I’m taking part in the 90 day challenge hosted by Jason E Johns and part of the challenge requires building backlinks to pages. So I made a tool that helps make it a bit easier!

View the tool for more info by clicking here

The challenge is to generate an income through affiliate marketing of $100+ per day after 90 days.

With internet marketing you’re generally going to have a lot going on, and so it pays to be prepared an organised. So I’d like to share how I keep myself organised and motivated to reaching my goals with online marketing.

I use Google Docs (now Google Drive) to store all the documents I need. This is very handy because theoretically I can work on my online business anytime anywhere on any computer with an internet connection or smartphone. So it makes it super accessible and easy to get working. Whenever I have some time to kill I can just whip out my Google Drive iPhone app and see all of my keyword research, content ideas, niche research, account details and the rest. I prefer to work on a desktop computer because it’s quicker to work on. With Google Drive you could go to your local library if you didn’t have a computer and then you could work on your business there! I love the flexibility of it.

Since Google Drive is so flexible, it’s pretty much like having a web based version of Microsoft Office. So spreadsheets and slideshows are possible as well as simple word documents.

So what sort of documents do I use?

First document I create is a spreadsheet that I call ‘[niche] – Keyword Research’. Inside this spreadsheet I’ll have three columns: Keyphrase, Competing Sites, and Monthly Searches. I’ll have this sheet open whilst I do all of my keyword research. I’ll insert any promising keyphrases that meet a certain criteria of competition and search volume. Tip: if you select all cells and then right click on any cell then goto ‘Sort Range’, you can specify which columns you want to sort by. I generally sort by lowest to highest competition. This gives me a better idea of what I’m dealing with and the better keywords to pick for content creation.

My second most important document that I’ll create is my Backlink building log spreadsheet. Inside this I’ll create several sheets: RSS Feeds, Blog Comments, Article Marketing, Web 2.0, Social Media. Then whenever I create a new backlink I’ll add it to the appropriate sheet. This is particularly handy with blog comments because I can go back to check them after a few days to see if they have been accepted. Then I can highlight the row a different colour to indicate that it’s a confirmed backlink. Very handy! So anything you do to expand your amount of backlinks, add a link to this spreadsheet or a reference to show where this new link is. This actually motivates me in a way because I can see how far I’ve come which prompts me to do more to keep up the good effort.

Next I’ll have a ‘Niche Details’ document. Which is just a word document that highlights key things that are handy to have ready to copy and paste. For example, affiliate link URLs from clickbank, website URL, top 10 keyphrases, other sites of interest in this niche, e.t.c.

Another good document I like to have for motivational purposes is a Niche Diary. Just a simple text document where I make a log of everything I did that day. Up to you really, some people like to make a log and others don’t. Personally I used to hate this kind of stuff, but now I find it really useful. Especially when I might have had a couple of days away from it and I’m getting back into the swing of it. I can just read and recap where I am with this niche.

Every niche has so much information to absorb and so much detail in every part of it. I think if you really want to excel then you have to really take an interest and learn more about your niche. So I have a ‘Niche Research’ document. Inside the text file I’ll have names of key players in the niche and industry, key websites, resources, facts… It’s all really great to have, and you can populate this stuff as you browse the web doing your research for the niche, just copy and paste interesting things. Later on when you’re stuck for ideas you can come to this file and you have the basis of many new pieces of content!

Finally, and maybe most important, is the accounts spreadsheet! Without this you’ll just become very confused and frustrated! Invariably you’re going to create roughly 2143293207 accounts (actual number!) on this site and that site. You’ll quickly lose track of it all. So create an accounts spreadsheet with the headings: Email, Username, Password, URL. Now you’ll always know the logins to all of your accounts!

There is one more… quite new to my Niche folder. It’s a link wheel list. Which is basically just a big list of Web 2.0 properties that I found online, and I plan to create an account at each and then link them all together and back to my site in one way or another to create a link wheel/pyramid/spaghetti. If you want to do the same here is my list:

PR 9 Web 2.0 Sites

http://wordpress.com/

http://twitter.com/

PR 8 Web 2.0 Sites

http://www.weebly.com/

http://www.typepad.com/

http://www.blogger.com/

http://www.livejournal.com/

http://www.tumblr.com/

http://www.webs.com

http://www.squidoo.com/

PR 7 Web 2.0 Sites

http://my.opera.com/

http://viviti.com/

http://multiply.com/

http://www.xanga.com/

http://www.yola.com/

http://www.blogsome.com/

http://edublogs.org/

http://www.jimdo.com/

http://knol.google.com/k

PR 6 Web 2.0 Sites

http://www.blogspirit.com/

http://www.opendiary.com/

http://www.blogdrive.com/

http://www.tblog.com/

http://weblogs.us/

http://blog.com/

http://www.blog.co.uk/

http://hubpages.com/

http://diaryland.com

http://www.bigadda.com/

PR 5 Web 2.0 Sites

http://www.20six.co.uk/

http://www.terapad.com/

http://typolis.net/

http://zoomblog.com/

http://home.onsugar.com/

http://nireblog.com/

http://business.blinkweb.com/

http://www.insanejournal.com/

http://blurty.com/

http://www.free-conversant.com/

http://freeflux.net/

http://tabulas.com

http://www.sosblog.com/

http://upsaid.com/

http://home.onsugar.com/

PR 4 Web 2.0 Sites

http://www.soulcast.com/

http://www.wordcountjournal.com/

http://www.yousaytoo.com/

http://www.netcipia.com/

http://www.blogeasy.com/

http://www.busythumbs.com/

http://www.journalfen.net/

http://www.memebot.com/

http://www.blogabond.com/

http://www.blog.ca/

http://www.aeonity.com/

http://blogstream.com

http://blogwebsites.net/

http://bloghi.com/

http://blogigo.com

http://blogstudio.com

http://blogtext.org/

This is how I keep myself organised. I can work at home with this, I can work on my lunch hour at work on my online business, and all of my documents are synced where ever I am. I’m looking forward to creating a new spreadsheet and calling it ‘Monthly Income from [Niche]‘!

