Quest to make first $1 online. Follow me on this epic journey.

GoRedWings

GoRedWings

New member
Jun 18, 2010
47
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Detroit
So I have been lurking for way too long around this forum and figured its time to shit or get off the pot and really buckle down and try to make some money.

I read Lemons884's awesome diary yesterday, and it gave me the motivation to do my own. So I am going to start one of these journal thingies to document my experience as I start my quest to earn my first $1 online.

Being forced to update this thread will keep me focused and on task, while hopefully allowing other newbs to learn from my experience.
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Today was the first day of my quest. Below is a list of tasks I finished today.

Day 1:

- Keyword Research (Found 1 good Keyword with ~5,000 monthly exact searches and very little competition. 37,000 results for "keyword" and 9,200 for allintitle: keyword)

- Registered Domain. Already had a hosting plan so I just threw it up on there for now.

- Set up WordPress

- Installed plugins - (All in one SEO, Google Analytics for Wordpress, Google XML Sitemaps, Sociable)

- Posted article around my main keyword

- Submitted link to a couple social bookmarks to help the site get indexed quicker (Sent it to Reddit and Mixx - Is there a bookmarking site out there that is known to help get a site indexed faster?)

- Created Google Webmaster account, verified site and submitted sitemap

- Applied to several affiliate programs on CommissionJunction that have products directly related to my niche. Waiting to get approval.


Next steps:

- More Keyword Research (I want to find 4 more good Keywords that have to do with the overall theme of the site. Ideally these KW's will have 10k monthly exact searches and less than 30,000 competing sites)

- Write an article around each of the new keywords I find

- Write 2 blog posts using longtail kw's to point back to my first page I already have created


Current Profit:
-$7.67
 


You're on the right path. Study ad placements on the bigger high traffic sites, like ehow.com and similar sites.

Do some social bookmarking and blog commenting for each article you right. If you spend 2 hours a day writing and 2 hours a day building links, you'll be making money in your first month. Persistence is key.
 
barman said:
I will paypal you $1 to shut the fuck up.

(yes I know, newb section, but sometimes I can't help myself)
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As long as its not a dickroll to get me to shut the fuck up I'll take it.

bobsoap said:
You'll have to make that $1.34, you don't want the paypal fees to drive him bankrupt.


OP - just kidding, you know. Good luck.
Click to expand...

I know. I appreciate you looking out for me and covering those paypal fees. They are a bitch :D
 
dchuk said:
You're on the right path. Study ad placements on the bigger high traffic sites, like ehow.com and similar sites.

Do some social bookmarking and blog commenting for each article you right. If you spend 2 hours a day writing and 2 hours a day building links, you'll be making money in your first month. Persistence is key.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the tips. I will definitely check out those sites you mentioned for ad placements.

Day 2:

- Did some more keyword research. I think I found 2 more solid keywords to target. I am quickly realizing how tedious keyword research can be, but it is a necessary evil.

- Changed the theme I was using as the first one I had up looked like crap. I think I like this new one. It will have to work for now because I'm sick of fiddling with the layout of the site. Hopefully this site will make some money and I can purchase a custom theme down the road. I was even able to change the little favicon (image next the URL) and was surprised just how easy it is to do that. This site makes it super easy to do.

- Threw up some shitty adsense ads right now just in case I get a few visitors before being approved for the affiliate programs.

- Added a blog post. Bookmarked my homepage and blog post at 10 sites. Did a little blog commenting as well.


It looks like my site is indexed as it is showing up in a google search when I enter domain.com. Hopefully the organic traffic will start soon.

I actually had 38 visitors on day 1 but they were all from a link I posted on Reddit, haha. Only had 7 today from the social bookmarking I did today though. I will take it though, at least people are interested in the topic :)

Next Steps:

- Thank god I am done formatting the site and installing plugins. Now I can focus on creating content and getting those backlinks :thumbsup:

- Write another Page article

- Write 3 blog posts

- Continue Social Bookmarking and blog commenting.
I would eventually like to outsource this. How soon is too soon to hire a service from the BST section? I should probably give it at least a month right?


​
Current Profit:
-$7.67 (waiting for Barman's $1.34)
 
GoRedWings said:
I would eventually like to outsource this. How soon is too soon to hire a service from the BST section? I should probably give it at least a month right?
​
Click to expand...


Don't outsource until you have become an expert at everything you're doing and just dont have time for it anymore. Save your money and learn.

​
GoRedWings said:
Current Profit:
-$7.67 (waiting for Barman's $1.34)
Click to expand...

Classic
 
dchuk said:
Don't outsource until you have become an expert at everything you're doing and just dont have time for it anymore. Save your money and learn.
Click to expand...

Good idea. I have the general concept down but I should probably get some real world experience with linkbuilding.

designerTODOall said:
hmm seem to be fake :(
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que?

Day 3:

I didn't do too much today as I need to take a break from sitting in front of the computer.

- Wrote a blog post

- Some light social bookmarking of the new post

Next Steps:

Later today I will write another article, 2 blog posts and do more linkbuilding. I am going to try and find some do follow blogs in my niche as well some blogs that have a large community to get most of my back links from.

Does it matter if all of my links come from a handful of websites? Or should I try and find as many different websites as possible and get 1 link from them?

