogs, forum marketing, article marketing, social bookmarking. Things like that. I’m also writing under a pen name to make it harder to find out what niches I’m playing in. It’s kinda cool to use a pen name because you can take on a different persona. A little bit of Kabuki theater never hurts!

Anyhow, today I started… or should I say I attempted to set up a Squidoo page. The plan was to set up several Squidoo pages, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. First mistake was to jump in without reviewing, or studying any how to information. After all how hard could this be… right? I mean you slap up a couple modules, a picture, YouTube video, toss in an affiliate link & away you go!

Well, Hang On There Sparky… Not So Fast!

Seems like when I open my dashboard my new lens still “Needs Some Love”. Which is Squidoo’s way of telling me my lens SUCKS! Yeah, sure the guys at Squidoo are too nice to use those exact words… but they won’t let my lens out of the “works in progress” column. In other words – I’m not allow to go out and play until I clean up, comb my hair & put on some nicer clothes.

I suppose I could rail against Squidoo, and say there’s nothing wrong with my lens. They are a bunch of nit-picky morons, and are in a conspiracy against left handed, middle-aged male, east coast, quilt knitters! (one of my ultra-mirco niches)

But seriously… I’m the one to blame here.

After all, I did jump into this thing without reading the rules. I had a little too much swagger in my step, and figured – Hey, Piece of CAKE! And guess what?

It didn’t take too long for me to get slapped down… Lesson learned. Time to eat a little humble pie, and head back to the drawing board. Going to have to learn the rules, and then set up a lens the right way.

Hey, I have and idea!

Wonder if there are any Squidoo lenses teaching you the right way to set up a Squdioo lens?

Hmmm…

http://www.squidoo.com/links_to_learn

http://www.squidoo.com/squid_etiquette

http://www.squidoo.com/first_lens

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So, my only solution to this is…

Start all over again. It’s a pretty simple solution. Just have to reset the calendar and get going. No big deal really… I want to re-establish the habit of blogging, and the only way to do this is by blogging.

Even though this is a minor setback it is a good example of how to overcome setbacks. Now, I’ll admit this is a minor setback, with an easy solution. But, it is a good opportunity to take a look at this process.

Remember One Thing About Setbacks…

They happen to everyone. Any goal worth reaching will have several obstacles and setbacks. No, reason to hide from this fact or pretend it didn’t happen. That would actually be counterproductive. You must acknowledge when they happen, and realize it is part of the process. Just remember this… you must learn from the experience and continue on.

A Big Key To This Is To Remain Optimistic

It’s important to keep you attitude up. Remaining optimistic will help you maintain your strength, keep your enthusiasm and make the transition smoother. Hey, you have a choice here; you can choose to get bummed out or remain optimistic. It doesn’t matter which one you choose… Positive or negative. You will still have to go through the experience. You might as well take the optimistic approach.

The Most Important Step Is To Evaluate, Make Adjustments And Take Action…

This step is critical to high achievement. It’s important to evaluate the situation, make some new plan if it is warranted and then get back into the game. Taking fast action is a key component of highly successful achievers.

The opposite is true of quitters. They have a habit of dwelling on their situation, getting down and assigning blame. They will spend so much time on the mistakes and many times will talk themselves out of taking action. They are more likely to throw their hands up in frustration and give up.

It’s OK to go though an evaluation process… but remember to get through this fast, lay out a new plan (if needed) and take action.

So, that’s what I’m going to do here. Get back on the blogging bike. How about you? Have you done this yourself? Let me know any of your success stories you’ve overcome with setbacks.

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Is Article Marketing Worth It?

Jack Keifer wrote an excellent post covering the benefits of article writing. This post goes pretty in depth, and I found it to be very informative. Head on over there and check it out.

Here is one of the benefits of article writing from Jack’s post: Is Article Marketing Worth It?

One important point that most people overlook is that article marketing has a cumulative affect. Many will submit one or two articles, get a few visitors, and soon decide that the few visitors they got aren’t really worth the time and effort. Suppose you went against your instincts and stuck it out longer?

Every time your articles are submitted, they end up in article directories and eZines, depending where you submit your articles. These articles are copied by webmasters and can be legally used on their sites to provide content so long as they leave the complete article intact including your resource box containing your back link.

Entrecard is up for sale, or is it?

Graham the owner of Entrecard wrote a post the other day saying he is putting the site up for sale. It seems like he has grown tired of messing around with VC’s. He sounds very frustrated with the whole trying to raise capital.

I was surprised to see him put it up for sale. Hope he gets a second wind, and decides to give it another shot. I like the vision he has for Entrecard, and would be disappointed to see him hand it over to a new owner.

He give a good snipet of his vision on the post: Entrecard exploring possibility of new owner

My vision for Entrecard is enormous. From day 1, my goal was to build “the currency of the blogosphere” -and on top of it an entire economy of bloggers buying and selling not only advertising, but all sorts of products and services. The benefit for bloggers to participate was always the promise of more traffic, more community participation, comments and subscribers.

I’m only including two posts here today because I think both are one you should read. Plus, it’s Friday & everyone is winding down from the week. So, I’ll go easy on you!

