Now that Caffeine Enthusiast is online and making money, I intend to follow suit with several more websites following the same routine. I’ll set out my daily plan in here with the intention of following up with a daily post on the progress.

As with Caffeine Enthusiast, I won’t necessarily see an instant generation of profits due to certain restricting factors, the most significant of which is the indexing of the website’s pages by search engines. Most search engines take up to two weeks (sometimes longer) to add a site once requested, and there is nothing that can be done about this.

It is technically possible to request a site be added to a search engine earlier in the steps I’m going to lay out, but there is a risk that if it takes only a short period of time to be indexed, then the site will not have all the desired articles online prior to its being indexed. This is not a major problem since sites re-index new pages, but this second pass to look for new pages can take a long period of time to accomplish. I personally would like everything to be added to Google et. al. at the same time.

Below is the schedule I intend to follow for completing the new site. Depending on how things work out as this progresses, the steps may require some minor alterations, but the whole schedule will generally be the same.

Day 1: Find a Niche

To start, you’ll need to know what your site is going to be about. This can be any topic, whether it be something you already know about or not. Either way, you will undoubtedly require some research as you probably won’t be able to provide the answer to every area within the topic anyway. However, picking a topic that you are fond of may assist in the long run, especially for doing this the first time. (I know it helped me!)

There are a few ways to find topics. Use a directory such as Yahoo! Directory, or take a look at Magazines.com to find a topic. Google Suggest has a very nice auto-complete feature in its search box that you may find useful in selecting a niche within a topic area. Make sure the topic you select is in concordance with the AdSense Terms of Service. (e.g.: Gambling and pornography are not acceptable topics.)

Day 2: Develop Your Site

Start working on your site. The main sections you’ll want to include are a welcome page (your index page), an articles page, a links page (we’ll come back to this), and a contact page. Other sections you might consider including (depending on your niche and your goals) are a tips page, a getting started page, or anything else that doesn’t fall into the aforementioned categories. (A good example of this is a products page that I placed on Caffeine Enthusiast, where I explain several key appliances used in creating quality coffee at home.)

It’s important to have a page that is aesthetically pleasing and simple navigate. However, you don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, as much of your time should be focused on adding content in the following days. There are a number of free templates available online, some of which can be found at the sites below:

• Open Source Web Design - Over 2000 free HTML/CSS templates as of this writing.
• Free Website Templates - Hundreds of free template designs as well as pay designs. (Note that you must click one of the links in the top-right corner under the “Free Templates” label to access those that are free.)
• Zymic - Presently 80 free HTML/CSS templates.

At this point, I also recommend signing up for Google Analytics and Google AdSense if you have not already. Insert the JavaScript provided by Google Analytics. This will later help you to track access to your site and determine where your visitors are coming from and what pages they are visiting the most (and least).

Day 3: Keyword Research

Utilize Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool to find common search phrases that relate to your niche. This tool allows you to enter a keyword (e.g. I used “coffee” for Caffeine Enthusiast) to determine what netizens are looking for within your niche. Copy down a lot of these related keywords for later use.

If you have not done so already, try to decide upon a domain name you like. Register the domain name and purchase web hosting as well. Here are a few cheaper domain registration and web hosting sites that you may prefer.

• GoDaddy - A one-year combination purchase costs $1.99 for the first year domain registration and $3.59/mo for web hosting (about $45/yr total).
• 1&1 Internet - $5.99 for one year domain purchase and web hosting for $1.50/mo (about $24/yr total).
• Host Gator - Cheap web hosting that allows for an unlimited number of domains to be set up within a single web hosting account. (Each domain name must still be purchased for registration.)

Once your site is registered and you have access to it (this sometimes takes 24-48 hours, but I’ve had personal success with GoDaddy taking less than 2 hours), you should upload your current layout and content. You’ll continue to add to this over the following days.

In addition, you might decide you want a logo for your site. I currently do not have one for Caffeine Enthusiast, but I may change this myself. Got Logos offers logo design for as little as $25.

Days 4, 5, 6: Write Articles

These days will be time consuming and require some work (or money) out of you. Using the keywords you found on day 2, write various articles, each focusing on an individual keyword from your list. An article should be approximately 500 words, and you should include the keyword or phrase at least 4-5 times in the article. Your goal should be to produce about 5 articles per day.

