How Would You Invest $5,000?

28 replies
I'm a little lost an I need some guidance. I have saved up about $5,000 and I have a ton of different ideas that I am working on. I can't do everything at once, and I know I need to actually go for one thing all-out and make a success of that, and then I can expand to other things. Here are the big three ideas. I've done a little bit of work on each of them, including registering domains, sourcing products etc. Here they are:

1) Amazon affiliate sites. I have registered 8 domains, and I've written a couple hundred product reviews myself. I bought some review plugins, tried to use them but they didn't really work the way I envisioned. So right now I have the content just sitting on my computer gathering digital dust. The domains are a few months old now. If I go this route, I'd likely hire some freelancers to post and format the reviews, and also to write more reviews, then invest in some link building software and target my keywords that way. This is definitely a viable business plan, I see lots of people having success with it. It is also, I suspect, a slower business plan that won't see the rewards right away.

2) Nutritional supplement. I am currently in my 3rd year of medical school, and supplements interest me a lot. I have identified a niche with a strong need, there is already a strong market. I've identified a private label manufacturer, and have formulated a product that is significantly better than what most people are currently using. My plan is to develop a sales site with a sales letter, autoresponder stuff, lots of content on sub-pages, and promote and optimize it via PPC. Once I have it converting well, start an affiliate program with share-a-sale. The risk here is of course that the site could totally flop and I could run out of money before I ever make it profitable. There are also a lot of legal land mines in this industry. However, if I can get it working, I'll be raking in large sums of cash, as based on my keyword research I could pull in a couple of thousand targeted visitors per day.

3) Jewelery: I got interested in selling Jewelry after I found a large amount of jewelry in a storage unit that I bought at auction. I have sourced costume jewelry from China, and my idea is to create a sales letter for one piece, offer it at a great price, and then do upsells, and create an email list where I can promote different jewelry products that I import several times per week. The initial product stock would cost me slightly less than the nutritional supplement, with roughly the same profit margins. The PPC costs for this niche are roughly half of the ones for the nutritional supplement. So on the surface this looks like it might be a better deal. I do not know, however, if people searching for particular types of jewelry are as "hungry" for a solution as people searching for nutritional supplements. So I am not sure if conversions will be as robust (probably not since the PPC costs are lower!).

As I said earlier, it is unwise of me to do all three at once. I need to pick one and have a real go at it, and right now I am kind of in analysis paralysis. What do you think? What is the best one for me to choose with $5,000 to invest? Why? Or should I scrap all of these and do something else entirely?

Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can give me!
#invest
  • Profile picture of the author jackpot9
    Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

    I'm a little lost an I need some guidance. I have saved up about $5,000 and I have a ton of different ideas that I am working on. I can't do everything at once, and I know I need to actually go for one thing all-out and make a success of that, and then I can expand to other things. Here are the big three ideas. I've done a little bit of work on each of them, including registering domains, sourcing products etc. Here they are:

    1) Amazon affiliate sites. I have registered 8 domains, and I've written a couple hundred product reviews myself. I bought some review plugins, tried to use them but they didn't really work the way I envisioned. So right now I have the content just sitting on my computer gathering digital dust. The domains are a few months old now. If I go this route, I'd likely hire some freelancers to post and format the reviews, and also to write more reviews, then invest in some link building software and target my keywords that way. This is definitely a viable business plan, I see lots of people having success with it. It is also, I suspect, a slower business plan that won't see the rewards right away.

    2) Nutritional supplement. I am currently in my 3rd year of medical school, and supplements interest me a lot. I have identified a niche with a strong need, there is already a strong market. I've identified a private label manufacturer, and have formulated a product that is significantly better than what most people are currently using. My plan is to develop a sales site with a sales letter, autoresponder stuff, lots of content on sub-pages, and promote and optimize it via PPC. Once I have it converting well, start an affiliate program with share-a-sale. The risk here is of course that the site could totally flop and I could run out of money before I ever make it profitable. There are also a lot of legal land mines in this industry. However, if I can get it working, I'll be raking in large sums of cash, as based on my keyword research I could pull in a couple of thousand targeted visitors per day.

    3) Jewelery: I got interested in selling Jewelry after I found a large amount of jewelry in a storage unit that I bought at auction. I have sourced costume jewelry from China, and my idea is to create a sales letter for one piece, offer it at a great price, and then do upsells, and create an email list where I can promote different jewelry products that I import several times per week. The initial product stock would cost me slightly less than the nutritional supplement, with roughly the same profit margins. The PPC costs for this niche are roughly half of the ones for the nutritional supplement. So on the surface this looks like it might be a better deal. I do not know, however, if people searching for particular types of jewelry are as "hungry" for a solution as people searching for nutritional supplements. So I am not sure if conversions will be as robust (probably not since the PPC costs are lower!).