Current Profit:
-$7.67 (waiting for Barman's $1.34)
 
The more unique domains linking in, the better. The more of those that are quality, the better.
 
pitbull said:
The more unique domains linking in, the better. The more of those that are quality, the better.
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That's what I figured

satih said:
there is a lot of software that can help you do this promotion that could be found in public access, some free, some cracked, but anyways it's better that do everything by hand, save your effort and a lot of time
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Care to share any of these? After a quick Google and Wicked Fire search I haven't found much. I've seen Social Marker before but it did not work very well for me. Same with Only Wire.

Also, isn't it better to manually bookmark your links at the social sites?
 
GoRedWings said:
That's what I figured



Care to share any of these? After a quick Google and Wicked Fire search I haven't found much. I've seen Social Marker before but it did not work very well for me. Same with Only Wire.

Also, isn't it better to manually bookmark your links at the social sites?
Click to expand...

Don't worry about software yet, do it all by hand at first. Build some web 2.0 sites out with content linking back, keep building out high quality bookmarking accounts, do 30 minutes of blog commenting a day at least. Once you get it all down and you start getting bored, hire someone :)
 
dchuk said:
Don't worry about software yet, do it all by hand at first. Build some web 2.0 sites out with content linking back, keep building out high quality bookmarking accounts, do 30 minutes of blog commenting a day at least. Once you get it all down and you start getting bored, hire someone :)
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sorry asking this - what do you mean by blog commenting? promoting your website on several blogs by commenting and backlinking to your website?
 
Sorry for the late post here. I fell asleep last night before I could update this thread:

Day 4:

- Wrote 2 blog posts

- Worked on social bookmarking and blog commenting

Next Steps:

- write, write, write
- I want to get a handful of articles written so I can create the web 2.0 sites dchuk mentioned above
​
- bookmark these sites at social bookmarking sites, RSS feeds and ping them as well.

- I was finally approved for some affiliate programs. Going to remove adsense and play with some ad placement.

- Create Twitter account and start building a targeted following. I downloaded TweetDeck to help with this, and it should speed things up a bit. Anyone ever tried Tweetadder before? It looks like a pretty cool tool.

- Create eZine account as well so I can start submitting articles there and gaining backlinks.

Busy day ahead of me here. Better get to work!

Current Profit:
-$7.67 (waiting for Barman's $1.34)
 
pick a pretty low volume, low competition keyword, write a perfectly optimized article (keyword in title, description, h1, first line of content), link to it with your anchor text from other pages on your site, and build links to it for that keyword.

It will be low added traffic, but should be pretty easy to get ranked. Push it hard, then rinse and repeat. It will add up over time.
 
dchuk said:
pick a pretty low volume, low competition keyword, write a perfectly optimized article (keyword in title, description, h1, first line of content), link to it with your anchor text from other pages on your site, and build links to it for that keyword.

It will be low added traffic, but should be pretty easy to get ranked. Push it hard, then rinse and repeat. It will add up over time.
Click to expand...

Ok, so you are saying focus on even lower volume, competition keywords than what I have started with? The main keyword I have been targeting has pretty low search traffic already (29 daily exact) and a SEOC or 24,300 according to Market Samurai.

I figured I would start with the lowest search and competition keyword of the 4 that I will be targeting. Should be targeting an even longer tail keyword?

BackBanana said:
stick adsense on a page, tweet all day using trending topics and a bit.ly url, watch the page views rack up, you'll have 1$ before you know it lol
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Haha, I might just have to try this out. Although the hourly rate of $.17 would probably make me want to kill myself.
 
Well I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked. I Got sidetracked by a couple other things today. I will have to make up for this tomorrow.

Day 5:

Wrote a keyword optimized page pimping several affiliate products within my niche.

Wrote 2 articles to be used on web 2.0 and article directory sites to gain backlinks to the keyword page I developed.

Started to build a following on Twitter so that I can have a targeted group to tweet my blog posts to in the future.

Next Steps:

Will focus all of my backlinking efforts moving forward on the keyword page I put up today until this page starts to rank on page 1 for my keyword.

Write more articles to use for link building. I am looking to write 25 articles and post 5 articles onto 5 web 2.0 sites with each article linking back to my site. Is this the right way to go about this? I would assume the SERPs would like to see these web 2.0 properties have more than one article on them?


Current Profit:
-$7.67
 
GoRedWings said:
Ok, so you are saying focus on even lower volume, competition keywords than what I have started with? The main keyword I have been targeting has pretty low search traffic already (29 daily exact) and a SEOC or 24,300 according to Market Samurai.

I figured I would start with the lowest search and competition keyword of the 4 that I will be targeting. Should be targeting an even longer tail keyword?
Click to expand...

You're fine with that competition, my point is more that you should pick a keyword and stick with it to learn the ins and outs. A lot of times, people will settle on making it to the front page, but when you're looking at that low of volume, you might only get 2 or 3 clicks a day, whereas you could get 10-20 being at the top. That can add up to a big difference if done correctly.

Also, getting to the front page is a different beast than getting to the top 3 and then #1, so it's something you should experience first hand.
 
dchuk said:
You're fine with that competition, my point is more that you should pick a keyword and stick with it to learn the ins and outs. A lot of times, people will settle on making it to the front page, but when you're looking at that low of volume, you might only get 2 or 3 clicks a day, whereas you could get 10-20 being at the top. That can add up to a big difference if done correctly.

Also, getting to the front page is a different beast than getting to the top 3 and then #1, so it's something you should experience first hand.
Click to expand...

Ok, cool. That is what I am going to do. I have a keyword optimized page I am happy with, that is trying to sell some products. I will not stop until I am #1 for my keyword :D
 
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