My Birthday (and questions about website software)

[poker-penguin]

Today is my birthday. This might seem like a really ilogical place for a birthday post, but bear with me.

For the TL;DR crowd, the key question is at the bottom.

For the rest of you, I'm going to ramble a little.

Today marks the end of my 26th year on the planet and the start of my 27th. During that time, I've done a bunch of stuff, a lot of which I am quite proud of and some stuff that I am not proud of.

Anyway, one thing I have discovered in my decade of employment is that working for a paycheck sucks. I'll bust my ass, for a while, but ultimately I'm busting my ass for someone else and I feel frustrated.

So, in one week's time I'll be arriving in Thailand for a holiday, and a month after that, I'll be back home in New Zealand. When I get there, I'm going to try building a business again.

I want to do what I enjoy and get paid what I deserve, even if that is less than I make in an office (hopefully not in the long term).

I am pretty good at writing, and I understand teh internets, so I'm going to be another one of those idiots trying to make money out of content websites.

I have about $20,000 in savings (of which about 5,000 is a poker bankroll - I'll be trying to cover at least some living expenses from bonus-whoring and low limit grinding). I don't want to burn through all of it, but I'm not going to be reduced to working at starbucks after a month to make rent.

I have a source of free accomodation for a few months if I want it, admittedly it's living with my parents, but I get on with them well, Dad is pretty clued up on technical stuff, and Mum is great at nagging (as long as I can harness it into "did you produce two pages of quality content today?" and not "why don't you get a real job?").

I have a few ideas about what to do.

A) The main one is Mondayphobia.com (nothing on the site yet just bought the domain when I thought of it because I'd kick myself if I didn't) - a website for people who hate their jobs. I have a rough site map and some potential monetization ideas, but it will take a while to get rolling. I'm down with that.

B) My youngest brother is a somewhat talented artist, I'm hoping to convince him to work on a webcomic with me (it'll mostly be a keeping him out of trouble project (since at the moment his artistic tendencies involve spray cans) but we'll see, really good comics can develop into fulltime jobs so there's income potential there)

C) I have a bunch of little ideas for semi-quick sites / blogs that should produce a bit of income. Nothing really exciting, and I doubt any of them would have a three figure week, but we'll see. These blitz projects would at worst be a somewhat constructive outlet when I am feeling frustrated.



WHAT I NEED TO DO:

1) Decide on which CMS to use - joomla looks good and free but site build it has a nice sales pitch and having the keyword tools would encourage me to make blitz projects when I was getting bored with the main ones, rather than slacking around.

2) Arrange hosting - I'll need the ability to host multiple domain names, compatibility with whatever CMS I choose, ability to scale up in bandwidth / space when I need it, nothing earth shattering, just a good host.

3) Make the first version of the damn site(s). This is basically going to involve locking myself away with a computer and a timetable and deadlines.

4) Get some traffic - hopefully I'll make my site(s) SE friendly from the go so it will more be a matter of getting links, although I will almost certainly have a lot of on-site SEO work to do.

5) Improve the hell out of the sites.

6) Get more traffic.

7) Go to Step 5

8) Profit



So, given there's a lot of good hosts out there, the first thing I need to do is decide on a CMS (and any other backend software / resources I need, like a keyword research tool, page editor, stuff like that).

I'd like to have this step somewhat complete before arriving in NZ as otherwise it'll just provide me with a an excuse for procrastination.

Anyone have advice for CMS tools / page editors / keyword research tools?

I'm also interested in hearing from people who have bought adsense guides and or similar e-books that they feel are valuable reading, since I have no objections to learning as much as I can from someone else's experience.

Thanks in advance.

[los_toros]

Check out Fantastico ... it's frequently packaged with cPanel, a control panel that many hosts offer. There are a boatload of autoinstalling CMS scripts included. Joomla has gotten good reviews and it would run well across several sites.

I'd recommend www.cybexhost.com mostly due to the scalability issue.

Making several sites is a great idea, as a way to network together traffic in a way that could be useful in the future.

Feel free to get in touch via AIM or PM/email through 2+2, I've actually spent quite a bit of time in this area of business.

[xwillience]

i havent finished readng your post yet but I wanted to make a point to say two things.

1) Happy Birthday (yesterday apparently)

2) i think your like one the best people in the world for trying to work your little brother into your business especially for the reasons you stated. Your a stud and probably one of the coolest people ive ever read a post from.


im going back to read the rest now.

edit: i read the rest and cannot offer any advice on this matter. you sound like u have the idea ready so just get it done. whats the worst that happens? you end up working a regular job in a year?

[poker-penguin]

los toros - thanks, I'll definitely be hitting you up in the near future. I would do it sooner, but I'm also trying to pack up a year's worth of stuff into a couple bags before the end of the week.

xwillience - also, thanks, *blush*, but yeah, the worst that happens is I blow $10k US (what I have arbitrarily decided my budget, including living expenses is), gain a bunch of "experience" and wind up in back in a real job by the time I'm 27. Not good, but really not much back on where I would have been otherwise anyway.

[xwillience]

sit down and make up a real budget. an arbitrary amount of money will do nothing but screw you up. either youll waste lots or 10k isnt enough to get started and your setting yourself up for failure. take a week or two to plan this stuff out with great detail. maybe even take a month and write out a business plan and talk to your brother etc. Trust me, having a plan is crucial to your business. if you dont write one in the beginning youll end up writing one in the future, so just take the time to write one now and get set in the right direction.