Hey Team,

Got up the next tutorial on getting Wordpress up and running. Keep in mind that Danie of greatfallssolutions.com. Offered a free six months of hosting for anyone who would is participating on our team for this year’s Thirty Day Challenge. If you want to find out more about that then go visit here and type in the question box: “NOVA EBusiness Bloggers Rock!” and he should be able to work some stuff out with you about hosting :D.

Keep in mind that blogging is irrelevant to the actual challenge and it is entirely extra-curricular. If you want to just participate in making your first $10 online then ignore this post :).

Look forward to talking with you soon!

God Bless,
-Dan

Hey Guys,

Ed did a wonderful video that overviews the Thirty Day Challenge website. Check out the video here. It is well worth the watch, also the song in the middle-endish of the video is great :).

God Bless,
-Dan

Hey Team,

One of the topics that we spoke about yesterday at the meeting was to go get the Flock web browser. In order to do that go check out Flock.Com. Click the big “get flock” button in the upper right hand corner of the website and follow the instructions for using Flock. Right now just install and make a habit of using Flock.

Why Flock?

Someone asked why use Flock, and more importantly, what does it do for us? If you know what Internet Explorer or Firefox are, then Flock does everything that they do, but better :). The major thing that Flock does which other browsers don’t do as effectively is tie in with social media websites. It is about time for me to release another video on using social media, and I will have to work on that as soon as I can :). In the mean time just know that Flock ties in real well with social media :).

Thirty Day Challenge Videos:

Check out the videos that Ed Dale did for the Thirty Day Challenge regarding Flock.

• Thirty Day Challenge Pre-Season Launch
• How to Configure Flock
• How to Install Extensions in Flock
• How to Speed Up Your Browsing with Flock

Review these videos over the next four days. You shouldn’t need to spend more than an hour a day to keep up with the material posted here.

God Bless,
-Dan

P.S. For those who are interested in Blogging I am going to start a Wordpress walk-through on Tech Mindset from A to Z. Head over there to get started with Wordpress and blogging!

Hey Guys,

Last week was the week of Interviews. Friday night was even more exciting as Monday evening with Yaro Starak: Cheree, one of our team members, interviewed me on Internet Marketing for her show, The Profit Partner. The filming was coordinated by her partner, Avery Gimble. While it is going to be a while yet until she gets the video up on the web, I thought I would share some of the highlights of the interview (or at least what I can remember from between the moments of panic from being interviewed on public television! =P)

Information is Currency

One of the things which we mentioned several times during the course of the Interview was the value of information to marketing on the Internet. Since we live in “the information age” sharing information is one of the most valuable habits we can build. Everyone is always trying to learn new things so they can get the edge in their field of expertise — so leveraging information to market yourself or your product or service is a HUGE deal. We are entering into this challenge to promote ourselves and our services and so quality information is going to become vital to being able to effectively capture our target market.

Start to think about some of the things which you have learned about your business which others might like to learn as well. It is the start to the information you will be able to use to leverage yourself as an expert in your field.

The Impact of Blogging

I have heard people say that America is changing in the sense that Small Business is becoming more and more vital to the national GDP. This is even more amplified online. The large corporations only make up a small SMALL fraction of the web. This is because a small business (or the kid across the street) can put on the same look that a multimillion dollar business puts on. Blogging is a simple way to get started building an online presence and it is VERY personal. It also is based on the concept of leveraging information to build a relationships with your potential customers. You share information and your audience grows to know and trust your opinion and judgment on the issues you claim expertise in.

Let me give you an example. Several months back I created a website called Techmindset.net (which I am toying with starting back up.) I posted up several articles about using computers which I thought that everyday people would need or want to know. After creating several articles for the site and also getting a professional design — I let it lapse because my computer repair business became more time consuming. Now, after several months I have found that my blog without updates has been getting 500+ unique visitors a month!! Not only that, but I have been quoted as a source for computer help in several places. Thats without marketing the blog!! That is how effective blogging can be, and I didn’t even get started on trying to attract an audience!

We are going to be tackling blogging in more detail as the challenge progresses because even though it is going to be extra-curricular, people understand its relevance and we need to jump on it while it is hot!

The Definition of Internet Marketing

The overarching concept Cheree and I spoke about in the Interview was Internet Marketing. I wanted to write about this briefly in this post to get you a definition of Internet Marketing which is what we are learning. It is about finding people on the Internet to sell your product or service to. Internet Marketing is not a technical profession. It is VERY important that you understand that you don’t need to be a techno genius to be able to take advantage of Internet Marketing. The key word is Marketing. You can get techies to help you with the “Internet” part :). So be encouraged because you don’t have to be a technological superstar like me (*shameless self-plug*) in order to succeed at Internet Marketing! You will be applying sales and marketing basics to a new and growing field of suspects and prospects, it is as simple as that!

The Interview Itself

The Interview itself was quite an experience. I have not set foot inside a television station before and so this was very exciting for me. I took a million pictures, despite forgetting to bring a high quality camera, but here are a few of the ones which turned out ok:

Keep Flocking!

God Bless,
-Dan

Hey Team!

Since the topic has been blogging I thought I’d post up this interview I was part of earlier this week on the subject.

