First things first. Who or what is going to support you while you get a business up and running?

You already acknowledge you are a newbie at this...so don't plan on 6 months to a year from now with replacing your old salary. You might need that buy out to live on and pay your bills. It won't go very far.

If you really want to take that buy out, find yourself another job, put the $25 big ones away and work at marketing in your free time until you get the momentum going. You can't just build a great business fast by throwing money at it...it takes your hard work and knowing what you're doing to get there.

I'd also advise you to spend time on the forums here, get to know the posters so you know whose advice you can trust. You'll also find you don't have to spend a lot to start earning.

First of all, I wouldn't tell people you have $25k to invest or you'll have people coming out of the woodwork trying to figure out how to take it away from you.

Second, and please don't be offended by this, but ... if you have to ask how to invest that money to build a business you have a very long way to go, so I'd advise you not to rush into anything. You've got a lot of homework to do.

Good luck.

I wouldn't bother, you live in the Bay Area lots of wealthy time strapped tech savy people. I'd offer them a local service which you can market locally online which somehow makes their life a bit easier.

Offer a lunch delivery service which they order through your website, or maybe a fresh fruit delivered daily? You just need to be creative...

People seem to forget the ocean of local online business opportunities out there.

bottle of wine and a steak dinner sounds good and within budget

I agree with kay, you can start selling websites to your local community and outsource the work, without spending more than 20 bucks. There are too many ways to get started from zero.

Throwing money at something usually only works if you have ALOT of it... because 25k can burn up so fast on testing opportunities that your head will spin.

Why?

Because when we have investment cap we tend to think that its the answer, so we throw money around more frivolously...instead of doing the "work", thinking the money will replace the work ethic.

However, there are simple ways to make money without any investment cap. If I had 200k, then I might put up 25-50k to invest in something, but if 25k was all I had, I would use it to live on while I worked some opportunity that only costs 25 bucks to start. There are a ton of them.

$25= hosting, domain name- and the ability to sell web design services and monthly maintenance to as many people as you want to without spending another dime.

$100 = War room membership- domain- squeeze page- WSO Ad

Now you can start a mailing list and market affiliate products or whatever. Offer a free gift to get people to opt into your list... You may even take a thousand bucks and do some massive free ad swap stuff to grow your list even faster.

You now have the beginnings of an affiliate marketing, or product creation business.

-John

Ps. You could take a thousand dollars, and have some foreign company create a software for you that solves some markets problems, and sell the software for $30,000

I did that back in 2011 myself.

Dont look for a way to spend all your money in one basket, try some smaller endeavors that can double your money instead.

You have some good guidance here... if we were looking to take advantage we would just say "Send it to me".

send it to me

Before you go off and blowing all that money on one project. I would take use $1,000 chunks to test out different mail order projects. If one deems fruitful, I'd then slowly start investing more of your money into it.

Perfect the method that made you $300.
Keep going until you are making sustainable income.
Then perfect another method of providing products
or services you want to provide.

Always perfect your lead generation methods.

Write out how quickly just your current living expenses
would eat up your $25K. Then, there's the unexpected
expense that happens just about every month.

Then, down the road, maybe use part of your savings
for a specific business need you know will return
something to you. Like hiring a programmer for
a software project as John mentioned. Or, like getting
a web develpment client and paying contractor(s)
for the stuff you can't do as needed.

Then you can send it to me.

just found out there are 3 levels of this buyout thingy. if 40-59 take it, they each get $25K. 60-89 participants it's $50K, 90+ and it's $75,000! thingz juss got alot more *interesting

i Definately had no intention on blowing all the money in a single project. THX for all the words of wisdom, i have alot more to think about now

$25k invested in 80% of high volume, low profit items, and 20% low volume, mild profit items will bring you between $15,000 and $17,000/mo revenue. Would likely need 1 local employee (unless you find a good fulfillment contract or something) and 1 outsourced employee.

First year, I would probably bet the numbers would be around $11,000/mo with $25k invested in rotating inventory, until you've been in the game long enough to build a better relationship with your distributors.

I personally wouldn't risk more than $500 while working, while you learn how eBay and eCommerce actually works, and then build up and match your revenue with your own money before reinvesting and continuing.