I have extensive business experience primarly in the field of industrial goods. I may be able to help in your decision making process but the first thing I would suggest is that you remove your dollar figure from this posting. There are two reasons for this. You are in public domain, it is not prudent to paint a bullseye on your forehead. The second reason is found in this example: someone has a small business endeavour for sale that may work for you and think that they would be happy with $10-12K. They see that you are willing to spend $20K . . . what do you think happens to their asking price? I would suggest that you edit the figure to "low $XX" at the very least. Please don't be offended by this suggestion.
It depends how much work you are willing to do. If you want passive income, I would recommend checking up on some stocks and invest into a diversified portfolio. If you want to get your hands dirty, you could try to pick up some top level domains, develop them and then resell for profit. Too bad you didn't have 200,000$ then you could buy a house, fix it up and resell for a profit of over 50k a pop. I have a number of friends who are very successful in this field of business.
lol funny you should mention the stock market since thats where my money came from lol ive thought about it but it has taken many years for it to grow to that i was thinking of something a little quicker
well maybe if i can find a couple of people with some money we could put our funds together to buy an already established business making money.
Buying an established business would be your best bet. Then put some of the profits back into the stock market to increase earnings and have money just incase the business fails.
Buy a webcam, contact TacoBell to sponsorize you. Make a web called: IeatTacosForMoney.com , the MillionDollarTacosWeb.com or something like that (better to purchase a lot of typos and variants, just in case).
Put a very big counter at top and add 1-5$ each time someone donate money.
Eat in life a taco for each donation. You can decide the limit, you know...many maniacs will pay you high $$$ only to see you to explote.
You can earn money with ads, medical ads, diet ads, taco ads....
When you reach 1,000,000 $ send me 10,000$ and enjoy your new, fat, life.
If you don't have any ideas of your own driving you yet, read shouldexist.org and halfbakery.com for a while and see if any of them look any good. Also Google for businesses for sale to find some of the major business brokers and business for sale listings.
Finally ask yourself if you have what it takes to run a business. Some businesses are very easy to run and you just have to mail out a couple postcards a month while others will take 90+ hours per week and consume your life. In the end, don't be afraid to fail but make sure you have taken the steps necessary to succeed. There are many dishonest characters out there looking to sell you the way to fast and easy money. Real opportunity must be sought out and found by you, its not going to be advertised on a giant billboard you drive by tomorrow.
Here is a suggestion as to what to look for. It is working for me, maybe it will for you. This is just a very thin outline......
1. Check your region for manufacturing companies. Decide whether or not there is an opportunity for exploiting those products on the market via the internet.
2. If there is an opportunity available, research and pick up a relevant domain name. Approach the manufacturing company with information regarding wholesale pricing, and any drop ship programs they may offer. See if they will drop ship with no markings, or your markings.
3. Build a web site with a fairly focussed range of products. You may have to stock some items, but they may be willing to drop ship larger ones for you.
4. Go to shareasale.com and create a merchant program. This will cost a couple hundred bucks, but will also give access to their affiliates, who will be willing to resell all of your products for you, for a decent commission.
5. Start developing an affiliate base, a core group of active affiliates.
6. Once that particular niche business is profitable, move on to your next local manufacturing company.
You can find one list of manufacturing companies from the Thomas Register I'm sure there are other directories as well you can look in.
You can also look for distributors, fairly easy to find, for just about every line of products you can find.
You may want to return your funds to the market but in a different capacity. Playing the stock game is fine and in many cases "safe" but as you pointed out, long term...
IPOs offer a MUCH faster and MORE consistant return. The take isn't as large but it's generally double or triple your investment depending on your field.
For instance, technology stocks... although volital lately, sees an average of three times ROI and that's the MOMENT the stock opens. You get cashed out and you're done. Sure, the stock may continue to rise and you may "miss out" on any ptotential if it keep going up but the point is that you've made money and are out and on to the next IPO.
VC Funding in this way is very lucrative and very consistant. The fact is that in every IPO the stock has been pre-sold at least 4 times before the opening bell.... the Owner, the VC (you in this case), the Clearing House, the Broker and the Broker's select clients (Market Makers). Each time the pre-sale happens, the IPO will up to double in price.
That is why a VC buys (funds) an IPO at $4 per share and the stock opens at $12 or more.
It's GOOD money for the savvy VC.
I've gone through a few IPOs... let me tell you what!
Before I sold my Corp. www.GoPC.com was a part of a tech firm that developed technology products specifically for other companies. GoPC was born inside our firm FOR our firm, that is why we still control it. However, we developed a distributed networking technology, housed it in a new shell corp and are taking it IPO. First round Bridge Capital sold for under $1 per share to fund the IPO. VCs negotiated at $4.80 per share and the expected public trading prices was valuated at around $13 per share.
We are working the scenario again on a different project but it makes sense and money TWO ways... Either be the VC and take a set return. OR Be the IPO itself and build your concept specifically to take public and then sell for cash and stock to a larger corp.
That's my .02 cents worth based on personal experiences.
I have made a few dollars buying and selling silver over the past few years and recomend it. Coins expecialy silver coins are a great investment right now. i t wont take you long to see what sells and what dosnt. I and many others believe that silver is on its way to a long bull run.
What i do is put ads in the newspaper offering to bu pre 1964 silver coins. i generaly pay about 5 to 51/2 times face vale and get between 61/2 and 11 times face depending on the coins. Selling mostly on ebay and other auctions.
Just hold on to your money and read books and magazines and visit business forums until you get a good idea. Don't rush into something just because you have the money.
Sorry, maybe this is not what you want to hear, but all stated upper is true and the only way! IMO
Book and magazines, and basics of economics, and after some time, new idea must show up!
And hold your money and wait till you check all aspects of your idea and make your full business plan.
I have IMO one great idea, but need at least 10 000 Euro to start, and right now i cant secure that money, but last few months i am thinking about that idea and now i will do something different of what i would done before few months. I still need 10 000 Euro, but now when i start, my business will be much better and more quality than it would be if i started it few months ago with the same money.
I want to tell you that you first have to get an idea, and then wait and think about what you will have to do and how you would need to develop your idea, and ONLY after a lot of thinking, you may invest your money and start that business.
Good luck!
Sorry, my english is not fluent, but i hope that you figured what i am trying to tell
I sometimes I like looking through what people are asking about in Google ask/answer is really what it is. Also, Yahoo even has one. I figure if people are paying money to get there answers to there questions, then they would surely pay you money if they could find it from you or they wouldn't be asking there questions for money in the first place!
Just my two cents! Or you could try stocks! I liked that one!
Or I have an idea...just pm and we can work on it together!
How about visiting my site NiceStuffs.Net and improving it?
There are a lot of things to invest in there, but unfortunately it's not a good timing to pull out my funds which are now invested also in the stock market.
NiceStuffs.Net has a lot of potentials and we are proud to try to stretch them out.
__________________ "Dayu is a proud member of the Free Hosts Alliance, your Quality Assurance Ally."