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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
Your future is what you make of it, I was homeless at 16, yes 16yrs old. I ate in soup kitchens and lived in homeless shelters and group foster homes. I was physically beaten and abused as a child from my father and from street gangs. I slept on blacktop driveways to stay warm.
If the thought of working at burger king tears your heart out I have no sympathy for you, none, not a drop. If I can overcome adversity such as I have and work 2 burger king type jobs while I walked to college 6 miles each way daily and live in soup kitchens and homeless shelters, you certainly can do more.
Your plans of getting $100.00 a day within 90 days and making "easy money" are a pipe dream. You need to get off your lazy behind and get out there and work. Take your "fragile" emotional state and flush it down the toilet, you have nothing to be "fragile" about.
Go get two jobs and make the money you need to straighten yourself out, then keep that mental state forever and maybe someday you to can not have to worry about money anymore.
WAY too much happened all on day 3, for example. Holy cow, you posted on elance, found somebody somewhere else to do the design, got the design back from them, then spent 10 hours fixing it up yourself - all in one day?
Even if this all happened in days 1-3 and you never got around to posting it till day 3 - doesn't make sense, things don't happen this quickly in the real world.
That said - IMO, there is no way to do this in 3 months using a website. To do this in so short a time, you will need to buy traffic in some way.
Oh, you MIGHT come up with some idea for a website that will make national news or get slashdotted, and have advertising in place for the onslaught, but that doesn't seem to be your agenda.
Anything that depends on organic search, word of mouth, whatever, to draw traffic to your site is going to take longer.
Instead of going for the big kill, look for something overlooked that you can make a reasonable percentage on. Of course, you will have to cheat and use capital beyond your $400 (credit card?).
You MIGHT do it arbitraging ads. (Adwords, etc.) I've done it myself, advertising Amazon books, primarily cookbooks, leading into the Christmas season (2 years ago). Though I hadn't set a specific goal for myself, I did reach that $100/day mark in less than 3 months, so I can't say it's not possible. Based on my experience, I would urge you to concentrate on relatively LOW-priced keywords.
But I doubt it would be possible today. Things dried-up completely after Christmas, profits went to losses, and a year later at the next Christmas season, it was barely possible to eke-out any profit at all. Adwords has become MUCH more difficult, and they've made long-tail nearly impossible. (Already was, but they've made it even more difficult.)
I managed a 100% profit, at least during the Christmas selling season, but, again, I doubt this is possible today. Still, this would require that you have a credit line of $3000 or so available to fund advertising, and would be "cheating" given the constraints you've laid-out.
It was fun and interesting, but I can make a lot more writing Python code...
If this is real, you're a good writer. Try your hand at the ultimate writing challenge - writing in the constrained space of an Adwords ad.
Oh, just went back and read more of the comments, I see some of this has been discussed - wanted to respond to this at least:
We'll make these assumptions:1. He won't do arbitrage (no-no anyways)
Actually, it's not a no-no (assuming we are talking about Adwords here). You just have to link directly to the merchant. That's how I did mine, at a time when it still WAS allowed to arbitrage with your own site. (Just before they dropped the hammer, which might be part of why I did so well - it caught a lot off-guard.)
Problem with Adwords arbitrage today is you have to fight it out for the single slot alloted any given merchant.
And, curiously and illogically, it's hard to beat generic, poorly-written ungrammatical ads by those who apparently have some inside advantage, even with the best targeted writing.
[edited by: jtara at 7:38 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2008]
one of those 'free articles' websites
This thread, so far, reads like a contrived reality TV series. Jleane, if you're serious about living as an adult, you'll follow this advice, the only reply I'm donating to this thread:
GO GET A JOB.
It doesn't have to be Burger King. In fact it shouldn't be. Go find a good job worthy of an educated, literate adult. Something that pays what your skills are worth.
Starting from scratch on a web-based venture to earn $100/day, with moderate skills and little to invest, within 3 months, is not realistic. I think you know that, hence I'm interpreting this story as mere entertainment.
