[spiritus]

I am at a crossroads lately as I can't decide whether I should push ahead and build another batch of websites or should I put more focus on what I already have and try to squeeze every last drop of potential out of them.

I don't wanna be the guy drilling for oil in Times Square but at the same time I don't wanna be someone who jumps around from project to project giving up just before there's a breakthrough just up ahead.

How many sites on average do you guys have ?

[mofoe]

Run thorugh a keyword tool and see how many searches there are, how many keywords you missed and how big the competitions is.

Edited by mofoe, 22 February 2012 - 11:42.

[adamcm]

I started off with an authority site, and then after reading some threads on the WF decided to give micro niches a try and built 5-6 websites quickly on low level keywords.  Fast forward to now and most of those EMD micro sites I made did not convert much and I only have 2 left in my portfolio.  One was a winner until a recent rank drop and now see very little traffic.  But my larger site keeps bringing more and more revenue each year.  I asked a similar question the other day as I enjoy building sites but am having a hard time deciding on what is micro.  For instance do I make a website on "little green widgets", or do I start off right away making a site on "widgets".

I think most peoples opinion is start with the idea of making it an authority site and then branching sub pages off of it.

[ARVolund]

spiritus, on 22 February 2012 - 10:07, said:

I am at a crossroads lately as I can't decide whether I should push ahead and build another batch of websites or should I put more focus on what I already have and try to squeeze every last drop of potential out of them.

I don't wanna be the guy drilling for oil in Times Square but at the same time I don't wanna be someone who jumps around from project to project giving up just before there's a breakthrough just up ahead.

How many sites on average do you guys have ?

My first choice would be to look at the sites I have and see if I can add more related keywords to them. Much easier than starting out with brand new sites.

[mofoe]

adamcm, on 22 February 2012 - 12:33, said:

I started off with an authority site, and then after reading some threads on the WF decided to give micro niches a try and built 5-6 websites quickly on low level keywords.  Fast forward to now and most of those EMD micro sites I made did not convert much and I only have 2 left in my portfolio.  One was a winner until a recent rank drop and now see very little traffic.  But my larger site keeps bringing more and more revenue each year.  I asked a similar question the other day as I enjoy building sites but am having a hard time deciding on what is micro.  For instance do I make a website on "little green widgets", or do I start off right away making a site on "widgets".

I think most peoples opinion is start with the idea of making it an authority site and then branching sub pages off of it.

Main site is an authority, but I am trying some stuff for fun.


The strategy now is about 50 pages to start targeting a number of terms, the big gun PR pages to index and a few internals. Links from blog nets to finish off. After that wait and see if it converts or not. All this on an old domain.

[Bryan V]

adamcm, on 22 February 2012 - 12:33, said:

I started off with an authority site, and then after reading some threads on the WF decided to give micro niches a try and built 5-6 websites quickly on low level keywords.  Fast forward to now and most of those EMD micro sites I made did not convert much and I only have 2 left in my portfolio.  One was a winner until a recent rank drop and now see very little traffic.  But my larger site keeps bringing more and more revenue each year.  I asked a similar question the other day as I enjoy building sites but am having a hard time deciding on what is micro.  For instance do I make a website on "little green widgets", or do I start off right away making a site on "widgets".

I think most peoples opinion is start with the idea of making it an authority site and then branching sub pages off of it.

There's nothing wrong with getting adamswidgets.com and ranking inner pages for "little green widgets". If those KWs turn out to be duds, you can easily make other pages for "little widgets" or "yellow widgets" and have the name look legit. Just keep expanding it if it's a big enough market.

Or on your 'failed' EMDs, just build inner pages targeting other KWs, even if the domain name is more targeted.

Edited by Bryan V, 22 February 2012 - 14:25.

[ARVolund]

Bryan V, on 22 February 2012 - 14:23, said:

There's nothing wrong with getting adamswidgets.com and ranking inner pages for "little green widgets". If those KWs turn out to be duds, you can easily make other pages for "little widgets" or "yellow widgets" and have the name look legit. Just keep expanding it if it's a big enough market.

Or on your 'failed' EMDs, just build inner pages targeting other KWs, even if the domain name is more targeted.

This is very good advice, take those domains that are not generating as much income as you would like and just keep adding more keywords until they do.  Much easier than starting a brand new site.

[KevinA]

I'm in the 25-50 range. Considered adding more but then sat back and realized I should focus on the 4-5 that are actually making me money, and scale those, because I know the market is hungry.  No point diving into another market prematurely.

On top of that I realised I should improve the quality of my 'winning' sites even further (in terms of user experience) and it would be hard to do this without narrowing down and focusing on the 4-5 that are actually feeding me at the moment!

[Fitgal]

My thought is that it is a mistake to try and rank to many keywords at once. When you focus on a few, you can generally get higher rankings and make money. If Google changes its algo, you still made money. Whereas if you focus on to many and Google changes its algo, then none of them may have reached the top and you are starting over again with nothing to show for it.

Another thing to think about is that it only takes one page to make really good money on a site. So you could have 10 sites at 50 pages each yet your focus is really only on the 10 money pages on those sites and the other pages are support pages. This is a way to diversify and yet be focused at the same time.

[trishworks4u]

a lot of what I do in IM isn't very rational and I do it b/c it's what I enjoy more than b/c it's what needs to be done.  That being said, I have hundreds of sites.  I went through an autoblog phase and have a lot of those but have a lot of other types of sites as well.  I enjoy building sites much more than promoting them but do do enough promotion on many to be pretty successful.

From a purely business model point of view (ie - rational), it would make sense to be doing a good mix of both, and you'd have to figure out the correct ratio.  Nearly all sites are cyclical and are going to "peak" at some point and you will want others in the pipeline to replace them.  At the same time, attention needs to be paid to link velocity on the sites that you already have.

[RobertoMejia]

I am like Trish. I enjoy creating websites more than I like promoting them. I keep fighting making more website and focus on promoting more keywords because It is much easier and less time consuming to rank a new page for a new keyword on an aged domain with plenty of PR flowing through it than it is to start over.

Spiritus, I would suggest to go through your websites and look for keywords worth ranking for (specially on bigger authority sites). If you find potentially profitable keywords, then focus on those. If you do enough keyword research, I am sure you can find some hidden gems. You just have to do a little brain storming.

Edited by RobertoMejia, 23 February 2012 - 12:49.

[spiritus]

trishworks4u, on 23 February 2012 - 08:18, said:

a lot of what I do in IM isn't very rational and I do it b/c it's what I enjoy more than b/c it's what needs to be done.  That being said, I have hundreds of sites.  I went through an autoblog phase and have a lot of those but have a lot of other types of sites as well.  I enjoy building sites much more than promoting them but do do enough promotion on many to be pretty successful.

From a purely business model point of view (ie - rational), it would make sense to be doing a good mix of both, and you'd have to figure out the correct ratio.  Nearly all sites are cyclical and are going to "peak" at some point and you will want others in the pipeline to replace them.  At the same time, attention needs to be paid to link velocity on the sites that you already have.

I used to love building websites but the more sites I have built the more I get tired of it.

I guess I now favour promoting the sites (I include SEO as part of the promotion phase) as the feedback is faster and tangible i.e. I can see my rankings go up or down.

Whereas with building sites, I start off full of enthusiasm but when I'm half way through doubts start to creep into my mind about my site's prospects. I then start thinking negatively about the time I'm spending building e.g. I spend hours building this site and then it won't get any traffic.