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MONTH 1 - BUDGET: $500
Month 1 of Your 6 Month Strategy
Because this is the beginning, and you’ll just be getting everything set up, month one will be your most expensive. 50 to 60% of your costs will be taken up in month 1. You’ll need domain & hosting, educational materials, and some research resources.
A. Get Serious - **COST: $0
OK. This is about running a BUSINESS. So the FIRST thing you need to do - is GET SERIOUS. Unless you treat this like a business, it won’t BE a business, it will be a “should’ve done”. You know, it’s when you look back a few years and go “I should’ve done THAT.” You’ll look back and realize you didn’t put enough into it, didn’t follow the directions, didn’t do everything you could have, or didn’t bla, bla, bla. You’ll have a million excuses why you didn’t succeed.
The BIGGEST killer of any business - is excuses. The best way to avoid excuses, is to have a plan, and commit to it as best you can.
THIS is your general strategic plan. Stick to it, commit to it, live it like your are serious about it (after all, it IS your BUSINESS) and you WILL SUCCEED. You will be creating a more focused plan for your day-to-day business, but you can be - and must be - flexible with that.
B. Educate Yourself - **COST: $100 to $200
At the beginning, you’ll need to learn about what you’re doing, what your niche is, how to do certain things with your website, where to find your resources, etc.
The best way to learn is to learn fro others’ mistakes. Even better to learn from the mistakes of the PROS. Check out this interview of 14 top bloggers by ProBlogger - “What Would I Do If I Had to Start Over?”
Research everything, like WordPress plugins and themes, about affiliate programs, list of affiliate advertisers, websites in your area of interest, your competition, and everything you can get your eyes on.
Don’t know what your niche is - or what that even means? Check this post out on “7 Steps to Choosing Your Niche“. I would sign up for a keyword tool like NicheBot ($20/mo!) and do some keyword research related to my area of interest. NicheBot is the only keyword tool that offers scads of videos on doing keyword research. We like videos.
You’ll also want a comprehensive course on how to build and maintain (an income with) a website or blog, and how to take advantage of the flood of new tools that keeps being made available. I would recommend Yaro Starak’s Blog Mentoring Program, or Michael Cheney’s complete website traffic building course ($97!). Check out all of the mentoring programs we suggest - and select the one you are most comfortable with. IGNORE ANY HYPE YOU READ. You will be learning BASIC information from some of these guys but they make it sound like they’re giving you a diamond studded Ferrari. Don’t worry about if you’re going to get ripped off - you won’t. While there are hundreds of online mentoring coaches to choose from, we will only recommend the ones to you that are trustworthy, and will will be your greatest help on your road to success.
C. Domain Name & Hosting - **COST: $400 (or less - covers 1 year)
Your initial domain hosting fees will be a little more due to purchasing a domain name. We offer a simple in-house hosting package with your domain name and fully managed hosting - with WordPress installed! - All you have to do is pick a theme. You just tell us the domain name you want, and we do the rest. You can actually get your hosting and domain name for far cheaper than this - and we list resources where you can do this in the ‘Hosting, Domains & FTP’ section of the Members Only Directory.
D. Start Planning & Building Content - **COST: sleepless nights
Once you’ve picked out your niche, start planning out how you want to present your information. What are your categories and sub categories? Is there any way to monetize special areas of your site? What resources will you offer? Who’s on your ‘Recommended’ list (Blogroll)? etc… Once you have categories and sub-categories figured out, what about topics to write about?
E. Start building links to your site right away!
Links are the most important factor in your online business. Links are EVERYTHING. They are what adds value to your virtual real-estate, they’re what drives your traffic, your search rankings, and they’re what you should concentrate on as the main commodity of your web property. THIS is why you are writing so much unique content. THIS is why you are doing promotion. THIS should be your main concern. LINKS. BUT, do not be over-reactive about it (and go on a link-building frenzy), but be acutely aware of it (as to know how important they are for all your decision making). And EDUCATE YOURSELF on links and link building right away. Here is a comprehensive overview I have done of links and link building: Top 25 Benefits of Links and Link Building. Find a whole list of link building resources in our Members Only Resource Directory under ‘SEO Tools & Resources > Link Building’.
F. Join StumbleUpon - Become a Stumbler - **COST: $0
Join StumbleUpon while you are still learning and build up some Stumble trust. As other stumblers see your ratings, they’ll visit the sites you recommend (yours included) and add those links to their ratings. This is great for search engine rankings. You will get links from several StumbleUpon pages. Links are Good.
G. Join Squidoo - Build a Lens - **COST: $0
Squidoo will let you build a little one-page ‘mini-site’ about a specific topic (the same as your blog/website). You can become a Squidoo authority on your topic. The best part about Squidoo is these pages have high PageRank and usually show up in search rankings if built cleanly, which will drive your site traffic, but it is also a great way to instantly build links to your site.
H. Start Commenting - Get Known - **COST: $0
Don’t drive other bloggers crazy with your commenting, but find other blogs in your niche or general topic of interest, and start commenting on their posts telling them how great and helpful it was - or ask questions. Only ask questions that deal directly with the post, not stuff like “What does bla bla bla mean?” - they’re not tutors, but many will provide a helpful answer. You can ask “What did you mean by…?”, or “How did you find that out…?” - that kind of thing. DO NOT tell them that they should check out your eighth wonder of the world - YET. You are just starting to develop content, and if you send a top blogger to your site - there better be something AMAZING for them to look at - or you’ll be wasting their time and you’ll piss them off.
I. - Decide what advertisers you want to feature. - ***COST: $0
This is the fun part! You get to see everything everyone is offering, and dream about all the money they’re going to pay you!
Get ready, month 2 will be here before you know it! And don’t forget to ASK ME QUESTIONS!!
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How I Would Start an Online Business for $1K - Month 1
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