How many do you run?

[retired_member36]

Ive been reducing the number of sites i run so i can spend more time on the ones that interest me the most, and also so im not constantly stuck behind a computer screen .

From personal experience, and from what others have said on the forum a few quality sites are much better than loads of thin ones.

Im just wondering how many sites other people run, if its multiple sites how much time do you put into each site (do you split it evenly, or put more time into certain ones)

 

[Blossom]

At the moment, 14, plus I'm in the middle of developing one and nearly finished 1 ecommerce site which will be taken over (hopefully).

They are mostly pretty different sites and the time I allocate depends on how new they are/how many pages they have, and how much money they make. I built the first few sites I did pretty slowly, and then I took on a few too many so there are some out there in desperate need of more content, which I'm slowly getting round to.

I tried a strategy of getting guest posters in for one site and that worked pretty well - the domain had good PR so I had eight months of posts every day after advertising it.

I finished a site yesterday (which will be completely automated from now on) as an experiment to see what Google thinks of it. It's videos rather than written content, so it will be interesting to see what happens once it has a few back links.

Nothing to suggest really - I wish I could give up sleep to spend more time on them/getting everything else done!

 

[retired_member36]

Thats cool Blossom, you sound very busy

I bought a domain earlier this year with the intention of running a video site for bmx stunts etc (Was mainly for my nephew) Not got around to it yet. Did you use a script for the video site you mentioned? (i was thinking of using phpsugar or movie press = http://www.premiumpress.com/demo/?t=moviepress )

Good luck with the sites

 

[Blossom]

Thats cool Blossom, you sound very busy

Always

I bought a domain earlier this year with the intention of running a video site for bmx stunts etc (Was mainly for my nephew) Not got around to it yet. Did you use a script for the video site you mentioned? (i was thinking of using phpsugar or movie press = http://www.premiumpress.com/demo/?t=moviepress )

That sounds cool. Not used either of those but movie press looks good. I'm using a slightly modified version of a free theme, WordTube (http://www.wordpressthemesbook.com/wordtube/) with WP Robot for the automation part.

 

[boxfish]

Im just wondering how many sites other people run, if its multiple sites how much time do you put into each site (do you split it evenly, or put more time into certain ones)

Penguin was the final straw (in a good way) that made me ditch the last of my remaining crap/non-earning/no potential/developing because I happen to have an EMD sites.

I now have 3 sites.

First is my main ecommerce site. Very little done development wise on a daily-basis as it's currently doing what it needs to do and I plan to move out of this business in time so not looking to develop it further.

Second is a geo-site that I'll be launching in July. I spend around 3 hours a day at the moment researching & writing content and then take photos at the weekend. I'm hoping after launching this will give me a solid monthly income from local advertisers and allow me to move away from the 9-5 on my ecommerce site, even if it is a lesser amount of money. This will allow me to develop the site further and also site #3.

Third is a single word .com domain that I recently bought (after coming up with an idea I want to develop - see below*). This has huge potential but I'm not in the right place yet to launch it. Going to hone some of my writing/social media/user-generated content skills on site two first then look at 'launching' this. At the moment I spend about an hour a day researching and collating information for this.

I really like this forum but since I've joined it's as though I've taken my eye off the ball. I've been letting the cart lead the horse in a way, seeing domains, buying them and then wondering how to develop them, doing a half-arsed job and getting sidetracked. I'm now back to developing sites that I want to develop and the domain name takes much less priority or at least doesn't guide the development.

I'm like you in wanting to spend less time behind the PC and the two sites I'm working on are purely about things that interest me (local history, architecture, photography) and how I like to spend my spare-time. When I first quit my job I would have worked on anything if it meant I could be self-employed. Now I'm 4 years down the line I've realised that if you're not doing something you enjoy then you're still really 'going to work' and I'm out to change this.

 

[retired_member36]

That sounds cool. Not used either of those but movie press looks good. I'm using a slightly modified version of a free theme, WordTube (http://www.wordpressthemesbook.com/wordtube/) with WP Robot for the automation part.

Thanks for sharing that Blossom, its looks alright, might use that my self

Penguin was the final straw (in a good way) that made me ditch the last of my remaining crap/non-earning/no potential/developing because I happen to have an EMD sites.

