Third 30 Days Online (TMD 003)

Hey, what is up, dudes and dudettes. Welcome to the TMD Show. I am LBT on the mic, and thank you so much for tuning in to this episode today. Now, the TMD Show is a place where I bring on guests to talk about business and travel, three episodes a month doing that, and then one episode of pure travel stories. But for the first eight weeks, this is going to be a little bit different. I’m going to be publishing three episodes every single week with a guest that I bring on to help co-host an episode. Now, this is episode number three and this is going to be the third part of our three-episode series where I help you with your first 90 days building your website and building your business to help you build this lifestyle of travel.

Now, in the last 60 days we have been building our website; helping, like, figure out the direction that we want to go; helping figure out our avatar. In the last 30 days, we created a lot of content, both for our website, for our email list, and this month the focus is reaching out to other people in our space. To help us grow our audience, we’re going to be trying to do some, like, guest posting on other people’s websites and then we’re also going to be reaching out to our own audience and trying to learn a little bit more about them and what we can help them with, what we can create for them, whether that’s content or, like, paid stuff. We’re going to be reaching out to those people and helping to define our perfect avatar a little bit more which we did in one of our – it was one of the first tasks that we did in the first – I think it was day number two when we did that, yeah. And this month we’re going to be doing all of that, and then we’re also going to be thinking about how we can repurpose some of that content that we’ve gone and created.

So I’ve gone and created a calendar for you guys. If you haven’t listened to the first or second part, go back and listen to those but then also make sure you download the calendar. It goes through step-by-step, day-by-day, so you can print it off and cross it off as you go. But also download it so you can follow along with that calendar as I go through each day. It just makes it a little bit easier for you guys to follow along. So if you want to go download that, you’ll be able to find that over at tmdshow.com/3. That is the number three. tmdshow.com/3. Go and download that calendar, and we will jump straight into this episode.

So at the end of our last 30 days, we sat down and we planned out five more blog posts that we can write for the next month. And what we’re going to be doing, instead of publishing all five of these straightaway like we did with the first 10, we’re going to be scheduling these out one per week. So for the first five days, we’re going to be creating those five posts. Then on day number six, we’re going to be scheduling those posts out. Like I said, we’re going to post those out once a week. So pick a day that works best for you. You can publish them – every Monday you publish a post, every Tuesday or Wednesday; whatever day you wanted. You know, pick a day and schedule each one of those posts out for the next five whatever day it is that you choose.

Next, on day seven, it’s going to be another day off or a catch-up day. So if you haven’t had a chance to finish all five of those posts or schedule them out, this is going to be the day that you are going to do it.

On day number eight we are going to be scheduling our social media and emails. So once you’ve got these posts ready to go, we’re going to be creating emails that we can send out to the people that are on our email list, letting them know that we’ve got a new post that they can check out. But then also we can schedule out social media posts to go out to also let people know about these new posts. So when you’re creating your social media, whatever platforms you decided you want to work on, say, Facebook and Twitter, say if they were the two you wanted to work with, go and create those posts and you can schedule them out either using a tool like Buffer, which is for free; you can schedule them out. You have to go in and manually do that. Or you can use a tool that I use called Jarvis.

Now, I know the guy that created this tool and you can go in there and you can create all the posts inside Jarvis and choose when you want to schedule them out. The other cool thing about Jarvis as well is that you can also add these things to a library and then you can set up a specific time that specific posts go out from your library. So inside of your library inside of Jarvis, you would set up different categories and then you can choose which category you want a post to go out what time of the day – sorry, a specific day and a specific time. So, for example, in the Dude Brood, the Facebook group, I have seven different categories; I’ve got a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday category. And inside of each of those categories, I have posts that are scheduled to go out every day, and what it does is it just goes through – once it posts the one at the top, it will then add that to the bottom. So you will never ever run out of content that’s going out.

If you have a short library or not many posts for a category, then you’re just going to be republishing or reposting those more often. So not only can you use it to schedule one-off posts, but you can also create libraries so you never have a dry content feed. So it’s a great tool to use. It comes in at $20 a month. But if it’s something that you wanted to try out for yourself, Henno, who’s my friend that went and created this, he’s given us a code that you guys can use to get $10 off for your first month. So you can get the first month for $9.95. And if you did want to do that, the code is TMD50 and you get 50 per cent off your first month, if that is something you want to use; if not, you can use Buffer. You just don’t have that library that you can auto-post over and over again the same content or from the library; it’s just all manual stuff that you have to add in each time.

