Came across a great article on Problogger.net about having multiple blogs. It seems that in the Internet marketing arena there are two camps. One believes you should build as many niche sites as possible and collect and utilize as many tools as possible to achieve Adsense glory. The other believes in quality and managing just a few blogs that reflect your interests. I guess each has their advantages. I’d prefer to be in the latter camp but the money I make is strewn across multiple, varied, niche blogs. Most on topics I couldn’t care less about.
Anyway, Darren Rowse’s article is his opinion about operating multiple blogs. The guy is a pro and worth listening to. I found the article very interesting. He states that he got up to 25 blogs but found he couldn’t sustain his enthusiasm, drive traffic (visitors knew he was faking it) and he couldn’t sustain the number. It was too much work.
There is a breaking point. I’m surprised he made it to 25. Knowing him, the blogs were high quality and not splogs. I can barely maintain 3 that I actively and manually operate. More than that and it becomes less personable and more mechanical. I have to auto-post all my other blogs which is one of the reasons I joined PortalFeeder.
I see the value in creating numerous niche blogs. They make me money. But I would prefer to have 2 or 3 quality blogs make the money. I suppose when one of my favorite blogs starts taking off big then I can start peeling away from building niche blogs. I’m sort of in limbo in that my 2-3 blogs I care about do not make the money, but the niche blogs do. I feel like I have to, and want to, maintain each. I don’t think I’ll ever give up my personal blogs, like Lost Ball, in favor of niche blogs, but that I will give up the niche blogs to concentrate on the personal blogs if they ever took off.
Quality vs quantity. I don’t guess there is any right way or wrong way if you are achieving your goals. Unfortunately I need money while I’m working toward my goal of having a LifeHacker or Problogger type of blog. So I’ll do both as long as I have to.
8 responses so far ↓
Dan Cruz // Apr 5, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Bro I just don’t have the heart to pump out a couple hundred Blogs just to get to a decent income level only to watch Google bitch slap me one more time…
I quess I’m taking a different approach? I have 6 Blogs and I justkeep my head down and try to post every single day. I’m trying to build those huge authority sites that Jack Humphrey and John Chow talk about all the time.
It makes sense to me. What Google wants; Google gets.
But I hear you about the quantity vs. quality debate. I have it all the time because my quality Blogs aren’t producing the income level I’d like them to produce yet…
Marc Lindsay // Apr 5, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Hey Splork,
There is a balance to be found that is for sure. What we usually do is find out of our sites, the one’s that we would like to go ahead with for whatever reasons.
And then find passionate people in that field to become the face of that blog. Kind of like b5 Media has done.
I know that I will have my own personal blog where everything will come from me. But for our authority sites and company sites, you need to eventually look at adding someone who loves the topic.
Because you can’t do it all yourself as you have seen here.
Usually its an evolutionary process of a site, 12 to 18 months with just content, quality SEO to build it up.
Then we ALWAYS re-invest the earnings or a portion of the earnings back into the site’s development.
Its an important step that a lot of people miss and therefore miss out on the longer term achievement of a site.
Regards
Marc
Splork // Apr 6, 2007 at 7:53 am
Hey Marc. Thanks for chiming in. You guys have really got it figured out. I’d like to get to the point where I would just bite the bullet and outsource some of this stuff. Right now though I’m choking just on the $300/month fee with PF. I need to free up some time with my writing and get someone else to re-write the PLR.
Splork // Apr 6, 2007 at 8:03 am
Dan I hear ya. I’m not inclined to do that either. What I do is take the article packs from PLRPro that I have an interest in and start building. Can’t do all 11. But I do what I can. I know that I won’t get slapped around by any SE because my content is useful and original. Getting ranked is an issue though so I am using the hell out of NicheBot’s keyword tool for LSI and other digging tools.
I think the idea is to get to the level where Marc is though where you can off-load your sites to people who really care about the topic. Maybe rev sharing or something. cause I tell you right now I have zero interest in about 90% of the stuff that I get PLR for. But there is money to be made there so it’s dumb to just ignore it.
Franck Silvestre // Apr 10, 2007 at 9:11 am
I find it really difficult to focus on several niches, and when I lose interest, it’s finished.
Problem is that most of the niches I have sites in, I don’t have interest at all.
I have some niche sites that receive only a few hundreds uniques per month, nothing to be happy about. They make some adsense clicks and some affiliate sales as well, but I don’t do nothing for them.
I prefer concentrate on one site (actually two). I started them the Affilorama 90 days roadmap way style, and it works really well.
I am in the process of creating my own products as well. While still being an affiliate.
Splork // Apr 10, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Hey Franck. Exactly. That’s what happens to me too. The only thing that keeps me going is if I can start generating income fairly quickly. Otherwise, yep, I lose interest and move on.
The affiliate road map on Afffilorama is very solid. I should do more of that as I do fairly well with affiliate sales when I really, really work it hard. But it is work, no doubt.
Sandy // Apr 30, 2007 at 9:36 pm
How do you make money on Adsense with blogs? Are they on your website? Do you have multiple websites, too. I have blogs on ebay and Blogger. Guess they can’t make me money, huh?
Splork // May 1, 2007 at 6:22 am
Hey Sandy. I don’t use Adsense on Lost Ball. I tried them a couple of times but they didn’t work very well. Still trying to monetize this blog outside of the occasional affiliate sale.
I have tons of blogs and other websites.
You can certainly make money with Adsense on Blogger. This link may give you a bit more info on that:
http://google.about.com/od/googleblogging/ss/Adbloggersbs.htm
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