    As I said earlier, it is unwise of me to do all three at once. I need to pick one and have a real go at it, and right now I am kind of in analysis paralysis. What do you think? What is the best one for me to choose with $5,000 to invest? Why? Or should I scrap all of these and do something else entirely?

    Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can give me!
    Hey there!

    The 3 ideas you listed are definitely sound ideas. The only question would be which idea have you really started making consistent money with.

    Idea 1 and 3 are earning affiliate incomes, so choose one that is working for you right now and scale it up. Personally i've seen some real consistent profits from Amazmon sites and must have invested at least 10 grand last month to scale it up. The results are showing bit by bit.

    Idea 2 is product creation and i hear all the experts say you must have that definitely. More of a long-term approach and i would suggest earning consistent affiliate income and using some of it to invest in that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin_Hutto
    Hey man... I would be wary of doing the supplement idea. Several reasons... First, you will have trouble advertising it on PPC as they are getting very squeamish about these type of offers. SEO in the supplement niche is pretty tough - i used to own a supplement site (i was an auth seller for a bunch of big brands)... And, a lot of the search traffic for supplements is information gathering traffic not buying traffic. They do their research online then go buy what they want at GNC or the gym. So I sold the site a couple years ago. Lastly, you can get into big trouble if the products are yours and someone gets sick or anything like that and you have to be very careful how you market it (ask Perry Belcher). So, thats my .02 about the supplement biz.

    Good luck,

    -- Kevin
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  • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
    Hey Kevin, thanks for that! I have been wary of doing supplements for the legal liability reasons. I bought your WSO and absolutely loved it, initially it was because I was thinking of using it with that supplement, but I can also do it with the Jewelry site. Thanks again for the input!
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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin_Hutto
      Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

      Hey Kevin, thanks for that! I have been wary of doing supplements for the legal liability reasons. I bought your WSO and absolutely loved it, initially it was because I was thinking of using it with that supplement, but I can also do it with the Jewelry site. Thanks again for the input!
      You're very welcome :-) Good luck with the biz (whichever one)... And BTW, did you get the bonus video? If not, pm me and I will shoot it to you.

      -- Kevin
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      • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
        Yes I got the bonus video, thank you very much for that!
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  • Profile picture of the author packerfan
    Why not set up a store for the Jewelery? Drive traffic to the store, make money, get email, market thru email.

    Works okay for amazon I think.
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  • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
    Hey Packerfan, I did think about an ecommerce store with lots of differnent pieces of jewelry, but the reason I haven't pursued that is that I have to order a minimum quantity of each individual piece in order to get the jewelry at prices that will enable me to give buyers a good deal and still profit. I can easily buy 10 dozen of a few different pieces, but if I buy 10 dozen of 70 different pieces, I will use up all my money on inventory and have none left for any other purpose. Do you see a way around this?
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    • Profile picture of the author packerfan
      Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

      Hey Packerfan, I did think about an ecommerce store with lots of differnent pieces of jewelry, but the reason I haven't pursued that is that I have to order a minimum quantity of each individual piece in order to get the jewelry at prices that will enable me to give buyers a good deal and still profit. I can easily buy 10 dozen of a few different pieces, but if I buy 10 dozen of 70 different pieces, I will use up all my money on inventory and have none left for any other purpose. Do you see a way around this?

      So start with a few pieces. Focus on one thing (bracelets) for example, as you sell them and get people's information send them questions about what like to see next. Let your customers decide what inventory you carry, so you can take the guess work out of it.

      Start small, grow huge. Amazon used to be a book seller...
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  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    For the jewelry market the key is going to be finding clients that aren't shopping for the best price, as that market can be really tough. I have some experience in this area. My wife modeled some earrings for ballroom dance costumes. The profits were better than 50%. One suggestion I would have would be to attend a ballroom dance competition and take a look at what some of the vendors are selling. Don't try to see to the vendors, but instead develop your own line and then get registered to vend at a future event. You can build a base this way, and start getting some sales from people who have money, and want a color to match their dress, but care less about price.