Another question i was going to ask earlier was, when do you give up on a site? I mean you invest money in the domain name, hosting and more importantly your time in creating, writing and seo'ing it. With the latest update as you said its basically made things a lot harder. I personally dont think i would invest any more of my limited time or money in creating any more afilliate sites. The income doesnt justify the amount of work thats needed to create a successful one, and the thing that puts me off more than anything is you can invest a lot of time creating brilliant sites with fantastic content only for google to slap you in the face with dildo, the next time they launch an update. (Now im sure there are people out there making a fair bit of wedge from their afilliate sites and it might just be the way ive been operating, but im just speaking from my experiences.)

seeing domains, buying them and then wondering how to develop them, doing a half-arsed job and getting sidetracked

Can totally relate to this, ive been lucky in a sense ive basically got rid of everything i dont want, just got a few left if anyones interested (Listed in my signature.)

With regards to your geo site

I spend around 3 hours a day at the moment researching & writing content and then take photos at the weekend

sounds like its going to be good and offer users fantastic content.

 

[boxfish]

Another question i was going to ask earlier was, when do you give up on a site?

Some I should have given up on sooner.

In the past I have regged a domain, ordered £100 of content, stuck it up and then thought 'WTF am I doing!?' before deleting the lot, all with 2-3 days. It goes from being the best idea in the world to complete horse-shit but I don't see the point in throwing good money after bad.

The thinking I've had lately is would I go up to a potential advertiser, introduce myself, show them my site and expect them to ask to advertise on there. With some of my previous sites I've been embarrassed to even have my name on the whois let alone actively tell people I own it.

Also, working on something 'good' is about a hundred times more satisfying than working on something crap.

 

[fresh79]

Some interesting trends & input here...here is where I am at:
4 years ago I stumbled on a product niche and got lucky with a keywordkeyword.co.uk - I quickly got hold of 9 other names in that niche and found they did ok. easy £100 to £150pm with no effort.

At the time datafeeds were ok with google and i was under the false impression that I could rinse & repeat this method in any niche/domain with decent exacts. I slowly and wisely picked up names as FTR or from the bargain section here - (some great ones from the bargain section - that went on to earn great ££ )

over the years I noticed thin/datafeed sites come and go in the serps, some stay up and some drop like dead flies, so my method was to try and throw more s**t and hopefully some would stick to the wall.
Well.. fast forward 4 years & now I have a daughter so time is more precious to me and now I have 240 ish names 95% of which are developed as either datafeed adsense or amazon, 50% of them are in dire need of content & updates its crazy & I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

However I wouldnt change it because I learnt the hard way - and I enjoyed it - Also Ill add that im a web designer by day, so I never saw it as pain,slog or chore to make these sites.
After much deliberation, I plan to run 10 sites in the future, spread over multiple methods, ie dropship,stock,affiliate,directory,adsense ect.
And hows this for a fluke? - my first ever aff site is still my best site and is one of the chosen 10 !

 

[retired_member36]

Also, working on something 'good' is about a hundred times more satisfying than working on something crap.

Couldnt agree more!

 

[retired_member36]

And hows this for a fluke? - my first ever aff site is still my best site and is one of the chosen 10 !

Thats fantastic, would you say its doing better because you have "more feelings" for this site as it was your first ever one?

I have more plans, and bigger ideas for my first ever domain reg / site.

 

[boxfish]

I have 240 ish names 95% of which are developed as either datafeed adsense or amazon, 50% of them are in dire need of content & updates its crazy & I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

This sounds horrendous, just adding a single page of content to each site would take forever or cost £xxxx, let alone looking at issues, rankings, conversion rates etc.

 

[fresh79]

Thats fantastic, would you say its doing better because you have "more feelings" for this site as it was your first ever one?

Hi Lee
I have no emotional attachment to any of my sites at all, its just a fluke.
on the surface of it, the name itself has low exacts and you wouldn't think its a great name. I believe/think now that its at the later stage of the "buying cycle" and so even when the traffic is not great, its always converted high, disproportionately higher than the other 9 in that niche.

At the time, I had no idea what a buying cycle was, and I put together 2 keywords that I thought would be ok
Ill PM you the url if u want a nosey at it

 

[fresh79]

This sounds horrendous, just adding a single page of content to each site would take forever or cost £xxxx, let alone looking at issues, rankings, conversion rates etc.

yep its horrendous, sometimes its therapeutic as in, im always building for the future and each step is a step forward - but make no mistake - its horrendous

In the future I would like to be able to track 20 to 50 keywords on each site and go deeper into other things too, right now that's just no feasible. LOL oh well
like I said, I enjoyed the ride.

