I was curiously running some numbers this morning and I’ve decided to share the results.

If you don’t know already, I’ve sold my web application development business and I’m now in investment mode.

My next simple plan is to start acquiring sites to build a different – diverse portfolio of investments and new revenue streams. My thought was to throw $10k at 4 sites to simply start making $4k a month – a livable income, but I have a livable income already and some, so instead I might acquire smaller sites and more of them to achieve the same effect, $4k per month revenue.

However, I’m going to do it in such a way that almost anyone who has a fulltime income can do – if they can find some disposable income every month to set aside to invest that is.

Why? Well finding sites that are in the $10k range isn’t easy, there’s not as many around as there are $1k sites, so it’s slow going and slim pickings. Other reason is that I’d like to acquire a wider range of sites and see if we can’t network a few together, do some link building campaigns and build the traffic and revenue on them. If we can we might sell (flip) a few of them along the way down the track to speed up some revenue growth.

Ok, so here it is - the plan from $0 a month to $4k a month in 14 months.

What you will need: An endless stream of money, some internet skills and a server.

When I say an endless stream of money, you need to at least be able to set aside $250 a week - $1k a month, that’s like $35 a day, every day.

If you can’t do that, then you’re going to take a whole bunch longer to get there, also, a starting bank of $5k – which isn’t all that much cash, borrow it, steal it, sell something to get it, I don’t care… ok well don’t steal it, but just get it.

So the idea is simple, take your $5k, spend the whole $5k on a site that’s making $500 a month – shouldn’t be too hard, most sites sell for 10x profit. Or buy 2 sites at $2,500 each, either way, spend your $5k to make $500 a month.

Next month, take your $1k you’ve saved, and acquire another site making around the $100 a month mark.

The next month, do the same again, take your $1k and buy a site making $100, BUT, you should have in the bank $1100 from the last 2 months of revenue from your existing investments.

Take that cash and buy another site, so on your 3^rd month you’re spending $2k on sites, not the monthly $1k.

Next month, same again, buy a site with your $1k. By this month you should be making $900 a month from your investments, and the end of this month you should have had $800 from last month, so next month you will have $1,700 in the bank to spend.

So next month pony up some more dough and drop your $1k + your investment revenue, with some luck you should have some growth by now in the sites if you’re working on them (which you should be), so this month – month 5, drop $3k on new sites.

This will leave you now making $1,200 a month in revenue. I think you get the picture now.

So in a little over a year, you should be sitting on $4k a month. With some luck, if you are working on the sites during the time you should be able to build more revenue by increasing the traffic, try and acquire sites that complement each other so your overall traffic can grow.

By the end of all this you might have over 15 sites easy, but, along the way there’s always the option to sell some of them or consolidate them down to less, just as long as the revenue isn’t effected.

A good strategy might be to pick 2-3 niches, pick up a forum for each that has users and traffic already, and work on picking up sites that would be relevant to those forums so you can leverage the sites to drive more traffic to the forums – thus building more members and more returning visitors, and in turn hopefully more revenue along the way.

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every ebook site for sale reads something like this

‘hot ebook – over $1k in sales in a week, looking for quick sale’

This should throw up all kinds of red flags… one, because 90% of the time all the sales are from ebay, so unless you’re an avid ebay trader (I’m not) your going to be shit out of luck there, also, most ebooks have a short life and limited market, they only make those initial sales then die off, especially on ebay where you will be pushing the same book to the same people after you buy the site.

You’ll need to expand the market the book more in other areas to keep the sales up.

Regardless, anyone looking to sell something that’s got 0 track record of sales, wants a very quick sale (a few days), oh and let’s not forget to mention they still want 10x revenue for it – so a $1k first month ebook they will try to sell for $10k…

I’m not writing off all ebooks here, but there’s heaps of them around, only a handful are good, but quick sales for large amounts of cash and no track record is just a dangerous investment if you ask me. If it’s made $1k in its first week or month, why not keep it for 2-3 months, grow it more and then sell for $30k… buyer beware.