Dividing Up the Work – Day 4 of Cowpetition
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Now that we have brainstormed our list of tasks, we need to break them down and put them on a timeline.
Obviously with this cowpetition, we have an unexpected and aggressive time line that needs to fit into or other tasks that can not be ignored. Not having a set deadline however, is not an excuse to not make one. If you want professional results, you need to treat this entire process as a professional. That means prioritizing, planning, setting goals and deadlines!
By not setting deadlines, you run the risk of…
Scope Creep: Constantly adding new features, strategies and more. This is killer on time frames and budgets and needs to be controlled. You must look at items that are not immediate needs as “maybes” and once all the important things are done and the blog is published and promoted, you can go back and look at implementing these strategies.
Procrastination: Give us an excuse to put it off until tomorrow and we will always put it off until tomorrow. Procrastination is a killer on time management and return on investment and you need to always keep this in check and setting a strict time frame can help. This takes self discipline, especially if the only one you answer to is yourself. This is where finding a “business accountability” partner or group is powerful. Two or more like minded individuals meet and review what’s going on, provide each other with third party feedback and review each others goals and help to enforce accountability. If you suffer with procrastination, then stop here and really think about who you can get to work with you on helping you.
Analysis Paralysis: With out a deadline you will find yourself spending hours upon hours on tasks that are an absolute waste of time and money. An example is trying to get a plugin to work with your blog that offers nothing but some fun functionality. Frustration and determination kick in and you can get so focused on getting this to work you lose all perspective on time. Before you know it, the day is gone and all you have to show for it is a cool plugin that still does not work. Set a deadline and use a timer and make sure you are spending time working on tasks that make you mooney!
How to Set a Deadline:
Well the obvious answer is –> when you need it done by 
How about for those that do not have a specific time requirement?
This is when you look at your goals and figure how this fits into with them. If you are just starting out and your first goal was to have your expenses covered in 60 days, then you need to consider the time to build and promote the blog. Then the time it takes for traffic to build up and revenue to start generating.
As a rule of thumb we believe it is wise to not plan any revenue at all to be generated less then 30 days from the completion of the blog. We are NOT saying it is not possible and in fact if you do everything correct, it will happen. What we are saying is for the initial goal it is best to set yourself up so the odds are more in your favor.
This is when we love to go back to the dry erase board. So with the cowpetition, we put the date that is 30 days from the start of the cowpetition at the far right side of the board.
Next we divide the board into resource sections. Here is a screen shot of our dry erase board…
(A) 4 sections for this project. Researcher, Content Creator, Designer / Programmer, Promotion
(B) The deadline is set for the date the site must be ready for promotion, which is Friday May 23rd. The goal for this deadline was for the main functionality and initial content to be implemented. The agreed upon “Link Bait” to be implemented and a name capture system but into place.
(C) The End Deadline is reviewed and we double check that we feel there is enough time to accomplish the needed tasks
(D) Each task is divided among the sections and in order or priority, so that jobs that are needed to be done first are done first. For example, the initial research for the targetted niche needs to be decide upon, then initial terms to focus on for content and then the domain name and so on.
It would not be wise to start content before you even know what you are needing
Here is the List of Our Initial Urgent Tasks and Basic Conversation About Them…
1. What Niche: Decide on specific niche in the “Video Gaming” market to target: Obviously the “video game” market is very broad and there are a lot of options to pursue. We need to do initial research to focus in on a niche that we can own. The niche must have…
- Decent traffic –> This should be pretty obvious (We will use Google trends her and compare again terms we know the traffic for)
- Low Competition –>not be overwhelmed with competition and a revenue potential. (Use Google filter allintitle:”keyword phrase” )
- Revenue Potential –> Must see obvious ways that the niche can be monetized, affilaite products, ad sales and so on.
2. Content: Once we have the targetted niche, we need to get the Initial content decided on using LSI principal. The challenge with this content is there is not enough time to truly know if they are going to be profitable however we are limited on time and need to select words to get started with right away. to accomplish this most effectively we…
- Brainstormed topics we wanted to write about
- Went to the top forums to see what the hot conversations were
- Checked out stores to see what hot sellers were
We do more keyword research later, that focuses more on “Money” keywords, but this takes a little time and we need some initial content for this cowpetition right away.
3. Domain: There are two ways to look at this, we could get a domain that is keyword rich or get a domain that is “brandable”. To do this we…
- Generate a list of keywords based on what was found from task 2 using the strategy laid out at http://www.johncow.com/keyword-research-show-me-the-money-words-that-is/
- Take those keywords and enter them into TrafficTravis (which I will be going into more detail on in tomorrows post)
- Take the results of Traffic Travis and use the Godaddy bulk register to find unregistered and keyword rich domains. (We will show this trick tomorrow as well)
- Filter through to see if there is anything that fits. If not, then look for variations that can be brandable.
