Let’s say you just won $100, like Becky did in my last blog contest. What are you going to do with that money? You have a number of options, but what you really need to decide is if you are going to keep that money or invest it back into your blog. There are a lot of people after that $100 and what you do with it could drastically improve your blog and your chances of making money online.

What are your options?

Buy blog reviews

You don’t have to spend $400 for a review on John Chow’s blog. There are plenty of blogs where you can get your site reviewed for $100 or less. Cash Quests is the obvious example, where you can get reviewed for $80. At the moment, you can get reviewed by Michael Kwan, who writes John Chow’s Review Me reviews, for just $40. Another to consider is Ben Cook, who has built up a solid readership in less than three months. He currently charges $100 a review.

The benefits of buying a review are traffic, links and advice. If you pick the write review, you can make the most out of all three of these.

Invest in domains

Remember when I wrote about how to buy dropped domains? If you have $100, you have the opportunity to buy dropped domains with Page Rank and links, and extend your existing network. Better yet, you could buy domains that have no been dropped, and create your network that way. You can use these acquired domains to generate additional sources of income and to link to your own blogs, thus boosting Page Rank and SERPs.

Buy text links

With $100, you can buy a whole bunch of text links. What you want to look for are two things: blogs with Page Rank/linkbacks and blogs with traffic. If you purchase a text link that has prime placement on a blog and the creative you use is catchy enough, you will get traffic. If you purchase on a blog with Page Rank/links and your creative is based around the keywords you target (”make money”, for example) you can receive a boost in SERPs for that keyword, and if your link is up when Google takes its snapshot of Page Rank, you might see some changes in that respect too. Text Link Ads is the obvious place to look like links, but don’t rule out Linkworth as well. At other times, you can approach bloggers directly to inquire about buying links.

Buy advertising space

Those 125×125 ad blocks are all the rage. Carl Ocab is selling ad blocks for just $40 at the moment while Courtney Tuttle’s blogs are going for just $50! Ad spots like these can generate traffic if you can catch a reader’s eye. It’s not rocket science, so pick a high-traffic blog and get your ad up.

Buy other blogs

It seems ridiculous, but for $100 you can buy other people’s blogs. Sometimes bloggers give up on their quests, while sometimes they just don’t have time to maintain everything. You can buy blogs for content, the domain, Page Rank, linkbacks, and a number of other aspects. You could buy a blog with a posting history and start writing paid reviews on it straight away, or you could use the foundations of a blog to build it into something new. As you trundle around the blogosphere, make a note of blogs that have apparently died. If one catches your interest, make an offer. Blogs for sale crop up on webmaster forums a lot too.

Would any of these options meet your needs? What would you say is a wise investment?

Part two of what to do with your $100 is here.

 Like this post? Subscribe to the feed
Share:   Digg it for goodness sake!  Stumble your heart out!

Tags: Blog promotion //