And thanks to a super nice father (to whom I now owe both kidneys) it can all go toward interwebby- costs.
Unfortunately, I have *nothing* written. Less than nothing, even. So now I have to write.
After all, I can't get cool, interesting information out there for people if I haven't written it. Without information, there are no visitors, and without visitors there's no money. So for the rest of today (after I go do another round of applications so I can pay *real* bills) I'll be picking up (real, on paper) information, calling places, and taking photos. I'm going to walk around, see what I see, and try to figure out a couple different walking routes, or "things to do and see" for different lengths of stay.
Oh, I'm doing a travel site- did I mention that?
Anyway, I'll collect information, take photos and try out ideas for most of the rest of the day, then tonight I'll write, do some photo editing, and hopefully have enough to get a (very rough) site up by tomorrow. I can then flesh it out over the next month or two.
But by the end of the week I want at least 30 articles/ pages- enough that if someone actually stumbles into the site they have something worth reading. Visitors first, then money. That's what everyone seems to say, anyway.
So how am I planning to get these visitors? Well, first I need to have the information up there, obviously. Then I am going to do a little (or a lot) of article marketing- where you write articles with keywords related to the ones on your site and put them in article databases and various other sites with a link back to your own, main site- places like hubpages. I intend to use some "free" adwords money Google sent me- once I have enough information to make it worthwhile- it'll cost $5 to get that actually running though, and I'm not sure they'll let me do a campaign for just the $100 I'll have. But I can try.
I need to send out some kinda press release- which I also need to write- so that people in the community know about it. This one's going to have to wait a little while. I could probably get something in at the local free press, but I don't want to point people at a shell- that just feels dirty to me.
Which brings me back to writing. I think everything comes back to writing. Once I have enough written, I can do all of this. Money is not (right now) what's holding me back. What's holding me back now is me.
Oh, and if anyone is wondering why I'm using this money to build something rather than to pay bills (as I'm sure my creditors would ask if I told them)- this is such a tiny amount of money that it makes no real difference in my bills. It would just get absorbed, and I'd be back where I am now, only worse. So I'm building something with it.
Most of what I'm buying with this money lasts at least a year- domain name registry, web hosting, photo hosting (maybe). Some of it's mine once I buy it- though I might have to buy upgrades later- like ad management software. I'm not buying a WordPress theme (tho the site(s) will be built on WordPress), I'm not paying someone to design a spiffy site for me, and I'm not buying beer with it. It's more durable than food or gas, and should be better in the long run then throwing it after debt right now. Even if I only ever make back the money I spent (which seems unlikely, if I really work at it), I'll have more than if I just use the money for bills now.
And isn't more for less the whole idea?
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