Posted on January 20, 2010 by Jim Fitzsimmons

Welcome to day 64 of my debt freedom plan. Thanks for following along!

Yesterday, as you recall – I wrote about my starbucks venti latte habit and it’s effect on my doward spiral into debt

And, if you’re one of my two readers, (hi everybody!!) you’ll also recall that, oh, about a week ago i changed the name from credit card prices to debt freedom plan, as this new name is much, much, more related to what I’m talking about here: my plan to be debt free in 1000days.

So, here’s the thing: I was checking google today, and low and behold – I rank on the second page of google for the search term ‘debt freedom plan’. I’m the 16th most popular site for that search term out of 1,100,000 possible results.

Have a boo:

I think the main reason why is that the term being searched for is in the domain name itself. A little light bulb went off today: Hey – lookie at that. All I have to do is create a website with the same name as the search term, or phrase I want to rank for and ta-da! I do. 2nd page of the search results out of over a million possiblities. Not bad, not bad at all…

This got me thinking: I don’t think this is a real competitive term. I bet with a bit of finessing I could get to the top page of google for debt freedom plan.

Hard Work Pays Off.
If there’s a moral to this story, other me getting to brag how lucky smart I am about getting to the second page of google it’s that it’s one thing to have an idea and it’s another to actually DO IT. It doesn’t matter what your idea is, whether it’s getting out of debt, losing weight or going to school and starting a new job (maybe one at starbucks.)

There’s been lots of days so far with this little project towards debt freedom that I haven’t wanted to post, or thought about it and blew it off, but for the most part I’ve stuck with this and now that I’ve got 60 or so entries, I’m starting to see the results of my efforts. Small, but somebody’s noticing.

I think I’ve bought every ebook and joined every club on how to make some money (which, for this site isn’t really about – it’d be nice though) but the real truth is like anything else – it just takes time. What’s that saying? You eat an elephant one bite at a time? ( I wonder if I’ll get search results for eat an elephant now?).

Where was I? SQUIRRELL! – Oh, right: Instead of buying every ebook, I’m going to write my own. Not today of course, but I want to be able to help you one day get out of debt too some day. Wouldnt’ that be kindof cool if one day I ended up being a get out of debt guru?

So paragraphs later, if you’re still with me: I’ve been reading and reading the past few days on search engine optimization and how it can effect your rankings in the google search engine. I want to specifically target the google search engines because that’s where a good percentage of the searches originate from, and I want a piece of the pie.

I can buy domain names for a buck a pop about products or services or anything really that’s popular and I might have have a chance at making my dollar back. Think about it. I can buy domain name for an .info domain name for under a dollar for the first year, and then come the second renewal the price goes up to eight bucks. That gives me TWO years to make nine dollars to break even. If I make even 1 dollar more, that’s a 5% interest, which is more than any savings account pays.

So, I’m going to give this a shot. I could use free blogger blogs to try this with (and might, as the the cost is absolutely zero, but I’m not familiar with how blogger works so I think I’ll start with using software I’m familiar with and hosting the domain name myself. I figure 100 sites would be a good number to start with. I’m planning on making tight little niche sites about specific topics I know lots about and think I can rank well for. Because these topics are very small, all the content on them will be relevant. These aren’t going to be just a page of links that I hope somebody clicks on, but rather real usable content about stuff I know. Heck, I’ve gotten visitors to this site searching for ‘great headphones’ due to my ebay sales earlier where I told you about the great headphones, so one example might be greatsonyheadphones.com, or greatjvcheadphones.com. And on each site I’d only write about the specific headphone brands. (actually, now that I think of it, this would be great topic – think of all the ipod users and headphones – been on a subway lately? you should see all the people with headphones) If you do this and it works for ya – do me a favor and let me know.

It costs me time to research, write and promote these sites, and the time is going to pass anyway and it would be a great story to tell that a year from now I’ve got hundreds of niche targeted websites all making me a few pennies or even dollars a day. It’s going to be hard work and there’s no auto program to help me, or ebook to show me but I can type fairly fast and I’ve got the time to dedicate to this project and see what happens. I’ll have to make an effort to get the word out about these sites as I can create them, but nobody will come.

If you’re still with me I’ve got another 1000 words under my belt.

See you tomorrow as I continue my plan towards debt freedom.

More Bad News

1. Debt Freedom Plan. Day 60, 61, 62
2. Bright Pink Kitty Litter Boxes
3. What a difference a day makes
4. Understanding Google Search Engine Results
5. Revenge of the Bright Pink Kitty Litter Boxes