One site or one hundred sites?
One site or one hundred sites? That seems to be the burning question every budding webmaster has to ask themselves. It’s conventional thinking that the more sites you have, the better chance you have of making money. Jason Calacanis would call this the longtail of publishing.
I have plenty of ideas. Not too long ago I was willing to try and get every single one of those ideas utilized. One man, infinite sites. Then a couple of weeks ago I sat down and made a spreadsheet of all my sites and where my revenue was coming from. I found that over 90% of my revenue was coming from two sites. That left me with two options:
- Drop the non-performing sites. These sites obviously have the potential to be successful otherwise I wouldn’t have started them, but they also take time.
- Work more on the non-performing sites. This requires that I spend less time on the sites that are performing.
I chose the first option because it’s much easier working on two sites opposed to twelve sites. Also keep in mind that I am running two different companies during this time so everyone running their own little mini-networks cut me a little slack (*grin*).
My decision led me to sell off some of my sites and I couldn’t have been more relieved to get them off my chest. Nothing worse then knowing you have properties sitting there doing nothing.
So am I saying that you should only focus on a couple of sites? Well it depends what kind of sites you plan on running. If you are running some blogs that you intend to turn into high-traffic keepers, I think it is best to focus on a couple. If you are running a large number affiliate sites then obviously the more the better.
However, I am glad that I started so many sites because it helped me see which ones would stick and which ones wouldn’t.
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POSTED IN: Personal Thoughts
8 opinions for One site or one hundred sites?
Ryan Latham
Jun 20, 2005 at 7:35 am
He lives! I do have the same problem where I feel the need to turn every single idea I have into a reality. Now lately this is fine; because I have been encountering some pretty good ideas. However in the past I’ve had some pretty crappy ones.
More and more often I am thinking of new ways to make it possible for myself to maintain more blogs with less time. This will be seen here shortly on one coming up.
Basically I will be practicing the slashdot method on this particular project. Sure I can write when I want, but a lot of it will be letting the public write drafts only to have an admin approve it.
Sure it will still take time for myself or any other admins I allow to sit down and read entries to decide which is worthy. However reading content is a lot easier than thinking of it and writing it.
Also; failing on some things is key. When you fall off a bicycle you get back up and get back on. When you fall of a motorcycle doing 75 you get back up and ask yourself is it worth it to try this again?
Bryan
Jun 20, 2005 at 9:20 am
Ah, I was waiting for this Paul :)
I am in a similar boat as I mentioned to you via IM. I have lots of ideas in my head and I just want to implement them, BUT, after talking with you and seeing how you are selling off some of your less popular sites, it made me think whether I want to spend most of my day focused on sites that might not turn a profit or focus on a few that I think will.
Right now, I have 4 good site ideas (one already implemented via 9rules.com) and the other three I hope to maintain and make popular, mostly for adsense profit (if possible). I also try to use adbrite. I hope that can pay off even though nobody has bought space with it.
David
Jun 20, 2005 at 10:57 am
Wow…finally, new content. :)
I think one or two sites is way better as well. Yes, if you have many sites all linking to eachother with different niche content, it can work really well (breakingnewsblog.com), but you need more people to really make it work.
Good on you to sell the sites, and hopefully the extra concentration you can now put into the sites you have will make them even better.
Keith
Jun 20, 2005 at 11:41 am
I think the way you’ve gone about it is a good way, even if it does get you down to two sites. I mean, like you say, you need to see what sticks and you’ve got a better chance if you roll out a few more of your ideas.
I mean, you never know what might stick. I started to-done.com on a whim and it’s doing pretty well.
Carolyn Wood
Jun 20, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Hi,
When you (Paul and Keith) talk about a site doing pretty well, what sort of numbers are we talking about? Are these numbers that you would never divulge? Both of you have great traffic, so obviously that’s an enormous factor. So, given that you have a good readership, and that you work on your sites, how much money can a person make from say, google ads and an amazon affiliate? Without knowing these numbers, it’s sort of hard to determine whether it would be worth all the effort to follow through on some of my ideas. I understand if you don’t want to divulge this info, but perhaps you know a good source of info that does spell out potential numbers?
Thanks.
Scrivs
Jun 20, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Hey Carolyn,
A tough question to answer simply because there are just too many different topics out there. I can say that Keith’s newest site To-Done is doing exceptionally well with Adsense with not a great deal of traffic. I think he would agree that we are both suprised to see the results that the site has come up with.
I know people making $10/mo to $10,000/mo from Adsense. Last year I made $10k in one month from Amazon, but haven’t come close to that again.
There are just so many different factors that you can’t just give advice from a financial perspective as to whether or not you should enter the online arena.
garrett
Jun 20, 2005 at 3:40 pm
I’ve only got one site live at the moment but I’ve got another in the productions pipeline and am thinking about another. They’re all very different which may make maintaining them a little harder but I’m already starting to feel the strain and that’s just in designing one :(
Jun 23, 2005 at 9:53 am
I come across this dilemna all the time when working on my sites - I have lots of ideas of what I’d like to do and about 20 domains to work on but I never seem to have time to get everything done. Concentrating on one or two though means that the other ideas get left behind. It’d probably be easier if I didn’t have to spend time working elsewhere to actually earn some money though. :)
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