For that sort of budget you'll probably find a site making $35-50 a month or so. If you have the skills you might be better off making a site yourself. Don't forget that you need to invest a lot more into that $500 site. You'll need content and links to increase that monthly earnings.
Agree with 80% of your statement Holzr, but if the first sentence is still 100% accurate I'd love to find that marketplace. Perhaps I am missing EmpireFlippa or Flippa latest sales or not seeing the marketplace here enough..that's surely interesting.
Now OP, here's what I'd also be looking into before spending $100+ in any of the available sites here or elsewhere buddie..let's just say a bit of experience here, just a bit..
USD..
- Quality host (FastComet/A2Hosting, etc) = $6-$15 per month
- Direct Response Design (think bounce rate/etc) = $60-$200, varies drastically
- Quality content (the ones you and I would read perhaps) = $7-$15 per 500 words, varies drastically (funny enough, incomeschool guys recently recommended at least 30,000 words in a youtube video, but one of my favorite is Doug Cunnington for Amazon/niche sites as I can relate more to his numbers in comparison with what's required by experience)
- Ideal plugins (thinking Google and diminishing time w/ WP-Rocket, WP-Spam Shield, WP Forms, etc) = $100+ , varies anually + according to investment
- Long tail keywords ranking @ 15-30 at Google after 8 or so months because of competitive niche? Without surprise, pick your
good poison , Sarkar and plenty of us charge modest fees, varies drastically, especially outside of BHW for top 10 @ Google . And from Sarkar, in advance, you may need a 2-4 of his packages for top Yahoo+Bing rankings
depending the keywords/keyphrases and/or long tails
My recommendations is to immerse yourself here at BHW along with youtube videos from the folks I mentioned for at least 30 days.. as it's free and often very accurate value in advice. For sure your budget and money will thank you for it by experience OP. GL
