Finance

Invest 1 Million Dollars for a Guaranteed Income: Where & How?

Invest 1 Million Dollars

Have you got a million dollars? First and foremost, congratulations for that. You deserve to celebrate this incredible accomplishment and very few people can claim to have ever had one million dollars in life. So you got your hands on a million dollars. You should celebrate this monumental accomplishment that very few can boast. Sincere congratulations. So when is the best time to invest it? Probably as soon as possible as you’ll begin experiencing the power of compounding. If you are wondering how to invest one million dollars for a guaranteed income, this post has got you covered. Before you start, you will need to plan very well as investing such a large sum of money requires a lot of discipline and commitment. As tough as it is to earn a million dollars, it is a lot easier to lose them all away. Should you invest in the tech IPO that just can’t lose? Or the cryptocurrency that doubled while you were in the restroom? Should you invest in a blogging website to earn continuous income in the future? Unless you have the suicidal desire to turn your million dollars to just a few hundred, stay away from plans and people that offer returns that are too-good-to-be-true. Respect your money and it should return the favour.

How to invest one million dollars for a guaranteed income

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Investing a million

Even before you decide exactly how to invest this considerable pile of dough, you’ll want to ask yourself five important questions.

What are your goals?

What do you intend to do with this sizable chunk of money?Do you want to just keep this money away and use it once you are retired? Or is it a miraculous inheritance that your ultra rich aunt left for you and you are planning to use it as down payment for a lavish condo that you are going to buy. Or you want to keep that money so you could send your kids to an expensive private school and an expensive private university upon graduating high school?A million is enough so that your plans might include some or all of the above, but your responses to the below will directly dictate your strategy.

What’s your time horizon?

What this essentially means is how long do you plan to keep your money invested? It’s an oversimplification, but in most cases, the shorter your horizon, the less aggressive you should be investing your money. With a million dollars, it’s hard to imagine you’d need it all right away, but if you need to have some of it available in a month, a year, or even three years, you’ll probably want to avoid investing that portion heavily in equities, aka stocks, since they can fluctuate considerably in value — and may not be all there when you need it.

What are your circumstances?

These are all the nosy questions. How old are you? How’s the old ticker holding up? How much money do you make a year? If you’re married, what are the chances you’ll still be five years from now? And do you imagine that you’ll be inheriting any money anytime soon—or do you have a rich relative just dying to help you out if you found yourself in a bind during a down market? Your circumstances will dictate how aggressive you can afford to be in your investment strategy.

What’s your risk tolerance?

After answering all of the above, you should have a pretty good idea of your risk tolerance, a term that just means how much of your investment you can afford to lose. If having a couple hundred thousand dollars dematerialize overnight wouldn’t really have any demonstrable effect on your life, you’ve got a very high-risk tolerance. If being down ten percent will mean that your kids will have to eat cardboard, your risk tolerance is super low. If the latter is the case, you’ll absolutely want to keep a portion of your million safe and liquid, in a cash equivalent account that earns a tidy bit of interest, like saving investment accounts.

How do you react to adversity?

Emotions play a big role in investing. The absolute last thing you want to do is be up all night worrying about your money in times of market turbulence. If you’re by temperament nervous about money and you think you might be tempted to cut your losses and convert your investments to cash if the market dips, you are not suited to start trading stocks by yourself. Entering and exiting investments according to perceived market conditions is called market timing, and it’s been shown to consistently be a losing strategy. Sometimes, it can be a good idea to invest your money with the help of professionals. Availing sound financial advice doesn’t always have to be an expensive affair. Sometimes, good advice can come for free as well (take this post for example). One great way to assess these and other factors is to take a quick risk survey offered by many automated investing services.

While common recommendations for investing one million dollars include options like stocks, bonds, real estate etc. In this article, we are going to focus on investing your money on blogs to generate a guaranteed source of income. If you went “blogs?” after reading that line, don’t worry, after reading this blog, your curiosity will be satisfied and you would definitely want to invest one million dollars in blogs for a guaranteed income.

