jleane - 10:34 am on Feb 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

Day #1

I've decided on a blog, as defanjos suggested. My subject matter is going to be personal finance, with a focus on credit cards - debt, budgeting and frugal living will be ancillary topics. I know that most of you will probably think I'm certifiable for choosing such a competitive niche, but the money is just too good to pass up. 'Credit cards' has a CPC of $10.56 on the Google AdWords Keyword tool and has a fairly high search volume. The affiliate marketing options are also really good, with commissions for successful credit card applications usually in the mid to high $XX range.

With this kind of moolah at stake, I know I'll have to work hard. Really hard. But I think if I can come up with a few unique marketing ideas and write some truly kick ass content, I'll have a good chance of breaking into the market.

Today I:

Bought a .com domain name for 2 years ($9.99 * 2)
Bought 6 months of hosting ($5.95 per month)

Total damage so far: $55.68
Budget remaining: $344.32

Other stuff:

I installed WordPress on my server. It's the first time I've ever used it, and I'm finding it really easy and user friendly. For now, I'm using a pre-made theme, but I've designed a mockup of my own theme in PS and it looks great. Unfortunately, I don't think I have sufficient skills to code it up myself, but I've found someone who says they can do it for $50. At this point it might be a luxury I simply can't afford - $50 is about 15% of my remaining budget!

As far as content goes - it's pretty much what will make or break me. I'm hoping to write a minimum of 2 quality articles per day for the site, and possibly 1 more for submission to those 'free articles' websites, since I'll need to start building up as many incoming links as I can. I've also been toying with the idea of employing a cheap freelance writer for just this purpose.

Total money made today: $0.00 (I haven't even bothered to put Adsense on my blog yet - I've heard that it's a good way to get the site spidered by Google, but I think I'll wait until I have a little more content first)