I am sick and tiered of seeing all the spam and scams pop up on the forums and everywhere else online. It pisses me off that people believe the crap that is out there. All these MLM programs that promise wealth and success.. and the muppits promoting them look fucking homeless. How do people fall for this shit?
Broke fools trying to convince other broke fools that they are all going to be rich with almost no work. You see the same people promoting a new MLM opportunity every month. The only thing that remains consistent is that they are broke and still chasing the fake dream.
Can you make money online? You bet your ass you can! You can make a lot of it.. but there are no shortcuts. You have to work your ass off.
What is the one thing that stops so many people from pursuing a full time online income? MONEY! Well, I decided to put this together to show you how easy it is to start a business online for under $87. Not some short term thing that will die out in a month. This is something that can make you money for a long time.. as long as you keep it going. And this is also something that you can duplicate over and over to create a little online empire of your own.
I’m talking about niche sites with multiple income sources. All you need is dedication and hard work. As I mentioned, this is going to cost you under $87 so there is no excuse. If you still don’t think you can make money online after reading this post then give up because you are too lazy to ever make it!
#1: Pick a Niche – Cost: $0
I’ve talked about this before in other posts of mine and it really comes down to picking a niche that you like.. especially for your first one. Your first website is going to teach you so much so you want to make sure you are always giving 100% and this is much easier if it’s a niche that you are into. Down the road if you want to add niches that are profitable but you aren’t totally into that is fine because you will have the blueprint of success already.
#2: Find a Domain Name – Cost: $1
Take your time with this. You want to find a domain name that is short and easy to remember. Don’t worry about having your main keyword in the domain or any of that shit.. too many people will register domains like: this-is-my-main-keyword-blah-blah.com – all those hyphens look like crap and it is a million miles long. Get creative. Think of sites like The Chive.. What the fuck is a chive? Who gives a fuck.. it is easy to remember and everyone knows it because it was branded! Also, don’t believe all the “only .com’s rank” bullshit. Do it right and you can get any TLD to rank just fine.
People will say “GoDaddy sucks” but they are usually the people that register trademarked names and crap. They are fine if you are doing everything legit.. which this is. They also push out more coupon codes than any other company. I have never paid more than $1 for a domain because of this. Just Google search to find the newest 99 cent domain coupons. You might have to try a few of them until you find a valid one.. but it will save you some money and allow you to get a new domain for just $1.
For those of you ready to take action now here is a valid 99 cent .com coupon: cjcfw99
If you are reading this after the original post date then just Google. I find that FatWallet usually has the most up to date GoDaddy coupon codes.
#3: Get Hosting – Cost: $12 (1 Year!)
Ok, I am going to tell you to stick with GoDaddy for your hosting also. It makes it easier with your domain and hosting in one place. They also have a great deal going on now.. their economy hosting is just $1 per month when you sign up for 12 months. That means you can host your site for a full year for just $12. That is a deal.
It’s shared hosting of course but you get cPanel and a lot of features for a buck a month. For just starting out this is a deal. Once you grow your website and have money coming in then you can look into dedicated servers and stuff like that. No need to get ahead of yourself in the beginning. Just like with the domain coupon, their hosting coupons are always changing. They have this $1/month hosting deal every now and then.
For those ready to move on this right now here is a valid coupon to get the special $12/year deal: cjcfw1hos
NOTE: You will need to make 2 separate purchases. One using the domain coupon and then another with just the hosting in the shopping cart. You can’t combine coupons in the same order.. so just make 2 different ones to get the deals.
#4: Set up an Email List – Cost: $0
You will learn that collecting emails is the best way to constantly make money from your website. Once you have someone’s email you can continue to send them offers and get them to return to your website. MailChimp allows you to build a list of up to 2,000 subscribers for free. No credit card is needed to start the free account either. By the time you reach more than 2,000 email subscribers you should be making plenty of money to cover the cheap $10/month fee for the next plan!
#5: Install WordPress – Cost: $0
I would suggest you use WordPress for many different reasons. It’s user friendly and it makes adding and editing content so simple. Content is the backbone of a site so you want to make it as simple as possible to feed your site content.
WordPress is also the easiest as far as customizing. You can make your site do almost anything you could ever imagine just by using themes and plugins. You don’t have to know how to code at all and you can build a really nice looking website with WordPress. It’s free to install.. and if you buy your hosting from GoDaddy I know they have a simple 1 click WordPress install option that automatically loads the latest version of WordPress on your hosting account.
When you set that up through your hosting you will set up your login details so make sure you write them down and keep them in a safe place. The same goes for your database username and password. Keep them on your computer in a txt file but also write them down offline as well just incase something happens.
#6: Install a Premium Theme – Cost: $48 (Or Free)
You could use a free theme but the paid ones have so many more features and they come out of the box ready to go, requiring very little extra tweaking. I suggest you go to Theme Forest and search for magazine type themes.. they tend to work the best. Most of them are responsive but just make sure that any theme you consider states that it is responsive. Don’t rush into this.. I usually like to sort the search results according to popularity. This way you can see what a large user base is saying about the themes. There is no need to pay more than $48 for a theme. Here is an example of a great magazine style responsive theme that is only $48:
http://themeforest.net/item/gonzo-cl…gazine/2415788
Pick a theme that matches your niche. For example, if you are starting a health or wellness blog then you would want to look for a theme with soft natural colors. If you were starting a gaming blog then you would want something with blacks, chromes, and real futuristic looking. There are so many themes to pick from but I would suggest only buying one with a lot of previous purchases and good reviews. Look for themes by developers that have a lot of successful ones.. this lets you know they know what they are doing and it also is a good sign that they will continue to update it and add features and constantly make changes to improve it. Once you buy a theme there you get email notifications anytime the theme is updated.. it’s always free to upgrade to the newest version.
