Nincy's quest to IM glory starting on day 1

I have decided to start a journal to share my findings, results etc in a thread here with everyone partly to get advice and share my hopes of success, but also to motivate myself to try and make progress every day.

Who am I?
As a complete newbie to Internet Marketing and SEO in general, I started reading success stories over 5 years ago. I always knew people had great success in this field, but never thought it would be something for me. IM has always felt like a skill in itself, and coming from a completely different background, I thought I would have years of learning to do before I could even fathom the idea of entering the field. I am a mechanical engineer by trade, and have never really considered doing anything else.

What changed?
My personal situation has changed. I have been left without a job after being laid off, and I have a lot of time on my hands. In an ideal world I find another job any day now, and this is still my goal, but I have decided that while I'm still applying for jobs coming up around me, I'm going to stay pro active in finding alternatives. This is both to fill my time, but also to keep my mind active. I would hate to feel like I vegetate away doing nothing with my life. I have chosen to try and learn as much as I can about IM. While making money is always welcome, it is a side-quest to actually learning the skills involved and enjoying doing something.

What are my goals?
My short term goals are:
- Learn how keywords affect search results. (On-page SEO)
- Learn how to effectively build a link rapport. (Off-page SEO)
- Start using some social media. (I currently don't even have a personal facebook or twitter)
- Get one website to a state where it makes profit enough to be able to keep it running

My long term goals are:
- Learn to use social media as an effective way to drive traffic to websites (White hat social media)
- Learn how to monetise websites in the most effective way (When to use affiliates/adsense, what niches work, how to analyse conversion rates)
- Learn to find good keywords myself
- Learn some web design
- Build an online portfolio of profitable websites/methods

What have I done prior to day 1?
For the past two weeks, I have been reading a lot. I started reading AMA's of Internet Marketers on reddit before eventually finding this forum and being amazed at the resources available. I have read a great deal about different strategies and SEO, and while many people appear to say stop reading and get started, my approach is that when I do something, I want to do it right. Now, I realise I'd be a fool to think I won't make mistakes along the way, and that is why I have decided to finally get started.
I'm going to start small, almost as a test to see if I understood everything I have read and to see if I can pick the skills up quickly. I have ordered a small package for a Micro Niche Site from someone in another section on BHW and the day has arrived that I'm getting started. Finding the right keywords and setting a wordpress up are skills I eventually want to learn to do myself as well, but I need to get started, and I'm going to focus on the actual marketing first.



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Day 1
- Domain bought
- Installed wordpress and gave the login information to my seller so he can add articles and logos.
- Reading up on the niche to think up article titles
- Considering my off-page SEO strategy (obviously will have to come after the site is finished to a starting stage and has content.)

Costs: $ 45.60
Revenue: $ 0
Profit: $ -45.60

A slow day for me. My website is not finished yet, although it does seem my seller has started putting some content on it. I've been reading up a lot on social media and have registered a twitter account. I've followed a load of people in my niche, but didn't get much follows back. (most likely cos my twitter is not very active looking with 2 tweets and 4 retweets.) I heard a lot of people use bots to follow/unfollow, but I haven't found a free one to do this yet. Buying a bot doesn't seem worth it yet, as I'm not even sure what to do with twitter yet. Suggestions are welcome.

I've thought of a few(5-6) blog titles and am now starting to think what I'm going to do when I run out of blog topics and subjects. I don't think my specific niche is great to keep writing about forever, as you'll start repeating yourself really quickly. That can't be quality content, surely. I do have the option to do reviews for a few products that might be on amazon, or on something else, so I could perhaps gain some traction in affiliate marketing?

Day 2
- My seller has started putting a few articles and images on the site. Not entirely sure if he's done yet, but no doubt he'll send me an email when he's finished.
- I've thought of around 5 blog titles that have my exact keywords in. I'm in a beauty and cosmetics niche, and struggle to think of more titles.
- Slowly starting to think ahead of monetisation. Adwords has my preference as it seems fairly fuss free when set up, but I might consider doing reviews for amazon products too.
- Considering writing guests posts in a couple of weeks (after on page SEO is at a later stage). Need to look into best practices for this.
- Made a twitter account. 150 follows gained me 10 followers. That doesn't sound that great for the manual work I put in. (twitter account has no links to me yet)
- I really need to start thinking about link building.

Costs: $ 45.60
Revenue: $ 0
Profit: $ -45.60

Happy easter everyone.

Day 3
- Thought up a couple more blog titles, and also a few reasonably good topics for guest posts in the future. Better start writing some of them soon.
- It's easter. Time for a break.

Costs: $ 45.60
Revenue: $ 0
Profit: $ -45.60