OK, looks like we got a decent interest from all our blog followers in the new version of the 45 Day Challenge. As it says on the tin, we’re trying to create $5,000USD in only 45 days from scratch. Well, to be fair, it’s not really from scratch as I have a lot of knowledge and tools at my disposal, but the spirit of the challenge is for me to only use resources available to everyone, so using any of my lists is out (for example).

OK, so let’s do some math here and try to figure out how we can do this in 45 days or less. First, let’s just do some math. If we go linear, $5,000 in 45 days translates to a daily average of $111. So, all we need to do is make $111/day for the next 45 days. Put that way, it sounds so easy.

So how do we get ourselves $111/day anyway? We can go through a whole bunch of scenarios to see.

Scenario 1: Write a bunch of articles each and every day. Demand Studios pays $15/article. That means 7.4 articles/day OR 8 articles one day and 7 the next and so on, and so on. Given that it takes an hour or so to create that article, we’re basically talking about a 9-5 job. For those of you who are out there starving, it is a great way to at least get started and pay the rent.

Scenario 2: Niche site creation and monetization. OK, here we have an opportunity to generate passive income. Without too much detail, the idea goes somewhat like this. Pick a niche, something very specific like “PVC vinyl patio doors” and create a site around that topic. Create 400-600 word articles around related keywords and make sure that the site has 10 or more articles. Get some backlinks to those articles and you should reach the first page of search engine results in 30 days or less if you picked the right niche and analyzed the competition properly.

I put up a free video on niche site creation (I’ll include a link here for reference) Free Niche Site Creation Video. The video is quite detailed and is around 20 minutes or so long, worth a look if you are interested in this method. Now in a challenge like this 45 days is not a lot of time. These sites can make $40-$100 each/month eventually. That won’t cut it in this 45 day time frame.

If we got some income from the sites, we can certainly sell them over at flippa.com (formerly sitepoint.com). Sites that already have some income from organic search traffic, even just a little income can sell for a decent amount of money. Think optimistically $300 or so. I like to plan for worst case scenarios, however, so the low end might wind up being $150 each. Since we must plan for the fees that flippa charges, you need to build more sites to account for this. What are those fees? Well, the listing fee is $19. When you sell the site, flippa gets another 5% which they call a success fee. Also, extras like bold, highlight and bordering the listing will add $5, $10, and $5 respectively.

So, for a site that sells for $150, listing+success fee+extras would cost you $19+$7.5+$20 or $46.50. Your cut would be $103.50. PayPal’s transaction fees are 3%, so you are left with $100-$10(domain reg. fee) = $90 for all your hard work. If you put more than 6 hours into this, then you are making less than the article writing idea above. Clearly, you need to create successful sites or this method will fail miserably. Anyway, at the high end, you’ll be making $300-$19-$15-$20-$10(for the domain) = $236 minus 3% PayPal fee or around $229. So, on the low end of the sale, you would need to create approx. 5,000/90 or 55 sites. At the high end, you would need to create 5,000/229 or 22 sites. Since you want sites that are 30 days or older, you would have to do all this work in 15 days to leave 30 days until the challenge end to have sites aged more than 30 days at the time of listing.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to sell your sites to use this method. In fact, I am just putting out the flippa idea if you actually need that $5,000 in your hand in 45 days.

Scenario 3: Do some offline sales. Now this method won’t work for everybody. In fact, it won’t work for most of us. Why? Well, let’s face the facts. Most of us don’t want to sell things. Most of us are made extremely uncomfortable by walking into places we’ve never been to and selling things to people we don’t know. That is why I don’t get the whole online craze thing. You can get new clients via email, though. Just keep in mind that it will take you 1,000 to 2,000 emails to land one client. If you can get $500 out of them, then all you would need is 10 clients. It sounds so simple and easy, but it’s anything but simple and easy. It’s hard and you will make lots of mistakes doing it. Having said that, I feel that I will add some component of offline client acquisition to the challenge just for completeness.

Now, to sum up, we have 3 scenarios to try. There’s room for success with each method. I think that we’ll shoot for September 7th as the start date. Let me know your thoughts.

TomG.