If you had $30,000 to build something?

I second that

I'd take a year off from "real work" and seriously work full time on 4-5 quality web sites on my own. After that, you got yourself some passive revenue for a long time and you could back get your 30K after just a year or two. But you need a few good ideas. Otherwise, I'd buy a few promising sites.

 

I would suggest buying The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and reading it. He defines exactly what you should be doing with your possible $30,000. Man I wish I could put my amazon associate link in here!

 

I will do the following things to make the money grow.

1. Buy a vbulletin license. Rent a best designer to create a best forum containing all the content including a-z and market the forum in all search engines. Put google ads on it . So that it will get back your money more than you are investing.
2. develop a adult search engine for images and videos... you will become billionare soon.

 

I would never ever ever ever do that, no offence.

I would take about $20,000 and pay a few freelancers to make me something incredible. I would then take $5000 and pay someone to make me an amazing iPhone application. I would then take the other $5000 and put it towards effective advertising, I'd wait a year or so, maybe two. Then sell it all and live happily ever after.

 

start a niche blog network and use money for marketing.

 

You won't have much left to invest in the sites if you're living off the $30K

 

How about time, talent, creativity, work, content, ideas, design... I've barely spent any money on my sites outside of hosting, but I did invest a lot of personal time and attention. $30K should be enough for one person to live a year... which frees up the necessary time to create, work and promote those sites. In the end, he could recuperate his $30K in a year or two and the rest would be gravy.

 

That's the best advice it's alot easier to target your local area then trying to become the next twitter google or facebook
Although anythings possible

 

$30k for business. That is a easy choose. I would buy a small to middle size active poker forum. Then use the money left over for marketing.

 

I don't know what countries you guys are located in, but where I am from you can't do much in real estate nor small brick and mortar for 30k. I would probably use the 30k and either invest in stocks or find a well established site on sitepoint as someone mentioned earlier

 

I'd consider a shopping cart site for a niche market. 30k should be enough if you plan it out right.

 

Funny to read all this 'Real business like a restaurant instead of that risky internet stuff'. Man... I guess people talking about 'real business' versus 'no-real internet businesses' don't make anything online and have incredibly weird ideas about what 'real business' is. Internet businesses are very real and easily top other business in terms of TCO and ROI. In an average site I invest $2k + some time and that site will make about $1000-4000/mo forever after that. Do that with your restaurant. You'll be working like a maniac (that 30k won't help you very far in terms of starting that up and running it without you working our *ss off) and making almost nothing for a long time. Weird.

 

I would make a browser based game

 

Exactly what I was thinking.
Take digital assets for instance. Zero overhead, zero shipping cost, infinite stock. You will never get that kind of a deal in 'real life' with any product.

 

Possibly a Facebook or iPhone app. Those things are making people incredible residual income.

 

Id spend it all on diddy donuts

 

Do not waste your time and effort on acquiring sites, ecommerce, adsense, or related junk. Leverage the marketing power and size of social network and mobile communities. A couple members have suggested an iPhone application and I would agree with a caveat. The mobile market is hotter than ever in part to the huge success of the iPhone. Android is another platform to watch and it would be a great time to enter the market, since the Android marketplace is growing and maturing. It is a VERY competitive market, so be prepared to raise the bar and introduce something "new".

 

i would invest $30,000 in myself! Meaning I would invest in improving myself because every success starts with the persons mind!

 

That's one hell of a haircut.

 

i would buy lots of chocolate lol