Could You Use an Extra $500 per month?
Welcome to an experiment in building long-term passive income.
Here’s where we’re going …
The first goal of this project is to document the trials and tribulations of working to successfully develop income from the Internet.
The path I’m documenting is the path of building a search-engine-friendly, content-rich website that refers visitors onto merchants who in turn give me a commission when the visitor makes a purchase. The site you are reading right now is a diary of my progress, successes and challenges. The site I will create is totally separate from this one.
The model of building content-rich authority sites is one version of “affiliate marketing”, and is a model of internet business championed by James Martell, Ken Evoy, Dr. Andy Williams, and Authority Site Center among others.
Granted, there are dozens of ways to make money on the Internet. To name just a few possibilities, you can sell things on eBay, develop information products and sell through a one-page site, you can “joint venture” with others, develop Adsense sites, do affiliate marketing with PayPerClick advertising or build websites for others. All of these methods (and dozens of others) are equally valid and profitable, some moreso than others for sure.
But you can’t do all of them and succeed. You have to Follow One Course Until Successful. (FOCUS!)
I’ve chosen affiliate marketing through content-rich websites because:
- I like the idea of letting someone else handle the ordering process, order fulfillment, shipping, and other customer service. Those tasks just aren’t fun for me, so affiliate marketing works well in that regard.
- I get to be the middle-man, pointing people towards products that can help them. I like to do that.
- I’m working part time on this venture, and affiliate marketing will give me the opportunity to do small, short tasks every day to build a successful site.
- I have to start somewhere!
So, if you’ve been curious about this idea of “affiliate marketing”, you’re in the right place to find out more information.
The Financial Goal is …
My current financial goal is a steady income stream of US $500 per month, hence the title of this site gofor500.com. That is a very reasonable goal of almost $17 per day.
If I had a steady income of $500 per month, I could stop worrying about my monthly bills … buy a new digital camera … and take a weekend trip out to New York City with my wife to see a Broadway show.
Once I achieve that level of consistency, I’ll proceed to a new $500 goal. (Perhaps a goal like $500 every other week! Then $500 every week! Then $500 every day! Wait … I’m getting ahead of myself. Gotta make that first $500 $17! )
What would you do with an extra $500 per month?
And I hope to help you too …
The third goal of this site is to provide motivation and inspiration to people like yourself who have always wanted to “make money on the internet” and “work from home on the internet”, yet who have a limited amount of time and money to do so.
As I write this in June of 2007, I have a full-time job that, with commute time, consumes 50 hours per week. My wife and I don’t have kids, but I do have other commitments that consume major chunks of time, too, including spending time with my wife, being the family chef, and volunteering my time for a couple of social organizations.
I’m sure that if you’re working a full-time job and have young kids, you also have a limited amount of time for this kind of venture.
I like to see other people succeed at making their lives better. My thought is that if I can be successful in this part-time adventure, then maybe you can too! My goal is to show you it can be done if you’re disciplined and willing to do the work that other people aren’t willing to do.
What I Promise to Do on GoFor500.com
I promise to share my successes and challenges as I create a content-based authority site from scratch and work to get it ranking well in the search engines. You’ll get to see the good and bad, the frustrations and triumphs.
I will make periodic updates to this site, on the order of at least once per week.
What I Will NOT Do
First of all, keep in mind the objective: $500/month steady income from a website. To stay focused means I must avoid lots of distractions. Therefore, to stay focused:
- I will not spend a lot of time trying to sell you things, or encourage you to buy anything that could possibly distract you. I’m not trying to make money from THIS website. My goal is to build another site, and report progress here.
- I will not post every day to this site. I have a life off the Internet as I’ve already stated.
- I get too much email these days to personally answer every single message I receive. I appreciate any feedback or comments you want to share and so will other visitors, but I will not promise a response or conversation.
Remember, we all only have so much time in the day, and we need to stay focused on our priorities. You’re welcome to follow along and I hope you find the information useful!
David Caban (read about me)