What ways do you keep yourself organised?

I hope you enjoy!

I built it completely from the ground up using a framework called Codeigniter.

The design was beautifully executed by my friend and colleague Will.

Most of the features you can’t really see from the front end, in fact the front end was the easiest part of making it. A few bits you can check out though are:

• Store finder – type in a post code, location, land mark, street name, city… and it will tell you how far away the nearest stores are within a certain radius. It’ll then link you to that store, giving you contact details and even job listings if there are any for that particular store.
• Product showroom – an advanced inventory of categorized items everything the fish keeper could ask for. Soon to becoming available to purchase items right there on the website.
• LSI Search – Search feature utilizing a basic but evolving latent semantic indexing algorithm to find you relevant results within the site. Yeah that’s right, I didn’t just use the bog standard google in-site search! I made my own! Also it will find where in the post shows that search term and then highlight that in the search item description kind of like google does…
• Intelligent “Related Products” adverts which know the content on the page you’re looking at and then serves you up relevant products which may interest you.

All the fun and wizardry is in the back end of the site where administrators have full and complete control of the site. Among the plethora of things admins can do are:

• Advanced creation, editing and deletion of content.
• Privilege Management – ability to make privilege groups for different levels of admins, and setting exactly what they want each person to have control over.
• Approval management – A ‘Super Admin’ can set who he wants to require approval of their content. Then when a lower admin creates or edits content it will go through the approval stage before it’s made live on the site.
• Scheduling – Anyone who has the privilege enabled can schedule a post to go live, make a change, revert or delete. Allowing the admin to potentially program in a whole year’s worth of content changes once and then the site automatically does the rest, right when it’s told to do so.
• Cool feature where VAT percentage can be adjusted in one place and it updates prices across every product in one swoop.
• + lots of really cool AJAX widgetry and clever stuff!

On last count (a day before it went live) the total line count was 25,560 lines of code to make it all work. That’s NOT including any framework code. That’s just stuff that I did.

It’s the most complex thing I’ve ever built, and most satisfying to launch, highest traffic site too (> 1500 hits per day).

And that’s that.

I hope to make a more secure housing for the GoPro in my next build. The next one is a F18, it looks like it has more lift that this plane so it should fly better with the GoPro!

Onwards and upwards!

Here’s the video:

My mate Dan did the music in the video, you can check more of his stuff out here: http://soundcloud.com/auditree

And here’s some final build pictures:

It was good fun to build and amazing fun to fly. Surprisingly acrobatic and nimble in the air. Was just brilliant!

Now it’s time to start building an F18, and some smoke bombs to go with it

Batteries, propellers, a motor, ESC…

But there’s always something you forgot, in my case it was massively obvious. A battery charger! So will be getting one of those Saturday morning, hopefully should have the batteries charged by Saturday afternoon for the maiden flight!

Now I have the stuff I got to work putting it together. I made a motor mount from basla wood and cocktail sticks. It’s really strong.

I promptly lined it up, trimmed it, and stuck it to the fuselage.

I was amazed at the accuracy of the plans, the propeller has 1mm clearance each side of the prop hole. That’s some attention to detail!

Next I cut and bent some piano wire/string. Surprisingly strong stuff. Got it lined up though and positioned the servo’s roughly.

Then stuck it in place securely. The coolest part was using the control rod to move the elavon for the first time! It’s the simple things… Can’t wait to get them attached to the servos and hooked up to radio gear as well.

It’s really coming together now.

So I just need to get some 3.5mm bullet connectors for the ESC now, and then hook it all up, stick it together permanently with glue, solder, charge, adjust center of gravity. Oh and stick them damn vertical stabilizers on! but that’s the cherry on top for when it’s done.

That’s all for now!

So started off today hot gluing the carbon rod and the two parts of the body together. I thought it was kind of strange and would create a weak point in the design, but its actually solid because I coated it in glue!

Next step after the body was solid was to get the elevons on (elevators/ailerons).

I carved the foam at an angle on the body and also the flap so it could reach a good angle. Then duct taped it into position to create a hinge.

Now onto the “fuselage” part, if you can call it that on a F117. Had to cut out and score the foam with this bit, being careful not to snap it when I bent it round. It looks like multiple pieces glued together but it is in fact one piece bent.

Those holes in the side are vents for the air to get in to cool the electronics. The air should be sucked through by the prop in the back.

The micro metal gear servos arrived today so here’s a shot of their rough position. Metal rods will extend to the elavons so that they are controlled by the servos. They’re in line with the axis of rotation for the elavons.

And finally I added the side vent housings. Nothing is glued down properly yet, I need to wait for all the components so I can lay them out and maybe modify a few bits to get it all working together.

Oh and of course add the vertical stabilizers. I think it’s looking pretty darn dandy so far for a couple of evening’s work!