#7: Install Plugins – Cost: $0
This is where you can really add some cool features to your site. In the beginning you should only be looking for free plugins. Some themes will come packed with every feature you will need, like contact forms and social share buttons. If your theme is lacking anything or if you want extra features just search the plugin database. There is a free version of anything you could ever need.
#8: Set Up Social Accounts – Cost: $0
You will want to set up a Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ as a base. This gives you more places to share your content once you start to publish it. Make sure to make complete profiles and include a link to your website. This way if anyone discovers you through social media they can then easily bounce over to your website.
You want to think about social media when selecting your domain name also. You want to make sure the Twitter handle is available and will fit.. and that the name is available on all other profiles as well. Proper complete branding like this is key. It might not seem important in the beginning but if you do this correctly and start to see success you will be glad you did it the correct way from the beginning.
#9: Write Content (5X) – Cost: $0
You have to start somewhere with the content so I suggest you put together 5 really good long form posts to start. Don’t worry about keywords or anything like that right away. This is going to serve two purposes in the beginning. It’s going to give you good practice at writing long blog posts and it’s going to give your website some content just starting out. If someone lands on your website you need to make sure you have something interesting for them to read.
You could order content but good content is going to be expensive. This will save you money and help you turn into a good writer. The better you can get at this the better your website will be in the long run. Don’t look at it as “writing articles” because that sounds boring. Think of it as helping to build you new online business!
#10: Hire 15 Contributors – Cost: $0
This is where you are REALLY going to make up ground. If you have a professional looking blog you can invite writers to become contributors. Now this doesn’t mean let any idiot that wants to do a “guest blog” and drop a weight loss link. ONLY allow niche related authors. You are going to have to let them link back to their site in order to attract them.. and that is fine as long as they are niche related and their site is high quality.
Where will you find them? Look for other blogs in your niche and reach out to them. You might have to contact 75 of them to get 15.. but it will be worth it. Make them have to submit 2 posts per month. This gives you 30 brand new pieces of content every month.. for FREE. This allows you to add a post every day and then if you write also you can really turn it up.
When you are able to publish that much content you are going to start to attract links and organic traffic from long tail searches. There are a lot of free content calendar plugins that will allow you to create a nice schedule and keep it all organized. You can also set it to email the authors when their posts go live.. in the message remind them to share the post on social media. This alone can drive a nice amount of traffic
#11: Install AdSense – Cost: $0
This is simple. Sign up for an AdSense account and put 3 ad blocks per page. I would suggest starting with 1 ad banner in the header of your site.. 1 in the sidebar.. and then one that is shown at the end of posts. This spreads them out a bit. Make sure to mix up text and image ads.. and make sure to customize your text ads so the colors match your site. This helps improve your click through rate because visitors will often click on them thinking it is more content on your site.
#12: Find CPA Offers – Cost: $0
Use offer vault to locate niche related CPA offers that have nice payouts. Mix these in your site as well. You can also write blog posts around a particular CPA offer and sprinkle in affiliate links throughout the article.
#13: FB Ads – Cost: $25
Once you have your site looking good and you have those first 5 articles up and you have AdSense and some CPA offers up you will want to test with some paid traffic. Use $25 and create VERY targeted Facebook traffic. You want to see the following:
- Your email optin rate
- Your AdSense click through rate
- Your CPA offer click through rate
- How long visitors stay on your site (install Google Analytics plugin)
- What your bounce rate is
- How many social shares your content receives from the traffic
This is just a small test but it will give you an idea if what you have is a good starting base. If you strike out don’t worry. It might take several changes and optimizing until your traffic engages and starts to do anything.
#14: Learn SEO Basics – Cost: $0
Now it’s time to learn how to attract long tail organic traffic. There are so many sources of information out there. I have written quite a few posts that explain how to attract organic traffic and there are so many other great free resources on other blogs and forums.
When you push all the bullshit away you can see that it’s possible to really start something that you can build into an online business for less than $87.
Look at all the threads on marketing forums that ask what do to or what to invest in.. invest in YOURSELF. Start a niche website and build it into a huge popular site. All it takes is dedication and hard work. You can learn everything by reading. You don’t have to spend a lot of money as you can see. Then once you figure out the formula you can start more sites and just continue to build your portfolio.
That’s it for now, as always I hope you guys enjoy the read.. Questions, Comments? Fire away.. Have a good weekend and I hope some people get a good wake up call after reading this. Until next time..
Tommy McDonald
Tommy is an SEO professional with years of experience running highly successful SEO companies, founded SerpLogic after noticing there was a major void when it came to options for SEO agencies needing a reliable and professional one-stop outsource solution.You can read all about me in the “About” page here on our blog!