Thread: $500 - Spend it on...

Let's assume you're the owner of:
http://www.runningonlinebusiness.com/

You're given $500 tonight to use for the improvement of the blog.
You must use all of the money on the blog's improvement.

What would you do?
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I'm in this situation. I decided to throw an easy $500 into improving my blog. I may invest more, but I want to take it one step at a time and ensure things are running smoothly first. What should I spend the money on?

The 1st $100 on link building

Hey if you can call $500 easy feel free to spot me some! And why spend ALL of the money? Being under budget is a good thing...

As far as buying improvements - get a unique design. Branding is important for building up a reputation. That includes a unique logo. Make sure that your design has great typography, because you want your text to be as readable as possible.

As for the other stuff, buy some credits for Istockphoto and start putting stock photography in your posts. Long chunks of text are boring.

divide it for link building, unique design as sneakyheathen said, promotions (video, article distribution, etc.)

The site design is a good idea. Generally, I like to go with what I have and concentrate on the linkbuilding and marketing. With enough seo work you sould be able to start monetizing the site. So that you can justify the design work.

I would:

Research and buy 50 articles. 200$
Submit site to top 40 RSS directories 0$.
Publish 40 articles other 10 publish every 2-3 days one 0$
Hire Sturat for article promotions 35$
Pay Social Bookmarking in different time periods 20$
Take PR package promotion 80$.
Buy Directory Submissions 2000 dirs 20$
After a month pay again Social Bookmarking for deep links 20$
Invest some ammount of money in getting relevant backlinks.

If more money left then probably I would buy more content and invest more in backlinks and SEO.

If you researched well your article topics, your site should get nice ammount of visitors.

You can later make unique design, once your site start working.




p.s. Your niche is very competitive. I doubt that 500$ can make some big difference.

Get good backlinks. Work on articles. The theme is a good suggestion. Then some other methods, like video marketing.

Originally Posted by bogart

The site design is a good idea. Generally, I like to go with what I have and concentrate on the linkbuilding and marketing. With enough seo work you sould be able to start monetizing the site. So that you can justify the design work.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I'd rather invest the funds into things like articles, link building and marketing before working on creating a fancy design. Once things start picking up, I wouldn't have any issues with purchasing a custom design, but I wouldn't really place that on my list of immediate priorities.

However, I think I will try and buy a logo or maybe some banners so I can advertise my site with some nifty graphics. I'll have to see what I can find.

Then some other methods, like video marketing.

Could you explain what you meant exactly by 'video marketing'? I noticed that two people mentioned it.

@Hellas - thanks for the detailed list.

@Hellas

What is the PR package promotion 80$?

Originally Posted by Kovich

This is exactly what I was thinking. I'd rather invest the funds into things like articles, link building and marketing before working on creating a fancy design. Once things start picking up, I wouldn't have any issues with purchasing a custom design, but I wouldn't really place that on my list of immediate priorities.

However, I think I will try and buy a logo or maybe some banners so I can advertise my site with some nifty graphics. I'll have to see what I can find.

Banners are a good idea to promote the site and quite cheap.

I would wait on the logo until you work out the site design.

Originally Posted by bogart

@Hellas

What is the PR package promotion 80$?

press release submissions

those things in google that show up alway as news for your site