What would you spend $50K on?

I would reckon you get full time staff to do all the work. So your main work would be to manage rather than do all the things yourself.

This is an impossible question to answer, mainly because we know nothing about the type of business you are trying to start or what your goals are. Add some details and I am sure that you will get some good suggestions. If you don't have an end goal and simply want to spend the money by throwing a lot of sh** on the wall to see what sticks, then I suggest saving time and just burn the money.

I would start by investing in good people, and I would spend time developing those people. Once you have a good idea and good people working on it, the glass is half full.

Drop it out of a plane

I would spend that money bringing a product or service to the marketplace with a new twist that made me unique.

I've just spent that ammount on a website im working on.

Breakdown of things are:

Content licensing
Software development
Software and pre-built code
Labour
Design

I had planned to hold some back for advertising but its all gone now so gotta get creative.

When I first got into IM I heard about people spending that sort of money on website and used to laugh at them thinking they were foolish. But after almost 10 years I have learnt there is a right way to do things so that you can have an easy to manage and almost administration free business, and this has its price tag.

I have managed several web projects for clients that each totalled in excess of $50k so I have been fortunate enough to use other peoples money to learn how these things work.

$50K sounds like a lot but in the grand scheme of things spending that sort of money to get a successful business is nothing, as long as you have spotted the right gap in the market and manage it correctly to get a return.

Well, I will launch in new year and will find out if my gamble has paid off

I would focus on producing HIGH QUALITY products developed and then focus on Marketing those products heavily. Of course, this would be after doing a significant amount of research to make sure I'm getting into a viable business.

To make it all happen, I would definitely spend time hiring quality outsourcers to do a majority of the work. However, I would probably develop the content myself.

I would design a kickass Wordpress plugin then launch it on Clickbank.

That would probably cost between 5-20k. The remainder would go straight to the CEO salary, aka me

The very FIRST thing I would do is market research. As Gary Halbert said, I would want a market with a starving crowd. At that point, the market should be able to tell you want THEY want so you can provide it.

Hmmm, most of us can probably do that research for a LOT less than $50K .

At that point, you have some information to help provide an intelligent way to spend that $50K.

Marvin

If I were in the scenario that you mentioned (setting up a media company to buy and build good sites), I'd invest it in an outsourcing team that would allow you to build quality sites quickly, and also employ SEO and other traffic generation techniques to get targeted traffic to your sites fast.

I would suggest the reals estate business. You will have nothing to loose. For sure.

I'd write a business plan before I spent a dime. Then I would spend it according to the plan.

I would be very careful... Sometimes 50,000 don't last long !