HERE IT IS EVERYONE –> For those asking when we were going to reveal the domain… this is what we decided on http://www.gamerzreviewz.com/, you can check out the almost finished (goal is to be done tomorrow so don’t pick anything apart yet) blog at Gamerz Reviewz
We decided on this domain because it captured the niche we wanted, is easy to remember and brandable.
4. Install: Blog Installed with selected Theme and Plugin: This obviously had to wait until we had the domain selected
5. Design and Graphics: Now that we have domain, we need to agree on the mood of the blog and what message to tell people as soon as they arrived on the blog. We needed to pick colors and graphics that matched what we felt our target audience would like.
6. “Link Bait” Content Ideas: Needed to brain storm content ideas to get lots of initial linking done and subscribers to out list and have it needs to be natural links and authentic subscribers. The “Link bait” must be something that people would want to share with others and help drive traffic to with sites like Stumbleupon and Digg. The options we looked at were…
- Controversial article
- Cool video
- Free give away (ebooks, software etc)
- Contest
For this niche and the time frame we had to come up with the actual content, we needed an idea that was easy to implement and very powerful. The winning idea was to offer what people in this niche need or want… and that was a new gaming system.
7. JV Partners: List of sites to contact for joint ventures: We now need to brain storm and research all the sites and contacts we have that might be willing to be a sponsor for this contest or mail their list about the contest. We need to collect emails and phone numbers and we also needed to brain storm an offer, that would be a “major win” for the sponsor.
IMPORTANT –> Do NOT shy away from this step, it is what took us from working for others, to working for ourselves. Build relationships with others and offer them incredible value for their effort. For example, we would not email someone and ask for sponsorship with out making it very much worthwhile on thier end. For our example, we emailed with recommended sponsorship amounts and what they would get in return. We offered promotion on our site but also offered outside promotion such as article submissions. The different levels of sponsorships came with different levels of available promotions.
8. Account Creation: We need to create the basic accounts to be used with this site. Each account must be able to be sold as a package with the blog (since that is our goal). The accounts we needed created were…
- Gmail
- Feedburner
- Aweber
- Digg
There will be more accounts created later but these were the ones we wanted created initially.
9. Legal Docs: Need to be sure we have all are ducks in a row with privacy, terms of use, disclaimers and all that good stuff.
Each of these tasks were divided up with needed time frames to meet our initial deadline. So far, we are on target
In tomorrows post we are going to step you through our Keyword Training (to help finish off the other series we were working on), to show you exactly how we use Traffic Travis. We will also be going into more detail about how we contacted potential sponsors and our results so far with them. Depending on how long that lesson is we may or may not start getting into…
- Niche specific content for blog and promotions research (will explain difference from initial needed content tomorrow) using LSI principals
- What plugins we implemented and why
- Social site accounts set up
- Videos planned for promotions
- Start viral marketing engine
- Maintenance plan
Hope you liked this walk through… What’s your feedback so far?
comparing search engine over time using Google Analytics. Yaro Starak is allowing people to join his affiliate program again; worth a look. The John Cow vs. Garry Conn “Cowpetition” is well under way. Day 1. Day 2. Day 3.Day 4. Blogstorm find some interesting results while using Yahoo’s search engine. I agree, Yahoo sucks. Courtney Tuttle breaks down the basic of you can make more money with your blog. Had zero success with BlogRush
John Cow dot ComDividing Up the Work – Day 4 of CowpetitionPosted: 22 May 2008 04:43 PM CDT
making any guarantees that we will answer every one, but we will try our best. To help spark your memory, here are the past weeks COWpetition posts… Day 1 – Build a Business Not A Blog Day 2 – The Big Picture Day 3 – Narrowing Your Focus Day 4 -Dividing Up the WorkDay 5 – Diamonds in the Rough If you do NOT have any questions or clarification and just want to provide some feedback of those posts, then please comment below On Monday we will be also announcing the time and date of the first ever
making any guarantees that we will answer every one, but we will try our best. To help spark your memory, here are the past weeks COWpetition posts… Day 1 – Build a Business Not A Blog Day 2 – The Big Picture Day 3 – Narrowing Your Focus Day 4 -Dividing Up the WorkDay 5 – Diamonds in the Rough If you do NOT have any questions or clarification and just want to provide some feedback of those posts, then please comment below On Monday we will be also announcing the time and date of the first ever
So this is going to be a game review blog…cool….Lets now wait for Conn response
Sudarshans last blog post..Chemotherapy Treatment They are the Best for Cancer
too much info, my brain is hurting!
