30 Day Challenge, truth be told, by Ed Dale.
Several years ago, John, Jason and I joined up with the 30 Day Challenge, not the 30 day blog challenge that we are in the middle of now. Rather the 30 Day Challenge that is hosted by Ed Dale and several of his friends. In a nutshell, the 30 Day Challenge started out at a contest to see which affiliate marketer could make the most money in 30 days from affiliate channels. I will be honest and say that I have started several 30 Day Challenges and have never finished the full 30 days of courses that goes along with the challenge. I do watch Ed’s Videos and have an rss feed still live from his blog. However, it usually takes me a lot longer than 30 days to review all the content. It is a great resource for learning new tools and I thank Ed and his group for taking the time to post all the great information.
Yet one thing that always bothered me about the 30 Day Challenge was that while it is a great introduction to many of the tools available to online marketers, it created an army of “re-posters” and traffic exchanges. It created a lot of what I see as false traffic that really didn’t go to any product or service. Sure some people made few dollars selling e-books, or selling ad space on a site that had generated a lot of hits. The fact was that there was no substantial customer audience because no one was creating anything, most of the traffic was other 30 Day Challenge participants checking out each others sites, blogs, and now twitter posts. Sorry, I have great friends, but none of them want to buy anything from me.
This is why when I got an email from Ed this morning, bringing this very point to life, I was relieved. Thanks Ed. Here is a excerpt from the email.
And like the first point, I may have had a bit to do with creating
a problem!I love leverage. “What’s new!”, I hear you say.
The ability to be a gatherer of information and then distribute to
your target market is a powerful weapon indeed. Like all weapons,
pointing it directly at your head is a health hazard.If all you do in life (or perhaps more importantly from my
perspective, in your market), is be a “re-tweeter” or a
transmitter of other’s information. How do I say this… I believe
the technical term is…“You’re stuffed”
I’m afraid you’re not going to get anywhere. It is only the people
who create content (or of course, products) that get ahead! Think
about it. It’s all very well being the neighborhood gossip and
passing on information to all and sundry (let’s face it, the
neighborhood gossip has their place) but they are only ever going
to be the gossip and eventually that gets tired and old.From a financial perspective, “you’re stuffed”.
This should not discourage anyone from checking out the 30 Day Challenge and signing up, but keep in mind if you truly want to make money or simply to get a message out there, don’t get caught up.
I repeat, don’t get caught up in the “socialness” of social networks and social tools. Take a step back and realize that while it is great to have your buddies follow you on twitter, if you are just swapping each other links all day, who is the customer? where is your customer?

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