$2000 to Invest in..

  • Posted by Allen
  • February 23, 2007

First off let me thank all those who wished me fun and success in the conference I attended earlier this week, it was indeed a prosper one as my speeches went smooth and were apparently interesting.

I also want to thank those of you who chose to stay tuned and subscribe to the feed, as promised I’ve taken notes from the conference and will be sharing some ideas and lessons with all of you.

But for now let’s talk about my unused money.

As some of you know one of my blogs was sold for $1400 in December 2006; since then my Paypal income continues to grow every month, after the end of Feruary I’m expected to cross the $2000 mark. I hate that.

The idea of the money just sitting there collecting (virtual) dust is killing me; I’ve been looking all around the online marketplaces for a worthwhile deal, but nothing interesting has came along so far. I’ve also tried to start negotiations on co-developing a domain I own into an advanced user-generated content site, but these are currently failing as well.

My online expenses are currently negligible, the only recurring payments I have to make are for the hired writers on my entertainment blog and that’s it. I did purchase a $100 review on John Chow’s blog, and will continue to invest similar amounts to market AlleNation, but as I said - the cash flow is greener than ever, and I should be looking to invest the surpluses somewhere.

$2000 have to get rolling. I’ll continue looking for some worthwhile deals, but would love to get some help, so if you happen to bump into a sale that you think is an opportunity in my range, do contact me.

Additionally, if you have a (good) joint-venture offer, this is the time to talk - I can either enter existing businesses as a VC, fund newly established ones, or start new projects.

PS: I love talking with all of you, but won’t and maybe can’t do business with most of you. Don’t take it personally as I’m not looking for the smartest partner or best project, I’m looking for the most suitable one for me.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Technorati
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us
  • TwitThis
  • Digg
  • e-mail
  • Reddit
  • Propeller
  • Fark
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Facebook
  • BlogMemes Sp
  • Spurl
  • Live
  • Slashdot
  • NewsVine

Information and Links

Join the fray by commenting, tracking what others have to say, or linking to it from your blog.

Information
February 23rd, 2007
9 Responses
Feeds and Links
Get the Feed
From This Author
Del.icio.us
Digg
Technorati
Categories
AlleNation
Finance & Money

Other Posts
Success May Only Seem Instant
A Possible Hiatus

Write a Comment

Take a moment to comment and tell us what you think. Some basic HTML is allowed for formatting.

Reader Comments

Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Nomar
Posted on:
February 23, 2007 at 2:10 am

Good to hear everything went fine !!

I hope you can find yourself a nice site to invest in. !! looking forward to read your purchase :D

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
cosmin
Posted on:
February 23, 2007 at 5:18 am

have you thought of investing offline?

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
HMTKSteve
Posted on:
February 23, 2007 at 8:48 pm

I tried to email you but I got a failure message.

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
Allen
Posted on:
February 24, 2007 at 1:02 am

Hi Steve, are you using the contact form or just emailing me regularly? I just tried using the contact form and it works for me, in case it doesn’t for you, please use the “time to talk” link in the post, my Google Talk address is the same as my email one.

Cosmin: not really, what do you suggest doing with $2000 offline? I’d really like to get into something leverage-ab;e and liquid, if you know what I mean.

Regards,
Allen

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
Armen
Posted on:
February 24, 2007 at 6:36 pm

Hmmm…maybe break it down and use it to develop other niche sites where all the content is written by other people who you pay monthly.

Look for people with writing ability, but no marketing skills and use their strengths. Some decent writers would gladly write 5 times a week for $50/month I reckon because they aren’t making anything of their own blogs.

Just a thought!

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
cosmin
Posted on:
February 25, 2007 at 2:26 am

hey Allen,
sorry for the delay in answering.

i really can’t tell you what to invest 2 grands in offline. it depends on the economy of the place where you live.

i have to admit my first thought was real estate. but i now realize you only have $2000. the next thing that comes to mind is the stock market or some government bonds or some certificates of deposit. just do some research on the characteristics of your market and see what would bring you the best return and meet your criterias in the same time.

the idea came as a result of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” credo.

Comment Number:
7
Written by:
Jacob
Posted on:
February 25, 2007 at 5:24 am

$2000.00. That’s a nice amount of money to invest in something. Now, I am going to give you my advice, take it or leave.

1. Unless you are going to pay attention to the stock market, don’t invest in it. That’s the type of thing that can change constantly and with you wanting to run an online blog network, focusing your energy on the stocks all day could hurt your network.

2. Don’t just spend it to create any old site. I think you said something that you want it to be most suitable for you. Maybe don’t even create a new site. Maybe expand on a current one. People love these RSS feed blogs where there is constant content all the time. What if you could do that for one of your blogs? Five posts a day? By hiring enough bloggers, you could do that and I am sure you’d see a return.

3. Create/Purchase a site that is beginning to already earn. Finding a site that makes a couple of dollars a day means that it past that first difficult hump. Then you can do with it what you want. So long as the traffic is coming in and there are clicks, you can tweak it with your preferences.

If I had the money, I’d devote it all to my science blog. I’d use it to buy a nice new theme for the blog, I’d buy a vBulletin theme and I’d get a license. But that’s just what I’d do. What you want to do is try and ensure that you invest it wisely. Those three ideas are just some things I’d do. There’s always different site ideas that come to mind, but I doubt you want them. Good luck with what ever you do and send me an e-mail if you feel like exchanging ideas ever.

-Jacob

Comment Number:
8
Written by:
Allen
Posted on:
February 26, 2007 at 12:33 am

@cosmin: Just like Jacob said in the comment, seriously focusing on the stock market will probably take away a lot of time that I can devote to my online business.

@Jacob: Thanks for your comment, these are the type of things I love about having a blog with a thinking audience.

I’m already implementing number 2, I want to approach it slowly though, I hired 2 writers but neither of them is successful at understanding what kind of content and post-layout I’m looking for, maybe it’s just my bad explanation, but I hope to hire 2 more when the two guys I already hired get the drill.

As for your 3rd advice, I’ve mentioned in the post that I’ve been looking for sites that are worth the effort, but the market is mainly full of proxies, arcades, scrapers and shit like that.

Thanks again for your advice!
Allen.H

Comment Number:
9
Written by:
thepaperbull
Posted on:
February 28, 2007 at 4:33 pm

Allen - which is the entertainment blog you’re referring to here? I’d like to give it a read.

Glad you liked the pullquote plugin I posted on my blog. The author responded as well and has shown me about the alt text feature that’s already there.