One or Multiple Websites ?

Currently I'm working on a website that generates a little income (high XX$/month) but as you can guess it's not enough to earn a living from it.
The question is, in order to make a living from my web activity, do I have to focus on my current website and try to generate more income or should I try to create more websites to multiply the sources of income ?

This question is driving me crazy so thanks a lot for your answers.

 

I would focus on one big site. It gets overwhelming when you have many sites. But once you have a nice site and it automated you can expand and make a bigger earning.

 

Thanks gkuang2 your reply is valuable for me but can others confirm from their experiences ?

 

depend on your niche, if it's rich keyword, you could earn more from it then 1 is good

 

Yeah, first focus on one site and after a while when you feel like you have more free time do another, and another and so on. It all depends on how much TIME you have.

When working with your first site it can be pretty tough but eventually you'll live into it so much that managing it becomes fairly easy and you will get more free time after this for sure.

 

I'm in a good niche so I'll stick with it.
Thanks all, I'll sleep much better now that I know where I'm going

 

That's good. I agree. While working on the first site, it is more tough.

 

A few years ago, I would have said multiple sites is the way to go. We had a strategy of having core sites and then satellite sites the were optimized for specific keywords.

With the changes in the search engine algorithm, we now focus on the core sites and ensure that they have quality information across many search terms.

 

I had the same confusion in the very begining of my online business. I will try to explain how it works in detail. I hope it can help you.

Business model #1- Having many low priced sites:

Theoratically, you can have unlimited sites as long as each site pays its domain renewal costs, $10 per year. Disregard hosting costs since you can have hundreds of sites in a single hosting account. Even if a site doesn't make a cent for couple of years, you can still keep it. $10 per year is not even worth to think about. So you don't have to sell any site in your portfolio in the theory and this will not be your end. Even if you will have to pay thousands per year for, let say, 200 domains, 5-10 money maker sites in your whole portfolio can pay all the costs. This quite possible though it sounds like buying 200 lottery tickets and expecting 5-10 winner tickets. Since your portfolio pays itself, you can grow your portfolio over the time or just keep it. All of these seems like almost 100% okay in the theory.
In this, #1 point of view, you also don't put all your eggs into the same basket. Nobody knows about the next animal or monster of big G..gle


Business model #2- Having less number of high priced sites:

3-10 sites are ideal if you do this business alone for full time. Have no more than 30 wordpress blogs at a time if you don't have someone works for you. Because each of those blogs must be updated periocially even if you don't add new content or approve the comments or need to play with ad placements.

Most people have too many sites because they don't have enough money, courage or experience to buy a single high priced site. Most people buy cheap sites over the time whenever they have some small funds like $100 or they feel ready to take the risks of their small funds. This is not a sustainable business model due to the lack of time. I stay away from having too many sites as much as possible.

Model #2 has never been possible for me. Because I have never own enough capital to buy a single really valuable site. But this is truly the best business model which I strongly recommended to all of my past partners with capital.

 

It would be better to focus on one good site and one good market niche idea to start. Then, after some weeks or months of being dedicated to that, then you move on to a new niche. This helps you gradually build up quite a few potential streams of income.

 

Thanks all for your opinion on the subject.
I'm carefully reading each reply.

 

I have 20+ sites and it takes me 10+ hours per day to manage them all. Some are blogs which need updating regularly, some are membership sites which require support and all need marketing and advertising..... it's way too much to handle. Although the money is good, i have not much free time. In fact i am trying to sell some sites so that i can concentrate on just 1 or 2 main ones. I would definitely recommend you do the same. Having multiple sites can be a big headache.... Just concentrate on 1 and put all your energy into it to make it work.

 

I would say in today's world you should rather concentrate on 1 as the competition is much bigger. It is hard to be successful in many areas. Still you might want to try new things just in case it will go big by a coincidence but don't devote too much time on that - 1 good is better than 5 average .

 

I think the thing can vary. Sometimes ideas just simply don't work and you need to move on. With that said, if you're not putting in an effort on ever site you own, you can't expect much out of them.

 

I have 3 sites that I am changing to 1. I am making the 2 sites that will merge into landing pages full of keyword content. They will then link to the main site to take customers to the shopping cart. My hope is that it will count as link backs and I can focus those 2 landing sites into specific keyword areas to get people to my main site.

 

Focus on one site to figure out what works for you. Once you have a formula and have a hit a plateau, start expanding horizontally (new sites).

 

It also really depends on what exactly you're current site is and what other sites you would be buying/creating. I am at the same dilemma but I decided that buying more sites would be a better use of my time because trying to grow the sites I already have take a very long time. You've just got to find what will give you the most marginal benefit.

 

Multiple is better yes but for a start, try to focus on only one first. One at a time and see if it succeed then go for more

 

Its about planning and thinking. Makeit Easy has explain it very good. I like the first part as I start good 15 years ago with a 10 sites. Later if the domain prices drops down I bought more and more. Some are self-runners with automated scripts. I use them for advertising my own services and sell adspace (cheap) to others. The prices for the domain (and more) always comes back. If you have 1000 websites (ok, I know its a extreme) and every website makes just 1$ a month...how much you have? Easy to count! And some makes much more.

 

This is from my personal experience , I am currently working on three webistes at a time and It is getting very hard to manage them all,


Though If you have money to invest I would say go for it, but If you just have time for one site and No money then leave it for that one site.

 

if you have a little bit, you can do some freebies sites, that works always. Give away some free articles, ebooks, games. Cost nearly nothing and works with scripts automatic.

But if you work on Blogs for example, thats really hard work, I know that!