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ROI Of Online Vs Offline Investments
By Aaron Wall
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-07-13
I am sure I have made similar posts before, but I live in an 8 unit townhome, and just down the street they are hauling away part of a mountain to make room for another one of these.
Each of the 8 units has a rent of $2100 a month, which comes to a total of $16,800 a month.
Their costs include digging up the mountain, hauling away the dirt, permits and licensing fees, property taxes, cleaning, land, raw building materials, construction, interest on a loan, etc. By the time they are done I am sure they will have spent at least $5,000,000 to create a small revenue stream.
A website I started a year ago took about $50,000 to develop, and already makes more than that building will. The virtual real estate investment required no loans, and the ROI is over 100x greater. If I build a strong enough brand my income stream will grow much faster than inflation and be nearly as stable as the real estate, while owning a more liquid asset with lower fixed costs. If you are aggressive enough, you can scale an affiliate site to a billion dollars.
The best investments you can make are in your own education and projects. As time passes the web will be more like the offline world and that 100x greater ROI will start heading closer and closer to 1. The only ways to prevent that from happening are to
* keep testing and learning
* heavily reinvesting in growth and brand building
* be willing to fail and move on to better markets
* use technology to automate
* build a following and create social relationships with like-minded people
* leverage your current assets to optimize and promote future business
I hope they have fun tearing down the mountain. I am off to get a few more links. ;)
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About the Author:
Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, a dynamic website offering marketing tips and coverage of the search space, free SEO videos, and free SEO tools. He is a regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and publishes dozens of independent websites.
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