So that’s day number eight. Day number nine we are going to be researching some guest posts or guest blogs that we could potentially post on. So back in the first 30 days, we went and created that spreadsheet with all of the websites that are potentially competition, along with, like, all the layouts and the colours and all that sort of stuff. Now what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to add another column for potential guest posts. And now what we’re going to do is we’re going to use Google to search for other blogs within our niche, our topic, our category, our industry, and we’re going to see if we can find ones that allow us to guest post on there. Now, the best way of finding these is that you can type in whatever your niche is, so using our example from the first episode where we used left-handed golfers, we can search for “left-handed golfers” plus “write for us”. And you have that all in brackets, and that way Google will search for all the websites about left-handed golfers but then also have the words “write for us”, which is a term that a lot of websites will use if they accept guest posts. Now, you can use “write for us”; you can search for “guest post”. You know, there’s a few different search terms that you can use. Just put in your niche plus the search term “guest post”, “write for us”, “contribute” or “contributor”, and you will be able to find a handful of blogs that will accept guest posts.

Now, we want to look for about 10 to 15 of these because for the next three days we’re going to be reaching out to these people via email to see if we can guest post on their website. Now, a lot of these websites will have sort of, like, a rules page saying, like, “We only accept guest posts with, like, certain criteria.” So make sure you check those out before you email them. And when you do email them, let them know who you are; the website that you’ve got; you know, let them know where you live online; and then give them some ideas of potential guest posts that you could write for them.

So we’re going to do that with every single website that we’ve added to our list. So for the next 12 days, reach out to them; hopefully they get back to you nice and quickly. A lot of the time, especially some of the smaller websites, they will get back to you very quickly. But if you end up going through all 10 to 15 that you’ve added to your list, just continue searching for some more posts; you know, you could end up having 30, 40 different websites that accept guest posts and you could reach out to them.

So hopefully if you did reach out to, say, 20, 25, you should get – we’re hoping to get at least five people write back to us and say, “Yes, I’d love to receive a guest post from you about such-and-such a topic,” which would be one of the ones that you give them an option of writing a post on. So we’re going to be doing that for days nine, 10, 11, and 12. So four days we’re going to be doing that.

Day number 13 we are going to be creating a logo for our website. Now, if you do not have the skills to use, like, Photoshop or something like that, which, to be perfectly honest, we’re only going to be spending one hour a day on this; I don’t want you guys wasting your time messing around with logos, because this is something you could get lost in for several hours. It was a mistake that I made when I first started messing around with – especially with creating my own website; I wanted everything to look beautiful. Right now, it doesn’t really matter; it’s going to be something you will most likely change in the future anyway. So you can use a website like fiverr.com and you can pay someone $5, $10 to create a logo for your website.

Or you can use a place called Logo Nerds where you pay $27. They will give you three different options; you can pick the one that you like; and you can request some alterations. $27, you’ve got yourself a decent looking logo. Now, if you have gone and used Divi as your theme, inside Divi they will give you a certain size specification that will work best for your logo. Just give that to them and say the logo needs to look good at this size. And then they go ahead and create it for you. And, like I said, it only costs $27 and you’ll get yourself a good logo which you can use for the next six to 12 months before you go through, like, a site redesign or whatever, you know. I’ve gone and changed the That Marketing Dude logo, god, probably about four times now; four times in three years. So, you know, this is why I don’t want you wasting your time on it because it’s something you are going to change your mind and change later on anyway. So just spend the $27, get something that looks better than just text that you’ve got there right now, and just move forward. So that’s going to be day number 13.

Day number 14 we are going to be taking a day off again or playing catch-up. You know, you can continue searching for some more blogs that you can reach out to and hopefully guest post on or continue writing the emails to schedule out to be sent to your list, letting them know about your posts that will be going out once a week or your social media. So that will be day number 14.

Day number 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20, these are all going to be writing the guest posts. So hopefully we’ve had five websites come back and say, “We would love for you to write for us.” So all the next week we are going to be responding and writing these guest posts out for these people, sending them off, and then we’ve got a day where we can tweak any alterations that these people have come back and said, “I like it. I want this changed, this little bit changed.” We can do all that on day number 20. Now, day number 21, again, day off slash catch-up; continue doing that.

Then day – well, the next week we are going to be reaching out to people in our audience. So day number 22 we are going to be creating a survey and arranging Skype calls. So you can use a place called Survey Monkey. You can go and create a free survey, and what we want to do is we just want to ask our audience questions to learn a little bit about them. So earlier on back in day number two, we made this fictional character which we assumed, you know, they are this type of person; they like this; they hate that; they had this financial situation; blah, blah, blah. You know, we’ve gone and created a fictional character. Now what we want to do is we want to talk to these people and see what these people have in common. So it’s great that we can do this online; you know, we can create a survey and people can answer it anonymously.

