[Hypothetical] You have 50k liquid and you're investing it online. What do you do?

Kevin

Kevin

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Imagine you have 50k liquid cash that's burning a hole in your low-interest savings account or money market. You're not putting it into the market, real estate, etc...you're going to put it into some kind of online project.

You're not a newbie to IM, but you're not a pro either.

What would you be doing in the following cases (or feel free to add one that isn't listed):

- Authority sites
- Website flipping
- Ecommerce
- Monthly recurring revenue projects / SaaS / subscription services
- Improving existing sites (authority, ecommerce, flips, etc)
 
I'm dumping that into an existing site. I'd get lots of in depth content and spend the other 45k on marketing those awesome pieces of content.
 
In my opinion (not a complete newbie, but not a pro, either) I would buy an under-optimized / poorly marketed site making $1,000 a month in a wide open niche, and then spend a bunch of time and money optimizing it, filling it out with more content, and marketing the piss out of it. Get it to $5,000 or $10,000 a month, and flip it.

Then keep repeating the process until I was at 7 figures a year, and could keep a couple projects in my portfolio to earn $20-$30k a month.
 
All depends on where you are on your journey. Existing site ready to scale... investment goes there. A new site the next step for your gameplan? I'd then put the money where I see the biggest opportunity. IMO the type of site really isn't relevant, the angle is. If you have a KILLER angle and see the missing piece that you can fill, fill it with the type of property that makes sense (or combined approach, why can't my authority site also have an ecommerce store, especially when I have liquid cash to invest to grow fast)

I think you will long go unhappy and unsuccessful trying to build a SaaS because they are 'hot'. The type of site is akin to the type of tool to get the job done.
 
jayk said:
In my opinion (not a complete newbie, but not a pro, either) I would buy an under-optimized / poorly marketed site making $1,000 a month in a wide open niche, and then spend a bunch of time and money optimizing it, filling it out with more content, and marketing the piss out of it. Get it to $5,000 or $10,000 a month, and flip it.

Then keep repeating the process until I was at 7 figures a year, and could keep a couple projects in my portfolio to earn $20-$30k a month.
Click to expand...

You're flipping the first site just for capital to repeat process with 3-5 more?
 
This is of interest to me. Another similar situation that I'm in, haha. I shall watch this thread with earnest and learn.
 
Kevin said:
- Improving existing sites
Click to expand...

I think at this point in time I'd sit down and smash out review posts for the highest priced items in my vertical, perhaps choose 3 groups of terms to take down over 3 posts on SERPs that are achievable. Then I'd spend a solid chunk of the cash on editorials aimed at them. Then I'd spend time promoting the editorials and juicing them up and ensure all 3 were wins.

With what was left, I'd hire someone on a per-link-placement deal to do outreach. Anything left over after that I'd spend on other items like Facebook PPC, content to schedule out, etc.

That's a hard question with a site that's already rolling. It's just "more of the same, faster and at a larger scale."
 
Kevin said:
You're flipping the first site just for capital to repeat process with 3-5 more?
Click to expand...

In that hypothetical situation, yeah. I'd flip the first site for $150-250k, buy up a few more sites, then repeat the process. Make it a goal to flip that second batch within 12 months. Keep one, sell the rest. Rinse, and repeat, making it "my thing".

Just remember, though. I've never had a site that made $10k a month.

I had a portfolio of 450 sites that made $30k a month, but it's not hard to generate that much when you have that many sites. And it was during the EMD SEO wave way back.

This is hypothetical advice, based on what I would do if I had $50k sitting there burning a hole in my account right now.
 
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If you already have an authority site I'd spend it on expert writers and epic articles based around commercial intent, long-tailed keyword phrases with low competition. And someone to do outreach and guest posting.

Otherwise, I'd spend the $50k on purchasing an aged, established site.

Spend between $25k - $35k on a site that is at min 10+ yrs old, making at least $1,000/mo, prefer DA of 40+ with strong / clean backlink profile and undermonetized with 100's of aged, well written articles.

Then pay for 100 articles of well researched, low competition around high value products or services (commercial value) $100/per article ($10k)

Now you have around $5k-$15k left to hire an outreach person, do some guest posting, PR, etc.
 
The answer will be different for everyone....as there are different skill sets, work ethics, etc.

I also think that your risk tolerance plays a big part here. Is this $50k going to make or break your entire future? Or, is it just a chunk of cash burning a whole in your pocket that you could care less about? Maybe somewhere in between?

I'm a safety guy. I need things to be calculated and I need to know that I'm going to get SOME kind of return and I need to know that there's potential for this to last a long, long time. I'm not one of those dudes that will throw my savings at a project for a 3% chance of getting a 5000% return on it.

I would buy an existing site (or existing brick and mortar business) that has a significant track record and consistent earnings. This business would have to be 100% above-board....no chance of getting wiped out by Google or other business risk.

I'd systematically grow the revenue as much as I could with my current knowledge through the use of systems / processes and goal setting. Once it was where I wanted it to be.... I'd put a manager in place and let it run on autopilot... checking in once a month at first, and then once a quarter.

Then, I'd use the profit from that business to get back into riskier ventures with a higher upside.

But...that's just me. :smile:
 
Kevin said:
Curious as to what @NickEubanks the god would do in this situ
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Har har :tongue:

But seriously, I would use this ALL to acquire an old, established site that has a great brand in a vertical that has a captive audience and an upward trend in terms of search and discoverability (i.e. a vertical that may not have been traditionally online but people are starting to use the internet more and more to look for ideas/answers/solutions).

Perfect example of this is a friend of mine who works at one of the largest enterprise search firms in the U.S., this past fall (2015) he picked up a site in a sub-niche of health that was the personal site of a prominent figure in the space from ~20 years ago. The site had been sitting dormant with not much traffic (say 5-8k visits/mo). He kept the about page and the branding around the gentlemen the site was named after whom had first started it up way back when.

He redesigned the architecture and invested heavily in content, all in I think he's somewhere in the 60-80k ballpark including acquisition, site dev, and content. the site is now consistently pulling in over 100,000 visits/mo from organic search and all of these visits, based on the intent behind the terms that are driving them - are potential leads for service providers in this space.

He built his pitch around that fact and the upward trend, and is closing on a $500k sale in the next couple of weeks to a large provider in this space, who will bolt this site onto their TOFU lead-gen efforts.
 
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