How Should i Invest $500?

Google #1 page is a function of your keyword and its competition. If the keyword has less competition, you can achieve this position even without spending any money on SEO. The tougher the keyword, the more it takes to rank better.

So to properly answer the question, more data on your site, keywords and competition is needed

Hello nicolasmd2112,

If you are going to hire a SEO expert I think you will lose your money cause you will have to pay him every single month in order for your website to remain in the first position and only if he manage to achieve the first rank. Even if your keyword is in a low competition that doesn't ensure that you will be ranked #1.

If you want traffic towards your website I would recommend you to go for guest blogging since this way is more effective. You can have more than 1.000 visitors from a single post but you must have really valuable content into a really popular blog.

Now if your website converts well you could test some PPC traffic...(if only you have some knowledge or experience in this field)

If I were you I would spent less than $200 for great blog posts and I would submitted them in different popular blogs outside.

Good luck,
Zouras

Your second sentence is a complete non-sequitur from the first. And that's what matters, here.

You're assuming (mistakenly) that increasing your Google rankings will enable you to make money from the site. It probably won't, for all the reasons explained to you in such detail in several other threads. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Can I be really honest without offending you, Nicolas? It's just that you start thread after thread (that's not a complaint!!) without anyone really telling you where you're going so wrong, and you're asking bad and inappropriate questions, and I know that makes it really hard to learn/improve. :confused:

Quite why you're trying to rank a "make money online"/"IM" niche site, as a newbie, and using a Western Samoan domain-extension for it, all remains something of a mystery.

It depends on the keywords for which you're trying to rank. I don't spend a penny to get there for multiple keywords with all my niche sites, but I'm not trying to do what you're trying to do (and I don't intend to, either, and there are reasons for that).

And (more importantly, in the case of your site) it depends on what sort of traffic you really need to try to get for the site, and on exactly how you're aiming to profit from it, if/when you get it. At the moment you have those other things so severely misjudged that it would honestly be a travesty for you to spend a penny on trying to rank the site. You'll simply end up more disappointed than you are now, if you try to do that. Please excuse my being such a mouthy chick, and be aware that I'm unreservedly well-intentioned by it, but if someone's told you that attracting relevant, well-targeted Google traffic to that site (which is going to be extremely difficult for you anyway) will produce realistic income from it, and build a business, they were wrong. Again, I apologize for not saying what you want to hear but what you need to hear, and I wish you well.

A proper domain-name and an autoresponder, and maybe some "IM education" (though you can get that without paying at all - and whether you pay for it or not, you need the judgment to decide by whom you want to be advised). Don't spend money on SEO: that will not be a successful recipe for you, with this site, because even if you managed to get a bit of traffic from it (which is doubtful anyway) it wouldn't produce anything of value for you!

To be really honest, I don't even agree with that. (Other than perhaps for the educational value of trying it, possibly achieving it, and seeing for yourself that it doesn't actually help you at all). What you actually need is a different site. In a different niche altogether.

OP- I just looked at your site and have a question:

What's the deal with the 50,000-email list you're giving away as an opt-in here:
http://themarketingblog.ws/index.php/subscribe-3/

Are you actually encouraging your users to SPAM?

Genuinely curious.

If you wanna do SEO, do video SEO. Way easier to rank, and you can do it for less than $20

"You're assuming (mistakenly) that increasing your Google rankings will enable you to make money from the site. It probably won't, for all the reasons explained to you in such detail in several other threads. Sorry, but that's the way it is. "

I completely disagree with that. Higher rankings usually mean higher traffic, which enable better monetization. It doesn't have to be through Adsense. If you have high traffic, you can make money in different ways.

For example, I use to run a small ecommerce store and use to make all my sales (not many) each month directly resulting from free rankings from Google even though I had only 6 to 8 products on the store. If I had even better rankings then the number of sales would have been higher. I had some personal problems (depression) for a couple of years which forced me to abandon the site otherwise I would have still been earning a tidy amount each month from it.

I also have other sites that make some money with Adsense and and bit of affiliates. I get 75% of all my traffic from searh engines, of that about 70% from Google. The other traffic returning and social bookmark type type, which by the way is the least converting traffic.

Even now, most affiliate companies (especially in health, who sell tangible products) do not allow their product links in emails as they prefer people coming from search or other methods. You have to get special permission for you to market them in emails.

However, one thing I I will say is that if you rely primarily on Google traffic then you are in for volatility on the traffic and earnings front. But the pattern is almost always the more Google traffic I had, the more money I made form the sites.

Remember, for every person that suffers in the search rankings, there is someone else benefiting.

Some while back I bought a pretty expensive pair of floorstand speakers. What did I do to find the products? Yep, I searched Google which led me to various stores, and after much though and research (all the while on Google), I bought from one of the shops. If there was no Google, i doubt if that store would have had me as a customer. Try to keep on Google's good books and then they have

But I also completely agree with you that you have to try and make Google and search share of traffic to under 50% so you have a good balance. Google traffic can be very volatile.

I wouldn't. I would invest in other methods like PPC and guest blogging.

It depends on the competition, you can spend the total $500, may be less, may be more.

I would look into testing a small PPC or PPV campaign. I know a lot of people here may say that you would lose all of your money very quickly, but I would start off testing small and also doing appropriate research beforehand in order to determine what others are doing with respect to the key words that they are focusing on, etc.

My opinion is to try website development.
Like setting up a website and then selling it for higher prises. I know a guy who can help you out of this. Take a look moneygenerator.tk. I have used this system and found it good and payful. You should really try this

You might can get to the top of the pay per click ads, but for $500 to appear in the natural organic searches... won't happen.

I would test PPC (Adwords and Bing ads), solo ads, blog advertising, and advertising on high traffic websites. Along with forum advertising also.

I suggest you spend a portion of your $500 on offline marketing.
For online marketing, Solo Ads are a reasonable method to advertise.

Retargeting is one of the most profitable ways to make money & drive traffic at the same time. That said, when you spend money on traffic make sure that your sales funnel is completely ready and you're ready to make sales.

Make sure to build a list if you're paying for the traffic, so that if you at least break even you can have the list as a bonus.

Cheers,

Mike