    (I'm sure there are similar markets outside of ballroom)
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  • Profile picture of the author jwhitebiz
    Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

    I'm a little lost an I need some guidance. I have saved up about $5,000 and I have a ton of different ideas that I am working on. I can't do everything at once, and I know I need to actually go for one thing all-out and make a success of that, and then I can expand to other things. Here are the big three ideas. I've done a little bit of work on each of them, including registering domains, sourcing products etc. Here they are:

    1) Amazon affiliate sites. I have registered 8 domains, and I've written a couple hundred product reviews myself. I bought some review plugins, tried to use them but they didn't really work the way I envisioned. So right now I have the content just sitting on my computer gathering digital dust. The domains are a few months old now. If I go this route, I'd likely hire some freelancers to post and format the reviews, and also to write more reviews, then invest in some link building software and target my keywords that way. This is definitely a viable business plan, I see lots of people having success with it. It is also, I suspect, a slower business plan that won't see the rewards right away.

    2) Nutritional supplement. I am currently in my 3rd year of medical school, and supplements interest me a lot. I have identified a niche with a strong need, there is already a strong market. I've identified a private label manufacturer, and have formulated a product that is significantly better than what most people are currently using. My plan is to develop a sales site with a sales letter, autoresponder stuff, lots of content on sub-pages, and promote and optimize it via PPC. Once I have it converting well, start an affiliate program with share-a-sale. The risk here is of course that the site could totally flop and I could run out of money before I ever make it profitable. There are also a lot of legal land mines in this industry. However, if I can get it working, I'll be raking in large sums of cash, as based on my keyword research I could pull in a couple of thousand targeted visitors per day.

    3) Jewelery: I got interested in selling Jewelry after I found a large amount of jewelry in a storage unit that I bought at auction. I have sourced costume jewelry from China, and my idea is to create a sales letter for one piece, offer it at a great price, and then do upsells, and create an email list where I can promote different jewelry products that I import several times per week. The initial product stock would cost me slightly less than the nutritional supplement, with roughly the same profit margins. The PPC costs for this niche are roughly half of the ones for the nutritional supplement. So on the surface this looks like it might be a better deal. I do not know, however, if people searching for particular types of jewelry are as "hungry" for a solution as people searching for nutritional supplements. So I am not sure if conversions will be as robust (probably not since the PPC costs are lower!).

    As I said earlier, it is unwise of me to do all three at once. I need to pick one and have a real go at it, and right now I am kind of in analysis paralysis. What do you think? What is the best one for me to choose with $5,000 to invest? Why? Or should I scrap all of these and do something else entirely?

    Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can give me!
    Number 2, hands down. Here's why:

    1.) it interests you, if it interests you, it will be 10x easier to do because you already think about it and like it

    2.) You could build and sell at some point or license the formula, you can't do that with an amazon affilate site unless its just some flippa auction, and the jewelry is only worth what you are selling anyway, its too commodotized.

    3.) I can tell you from experience, that diet products sell like wildfire, all the time. Jewelry is a luxury, people don't buy it nearly as much. You can do 10,000 sales/day of a diet product if you have the infrastructure in place. Put it on a CPA network. Study Force Factor and their sales funnel, they got big fast with a good product when people were making crap, they protected the brand name, and got picked up by GNC and so forth.
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  • Profile picture of the author King Shiloh
    Banned
    If I have $5,000 to invest. What will I do?

    I will lend some of it to a Nigerian youth that like getting himself in debt and I will make sure they provided landed property thrice worth the credit facility so that if they don't pay back the money with the interest, I will sell the land.

    Also, I will fix the remaining part, about $3,000, in one of the top Nigerian banks' fixed deposit account.

    Why won't I invest it online?

    I don't need as much as $5,000 to make money online.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jay D
    1. Pick A Niche
    2. Create Squeeze Page And *QUALITY* Give-Away Product.
    2. Sign Up For DOA (Directory Of Ezines) - Google it.
    4. Look for list owners in your niche and get a feel of their list by joining it.
    5. Buy solo ads from list owners you find appropriate and drive traffic to the squeeze page.
    6. Give FREE stuff and promote products (affiliate or your own) to your new list.
    7. Automate via autoresponder and keep getting fresh leads to your squeeze page.

    Simple and straight forward model to make money.

    Cheers,
    Jayneel
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    • Profile picture of the author luis23
      Originally Posted by Jayneel D View Post

      1. Pick A Niche
      2. Create Squeeze Page And *QUALITY* Give-Away Product.
      2. Sign Up For DOA (Directory Of Ezines) - Google it.
      4. Look for list owners in your niche and get a feel of their list by joining it.
      5. Buy solo ads from list owners you find appropriate and drive traffic to the squeeze page.
      6. Give FREE stuff and promote products (affiliate or your own) to your new list.
      7. Automate via autoresponder and keep getting fresh leads to your squeeze page.

      Simple and straight forward model to make money.

      Cheers,
      Jayneel
      In simple terms I will do this...

