Websites are Like Cars & Real Estate on Steroids

Building A Website is like Buying A Car:

A website could cost close to nothing or cost millions of dollars in development costs. A high quality developer can cost one hundred thousand dollars or more a year to employee. With 10 quality in house developers in one year you could have spent more than 1 million dollars on your website in in house development costs.
On the other side of the equation you could install WordPress and build a website for free plus a little bit of money for hosting and a domain.  You could also buy a used car for practically nothing. Unless you are web savvy or auto repair inclined, in both scenarios you may run into major troubles trying to keep your website or car running.

(4 Million Dollar Lamborghini Veneno)
So why spend 4 million on a Lamborghini Veneno or millions on a website? Well a website that cost 50k to build or even 4 million could one day be worth 10 times or even 100s of times more then the original cost to build.  Cars on the other hand are more of a status symbol and do not offer the same long term upside value as a website.
This is why building a website is like buying car but maintaining a website is like real estate. The upfront cost of building a website ranges drastically based on quality and features like horsepower and specs of a car drastically change a cars price. However a car will decrease in value, but a website, if well maintained, can gain tremendously in value, just like real estate.

Maintaining A Website is like Real Estate:

Once you spend money on a website you have to make sure you put even more time and money into improving it. This is very similar to real estate. If you buy an awesome space in downtown New York, but don’t bother to improve your new digs, you could lose out on a once in a lifetime investment. A great website with no content updates or marketing initiatives will also be a waste of money and potential.

(Copper Town Beach Home Sold For 120 Million)
Investing heavily into your website could offer incredible ROI just like investing heavily in your office space or home could offer the same long term value. The difference is that a home may be a more stable and consistent investment, whereas a website could offer far greater ROI but also more risk.
So what should you invest your money in, a website, car or real estate?

ROI:

1) Website
2) Real Estate
3) Car
Facebook, Google and other major websites are worth billions of dollars. Something no other investment can offer in terms of ROI. Even a large commercial real estate building may only be worth in the low billions at best.
Most expensive home: Copper Beach Farm, 120 million
Most expensive Car: Lamborgini Veneno, 4 million
Most expensive website: Google, 364.85 billion (market cap) or Facebook 150 billion (market cap), unless you consider Google more than a website now that it has physical products.

Risk:

1) Website
2) Real Estate
3) Car
Your website and online business could go belly up if you fail to properly maintain and drive traffic to it. On the other hand your real estate investment or car will most likely be worth something unless you total your car. The real estate market could also go belly up like it did in 2008 but a car generally holds a more stable value based on total miles driven as long as it is not in a major accident.

Long Term Value:

1) Real Estate
2) Website
3) Car

Overall Winner: Website

If you are looking to invest in something that can truly generate strong ROI a website is a great investment. You can start a website at a low cost with a WordPress theme and cheap hosting and build it up to something worth much more then that with a lot of hard work and sweat.
Real estate is a little more difficult to generate that kind of ROI but is generally a more safe investment, especially for the non tech-savvy. A car is not as much a long-term investment but a necessity to get to work for many people, and will most likely lose value over time.
If you want to mix up your investment strategy, try investing in some popular web based companies or take the plunge to start one yourself.  At the very least you will have learned some invaluable lessons about the web.