If you prefer, it is possible to have others write articles for you for as little as $10-15 per article. (Just remember, you get what you pay for!) I wouldn’t suggest this for first starting, especially if you have the time to write your own articles. Several sites you might consider are listed below.

• Elance
• ScriptLance
• Guru

You should also decide what you want on your homepage and write that during this time. Remember to upload your content to your site as you create it.

Day 7: Directory and Backlink Submission

Now that there is content on your site, you’ll need to find a way to get visitors. Start submitting your website to directories and search engines. Below is a list of several key sites to utilize for submission.

• Yahoo! Directory - A subject-based guide to web sites and web content
• DMOZ Open Directory Project - The most comprehensive human edited directory of the Web, compiled by a vast global community of volunteer editors. It powers core directory services for some the most popular portals and search engines on the Web, including Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, AOL Search, HotBot, etc.
• ExactSeek - Internet search engine and directory with over 100 million web pages indexed.
• BusyBits Web Directory - A young, human-edited web directory.
• SoMuch.com - Another human-edited web directory.
• Chiff.com - Your guide to the best sites on the web.

For even more free (and pay) directories for list your website, check out the Strongest Links Directory List.

You’ll also want to get backlinks from other sites related to your niche. The Backlink Builder is a tool that allows you to find sites that offer quality backlinks. In addition to allowing netizens to find you via the links on these sites where you are backlinked, it is also useful for SEO in order to be placed higher in search engine results by increasing your backlink count.

Some of these sites will require a link exchange, which you can place into your “links” page from day 2.

Days 9-14: Rewrite Your Articles

The goal for this step is to produce articles for submission to article directories. Using the same keywords that you’ve already used for writing articles, write new articles. Within the new article, include a “resources” section that includes a backlink to your article. Make sure you have one article per article on your page, and submit them to various article directories. Below is a list of several such directories.

• Ezine Articles - Free content for ezines and websites. Include your website information when submitting articles, allowing your articles to lead to more inbound links.
• Go Articles - Article search engine directory.

Day 15: Utilize AdSense

If you have not already included AdSense code on your pages, do so now. Some directories prefer not to add sites with heavy AdSense usage, and it may prevent your site from being added if already included prior to day 7.

Day 16: Forum Posts

Register to forums relating to your niche, and make useful, informative posts. They should not be too self-promoting, as they may be considered spam and hinder your efforts.

Days 17-30: Repeat Prior Steps

Write more articles, get more backlinks, and submit your site to more directories and link exchanges. Don’t slack off; continue working hard on these days as you have each prior day. You may consider allocating a certain time frame each day to ensure you are getting some work done.

Wrap-up: Miscellaneous Points

This is pretty much all it should take to get a quality informational site up with AdSense based revenue.

As mentioned in day 2, you’ll want to play around with Google Analytics to get an understanding of how this tool works. There are a lot of useful reports in here that can tell you a lot about your visitors. For example, on Caffeine Enthusiast I found that the majority of my visitors were immediately visiting the products page during the first week as opposed to the articles page, which would have been my guess. I can now focus on improving the products page to provide more info, or perhaps break it into more pages to show more ads.

When setting up your AdSense, you should also create various channels. For example, I created one called “sidebar” for Caffeine Enthusiast, and another called “content”. This gave me a basic start in determining where users were clicking on ads the most. Creating even more channels could help you to find out what is working and what isn’t on your site.

For each of these steps above, everything can be bought. You can find others to write your articles, people to design your site, and others to submit your site to directories and sites for backlinks. You can even pay others to write forum posts for you. If you wish to take this route, make sure you know what you are paying vs. what you are earning since you don’t want to lose money.

This post is not the end-all be-all, but I hope it helps in getting started. Please feel free to provide me with any links you have that may be useful within this post. Good luck!

Edit (2007-03-28): It’s been awhile long time since I put this post together, and I thought I had included a link to where this 30-day AdSense Project was originally described. However, it was just pointed out that I neglected to include this information in this post. As such, I encourage you to check out the original forum post by JoshK on the 2+2 Money Making & Business forums where this process was originally described. Josh deserves full credit for the process defined in this blog entry.