I was interviewed by Yaro Starak to promote his Blog Mastermind relaunch which I’ll alert you guys to as soon as it is live again. Here is the video for your viewing pleasure:

Daniel Kolansky and Yaro Starak discuss Blog Mastermind

God Bless,
-Dan

So pre-season was off and running last night. There was a rough start with the live video, I don’t know if any of the rest of you were in there, but it was really choppy — so much that I just simply couldn’t watch so I had to catch it in requiem.

The youtube video of last night’s broadcast from Austraila is located right here. It is about 40 minutes long, so I’d recommend getting some popcorn or something before you work through it and turn it into an event :). The challenge is going to start out nice and slow so you can ease into this whole web 2.0 — social web — style of thinking. There was only mention of some of the tools that we are going to be working with this year.

The two that Ed mentioned in the video were Flock (a web browser much like Internet Explorer but that has some special features — more on that later) and Twitter (a web 2.0 service which we will apparently be using heavily this year). Both of these tools are free so when you get a free moment go ahead and run to their websites and check them out:

http://flock.com/
http://www.twitter.com/

Don’t feel pressured to totally understand them or anything — there is still a LOT left to this year’s preseason (a full 59 days!) So stay tuned as we wait in anticipation. Check out those websites and I will look forward to speaking with you again!

On another side note: At the end of the video (around 32 minutes) Ed mentions that one of the most successful groups of people from last year’s challenge are those who took the concepts from the Thirty Day Challenge and applied it to their small business. So we are right in line for success this year around since many of us are already business owners.

However, if you don’t own a business that is no reason to quit! This is just as advantageous for those looking for some spending money as well — so keep trekking with this! We are gearing up to really blow people’s socks off!!

God Bless,
-Dan

Tags: flock, twitter, thirty day challenge, preseason, ustream, ed dale

It quickly became obvious that this challenge has the ability to overwhelm people with the sheer difference in culture and mindset.

I suspect that those of us who are more technically skilled should work out a way to team up with those who are less technically oriented as well. For anyone who feels like they are just having information dumped on them, I would encourage you to talk with someone way before you reach the point of frustration. Patience is the key and we are going to get everyone through this!

Awards

One of the other discussions at our meeting today was that of awards. What is going to be the reward for making it through the challenge successfully? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think the best thing to do would be to combine our collective abilities to purchase awards so shoot me an email if you have an idea about what are some awards you might be able to offer to someone who completes the challenge successfully.

The most exciting thing mentioned  at the meeting was a cookie for all who pass the challenge…. Or maybe not… Basant, who is a wealth of information and wisdom suggested that we all take the person who makes the most from the challenge out to dinner at a nice restaurant. I am down with that suggestion because I like getting free food ~_^. (Yes, that was a challenge). I think that this is a wonderful idea and am looking for commitments from all the members of our team to this idea.

Also, it was suggested that we reserve a reward for everyone if our team breaks a certain dollar amount of income. We need to think what that dollar amount is per person (because our total numbers are going to change dramatically over the course of the summer as the team grows.)

Some Links

There were several links mentioned at the meeting. From memory, here are some of the ones I recall being mentioned:

• http://www.wikipedia.com/
• http://www.alexa.com/
• http://www.dmoz.org/

There were a lot of other links mentioned but these were some of the more relevant ones. Another link that I would add to that list, if you are interested in blogging is: http://www.technorati.com/ It is kind of like Google for blogs. It searches only blogs, and no other websites so you can get a feel for what blogs are like by reading them off of Technorati.

Coming back around to not getting overwhelmed

But swinging back around to the beginning of the pipe. You do not have to get overwhelmed by everything we talked about at the meeting. Just be sure you are registered for the newsletter (which you can find in the upper right hand corner of this page) and also be sure to check out the live broadcast from Ed Dale tonight at 8pm EST (which you can get to his live broadcast here.)

We are in for a real treat! Check back often as I am going to be pouring out everything I know and we are also going to do something about collaboration very soon via forums and if we want to try — a wiki or something of that nature!

Lots of amazing things coming, so hold on to your chairs and be ready for anything!! We are going to overcome this challenge!

God Bless,
-Dan

While Ed Dale is rocking and rolling bringing us the live kickoff tonight for the actual challenge itself. We are meeting at Panera Bread here in Virginia to do a little kickoff of our own.

We are going to cover some topics such as:

• What is the Thirty Day Challenge?
• What is an internet marketer?
• How can you use this challenge to start on a path to riches?

Here is the link to where the broadcast is about to go out.

Cya then!

-Dan

Now that we have had our first meeting and you know that this website exists. I am proud to be able to have you as a member of the novaebusiness team!

We have an awesome team name that doesn’t include any of my personal randomness (praise God!) and we are already well off to a very strong start! Be sure to keep an eye on Ed Dale’s Twitter Stream and the Thirty Day Challenge website for more information regarding kickoff. They are going to be doing it live on ThirtyDayChallenge.TV starting at 8pm EST. Check it out!

Also, if you were at the meeting and NOT yet on our email list then you are gearing up to seriously miss out on communications I am sending out! Be sure to sign yourself up! I won’t spam you….much :). I can’t keep you in the loop about what is going on if you don’t take the initiative to sign up! So once again, register right here:

God Bless,
-Dan