      1. Pick A Niche
      2. Build a website and landing pages to capture e-mails....(You can promote other people's products, your own, services, use adsense, affiliates, etc.)
      3. Send targeted traffic to those pages...
      - SEO
      - PPC Google
      - Facebook Ads
      - Video Marketing
      - Social Marketing

      etc etc....
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  • Profile picture of the author Lazy
    I would hire a second person to do my backlinks, and then i would play more golf.
    Signature
    WARRIORS ONLY: Get up to 100,000 verified high PR backlinks as soon as tomorrow! RAVE REVIEWS!

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  • Profile picture of the author Rukshan
    I will build 10 amazon web sites. So I have to spend around $1000 to build those sites. After that i will buy few software to automate backlink building, social bookmarking, blog commenting etc to improve SEO. I will also hire few VA to handle these stuffs.
    Then i will do PPC with rest of money.

    Thanks
    Rukshan
    Signature

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    • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
      Originally Posted by blog8491 View Post

      I will build 10 amazon web sites. So I have to spend around $1000 to build those sites. After that i will buy few software to automate backlink building, social bookmarking, blog commenting etc to improve SEO. I will also hire few VA to handle these stuffs.
      Then i will do PPC with rest of money.

      Thanks
      Rukshan
      Would google not classify such sites as "Thin Affiliate Sites" and administer the dreaded google slap?
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      • Profile picture of the author Lazy
        Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

        Would google not classify such sites as "Thin Affiliate Sites" and administer the dreaded google slap?
        Not if the content is rich, and the SEO is "organic" rather than traditional paid traffic
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        • Profile picture of the author Rukshan
          Originally Posted by Lazy View Post

          Not if the content is rich, and the SEO is "organic" rather than traditional paid traffic
          yeah, we have to maintain the quality content. If these are old domains, then we have a less chance for Google slap.
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  • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
    Yeah I guess that is my dilemma right now: do I want to go the organic route or the PPC route? They both have advantages and disadvantages. I am pretty sure based on Kevin's advice above and my own worries that I'm going to skip the supplement for now. Too many legal landmines. So I have to decide between: amazon sites organically promoted or Jewelry via PPC.

    I guess I should make a list or pros and cons :-/
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    • Profile picture of the author Lazy
      Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

      So I have to decide between: amazon sites organically promoted or Jewelry via PPC.

      I guess I should make a list or pros and cons :-/
      Why not do both organic and ppc?
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  • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
    I am not aware of any way that I can get an Amazon affiliate site to be approved for PPC. Maybe I'm missing something? I mean, if I do jewelry through PPC I'll work on organic traffic there too.....is that what you mean?
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    • Profile picture of the author Lazy
      Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

      I am not aware of any way that I can get an Amazon affiliate site to be approved for PPC. Maybe I'm missing something? I mean, if I do jewelry through PPC I'll work on organic traffic there too.....is that what you mean?
      I meant why not do an organic amazon store AND the jewels, unless that's stretching you too thin
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  • Profile picture of the author FranciscoDancon
    Yeah I think that is stretching me too thin, I had better choose one and focus on that :-).
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    • Profile picture of the author Lazy
      Originally Posted by FranciscoDancon View Post

      Yeah I think that is stretching me too thin, I had better choose one and focus on that :-).
      Go with amazon then. Low starting point. Once it's profitable and on autopilot, then you can get into your other niche
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  • Profile picture of the author James Foster
    I'd create a product about something I like.

    Once I had a product, I'd hire a copywriter (if I didn't know how to write copy myself) and spend the rest of the money on hiring a JV Broker.

    The JV Broker would do the work of getting people to sell your product, and you could quickly make 5x -10x your money back.
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    • Profile picture of the author lynneklos
      I agree with Kevin about staying away from supplements. I've seen some get pulled so fast and there goes all that work. Also, words you can't even attempt to use in Google Adwords. Simply not allowed.

      It doesn't cost a lot of money to do Amazon affiliate sites. My average is $25. That is for a domain name plus four articles. I have my guy do three product review-type articles and one generic article with my top 3 or 4 KWs.

      I build the site with the three articles and put the generic one in Ezine or Squidoo. Also, I hate to give this away, but there are amazing link whell builders on FIVERR! Just don't fill up my guy's queue, OK?

      I really don't see why you couldn't do jewelry along with Amazon, but you probably only want to do that if you can do it full time. I guess what I would do is get the jewelry thing going on AutoPilot and then move on to Amazon when you have free time here and there.

      Hope this helps. Best of luck to you!
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  • Profile picture of the author copylicious
    $5000 is pretty good.

    Why dont you try PPC or PPC with CPA; I hear that combination works great!
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