Make Money Online Experiments

It’s time to get serious about making money online.  My day job is ending this Friday (I quit*) so I will have a lot more time to devote to trying to earn a living on the internet, and I plan to use that time very, very wisely.  I have estimated that I am going to need to generate an income somewhere around $2,300 a month, or about $77 per day,  (around $1,800 once you take out taxes and charitable giving) in order to keep my family fed and the bills paid.

This means its time to get super hardcore.

*I quit because I am moving to Louisville, KY to go to graduate school.  I want to keep eating and not have to get a full-time, out of the home job to do so.  I want to work at home so that I can still spend “some” time with the fam.

The State of My Income Online

Over the past two months I have made between $300 and $400 a month, or $10-$13 a day.   I only have two producing sites right now, one that earns between $250 and $300 a month and another that earns between $50 and $100.  I have other sites that get traffic, but I haven’t monetized them yet in the hope that by not doing so I can speed up their rise in the SERPs.

The bottom line is that by the end of December 2009 I am going to need to increase the amount of money that I make online by 7 times.  I am going to need to find an additional $60-$70 a day in 7 months.

Taking a Big Picture Approach

I plan on doing a couple different things to try and increase my online earnings, but before I get into the nitty gritty I wanted to say a word about how I am going to be thinking about what I’m doing. There are two main strategic areas where my efforts could go astray: in the strategy and in my motivation.

Strategically speaking, I want to be using the free time that I have now to the best of my ability.  That means that every moment that I have that isn’t devoted to my family or to my personal well being is going to need to be put into the business.  I’ll be giving up video games, mindless TV vegging, and wasteful internet surfing practices.  Productivity is going to be my number three priority (behind my relationship with God and my family).

Also, I want to be strategic about the things that I am spending my time actaully working on.  I don’t want to spend countless hours writing the greatest posts in the whole wide world or doing “fun” CSS work and template design.  I also don’t want to waste time pursuing a money making method that doesn’t have a good chance at making me some money.

As far as my motivation is concerned I have a feeling that this will be relatively easy.  All I need is a picture of my family with a caption underneath it that reads, “Daddy, we need to eat!”  That will certainly get me moving!

How I Plan On Making the Most Of My Time

So on to the nitty gritty.  I’ve worked out a plan with my wife in order to get lots of work done while still having time to help out with the kid and get packed and ready to go for our move to Louisville.  I’ll be working for sure 7 hours a day, 6 days a week - but more if sleep and time allow.  Each day, I plan on doing the following tasks:

1. Create 3 500-1000 word posts for niche blogs - I have 16 sites that I had bought last September that I have not had very much time to work on over the past 9 months.  That needs to change and I need to get those up and running pronto.  They are in niches that I should be able to make some money on so I am hopeful that I can turn them into $1-$3 a day each by the end of December, but I want to reach that goal by the end of August.  That will add an additional $16-$48 a day.
2. Create 3 hubpages as support pages and as a way to generate more Adsense revenue - Hubpages will fit into my strategy on a couple of different levels.  In one way, they will help me reach my goal as stated in #1.  You have to get backlinks to a site if you want it to rank for its term.  But I also want to make money online with hubpages as well (follow the link and read how persistence and being adaptable pays off big time in the MMO/SEO game).  3 hubs a day, 6 days a week, for 13 weeks will generate 234 hubs by the time graduate school starts.  If I can make $10 a day by the end of August and $30 a day with these hubs by December I’ll be stoked.
3. Create 3 Ezine Articles - The Ezine articles will be used to strengthen my hubs and my niche blogs.  Again, you can’t reach the top of the SERPs if you don’t get links so this will be part of the “grind” that will help me make more money in #1 and #2.
4. Create 9 mini-blog posts - Links. Links. And more links.  Need ‘em to make money.  These will mainly support the hubs that I create so that I don’t leave a huge footprint for people to go find my link schemes and de-index all my stuff if they think I’m doing something nefarious.  I won’t be doing anything nefarious, but not everyone might think so.
5. Contact 2 other webmasters a day with link exchange requests -  Have I mentioned that links matter a lot?  Contacting other webmasters and working out a mutually beneficial arrangement with them is going to be giving me a lot of movement in the SERPs if I can work it right.  I may contact more people if I can work out a good system for doing so.
6. Write 3 250-500 word entries for a “directory” like site I’m experimenting with - I’ve built a professional directory type site for a potentially profitable local niche that has gotten some age behind it.  Its time to do some experimenting to see if adding a boat load of content to the site will give me some more leverage and love with the search engines.  I’m hoping that 200-300 pages of unique content (more if you count tag and category pages) will do something great for my rankings.

In all, there are 23 things that I plan on doing each day.  If I am able to do more once I get into the thick of it I will.  My family must eat!

I am going to be posting what I am able to accomplish each day on a twitter account that I started expressly for the task.  I’ll try to include total time worked each day as well in an effort to share what exactly it takes to get stuff done.  We’ll see what I can fit into 140 characters.