Best way to Invest/grow $10,000

You're a senior in college, so Christmas break is coming up. That'll give you 4-5 weeks straight to spend on market research, with another 4-5 months until graduation after that.

If you go to an accredited university, you should have access to one or more of the following through your school library:

Ibisworld
Hoovers
LexisNexis
JSTOR
(Search for others)

These are information gold, mine them. Dissect the data you can pull from these sources, quarterly reports, EDGAR, etc., and compile all the information into ~200pg+ document. Using that knowledge as a foundation, start keeping up with changes (Google News, mashable, pc magazine, etc. is good for this) in your industry, and as you see changes occur, write a quick note in a notebook. Every couple days, pull out your research and your news research, and write all the key market changes on a whiteboard. Try to draw connections, which are founded on your research, on the whiteboard. A connection, validated by research, is a new market opportunity. Doing this it should be simple to come up with 1000+ new ideas to put your capital to good use. Pick the best one and go for it.

Just don't copy what everybody else is doing. As an educated person, you should see the value in books. A couple hundred $ in books could go a long way.

Whatever you do, please don't start buying "money making products." You can learn ALOT just from this forum. Perhaps you could use part of the $ to cover your living expenses while learning about Internet Marketing, deciding on which way you'd like to go with it, and building your business from the ground up. As you're reading through the threads on the forum, just post if you have any specific questions and there will always be somebody to help you.

I agree with the above. I feel that before you go spending your hard earned money on money making schemes, you should have a thorough understanding of exactly what you want to do when it comes to online marketing. There are many ways to make money online, some which require money, and others which do not. The last thing you should do is spend money without direction, so instead learn what you can online for free, preferably learning one specific method until you can master it. If that method you're learning is free, then great! Save your money unless you absolutely need it and are guaranteed that it's the right thing you need to do for your business.

Of course, money may be necessary in the future as your business expands, but since you're just starting, you should consider learning one method and stick with it.

Save it! Invest like an old lady on fixed income...learn all you can by reading, asking questions, trying things, trying new things, and sticking with it...

Only spend money when absolutely necessary....at least until you have a steady income such that you can afford to blow some cash here and there.

Just my opinion.

Hedge fund it :-)

Such great information and tips in those few post alone. Thanks a ton Porphyrogenitus, Steve B, ElijahM, Alast, Bkelly301, and seonutshell for sharing the tips! I'll definitely need to spend a little more time on this forum learning everything I can. Any suggestions as to what subforum is the best for learning?

Depends what your main focus is. Each subforum contains valuable information, it just depends what you do with the information which can determine the value of each subforum. You can always get invest in a war room account for just $37 I believe, which could enhance your knowledge as it's filled with information unattainable anywhere else. There is no one-set plan with internet marketing; you need to go down your own path.

Open a self-trade brokerage account and start investing in equities.

It really depends on your goals and outcomes with it. As the above person said set up a brokerage account and buy an exchange traded index fund that automatically invests in a parcel of stocks and leave it there for five years. When you have finished college you will able to start up a business or gain some other experience through travel etc. Learning about investments and finance is always a good option especially in the make money niche. Setting up a brokerage account can definitely count if done well as a make money online opportunity.

You certainly shouldn't invest into money making products. Do some research and try to figure out what you really want to do instead.

I think you should spend like $100 in education to build internet marketing business. There are couple of good stuff in wso, and if it's possible I highly recommend you to invest on one on one coaching, that's the fast track honestly.
Why? because you have someone to accountable to.

Learn a paid traffic method. Something like mobile cpa marketing, you have the cash available to test, optimize, and scale a campaign to 1k a day easily. Learn how to consistently build solid campaigns and you can create a nice portfolio and healthy monthly income with only a few hours a day of testing and managing media buys.

I opened this thread fully thinking you were already running your own business and looking for low-yield/risk investments to put your money into.

I was going to beat you up and tell you that, without a doubt, you're almost always better off investing in profitable cash-flows within your own business instead of focusing on all of that external crap...

Invest $1000 of it in a steady stock like Johnson & Johnson that will pay a good solid dividend for long time. Remember to reinvest your dividends each month.

I would agree with others here that saving it is a great idea.

HOWEVER, I'd also say that investing it into the right places is an even better idea.

If you can make money from scratch - then imagine what you would do scaling it up with 10000$.

Great to see people who recommend do not spend on money making products.

Because they are not money making

I was in the same boat as you until I graduated as a mature student this year. Do you really need to invest yet with the amount of students that will pay (well) for you to write their essays, thesis and masters work ;-)

If you have a business idea you can start working on creating the product. Look into Kickstarter and making a video there to help raise money for your project. depending on the product you are wanting to create you can create a WSO here on the forum and make some $$ if you have the right product. also, if you know ppc then you can generally get some good roi but if not that is probably not what i'd focus on.

if you're doing something in the IM world though make sure you build a community whether that is through a fb page, twitter following, or email list so that you will always have people to communicate with and sell product to

What do you want to do with your life? I would try to figure that out first...

Appreciate all the tips guys for sure!! Thank you!

Did you make the 10k working a normal job? If you did, I'd recommend opening an IRA or Roth-IRA at a brokerage account like tdameritrade or vanguard and contributing to it. You'll get tax benefits and it'll keep you disciplined in having your money fully invested.

Your options are generally mutual funds, ETFs, and stocks. It's tough to invest directly in individual bonds as an individual, as minimum requirements are very high. To invest in bonds, you'd have to invest in bond mutual funds. Keep in mind that you can lose money in any investment you put money in. Bonds lose money if interest rates go up. ETFs, aka exchange traded funds are similar to mutual funds in a few ways (they're a basket of securities) but they're more tax efficient. I prefer investing in stocks, but that really depends on your tolerance and knowledge of individual stocks.

and btw, you can't invest 10k in a hedge fund
(unless you're an accredited investor)

Putting it away in a qualified retirement account (in this case, the IRA) helps prevent you from spending/wasting it all.

I would take that $10,000 and fund your life for the next 10 months while you learn and build a real online company. I would personally sell all of my stuff, put the rest in storage, move somewhere like Chiang Mai Thailand, join a co-working office space and start building online businesses.

You can live for between $600-$1,000 a month out here and in 10 months you can bootstrap a business that generates over $4K a month.

Some good advice but I know your needing like a straight answer. Invest in intellectual property and/or development because you can turn that $10k into $2k-4k a month in income safety.. if you don't know how to do that then team up with a group that does. Don't buy make money products, dont do forex, or play with open market financial investments as you will lose your shirt. Don't try to buy websites with established income either.. just cash flow rich intellectual property with +3 years of income and a solid marketplace behind it.. thats it.

Invest $20 and just try to make $1 from it.. and fail.. then do it again.. and again.. and again.. about $200 bucks worth.. and if you can't do it.. then you can't make $10k into $1 either.

Is mainly depend on your target ROI.
If you need high ROI, you can do trading such as Options, Future, Forex. (High ROI meant High RISK)
If you need lower ROI, you can do value investing, buy under-value stocks. (Lower ROI need longer time to reach your target)

For me, I think solo business is a never saturated business.

I started doing business right after college and failed so many times. The best advice that i could give you is to take small risks and never risk all your money. Focus on one project at a time, once the project gets some revenues and profits then scale your operations using your spare money.

One simple formula:

Create a product or a service ===> Find a way to sell that service

Always give value, always get new clients, retain your clients and build relationships with them.

Outsource or get people to help you with your business so that you can scale your efforts.

Always remember that you can never do it alone. Get a team once you profit from your business.

This applies online and offline. Cheers!