$1K Project: Day 1 – Building a Site

I started a project with a goal to earn $1000 in 7 days (or less or at max, 30 days).

And I also invited others to join me do this for themselves. Why? Well, I want to compile an ebook with stories and case studies on how to do this. But rather than just theories, I want the ebook to be filled with actual stories on how to do it.

If you don’t quite know what this is actually about, read this post first.

Do You Have $100 to Burn?

Now, I can’t really tell you what my plan is yet. And I also can’t tell you what my niche is either. But let me just say that I have started building my site. But with work and other things that is going on right now, I only managed to get the site up with the subscription form box.

Roughly, I am building a lead capture page, and later start educating and promoting something in the autoresponder. I still need to write sequential messages though. You might have guessed that I have enrolled in the affiliate program of the product.

Hmm … let me go through the list again of what I got done …

- Build site – DONE!
- Integrate with autoresponder – DONE!
- Register as affiliate – DONE!
- Buy domain name – DONE!
- Setup webhosting and DNS – DONE!

So what else that I need to do …

- Write my 10 autoresponder messages
- and some other things I haven’t figured out yet

OK, money-wise … what have I spent? I spent $8.88 for the domain name from NameCheap.com.

And I believe in investing on a good reliable host. While there are $1 – $5 / month hosting out there, I don’t really know how good it’s going to be. And I’ve struggled with bad web hosting before – it was a big mistake going for the small, cheapo, unknown web hosts. So for this one, I settled with Site5.com for their HorsePower Plan – which is $11.95/mo.

Actually, I already have a MultiSite Plan which allows me to easily add a new site with no additional cost. So that is what I am using right now. But for the sake of the project, let’s assume that I got myself a new shared account.

So, that’s another $11.95 from the piggy bank. You can get cheaper rates if you commit to longer payment term. To keep startup costs low, I choose the monthly payment plan.

Now what else — oh yeah … the autoresponder.

I am with EmailAces.com and I also have Option 2. Option 2 allows me to create up to 10 autoresponders, and I have only used 7. I am using that for this. But again, let’s assume that I got myself a new account.

With EmailAces.com, I get a cheap trial price for the first month. If I want to get Option 1, which is $8.95 per month, I only need to pay $2.95 for the first month. And Option 1 allows me one autoresponder and up to 2500 subscribers – that is more than enough.

You may be asking about tools for building my site? Alright, in times like this, it’s best to settle for free tools.

You can go to Free Serif Software where you can download tools for graphics and web page editing. These aren’t really the best tools around. PhotoPlus now is at version 10 but the one you’ll be downloading is version 6. But it’ll do the job. There’s also a free web page editor called WebPlus over there.

Alternatively, you can also use NVU, which is also a great web page editor. I did a tutorial about this in my DIYMinisite.com. And if you’d like something different, GIMP is also a great graphic tool, but may require a longer learning curve.

Costs for web and graphic tools – $0!

So let’s do the math …

Domain name – $8.88
Web hosting – $11.95
Autoresponder – $2.95

Total – $23.78

Balance – 76.22

Alright … I need to get back to writing my sequential messages.