Sorry, we even trimmed this one down… it was twice as long when we finished writing it
Another top quality post, and the new blog for the competition looks cool too…
These posts are helping loads of us, I’m sure, thank you.
When do we get to hear who the new Cow is?
daves last blog post..Sligo Killavil
We are playing around with fun ways to have a little contest on figuring this out. You will find out soon.
You mean this blog has been sold? This is not the cow we grew up with! OMG!
Hyders last blog post..Live, Work, Live
Your site looks good. Detailed and helpful breakdown of the tasks, too. Thanks!
How many people in total do you have working on your team? I’d like to get a better idea of how many man-hours/woman-hours I will need to do something this good this quickly.
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman
Vicki Flaughers last blog post..The Value of Relationships: Why I Quit the “Convincing” Business
We can get this broken down but not today.. we are tired
Remember, we have other projects and things on the go so this is not fulltime on this… and we are facing a very aggressive time frame.
Your TrafficTravis link is broken – just a comma vs. period thing.
Annie Binnss last blog post..How many emails did YOU get about Stompernet?
Thanks.. we fixed it
Everything just got a lot more involved after this post, didn’t it? lol
This is great. I’ve always worked more on the technical side of things. I think I mentioned the other day that I’m only recently starting to use social traffic stuff. Something like arranging a contest, making deals with people…that I’m not so good at. But I knew that, and have been wanting to improve it.
So I guess all I can say is that I am very, very interested to study every small effect that happens from here.
This is great stuff! Awesome blog. Love the graphics.
I’m really looking forward to your ideas on niche specific content and promotions research and how you stay motivated to do this regularly. It’s too easy to put it off!
Superb Information! It’s very easy to wade in and attempt to get tasks implemented without much serious thought. I have only been into this internet business stuff for a couple of weeks, find it fascinating, but what a lot to take in! I admit I am guilty of procrastination and have realised that I need to plan better. I think you guy’s are doing a great job! Thank you.
Ardenixs last blog post..Course Part 3 – First look at WordPress
Thank you very much
So Far… So Good!
I love the multiple tickets you offer to encourage the Twitter, BLOG and video posts. I’m definitely adding that one to my business arsenal. I still don’t know what LSI stands for or what it is… and you have mentioned it in two posts now.
Keep the data coming…
FREE Stationery Downloads
PC
PrincessCraftss last blog post..Floral Stationery Downloads – Udated!
LSI –> Latent Semantic Indexing
Best way to describe, look at 100 magazines on different health topics and take a cross section of common used words.
This is so cool! And nice niche I am in that niche myself
EmmaBs last blog post..Its a Cowpetition!
Will you be going into more detail about finding the sponsors needed for the new blog? IE. List of Potential Sponsors, Sample letters or conversations with sponsors.
Bretts last blog post..Understanding Web Typography
Yes, we will show some samples.
This will be interesting. The market seems so saturated with gaming blogs. I can’t wait to see how you’ll make this one stand out.
Jeremy Wallers last blog post..What Web Analytics Can Tell About Your Affiliate Marketing
I agree with the comment above too much info, I think
you should break it out into few blog posts with probably
500 words each and add a few videos (if you can)
to explain your idea : )
Would love to be able to do that but cant… remember this competition was unplanned and the training is being rolled out with it. If there are points that you really need clarified, then ask them. What we can do is come back and expand on points as time permits… your questions give us topics for posts too
Coming right along. Looking Good.
Thanks for the direction.
Blessings in truth,
Dave
I am looking forward to your forthcoming keyword training session with traffic travis. It s/b good. I just finished the first 4 keyword training sessions.
Tell me something, is Traffic Travis similar to SEO Elite?
Blessings in truth,
Dave
Who says a 51 year old man cannot learn new things?
No it is not, you will see later tonight when we post about it.
Thank you great stuff
I understand that there is a lot to be learned here, but surely the fact that you are using a team of people with you on this task along with the fact that you are using JC.com to drive traffic to the new website means that this isn’t an effective case study that the majority of your readers will be able to relate to. The goal is for this to be a case study, right? So it would surely be better to build the blog and THEN report your findings.
I may have missed the point, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but the ideology seems flawed.
So what you are saying is you are getting no benefit from this training at all?
Matt, the original intent of the challenge we laid on Gary was that we each build a blog ourselves and se which one makes more money at the end of the 30 days. We would not share the domain or anything until the end and it would just be one on one. He did not want to do that.
