Posted on August 6, 2008 - by Kelly Verge

30DC “No Promotion Zone” – Yeah, Right…

Another Promotion-Free Zone

I realize this point of view might not be popular, but it’s bothering me, so I’m throwing it out there.

Each year, Ed Dale makes a point of saying that the Thirty Day Challenge is a month free of all promotions. They use the month to teach, and the other 11 months to sell.

I’ve had no problem with the other 11 months because the teaching has really be excellent.

By the time this challenge is over, I might be just as pleased with the content. Honestly, I don’t even mind the promotion that’s going on. However, I think they’ve really hurt their credibility by pushing the ideas of “free” and “promotion-free” during the pre-season and early videos – especially considering the non-stop barrage of affiliate “trials” and offers they’re pushing at us.

While it is possible to do this year’s challenge without paying a dime, most of the attention, instruction and hype has been given to three paid solutions.

• First, there’s Market Samurai. From what we’ve used so far, it’s a great tool and well worth the eventual purchase price (supposedly $67 for 30DC members). To be fair, they did also have videos showing how to manually do everything that MS does, but there was a great deal of hype and excitement surrounding Market Samurai (again, I think the excitement is deserved, but it’s still promotion).
• Next, there was Hostgator. They’re making at least $125 per signup through their affiliate link. This isn’t just some little thing to help defray the costs of putting on the training. It was a soft-sell, but selling is selling.I wonder just how many 30DC’ers purchased this hosting. They offer a free solution, but there’s even promotion happening with that (see below).
• Finally (well… there’s still another 25 days to go), there is Wordpress Direct. For free, you get a 30 day trial, during which you can create 3 blogs – all hosted with WD.For $1 (for the first month), you can have 12 blogs, and will be billed at $37+ per month after that. The $1 is a no-brainer – except that many people will forget to cancel or won’t be able to figure out how to cancel, etc. All of today’s videos were about Wordpress Direct. Ed hyped this from before day one. How many times in the nightly shows did he hold up six fingers implying something great was coming on day six?I feel for the brand new people. They didn’t even show any other way of accomplishing today’s tasks.Wordpress Direct is basically a front end for Wordpress installations. They have a built-in template directory as well as a suite of pre-installed plug-ins. For a higher subscription ($197+), you will be able to use some auto-content features, but short of that, it’s just Wordpress.Any experienced Wordpress user could do every thing that WD is doing for us in this challenge. It’s a shame that they are pushing this solution (with a healthy recurring commission) without also teaching a truly free method of doing the same tasks.

I’m kind of embarrassed that I pointed people to this year’s Thirty Day Challenge. I made a big deal about the idea that they might sell to us after it was over, but this month was all about training. They’ve let me (us) down.

“There is no cost for awesomeness,” indeed.

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