Have a great weekend…

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Anyhow, she posted a thread starting a 30 day article writing challenge a few days ago. I stumbled on it last night, and thought it was a great idea.

Here are the rules of Tiffany Dow’s 30-Day Warrior Article Marketing Challenge…

Alright Warriors, listen up – there’s prizes involved here!

I know we all have it in us – that “Steve Wagenheim” article marketer quality. So starting tomorrow, and for the next 30 days, I want to know who is going to submit 1 article a day to EzineArticles.com?

After reading the thread, I figured this is another great way to get in the habit of writing articles. So, I joined this challenge. This is one area I’ve really slacked off on as part of my traffic generation procedures. This challenge will get me in the habit of writing article on a regular basis. One article a day is a very doable task, and the benefits are great.

Article marketing is a great way to drive free traffic to a blog, squeeze page or any website. Now, it doesn’t always drive a lot of traffic rapidly, but it delivers some pretty powerful long term results.

I’ve already issued a 21 day blog post challenge for myself the other day on my post Let’s Break Some Rules. I felt the article writing challenge would fit in nicely with my blog post challenge.

So, what do you say… want to head over to the Warrior Forum and join in on the challenge? It will take some work, but in the end will be worth it.

Related posts:

1. The Article Marketing #HAHD Challenge Starts Today On a Saturday morning in late March last year Jeff...

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Guest Posting is a great way to get yourself in front of targeted traffic…

One of the best methods of marketing is finding targeted traffic. Birds of a feather flock together… and that is so true with blog readers. They are interested it the same subject, and are a sympathetic ear.

Steven Snell at Pure Blogging makes a great point about how guest posting is get past the advertising defense by demonstrating your expertise…

The Best Blog Advertising is Free – Are You Using It?

Despite the title of this post, I do realize that guest posting is not really advertising. However, it allows you to accomplish many of the same objectives that an advertisement would, and in most cases it’s even more effective. …

Darrin Rowe over at Problogger makes a powerful case why guest posting is a effective way to find new readers…

Finding New Readers for Your Blog with Guest Posting

Perhaps one of the most powerful ways of exposing your writing to a new group of people is to put some of your best content on other peoples blogs – and not your own …

Jason at The University Kid goes over how to make sure you are putting out quality guest posting content. You can get a leg up on your competition if you remember to follow these steps with your guest posting…

How To Annihilate Your Competition With A Guest Post

A lot of people get sucked into the whole guest posting spree and churn out posts for various blogs in their niche… and then neglect their own website. Remember, people are notoriously fickle – their views about how good a writer you …

So, how can you take advantage of what you’ve learned at these blogs?

Simple… I’m taking a week’s vacation starting Sunday. I’m looking for some guest posters. If you would like to guest post for me next week head on over the my about me page. fill out the contact form, and submit it. I’ll get back to you, and see if we can make arrangements.

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Hi Keith, I couldn’t think of anything to say lol, but wanted to ask you if you have seen Skribit.

A very cool widget enabling you to get “consistent” feedback from readers as they type it in themselves…I just installed it yesterday, very cool.

Dennis Edell
6 May 08 at 12:56 pm

Hey Dennis,

I have heard of Skribit. In fact I 1st read about it from Darren Rowe when he wrote about it on his blog here Skribit – Find Out What Your Readers Want You to Write About. It seems like a great way to find out what information readers are really looking for. By using the widget in the sidebar you can answer the question asked. Then through voting readers can prioritize which topics they would like to see covered here.

To answer the question “Why Are You Using Skribit?” 

It looks like a powerful tool to gain feedback from readers. It can be a way to provide content

I noticed Darren did something that others didn’t do with their Skribit widget. Most people just popped up the widget, and it sat there with no answers to the question. Darren went to his Twitter account and asked people what they would like to see covered on his blog. He then took some of the answers and added them to the Skribit que. He put up the widget and it looked busy already.

This was a smart thing to do because it seems to be human nature to not use something that’s not busy. It seems like no one likes to be first. It’s almost like the mentality of not eating at a restaurant that has an empty parking lot… If no cars are there, then something must be wrong.

So, I followed Darren’s lead. I set up a quick survey here on the blog. I took the answers I got and added them to the Skribit widget. I did see answer several times like; how to get traffic, conversions and such. In that case I just took one of the answers and added it to the widget.

I invite you to look at the Skribit widget and answer the question, or vote on one of the answers.

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• In 117 days there has been 100 posts.
• The last 2 weeks of January there were 694 unique visitors, and through the 1st 8 days in May there has been 1072. (Knock on wood that the numbers keep growing)
• Unranked in Alexa in January, and today 148,868.
• Zero page rank in Google, and PR3 today.

These numbers are fun to watch because they are fast improving. This is a new blog, and the numbers will make big jumps. And that’s always fun to track. Eventually the numbers will level off, and at best will see incremental moves. This is just the normal course of action as a blog matures.

The big question is what’s the reason behind this growth?

The easiest answer is… action.

Pretty simple, and not overly complicated. I’ve worked hard to get up 100 posts in 117 days. I remember reading once that a new blog should get up a lot of good content fast. And I figured blogging 5-6 days a week should be a way to get that much content.