But what’s even better is that we can talk to people online using something like Skype. So ideally we want to be getting these people on Skype, all these people that have joined your email list or following you on social media; just reach out to them. Ask them, “Can we jump on a 10, 15 minute Skype call because I want to learn more about you, my audience, so I can create things that you really want, things that will really help you out, and help solve whatever problems that you have.” Now, a lot of people will agree to jump on and do a 10, 15 minute Skype call so you can create things that they actually want. So this is what we’re going to be doing on day number 22; creating all of that and reaching out to people.

Day number 23 we’re going to be spending time reading and commenting on blogs. Now, when I added this in, some feedback that I’d got was, “What’s the point of doing this?” Now, the reason why we want to do this is because all these people that we’re, like, reaching out to and guest posts; you know, we want to get our name recognised not only by the site owners but also people – like, their audience as well, you know, especially if we can, like, add to the conversation that’s already been taking place. That’s what we want to do. So we can either do that on blogs, but we can also do that in Facebook groups too. So day number 23 I want you guys to go through, you know, some of the websites that we added to our, like, competition list back, like, in the first few days of these 90 days and I want you to go in, read some of the blog posts, and, you know, just spend time commenting on them. This way, later on in the future when you want to reach out to these people to either guest post or jump on a podcast or whatever it is, they’re going to recognise your name. And especially if you’ve been helpful to people in their audience or helpful answering questions that have come up in the comments, you know, people really appreciate that.

So we’re going to be spending a little bit of time – and I suggest you do this sort of, like, every single month as well, you know; spend one hour or two hours just going through and commenting on blog posts, in Facebook groups. You know, it’s a fantastic way to not only show other people that you know what you’re talking about but it’s also a great way to, you know, make some friends in your industry. So day number 23 we’re going to be doing that.

Day number 24 we’re going to be having the Skype calls which you hopefully set up back in day number 22, and also reading through some of the survey answers for the people that decided to go through the survey instead of jumping on a Skype call.

Day number 25 we’re going to be refining our home page. Now, we had two days in the first 30 to create our home page; now what we’re going to do, based off some of the conversations that we’ve had with people or, you know, our direction might have, like, changed slightly compared to when we created that home page. You know, day number 25 is going to be the day that we can go and make some alterations just so our message is a little bit clearer, especially if you’ve got some feedback from, you know, people on these Skype calls, you know, that use a specific language explaining their problems. You know, you can use that on your home page. And day number 26 we’re going to be refining our about page, doing the exact same thing; going through it, changing some of the language based off what our audience has said. You know, maybe the direction has changed a little bit. You know, day number 25 and 26 we are going to be refining the two most popular pages on our website.

Then, day number 27, we’re going to be thinking about repurposing our content. Now, we’ve gone and created 15 different blog posts in the last two months. In the last 60 days, we’ve gone and created 15 different bits of content. Now, the great thing about online is that we can repurpose this content for other things. You know, the very first blog post that we wrote, we can go and turn that into a video; we can turn it into an audio clip so we can, like, publish it as a podcast. You know, think of different ways that you can go and use content you’ve already created to turn it into different mediums or maybe there’s something in there that, you know, really resonated with people or there was, like, some comments for more information about something in particular. You know, you can create follow-up blog posts or videos or podcasts. You know, you can go in and create more content based off what you’ve already written so you’re not looking for fresh ideas every single month to write five new blog posts on to schedule out for the next month.

So day number 27, look at all the old content that you’ve written, whether or not you can repurpose it into, like, a video, a podcast, or especially looking in the comments and seeing what people have said, see if there’s something in there that you can, like, go in and create a new post on and dive in even deeper, get even more specific, more granular, and, you know, create an awesome piece of content that people are absolutely going to love. And day number 28 is more catch-up or taking it as a day off.

Then day number 29 we want to start brainstorming potential products or services you could potentially create or promote, like, with, like, an affiliate partnership. So, again, based off of your survey results and your Skype calls, we can go in and say, “Right. Out of the 10 people that I spoke with, six people have this problem. I know how to solve this problem,” or you can learn how to solve this problem and you go and create a course or a book or a video series, or you can turn it into a service and you can offer that to your audience. Or you can find somebody else that has a product that you can promote and earn an affiliate commission from. So what we’re going to be doing is trying to offer solutions to the problems that your audience are having. Whether or not you decide to create the products yourself or do an affiliate relationship, that is what we’re going to be doing for day number 29.

