Are there any successful people here? I have a business question for you...
 

When you started out did you make most of your money with lots of little sites, or from 1 big site?

Im dabbling in mainstream now and its so boring making little shit sites about how to learn photoshop, how to make your own beer, how to decorate your house, etc.

Im wondering if I should just do 1 BIG site on a BIG topic that has a wide market instead of fucking around with these little shit topics.
The competition is way more though. Maybe ill do better staying in a bunch of small areas.
thoughts?

I've always been a fan of doing large projects with higher potential, however it's a double edged sword with websites, because if your one big site doesn't rank well or gets penalized or whatever you can be pretty screwed.

Also if you're doing one big site you have to be more passionate about the topic, because it will show if you don't. You don't just bang out a big site like you do the little crappy ones.

I started out doing one main (celebrity niche) site. Same for when I went into the content/productions/ff pay sites full time. Once it became successful, I moved on to the next site, and so on.

As the cliche goes,... you can do one thing really well. Being the expert of your profession. Or you can do 100 things half assed. I leave the choice to you.

Good luck.

i've seen success from one site but def. will not stick to one. My personal agenda is many, many niches all tied together into a mother site. Hopefully soon I'll be able to post them...

I would think that if you can create 10 or so money makers your well on your way...

I'm with you dude, started with one site and trickled to more. Don't over work yourself in the beginning and burn yourself out.

I wouldn't say my ventures so far have been succesful money wise. but I always re-invest into a new site with something different every time possible.

always build.

pushing one big site could pay off with good SEO work but I think to be diverse is the best soloution.

How's 1girl1camera working out for you? I put my self shot on the backburner but will return to it in the near future.

IMO: Nothing wrong with starting with a number of sites as stumbling upon a niche or 2 is always nice. It's sure nice if you can find one of those... "Who would have thought there was this kind of business out there?"

Personally, I think it's best if you can promote something that you're really passionate about, and put everything that you have into it. But if you don't have one of those tugging at you, either think about what that might be, or test a few and then dive into the one or 2 that show some hope.

It is easy to get passionate about something that shows the hope of success. However you measure that.

IMO.

For me it was way easier to get 100 uniques a day to a small site times 10 small sites than it ever was to get 10,000 uniques a day to 1 large site. Even with the multiples of 1,000 uniques per day to each small site compared to 100,000 uniques to a large one.
Filtered properly and being able to dynamically swap out links on the hundreds of small sites and you are way better off than the one big site.
Not to mention if the google gods get mad at my site then the damage varies greatly again on the number of sites you have. If your large site dropped a few pages in the SERPS you would freak and get hit hard. However if even 20% of your small sites get nailed you will hardly feel the hit.

Think for it to really work though is that you must put in some time daily building new sites, doing link management, etc. All the while keeping the big picture in focus and avoid freaking over the small blips. Keep building and thinking ahead, all the while being able to swap any link anywhere in your network of sites at any moment.

I did make 1 dating site that is my passion and I totally love it, but it's 1 year old and makes about $50/day profit so I'm estimating it will take 2-3 more years before I start making good money from it.

So I'm doing these new sites as a way to try and make some good money to keep me going until my Plan-A dating site takes off.
Plus I just want some mainstream stuff.
I really want to start getting into the $5-10k month area, I just don't know if a bunch of little sites about topics I dont care about are going to get me there, or if I should think bigger.

Wow some great advice in this thread. :thumbsup

I wish I could have read this a year ago, I tried to make too many sites at one time and realized to be successful I would need a staff to help me. Just to manage the domains alone takes time, and if your doing this as a second job...you need to be building pages in my opinion.

I also think one monster website with a ton of traffic is best, of course you would need great content...this is the number one thing...content. You can have a zillion domains with one page...but once the surfer realizes nothing is there...he will not be visiting again.

At least the white labels keep the visitor interested...so this works until you decide to develope the domain. Also blog feeds...since you don't need to spend time updating.

If you are up to $50 a day with your dating site I think you are on a good exponential path. Instead of focusing your energy/resources on new projects, I think now is the time to push that project even harder since it is showing results, albeit slowly.

Interesting theory.

However, a noob, or someone inexperienced does not have the skills coming in to make one site bust out of the gates, and the odds of them stumbling into a goldmine is next to nil IMHO.

I think someone starting out needs to focus on one, maybe two, sites. Learn all the skills lthat it takes to build traffic, SERPS, link bait, updates, fan base, etc. before they going branching into 10 or 100 sites throwing shit at the wall hoping to stumble into gold.

Furthermore, not having success on one site is frustrating enough over months. Multiple that by 10, or 100 and you see why so many quit before getting out of the starting blocks. Of course, I am not staying one mega site forever. I am saying start with one, learn some skills, and then multiply.

:2 cents:

some good answers

Again though good luck on getting that one big monster site. Though odds are if you can generate a big monster site that is a success, odds are you had the willpower and smarts to make it either way in this business. I would just worry about what if something happens to that site.

