jleane - 9:20 pm on Feb 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm 22 years old, a part time college student, and I live with a few awesome friends in a shared house. For the first time in a long while, I'm happy. Life is good - but not for long. Unfortunately, due to my extreme lazyness (compounded with some rather 'questionable' purchases), I am pretty much flat broke. I've done the sums, and in 3 months I will have a net worth pretty much on par with a cashew nut. Unless I'm able to start bringing in roughly $100/day by some time around my 23rd birthday (9th May), I will be forced to make one of two decisions, both of which will utterly annhialate my already fragile self esteem. These are:

1. Move back in with parents
2. Get a job at burger king

Now, you might be thinking to yourself that, while not particularly appealing, niether of these options is really all that terrible. And you would be wrong. I won't go into why this is the case at this point, but for now it should suffice to say that I would rather sell my body to complete strangers. And before anyone tells me to just go ahead and do that, I'm far too ugly to make anywhere even close to $100 a day, so don't bother.

Believe it or not, the mere thought of either of these things is enough to get the hair on the back of my neck to stand up on end, and as the complete financial meltdown gets closer, my psychological state is deteriorating ever more rapidly. Whilst only a few days ago I could push the thoughts of impending doom to the back of my mind, now I wake up with cold sweats on a regular basis. Yesterday my girlfriend told me I started hysterically screaming 'do you want fries with that?' and 'you can upsize that for 70 cents' at random intervals throughout the night.

To save my sanity and avoid emotional castration, I had to come up with a plan. Unfortunately, as well as being lazy, I'm also not the sharpest tool in the shed, so my plan is really not all that good. Basically, it goes something like this:

Step 1: Start up a website
Step 2: Find a related affiliate/advertising partner
Step 3: Get hits and sell stuff
Step 4: Bring in $100/day on a regular basis within 3 months time.
Step 5: Avoid asylum

So yeah.. that's, uh, pretty much the master plan...

Now I assume at this stage most of you are either shaking your head or laughing at me (or a combination of the two).

You're perfectly justified in doing so, but I'm still going to try. Although the odds are stacked against me, I do have a few factors working in my favour.

First, I've got lots of time on my hands. Theoretically, I could work 8-10 hours a day for the next 3 months on this.

Second, I've got reasonable web design skills. While I don't have any official qualifications, I'm decent at HTML and Photoshop, so I can at least create semi-professional looking sites.

Third, I've got about $400 that I can use as a marketing budget - pretty much what's left of my savings after I budget for 3 months of rent, food & misc. expenses.

Fourth, I have a basic understanding of affiliate marketing and SEO, since I occasionally read WW when I see something interesting.

And finally, I really, really, really don't want to move back home or work at burger king.

Now the purpose of this thread is to doccument my quest. Every day I will post a status report that details what I have done as well as how much money I have brought in. I'll also write a breif reflection on anything I've learned, and probably rant on about various unrelated things as my emotional state continues to deteriorate.

I hope you come along for the ride and whether I succeed or fail I'm sure it will be quite entertaining and I hope that you'll leave me a little tip, some encouragement or a scrap of advice once in a while.

Day 1 of 90 starts tomorrow - I hope to see you then.

Jonathan