Any ideas to begin with, looking for answers outside of the box [just adwords]for advertising for a site with, "topics for men". How would you promote a site with $2K - $4K?
There's so much to that question actually. It would take an overall analysis of what you have going on. If it's the website you have in your signature then numerous ideas come to mind. I'd personally grow my network. <- big concept right there. My efforts tend to focus on an overall philosophical standpoint at all times - complimented with specific knowledge that works _right now_ Think big, not small. Not temporary either. Grow your online network in ways that add value to your customers lives and they will reward you. I really don't want to go into specifics here, but PM if you want to get a bit better of an idea about what i'm talking about.
If I had that amount of money i would buy mostly links of quality and relevant websites however I would not spend the full amount, I would spend about $500-$1000 in the BST section buying quality sites and around $500 in content creation to supplement my own work.
Pick a relatively uncompetitive niche. Shoot for being an authority in this niche. Buy content, high quality unique articles. Place adsense ads and affiliate offers, SEO every page (that means getting backlinks too). If you do this correctly, you will have at least a $1k a month website within 3-4 months.
if what you say is true, all uncompetitive niches would be competitive. I agree that there is some truth in what you say however it depends on how big the niche is. You might not make as much as $1K per month to start off with and it may take a little longer because when working with SEO, you can't get results overnight. I really like how you placed great emphasis on quality content though. This is the part of websites that many people fail to realize is the most important aspect.
There are literally tens of thousands of niches. I can think of 1000 keywords in two minutes that I could rank top 10 in 3 months. Think of a keyword like "marantz SR 8001". Do you think there is competition for it? A few backlinks would make you top3 probably within weeks. With some similar variations this keyword should bring about 20-30 uniques per day. This product is worth more than $1000. If you join an affiliate network and get 5-10% of the sale, thats $50-$100 per sale. Lets assume every 100th(which btw. is very low for such a keyword) click is a sale. You get $50-$100 every 4 days for this product. Now find and optimize 1000 of such and similar products within a year and you should have at minimum 5k a month, but realistically its more in the 10-20k range. Of course you would need help with it, thats why I said to outsource the content writing part. Or you could outsource SEO work and write content. Either way you would need some help with something, you're not a robot. It's very hard to make money online as you start. Once you know how, it becomes easy. It takes a lot of work and knowledge to get there. Pretty much as in every other field. You are not ranking in top positions overnight, I never said that. What I said is you could rank top 10 in 3 months for pretty much every uncompetitive keyword. When designing your website it all comes down to relevancy. Give your user what he is searching for. If he is searching for information, give him information and place more emphasis on adsense ads. If he is looking to purchase something, place more emphasis on affiliate products. A searcher always starts in the informational phase of research and ends in the buying phase where he is ready to buy. The buying phase usually is the keyword "product name", a keyword that somehow is related to the product or a keyword which offers a solution to a problem. Searchers are using the internet only because of two reasons. One is they are looking for something which would increase their happines or pleasure in life, the other is a solution to a problem. Design your websites for the visitor and their needs. You (or your website) need to be a solution to their search query. That is relevancy and google knows why it gives so much attention to it. So how would you find a niche? Well I can give you a practical example. Go to dmoz.org and browse the categories. You will find thousands of niches here, but go a little deeper. The deeper you go, the more uncompetitive the niche is and usually more chances that the niche has more potential buyers, than researchers. (I talked previously that the research starts with informational keywords and ends with buying end cycle keywords, usually the same applies when browsing through dmoz.org)
I owuld invest heavily in PPC and buy links on other relevant, targeted sites. I would laso invest heavily in CPA to build a list of subscribers that i can continually sell to. Basics really...
Personally, I would pocket that cash and continue doing marketing my way, which basically just takes time and effort.