About Adam Taylor...

I am a student, blogger, lazy entrepreneur....


I write about: Analytics, blogging, search engine optimisation and social media marketing.


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Archive: February 2008

Review Of The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan

A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I wanted to review a new internet marketing product, The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan [aff link] and I figured I may as well.

Essentially the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan is an informational product designed to teach a beginner about internet marketing. It covers a wide variety of topics and is quite a comprehensive package.

It was created by the people at Purple Internet Marketing a British internet marketing company.

What’s included in the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan?

In the box you get four workbooks, four DVDs, eight CDs, a poster and a tshirt.

26 week internet marketing plan

What does the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan cover?

The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan is broken down into four main phases:

  1. Website Structure - this covers the planning and creating of your website: keyword research, site architecture etc
  2. Automation & Launch - this is about blogging, building email lists, and using press releases and pay per click to market the launch of your website/product.
  3. Broaden Your Base - this phase is pretty much all about link building: directories, forums, articles etc. Pretty standard stuff.
  4. Broaden Your Horizon - the focus in this phase is social media, widgets and other marketing techniques.

Is the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan any good?

In a word: yes. The DVDs are essentially a video of a training seminar where David Bain is teaching a group of business men and women about internet marketing. It is slickly produced. There are no wobbly cameras or dodgy audio in the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan and it covers a lot of topics.

The target audience will be absolute beginners to online marketing as it is all fairly straight forward stuff that you could easily learn from blogs and forums but it’s convenient to have it all in one easily accessible format.

The workbooks are transcripts of the DVD with space for writing notes. Which is nice for reinforcing what you’ve watched on the DVD.

There were a few things I thought were a bit odd about it, for example, there is quite a long section about wordpress and blogging which goes as specific as to discus plugins yet fails to mention plugins I see as being essential, like the All-In-One SEO Pack. Also the whole thing felt not very cutting edge, information wise. It seems to be all the same things that have been said over and over: create great content, submit to some directories, write some articles, start a blog, participate in forums social media…. etc etc but I guess you could argue not much has changed?

Summary

If you’re new to internet marketing and want a convenient, easily accessible introduction to the field you could do far worse than purchase the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan [aff link], which I should mention is retailing for £399, however, if you already have an idea about internet marketing and are reading some of the top blogs then you’ll be fine without it.

I may have suggested you should consider Aaron Wall’s SEO Book but he has recently changed his business model and is no longer offering the ebook.

The 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan probably fills a void in the market, not replacing SEO Book, but offering an alternative, which, money-wise, is probably more viable than something like Internet Marketing Ninjas (although they’re all slightly different products).

Plugins, Addons, Applications, Toolbars That I Couldn’t Live Without!

l33t

Photo Credit.

Every other day there is a post about the top 10 webmaster/SEO/webdeveloper [insert person here] toolbars/addons etc. that people use and it does, admittedly, get a bit boring. However, I thought I’d quickly share with you what I have and why because I actually find them rather useful.

Firefox Addons I couldn’t live without!

I have a few addons which I don’t really use but here are the ones that are actually useful:

  • Web Development
    • Web Developer Toolbar - this has soooo many features that it is an essential toolbar for any webmaster or geek interested in web development. Think it was one of the first firefox addons I installed.
    • Firebug - similar to the web developer toolbar this is another one that is really useful for web developers/designers, especially if you do a lot of JavaScript. It is a really powerful tool if you learn to use it properly.
    • Cookie Editor - again probably more useful for the web developers out there but never-the-less worthy of a mention. It allows you to quickly edit/delete cookies.
    • IE Tab - this is pretty simple. Allows you to render a page as internet explorer would without needing to leave firefox. Really, really useful.
    • Live HTTP Headers - allows you to see all the individual header requests, status codes etc. as you load a page. Very useful.
    • Colorzilla - so you’ve just setup a new template and are heading off to set up some blended adsense units but have no idea what the colour codes are on the site? Well this handy plugin has an eyedrop whatsit thing that allows you to get the code for any colour on a web page. Great time saver!
  • SEO
    • Search Status - this is quite handy, shows PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete rank as well as allowing you to check a load of things about a page.
    • SEO Quake - turn this on to see lots of useful information about a domain/page when searching in Google etc.
    • User Agent Switcher - want to see what Googlebot sees? Then use this plugin to easily change your user agent.
  • Social Media
    • Stumpleupon - a social site that’s fun, interesting and a great time waster!
    • Del.ico.us - don’t lose that interesting page; tag it with del.icio.us instead.
    • Social Media For Firefox - the concept behind this is great: shows you how many times a page has been dugg/stumbled/redd/del.icio.us’d. From my experience, doesn’t appear to be entirely accurate but it should still help with working out what to submit where.
    • Twitterfox - this makes keeping up and replying to tweets dead easy, they just popup while your browsing.
  • Misc.
    • Down Them All - ever wanted to download all the .jpgs/.mp3s etc on a page quickly? This addon allows you to do just that. I think it supports regex too!

Web apps/sites I can’t live without!

  • Facebook - yes some people don’t like it but it’s undoubtedly my most visited website (probably because I’m a student..)
  • Google Reader - couldn’t live without this, it’s how I keep up to date on all blogs I read.
  • Twitter - ok so I used to not see the point in Twitter but it’s actually really good for having short conversations, sharing links etc. You’re definitely missing out if you don’t use it.
  • Stumbleupon and del.icio.us - you may have guessed from the addons above that I really like Stumbleupon and del.icio.us. I use Stumbleupon because I find it interesting and fun and I’m trying to build up more of a power user account there because I feel it’s the social sharing/bookmarking website I enjoy the most and one I actually waste an hour or so a day on! I use del.icio.us because it’s useful to have a central repository of all my bookmarks. I mostly just tag interesting blog posts that I’ve read but will probably forget about.

Applications I couldn’t live without!

There is only really one application I would say I can’t live without and that is: Launchy. What is it? Well it’s a free launcher application so basically you hit Alt-Space and a little box pops up and you start typing iTun.. and then you can load iTunes. Much quicker than the start menu/desktop etc. Massive time saver.

Actually that is a lie, I couldn’t live without MSN Messenger either. Everyone I know (pretty much) uses MSN Messenger. With a mix of messenger/facebook it pretty much negates the need for e-mail amongst my close friends.

Domaining

I just purchased an ebook about domaining (affiliate link btw) on the recommendation of TheMadHat. I kind of see domaining as a dark art, something I don’t really know anything about and I’m hoping this book will change that.

I’m not really expecting to flip any domains for $xxxxx any time soon but I figured if I could at least purchase more valuable domains for my web properties I’m planning to build that in itself will be valuable knowledge.

Anyway, I’ll try and give a bit more of an in-depth review of it later when I’ve read some more. So far it seems pretty good though. Don’t get put off by the spammy sales page - you can get two chapters for free so you might as well try it out. It’s always good to attempt and diversify income streams.

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