 

[murph]

I have to say, as much as I agree about too many sites not enough time... This G update has led me to the conclusion you really can't have all your eggs in one basket - just too risky! Even if you believe you're doing everything as you should, you never know when G will strike out your main sites!!

 

[cc976a]

yep its horrendous, sometimes its therapeutic as in, im always building for the future and each step is a step forward - but make no mistake - its horrendous

In the future I would like to be able to track 20 to 50 keywords on each site and go deeper into other things too, right now that's just no feasible. LOL oh well
like I said, I enjoyed the ride.

Without giving too much away, do you find that 20% of your sites generate 80% of your revenue? Are they mostly product / service selling or information sites earning from affiliates and adsense?

I think I was always dubious about building a number of new sites over the past couple of years because continuously going out trying to beg and persuade people to link to me, or sign up to directories became boring and counter-productive - rankings became more difficult because of commonplace grey hat techniques (linkbuilding, content building and optimising for search engines - rather than visitors)

Not planning on going silly but now Google Penguin is now helping sites rank on merit rather than stupid and nonsense directories / link pages / tons of blogrolls etc... it's more appealing to start creating again.

I am about to launch a new site (will be quite big) and will take time to keep it updated - after which have a few more projects would like to get underway.

I was a web designer a few years back (almost 8 years now) but have been out of the loop for a few years now. Everything seems to have changed - think it's for the better but sometimes feel that I'm back to square one again in terms of learning.

 

[retired_member36]

Not planning on going silly but now Google Penguin is now helping sites rank on merit rather than stupid and nonsense directories / link pages / tons of blogrolls etc... it's more appealing to start creating again

I know what you mean, i bought a domain of this very forum a few weeks back and put some content on that i planned on using on a very old site but never got around to it. Its now sitting on page two of google, No backlinks nothing. But i only bought the domain because i already had content in place.

And i agree with

I have to say, as much as I agree about too many sites not enough time... This G update has led me to the conclusion you really can't have all your eggs in one basket - just too risky! Even if you believe you're doing everything as you should, you never know when G will strike out your main sites!!

But if your creating a site that your truly passionate about, you would probably be getting visitors from a variety of sources because your willing to put the extra effort in, whether thats from facebook, forums or even blogs. (Ill use one of my main sites as an example here, i get a decent amount of visitors from its facebook page, although i dont mind the visitors google send me LOL)

P.s appologies for spelling mistakes and comments that are no longer making sense, im having a drink

 

[Blossom]

I have to say, as much as I agree about too many sites not enough time... This G update has led me to the conclusion you really can't have all your eggs in one basket - just too risky! Even if you believe you're doing everything as you should, you never know when G will strike out your main sites!!

If your site has enough authority, nothing in the world will be able to damage it except manual penalisation (as with JC Penney and that car brand that got hit, was it BMW? I can't remember now). But you need at least 250,000 to half a million halfway decent links for that to become a reality. Again it's a push to fewer, more authoritative sites that aren't built just for advertising.

 

[accelerator]

I have discovered the hard way that it's pretty difficult to keep quite a few sites up to date. When I think of new niches, I now tend to add a page to Low Prices, rather than start a new site.

Rgds

 

[retired_member36]

Thats quite a list Mate, do you get decent amount of monthly visits on each of them?

 

[boxfish]

I have to say, as much as I agree about too many sites not enough time... This G update has led me to the conclusion you really can't have all your eggs in one basket - just too risky! Even if you believe you're doing everything as you should, you never know when G will strike out your main sites!!

But if your creating a site that your truly passionate about, you would probably be getting visitors from a variety of sources because your willing to put the extra effort in, whether thats from facebook, forums or even blogs.

I think that's the key.

If doesn't matter if you have 1, 10 or 100 sites, if they're all relying on the same one traffic source and that stops sending you traffic then you're screwed.

It's not in Google's business interests to send traffic to organic serps so basing your long-term business plan solely on receiving that traffic can only go one way (imo).

This isn't an 'SEO is dead' post, I'm talking about any single traffic source really.