And then finally, day number 30 we’re going to be planning out the next five blog posts just like we did on day number 30 last time in our second lot of 30 days. Plan out five blog posts; like, get sort of, like, a skeleton of what you want each blog post to contain; and then next month or starting the day after, we’re going to start writing those out to be scheduled on the same days that you decided, you know, whether or not it’s a Monday, every Monday a new post is going to go out. So we’ve always got content going out on a consistent basis. Google will love it; audience will love it; and it will consistently bring in new visitors, and slowly you will find your traffic start to increase to your website. And that’s it. That is your 30 days.

So if we look at the resources that I mentioned, especially, like, the cost breakdown as well, for our email service provider, we’ve got ConvertKit still; that’s another $29. Like I said, this is going to be $29 every single month. If you decide to go and use Jarvis, that’s going to be $19.95 a month, so $20 a month. But for this first month, it’s only going to cost you $10 because we have that code, TMD50, to get your first month for 50 per cent off. If you decide not to go with that option, then you can use Buffer for free. And then we’ve got the logo from Logo Nerds for $27. All in total, that comes to $75.95. But with that $10 off, it comes to $65.95. And, again, if you decide that you want to use Buffer, then it’s only going to be $55.95. Actually, no; it’s going to be $55 exactly.

So hopefully, guys, this is going to show you that it doesn’t take a lot of money or a lot of time to go and, you know, start off with a potential idea for, you know, creating a new website and a new business to, in just 90 days alone, you can have a website up. You can have content on that website; you can have content constantly going out on a weekly basis; you know, you’ve got an email list that’s starting to grow now; you’re now reaching out to other people in your space; you know, you’re building up relationships with, you know, other people in your niche, in your industry; and, you know, you’re getting in front of the audience because you’re writing guest posts and then you’ve got all these new content ideas based off of the posts that you’ve gone and already created; you’ve spoken to your audience and potential customers; you know, you’ve seen exactly – you’ve asked them what problems they’re having; you’re now starting to think of potential solutions that you could offer them, whether or not you go and create them yourself or promote them as an affiliate. If you decide to create them yourself, you know, it could be an actual product or a service, you know, and this is all in just 90 days. Imagine what you could do in nine months, six months, in a year. It doesn’t take a lot. As long as you put consistent effort in, you do something every single day, you are going to make giant leaps and bounds in your business. You know, all those little baby steps, they will add up over time.

Now, again, if you guys haven’t gone and downloaded the calendar that breaks all this down – you know, it breaks down everything that you should be doing in every day for the entire 90 days; it shows you all the resources; how much they’re going to cost; has links to them all so you can find them. Go and download the calendar that I created in the show notes for today’s episode. Again, that is at tmdshow.com/3. That is the number three. tmdshow.com/3. Download that calendar, print it off, and each day cross the day off once you’ve completed it.

So hopefully, guys, this has been extremely helpful for you. This is going to be the last solo episode for a little while now. For the next eight weeks, I am going to be giving you three co-hosted episodes every single week. Tomorrow we have Madison Black from Australia who is currently in Mexico, or at least she was in Mexico at the time of recording our interview, although I don’t like to – I keep calling them interviews; they’re not. They’re co-hosted episodes. And it was a really good one. And so every single episode you are going to get some either business help, business advice, some travel advice, and then every single episode has got an awesome travel story to end it with. And then once we hit the end of those eight weeks, we’re going to be having an episode every single week; the first three of the month are going to be business or travel help and advice, and then the final one of the month is going to be pure travel stories.

So hopefully, guys, you guys are going to be sticking around for a long time. Hopefully you guys have enjoyed this three-part series that help you go through getting your first website set up and doing it in the right way. Later on, hopefully very soon from the time of recording this at least anyway, I’m going to be turning this into a more in-depth course for you guys. So come and join the Facebook group, dudebrood.com. That will take you to the Facebook group. It’s completely free. Come and join, come in and chat with other digital nomads and location-independent entrepreneurs and those aspiring to become either one of those. And as soon as we have the in-depth course out and available, you know, these people will be there hearing about it first. So if for whatever reason, you know, you couldn’t follow along with this or you just want to learn more information, more step-by-step, some videos to go along with it, that will be coming out very soon, at least very soon from the time of recording this; it might already be out if you listen to this in the future. Either way, I’m rambling right now. Come and join us in the Facebook group, dudebrood.com. Again, if you haven’t downloaded the calendar for this episode, you will find at tmdshow.com/3. And I am going to end it here for you guys, and I will look forward to being in your earbuds again in the next episode. Take care, guys. Peace. Fist bump.

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