As for your comment about an effective case study…. how about you be the judge of that after it is done and you have implemented some of this.
Once this is done we can look at doing some other thing.. where we actually have a new reader build a blog.. but we dont share the niche until the end…. that might be fun.
Definitely guilty of the ‘Scope Creep’ and ‘Analysis Paralysis’ things here! *ugh!* Thanks for the wake-up call!!
Yes, Tons of Info squeezed into this one…great step-by-step
pattern to follow though!
Thanks John!
Jennie Hs last blog post..Creating Information Products That Sell
allintitle filter is an interesting little tool, thanks for that … and the rest of the great info.
Neil Ducketts last blog post..Cool Japanese Transport
You’re having a very bad effect on Garry Comm!!
http://host.gconn77.com/suspended.page/
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.
…. Any chance of a hand out for poor Garry ….
Paddy Bloggits last blog post..Half the waste!
Me too would have wished that this would be a “one man case study” with a capped budget, but still a LOT to learn from this.
(What Niche)Can you be more specific about “decent traffic”? Put a number on that. Same for “low competition”.
Cheers,
Richard
Info Products last blog post..The Easiest Info-Product Creation Ever (Really)
I will address these questions in todays post.
THat is one of the best outline post for s new site I have ever read. Great content. I am outlining my on site as we speak for a small niche market with little competition and this article helped alot.
Cheers,
Greg
Thanks!
Thanks for your great posts. I am learning more from this single blog than from any other source.
Cool… that is a huge compliment
A lot of awesome info and I mean a LOT. The problem for me is by Day 4 you have already done so much in terms of content/site creation (the part I find most tricky) that I need a thirty day class just to catch up and learn how to do it all.
No problems that can’t be solved with a little effort and thinking though. Keep up the great work and I look forward to learning a lot more. Cheers!
Thanks, this is giving me inspiration to do something when this contest is over. We will give you the details later
Thanks John!
I have started a blog and mainly concentrated on traffic. I now have a PR3 and have moved from 6mill on Alexa to 800,180 currently.
After reading what you have been doing I missed a few things. Now I can go back and correct them.
Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this for us! The best part of this is that you have only touched the surface. And what you have provided is extremely informative.
Too bad some have to be so critical. You have to be able to put small chunks into place as you get them. That is how it all comes together. Not all at once.
Thanks again John!
Thanks for the encouragement!
I need tp print out those time controls and glue them on my wall! I think I have been guilty of all the time wasters more than once.
Hey John,
could you please tell me where to get this blog template/design that you’re using. It’s quite unique and would like to use it for a couple of my blogs. I presume this is a wordpress blog?
Appreciate it.
http://www.johncow.us/milkit/
What you and Garry is doing is amazing. Although, it seems like Garry has temporarily been hit with some server problems. You (and your team) have really risen to the occassion that you want to truly help others. There are so many details you are covering. It is truly a pleasure to be along for the ride. I’m hoping you keep this part of the blog up, long after the contest is over.
BankCD Man
Bank CD Ratess last blog post..Day Two of the Big Adventure
Thanks and yes, this has inspired a lot of cool things that are going to be happening.
First off, awesome job on the gamerzreviewz site….
quick question: are you creating all the reviews yourself or do you spice up a review that already on the net?
(i suck at creating unique content)
This site is 100% unique content and the big reason for that is because the goal is to sell the site and having good unique content is best.
As for re writing others peoples content, we am not a fan of that for use on your main blog… then your site just becomes like everyone elses.
We will do that a bit for promotion content… which we will explain later, but even then we are not fans of that.
I really appreciate what you’re doing! Your posts are NOT too long, and there is LOTS to learn from this case study, whether you’re doing it as a team or not. As entrepreneurs, we get to take what we can from the process and adapt it to our situation. You’re showing how it works best for you, and since you’ve been successful, I’m staying open to all the possible ways it can work for my business. THANKS!
This is amazing, you are providing great information.
Thanks a lot John.
Prasads last blog post..CSS Specificity
Self contained social networks for this blog. Makes perfect sense given the goal of selling this package in 30 days. Great move.
Steve Pohlits last blog post..Business Blogging – Steve Reports Relies To BusinessWeek
A lot of info, but I need all I can get. At the pace you are traveling with this I am surprised you have the time to share anything with us at all. I find it highly unlikely, however, that you are able to lay-out every step. Realistically, I’m sure you must have to abridge this walk through. I’m greatful for what you have been able to share.
Ya, the posts would have been about 2000 words each if we gave you 100% everything. We made sure the most important points are in here though and we will be sharing other things on other posts.