Investing in blogs and earning money through them is an up and coming method of investing significant chunks of money. A recent, growing trend in the field of investment is investing in blogs. The growing popularity of blogging sites have made more and more investors look towards web properties to put their money in. As every form of content that we consume, is being converted to its digital version, sites which host blogs (they can be niche blogs or websites which host blogs in a wide variety of categories. With the majority of the world turning to the web for just about everything, content consumption, shopping, registering for government ID etc. the sheer number of people on the world wide web is massive. Such numbers also equate to a large number of customers. As a result of that, online advertisement in its numerous avatars is a very lucrative field. Blogs which get a large number of visitors every day can charge a lot of money for displaying ads. They can also generate a lot of income through affiliate marketing i.e. earning commissions after helping a customer buy a product online. If you have a million dollars to invest, investing in blogs is  bound to be successful. In general, blogs are considered to be a source of passive income. However, that’s not necessarily the case, especially at the beginning. However, if you invest in a blog that already earns consistently, you can just outsource the maintenance and upkeep and just enjoy the consistent influx of income. 

A blog/website can be treated as an online version of real estate. But unlike real estate, you don’t need a large amount of money to invest. A blog can start giving great returns on a small scale investment as well, and it’s the right medium to invest in, especially considering the times we live in.

Here’s why blogging is good for businesses:

  • Small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads.
  • One of the top two reasons why people follow brands on social media is interesting content.
  • As per a survey done in the USA, over 80% of consumers trust the advice and information shared on blogs.
  • Companies that use blogs have 97% more inbound links.
  • B2B marketers generate 67% more leads using blogs.
  • Websites with blogs have a staggering 434% increase in indexed pages.
  • Websites with blogs have 97% more indexed links.
  • 61% of American consumers have made at least one purchase based on a blog post.
  • 31% of digital marketers believe that blogs are the most important type of content marketing.
  • 82% of users enjoy reading relevant content from brands.
  • 70% of consumers learn about a company through articles rather than ads.

No matter the kind of blog it is, it is possible to generate a lot of money through it. The world’s most popular blogging website, The Huffington Post, generates almost $2.5 million per month. However, before you invest your million dollars (or part of it) in a blog, you must remember that unless it’s a pre-established, high earning blog, your investments might take some time in providing returns. In general, it’s not a get rich quick ordeal. But you have a million dollars, you are already rich. So you need to focus on increasing the wealth that you already have. 

So before you start investing your money on blogs, find out the different ways in which blogs generate money:

Monetizing the blog with CPC/CPM Ads

One of the simplest and most commonly used ways in which blogs make money is by displaying ads. There are two basic types of  ads that blogs display:

  • CPC/PPC Ads: Cost per click or pay per click ads are usually displayed on the top of the website or along the sidebar. The blog generates money every time a user clicks on the ad.
  • CPM Ads: CPM Ads, or “cost per 1,000 impressions,” are also displayed in a similar manner to CPC ads, but they generate money based on the number of views of the ad. 

Google AdSense is a great tool for placing ads but there are other useful and at times, cheaper alternatives as well.

Selling Private Ads

In case a blog has a lot of traffic, advertisers might want to directly contact the blog and place their ads on it. Blogs can contact advertisers as well and ask them to place private ads. This process eliminates the role of a middle man like Google adSense and makes it easier for the owners of the blogs to decide their own advertising rates. There is no commission to be paid to the middle man as well. Private ads can be displayed in the form of buttons, banners or links. Another way to sell private ads is in the form of a sponsored post. Here the blog can be a review of the advertiser’s products or services. Another way to deal with sponsored posts is to write on any topic and suffix that with a “Brought to You By” followed by the advertiser’s name. Blog owners can also sell sponsorship spaces in their email marketing.

Including Affiliate Links with Your Content

A great way to earn money through blogs is with affiliate marketing.  Here’s a simple explanation of how affiliate marketing works:

  1. Advertisers who are looking to sell a product or service can list it on a blog and agree to pay a commission to the blog owners if a sale is generated through it.
  2. The advertiser will share a unique link with the blog owner which can track the affiliate code. That way, the blog owner will get the commission in case a user uses the blog’s link to make a purchase.
  3. The affiliate link can be placed in the form of a banner ad or as a part of an article.

Amazon Associates Program is a great affiliate program for bloggers to partner with.

Selling Digital Products

In case some bloggers are not interested in advertising through their website, they can directly sell digital products on their blogs. Some of those products are:

  • eBooks
  • Online courses/workshops
  • Images, video, or music people can use in their own content
  • Apps, plugins, or themes

Selling Memberships

This is yet another way to make money through blogs. Bloggers can make money by selling memberships to certain sections of their website. An example of that would be a career options blog which can charge a certain fees for accessing a job message board. A health and fitness blog can charge its users a certain fee to gain access to their expert nutrition advice section. 

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