Publishing this many blog posts a week was not easy. There were many days I got up with no idea what to write about. But I wouldn’t let myself off the hook. I made myself sit down in front of the keyboard and write. I would write 2 maybe 3 paragraphs not like what I wrote, and start over again. Many of those early drafts I deleted.

Sometimes I would write a complete post, and decide not to publish it. I was not happy with the way it turned out. It either got way off point, didn’t read good or the timing didn’t feel right.

So, I would start all over again. I was not going to miss my personal commitment.

Another curious thing happened because of this hard work…

It put me in position to receive a little luck. A couple of big name bloggers linked to my blog… I was lucky to have them do that. But if I wasn’t adding content on a regular basis would they have linked to this blog? I don’t know, but probably not. I got to interview copywriter Stephen Dean. That interview has generate traffic, and back links. If I wasn’t actively involved in the blogsphere I would have missed this opportunity. I got asked to participate in a Marcus Hochstadt blog contest. Would I have been asked to participate if I wasn’t blogging on a regular basis? Probably not.

I guess it boils down to this… Luck and hard work go hand in hand.

Here’s how I’ve always felt about this. It seems like when you are working hard you tend to be in the right place at the right time. You find luck out on the playing field. You have to be in the game. When you are out there working hard, making the plays, you will find yourself standing in the right place at the right time. If you are standing on the sidelines when luck happens by, you will miss out, because luck will pass you by.

I think that Will Wheaton, and Sam Adams make great points about luck & hard work. They both write that you need to be working hard to be in position to have good things happen.

Will Wheaton sums up about hard work and luck in his post yet another post about writing… and stuff

Finally, an important note to all artists: nobody in the world will work as hard as you will to promote your work, nobody will care about promoting it as much as you do, and your work will be as successful as you work to make it. Hopefully, you’ll get lucky like I did and get some good word of mouth and connect with a passionate group of people who will tell their friends about you, but that’s never going to happen if you don’t work hard — really, really hard — to make it happen.

Here is what Sam Adams says in his post titled Luck and hard work go hand in hand:

Luck is about being there. Luck is about showing up. I tease my kids all the time that it might be true that it is better to be lucky than be good; but I also tell them that you can’t get lucky if you are not prepared to accept it.

Every champion, in sports or industry, can look back over the course of competition and see places where they were fortunate, opportunistic and sometimes just downright lucky.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, gets lucky. What we all want in life is a shot. What we do with that shot, that’s the story we want to tell.

What do you do with the luck that falls your way?

So, what are you going to do to make sure you are standing in the way when luck comes along?

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I would like to think that most people who blog this way get found out. Probably not in a public way, but in a loss of readership. Most folks have a good ‘B.S. detector’ (aka common sense), and can sniff out junk a mile away.

There are 2 ways you can write about topics…

First you should write about what you know… yeah I know you hear this advice all the time. And there is a reason – It works. Writing about subjects you know comes through in your writing. You have a level of confidence, and comfort that surfaces. Credibility builds as you write about topics you know.

Do you have to be a screaming success to write about something you know? No… I think that many people believe this idea. You can write about your experience with a particular subject. Did you have some success? Moderate success? Or fell flat on your face? Then let everyone know about your experience. People can learn from your success, and your setbacks. You will also find that people gain valuable information from your experience… good or bad.

Writing about your experience is a great way to weave your knowledge into the story. Mohamed over at Internet Business Opportunities writes about how some bloggers do this…

Write About What You Know

Hi, When I first started this blog, I was in a bit of a dilemma. I mean, how would I write about something new everyday? I mean, I know full well how to do research and get ideas. I can sit down and push out articles pretty quick, …

You can write about something you don’t know if you do it this way…

Be up front and tell readers you don’t have any experience or knowledge when you started. Let them know you are not an expert. Then tell them what you did. Give the steps you took, and how you found the information.

Then tell the story… what happened, how it went, any hurdles you came across and how you overcame them. Then give the results… good or bad. Everyone knows that not all experiences are a success. Most people become suspicious if all you have are victories. When Babe Ruth retired in 1935 he held the career home run record of 714 dingers… he also held the career strikeout record of 1330.

Another great way to write about something you don’t know is to write a tutorial. Raj Dash over at Performancing gives a good tip on how to do tutorials..

Bloggers: How Do You Learn Something New?

You’ve probably heard/read the age-old advice to writers: write about what you know. Not to be contrarian, but there are ways to write about what you don’t know – or at least don’t know very well – and it’s a good way to learn a topic …

Transparency is a buzz word making the rounds lately. It’s a fancy word for honesty. Just be up front with your readers and I bet they will give you a lot of leeway.

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I’m taking a quick one question survey about what topics to cover on this blog. The best way is to ask you what you would like to see covered.

Take a second and answer the question below. You don’t have to leave the page, or take more than a few seconds to answer. You can leave a quick answer like… how to get traffic, How to improve Alexa or How to set up a blog. I’m just looking for what you would like to read about.

I would appreciate your input.

Thanks,

Keith

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