What I've Done in the Past 48 Hours

The first step I decided to take was to throw together a website and see how much traffic I could get for next to no work. I love to BBQ and it's the right season so I decided to throw together a BBQ recipe site. The concept is Quick & Easy BBQ Recipes. No long prep times. No long lists of special ingredients.

I looked around for a free website host. I chose www.50webs.com for a few reasons. They don't require any advertising of their own. No forced banner ads or pop-ups. They also allow me to have advertising on my site. And they will allow me to use my own domain when I get one, at no extra cost. It seems like a perfect fit to get started.

I found a free website template at www.freewebtemplates.com. I made a couple modifications to it because I wanted the menu bar on the left side not the right. Only because I have a hunch that advertising & menu navigation are better on the left.

I applied for a Google AdSense account. It says they need 1-2 days to review my application.

So far I have 4 recipes online. I found a public domain image of steak in the wikipedia commons. We had homemade hamburgers last night and I took a picture for the recipe. I'm missing 2 photos but I used placeholders so I could get the pages online and let the search engines start indexing them.

I configured Google Analytics to monitor my site.

I also started this blog.

From what I've read so far, diversification is a good strategy. Maybe a blog can bring in more than a website. Maybe a restaurant guide website or an iphone forum will bring in more than a BBQ website. My plan right now is to set up several small tests and in the process establish a trickle of revenue that will pay for a domain name for my BBQ site. $20 isn't much but it will be a start.