I was wondering if any of you had some advice about an idea I had recently. What if someone were to start a fund, like a mutual fund or hedge fund, that specialized in getting long-term web-space leases and selling this space on a short-term basis? It seems like prices for ad-space on good websites would go up over time and there would be money to be made. I guess picking out sites w/ a lot of potential would be important; maybe hiring some web analysts could help w/ this. Profits could then be returned to investors, w/ the fund taking a standard hedge fund fee (2% of assets, 20% of profits, something like that). Any suggestions/criticisms?
Not particularly helpful The forum has 2 user registered and one post in the whole forum, might be quite hard to get opinions. Stop self promoting....
It sounds like a decent idea, but it would be difficult to raise enough funds to pay off a web analyst. There would also be a lot of risk invovled. It would also require a lot of capital to get it started and truly prosperous. If you ran an operation like waytoprofit.net or infinityshares.com, where you allow real investments that received a small percent of the profit, you would probably have a lot of luck. These types of programs are very popular on the internet.
Well..you're definitely thinking outside of the box but I wouldn't call a fund like that a 'hedge fund'. A few issues I can already think of. Can you really deploy that much capital efficiently? Why would anyone invest their hard earned money on unproven strategy with no track record, and uncertained future? How many companies went out of business during the bust that relied on advertising? Can you truly generate alpha? (i.e. Can you return better than TBills to make it worth the risk? And this is highly risky.) Best of luck. P.S. In the hedge fund world, 50mil is considered as a tiny fund that may or may not make it beyond 3 years. The PBs will barely pay attention to you and give you crap rates. Everyone will be looking to cut your throat. At about 500mil, you might be able to have some level playing ground. This stuff is outside the realm of 99.9% of the DP posters.
I think the main problem is that the web is always fluctuating and internet bussiness are more risky than offline ones. That will make it hard to get investors, imho, not that I now much about this stuff.
You might be right about that; the risk does seem to be the largest barrier. However, what if you had investment guidelines and rejected sites falling outside these guidelines? You could try to sign leases w/ sites that had been profitable for say, 2 years, w/ a certain revenue benchmark. This could also be done by trained analysts in the field. Would this at least partially remove the risk?
Yes, that will partially remove the risk. Anyway I guess that if you offer something good (good revenue I mean) for the investors, there will always be people willing to take the risk. Specially if you can make it in a way that they can invest small amounts. Take a look here for example, http://www.goldpoll.com/ A lot of people invest in hyip(high yield investing programs) without even knowing in what their money is being invested, but since the entry level is low, around $10, they take the chance. The advantage that I see is that there are not many business working in this area, and none with your idea, at least that I know.
If you did an HYIP style investment, you could easily scrap together enough money to get your start. I know that sites like infinityshares and superchain.net operate like this, and they have a strong following. There are thousands of people who search day and night for an honest online investment opportunity. Just make sure that they know the risks. You also might want to examine using a shares style investment system, similar to what infinityshares used.
Ryan! Not a bad business idea..however, the catch here is identifying "good" websites..whose value would increase over time. Moreover, when you try to start something like mutual fund and generate funds from people, you need to provide a solid business plan, which will be difficult in this case. Beter option would be collect fund from some friends who trust your ability and idea..once you start getting some returns, you can then start a fund for public. Wish you good luck
I'm not disin' your forum but you really need to give it more attention and promote it well instead of going from post to post promotion. Your forum is well organized and design is good but nobody's home. Do an open house or a tupperware sale you know what I mean?. Great job though.
This seems to be a very good idea , the challange is to identify the websites ( from small players ) which you think can go in the big league . If you can do that then you can go even further and use this fund in buying their shares aswell.