PS I do think you should write this as a daily blog with page-by-page comments, not in a long uninterrupted forum thread. I would read along, so that would be subscribers+1.
i've seen blog by guy wanting to do copywriting; indeed landed full-time job after a few months
I often said, I want to walk the path less trodden by. Coupled with my overrated idea about my own wit and a bit of laziness, I was leading a life where 2 days weren't alike. I had many days when I didn't even have money to buy food. When my newspapers pile up to some size, I would sell them to buy few essentials. I had a giant self esteem to ask money from my wealthy father, for I constantly denied taking the teacher's job he got for me in a business school. When this carried on, and even my girlfriend of many years started doubting my chances of leading life without bothering about money, I started getting my acts together. First thing I decided in getting my lifestyle right. I had started an SEO firm and reduced my "quality time" with many friends I had. Before I knew, I was leading an organized lifestyle.
Thinking about those days now, I wonder if these conventions and ways of normal life the society has created, were in a way kind of steps/rules of ensuring a normal life, if not an affluent one, lest go broke in life.
I see that you are already past my experiences and on way to success. Be prepared to over shooting the goal of 3 months. Keep working, and money will come after you. Good luck.
[edited by: McMohan at 5:38 am (utc) on Mar. 7, 2008]
WebmasterWorld.com should already be paying you, look at the traffic your thread is generating.
first of I wish you the best of luck!
Secondly, I just have to say that I really enjoy your writing style.
Without getting into the why of your present situation (I am a parent of 3 boys), I would suggest that you spend a little time looking at ways to supplement your present cash reserve. In fact, just a couple of hours on the weekend working behind a bar would provide you with a little extra cash, and stop you spending money on extertainment!
Thirdly, stop spending money on your project. It has not been throughly thought out, or prepared, and as a result, any spending on coding, designing etc should be considered risky, and therefore avoided.
Drop me the url of your blog in my pm please.
Cheers
[edited by: OddDog at 9:34 am (utc) on Mar. 7, 2008]
Burgerking will put you into contact with a great deal many more people than sitting behind a computer panel will, in the beginning.
And by that, you might begin to grow any online interests you might have.
Going in cold, on the internet such as this, and making 100 dollars a day after 90 days is a bit of a stretch mate. I may not know many things, but I can certainly tell chalk from cheese.
I wish you the best of luck then.
Two months later it was 200$ a day etc etc
Its easier to increase your earnings than it is to start off from scratch I feel.
Have you put ads on yet?
While I agree the $50+ per signup of a credit card is attractive, it's also the most competitive market on the internet. With your time frame I can definately say you will not rank in serps for debt, loans, mortgages or credit card related key phrases.
Here's a couple of tips...
1. You have great writing skills. Sign up at free lance sites under writing and translation. It doesn't cost much and you will get a flood of leads every day. I'll even sub you out under my accounts for a small percentage!
2. Develop a solid intro letter and send it to website and marketing companies offering your writing services as a source. Start developing contacts and try to make alignments. As a consultant, I would definately contract you for copy writing. Be sure to include your proficient skills in web and seo copy, landing pages, contextual ads, email campaigns, social networking posts, forum posts, blog writing, ghost writing, etc..
3. Get a grip on the reality of your situation. Start sending out resumes to web design companies or whatever it is that you do and secure a baseline income to avoid moving back with the parents. And no I am not your father either.
4. Don't give up! I started my company at 22; I'm 29 now and self sufficient.
Best of luck on your life venture!
- Played video games. Net profit: $0
- Spent money on girlfriend. Net profit: Wife
- Got married. Net profit: Two children.
- Total net profit: A nice family, no web sites, no free time to develop web sites. Oh yeah, no money either.
In other words, throw out your video games and other distractions, get a part-time job at a coffee shop, and lock yourself in your room with your free coffee and develop until you fall asleep at the keyboard and dream in XHTML.
With enough hard work and a dash of luck, one morning you may awake to discover you are earning money in your sleep, or while holding your slobbery baby, or perhaps even while playing video games.
At least that's what they say on Webmasterworld. I can't speak from experience, except to say that babies do slobber.
100$ in 3 months!
Anyways, and your writing style? "Screaming in your sleep about flipping burgers"? Give me a break.
What angers me is that all your work, and mine, and a lot of people's work, goes to line up the pockets of big firms like G and the others, preying on the original content we develop.
And scrappers, spammers, bot-pages and all the rest makes money through trash and stealing.