With a zillion sites with one page, if you filter them properly the surfer would not even know their is nothing there because they would be getting what they wanted and it would be something. Plus with tons of small sites you are not dependant on repeat visitors, hopefully many will still bookmark your larger hub style site that you filtered them to though.

That is so interesting I didnt even think of that. how it would be easier to get small traffic to a bunch of smaller websites than to get big traffic and maintain it to a large site with high competition.

Logically youre right, but I still have that nagging voice in my head saying that I could have a bigger payday coming if I keep trying the mainstream rather than settle on a little adult site if I keep trying at it.

I'm gonna go work on our 2,429th site review now.

Maybe that will motivate you.. Or have the opposite effect ;)

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:thumbsup

2 Sites here. 2 Sites is plenty when you are just starting out (and still is when you grow). Stick with one and make it as good as you possibly can. If you spread yourself too thin they may all fail.

I agree with you here.

However, I do promote another product... Where less than 1,000 SE visitors a day drive about $1M in annual revenue for this client. It was a real... "Who would have thought?"

Could it have anything to do with the fact that you are talking about 10 x's the traffic? That is going to be the same if 10 sites or one.

Diversity is key. Sounds like you have it clocked buddy clams.
:thumbsup

Depends if you know what you are doing.

If you do, then a handful of really good sites is all you need.

If you don't know anything yet, you are better off starting multiple sites so you can see what works and what doesn't in a much shorter period of time than if you did them one at a time.

If you are new and don't have much experience, planning to build one big mega site that will get super popular is pretty silly and a bad case of wishful thinking.

But that's just me.

Forgot a zero actually. It would be same traffic numbers, just either 1 site or 100, 1000 sites etc.

That nagging voice is still going to be there when you get up to $50 a day from mainstream. ;-)

You can't let the "what ifs" control you. Create a plan for the next six months outlining what you are going to do for your dating site. Set a concrete, but attainable, goal. If you don't reach that goal, move on. But don't move on until you have given it that one good chance at succeeding.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

As long as you keep moving forward, tweaking, learning, and applying your experience from your successes and short comings you will never fail. Success, like life, is a journey. Not a destination.

:2 cents:

I have always been a fan of creating a large network of small sites over a small network of big sites. The main reason behind this is it is much easier to optimize a bunch of small sites around specific keywords and have them all rank well rather than trying to get one big site to rank for many terms. :2 cents:

Oh I market it all the time. I chip away at my competitors member by member, but itll take a while. Also the thing is I just dont want the only successful thing in my life to be a cruisey sleazy gay pickup site. I love the site and its fun for me, but I want to do something serious. just feel like I have potential to do and make more.

How much competition does your large area have? Most "Large" porn sites got big when there was very little competition and just kept with it. It's another market now day's.

Not disagreeing with you, it just seems that you need a lot of time and effort to have multiple websites...I tried to link up 2,000 websites in six months not 100. By the time I linked them up it was time to renew most of the domains. So I decided to stick to only a couple of niches japanese/asian and cams, and perhaps just have a few multi niche sites. I am also going to trim my domains to around 500. It seemed I was working my day job to pay for my domain habit.

I never felt the need to use 500 let alone 2000 domains. I have no issues with having numerous small sites on one domain. Just watch your linking, even though your not trying to pass any google juice etc. Nor are you really trying to hit the number 1 slot for your keyword. Especially when almost anyone that tries could put up a page on some domain and get it up to 50 or 100 engine uniques per day to that page. I think the way I do this goes against most peoples plans of trying to be in the first page of listings. I am happy for page 2-10 typically. As long as it keeps sending the small amount of keyword searched engine traffic.

You may also see that I do not pay a whole lot of attention to full on SEO. Just unique content on unique pages done in engine friendly formats. I am sure it could get way more advanced, separate IP blocks, domains, hosting accounts, etc.

Very much focusing on one concept and one site for a ling time, diversifying a little bit during the 2009, the result will be a couple separate sites and a new sponsor program.

So far just upselling the first new functional paysite from the main site brings in about 5 pct. more in terms of revenue, and without much maintinance, so it might be definitely worthy not to keep all your eggs in one basket

BUT that all once you have ENOUGH time and resources to dedicate to it, the other thing is that if you want to start with a network already - you'll have to invest heavily into promotion, it doesn't make sense to work and update 10 sites if you don't have traffic there, not worth it.

Very true, i agree with this.

Depends on your resources. If you have a lot of money to invest, one big site is great. If you don't, you are almost forced to develop many small sites.

It's better to do 1 (to max. 3) projects/sites at the same time the best you can yourself.

If you do 37 different things at the same time, it might all end up being a waste of time unless you have partnerships or really good people working to do all those things for you.

It is def easier to push a product or niche that you are also interested in. Makes writing ad blocks and text a lot easier as well.