You can write articles for hours, bottom line, the Internet is a network of computers, and programmers are going to rack in the cash at the end of the day (on your back).
Maybe this thread is a fake, started by G, M$ or Y, to get the young ones all fired up with web marketing.
That's what happened to me years ago....
PS: as you can see, I am in a very good mood today ;) if you are indeed trying to do this for real, then give it all you have, and good luck, cause you might well make it. BUT at the end, if it has failed, do like the finance guys, STOP SHORT and cut your losses; after all, this is business and when you ain't making money, you need to stop.
Got into making a product, found that all the knowledge making websites that worked (thanks Brett) was really helpful to sell a product that we made ourselves. Conversion rate was low, but instead of making a few bucks per sale we made more than $100 per sale. Made all the difference.
Four years later the online business is near $50K per month, and enough to support 18 people. The wholesale business is the real gem, far exceeding the online revenue. Sometimes the best laid plans don't work out the way they should, but it doesn't mean that they don't work out well anyway.
Of course if you are REALLY lazy, then give up now. I got there by putting in the 100 hour weeks that you seem to abhor. That is all I can manage, being married with two kids. You are single, so you must have a few more hours to spare.
1. You can either make money or post about making money, you can't do both at the same time.
2. Given the small amount of time I think you're better off learning a marketable skill vs trying to get a revenue generating site up.
3. You need to stop spending money right now.
jleane: I'm closer to your age than most other's here at WW.
Since I benefit a lot from W.W. Community I’d like to share my personal life experience and hopefully you might benefit from it:
I was raised in a fairly wealthy family in a third world country. I had the best private tutors in high school to prepare for the college entrance exam which was held once a year. I barely passed the exam, because I was busy enjoying life too much with other spoiled kids. I got admitted to a crappy university for 2 months in a ghetto village.
After being fed up with family and friends talking sh** behind my back on how unfortunate it was for me to fail in life, it just hit me one day.
If I had to live alone, away from family (which is not that common in our culture), why not make the best of it. 600 miles, vs 6,000 miles away. I moved to the US, did my undergrad in less than 4 years at a top school to compensate for the time I wasted back home. I chose a pretty tough major (Electrical Engineering) and graduated with honors from a well known university. To show them (referring to back home), I did an intense one year Master’s program in the same field at the same school and specialized in Signal Processing and Communications which I was told was the most difficult concentration in E.E.
During the 5 years of obtaining my Master’s Degree I worked in a lab to claim financial dependency. My plan was to go back home afterwards and work at my fathers company.
For some reason, I didn’t want to go back anymore.
I started working full time for a well known American company 2 weeks after my graduation. I enrolled in an accelerated MBA program 1.5 months later because I realized I was more interested in business than Engineering. I knew Electrical Engineering wasn’t my passion and dream but unfortunately I chose it for personal reasons or you can think personal issues! I’ll be done with my MBA this May and will barely be 25 with two Master’s degree and 2 years of work experience at a great American company!
Although most of my friends had their parents pay for their education, I decided to take out a subsidized loan, despite the willingness of my parents to pay. I just made my last payment 2-3 months ago. I am a free man now!
I started my website business when I was exactly your age and a junior in college.
In regards to funding:
I always had different part time jobs and even now although I have a full time job, I tutor math and physics at night after work and school to a few students. I use 100% of the extra cash I make through tutoring on my websites. I try to keep what I make at work separate from my website business.
Anyway, I didn’t write all this to brag or anything because I have a long way to consider myself successful.
But in short: I think you have to realize it for yourself and no matter how many times your parents/family or friends tell you what’s right, you’re gonna do what you want to do.
Maybe you gotta fail dramatically in life until you realize it. You’ll wake up one day and say: What the f* am I doing with my life? That’s how it all happened….
Good luck…
I am running a similar project on a forum I run. Me and a few others are trying to reach $300 a month in six months time. Less ambitious than your goals, but hopefully more attainable.
Every day I will post a status report that details what I have done as well as how much money I have brought in
Where are those daily updates Jleane? I don't see anything since March 2. Did you give up already? Since you chose credit and debt as your niche, I'd say things are probably getting pretty tough. Now that this thread has made it to the main news page here on WW, you have a lot to live up to. So, keep us posted.
