To make decent income - How many sites?

[ag9670]

I was just curious, for you adsense money makers, how many "themed" sites do you have?

Decent income: $3 to 5K a month

Thanks,
Al

[Andrew Bassett]

# of sites has nothing to do with it.

[barns101]

You could have one site with a large number of visitors or a number of sites with fewer visitors each but many when combined (as long as CTR is good ;) ).

[therob]

I'd say it is much better to focus on one site.

[Zygoot]

One big developed site can make a lot more than $5k a month. Like Andrew said, the number of sites isn't important.

It's the amount of traffic that matters. One site with 15k visitors a day is a lot better than 100 small sites that only get 30 visitors a day each.

[ag9670]

Thank Barns! That makes sense.

What would recommend to a newbie starting out:

1) Create your first site and concentrate getting that going strong THEN creat another one.

Or

2) Create a number of sites and work on all of them at the same time.

[Jafo]

I would recommend working on one site first.

[ag9670]

Thanks Zygoot!

One site making more than 5K a month with Adsense? Wow! Now that would be awesome!

I think I just answered my question (don't we always : ) )

[edited by: ag9670 at 6:09 pm (utc) on May 15, 2006]

[Moosetick]

That is like asking how much education do you need to make $3 to 5K a month. Some would say highschool. Others would say you need a college degree.

If you want to be vague and general, then rather than thinking of # of sites, think # of visitors.

Say you want to make $3000/month, then you need $100/day. If you get $0.10 per click then you will need 1000 clicks per day. If you have a 1% CTR then you will need 100,000 page views per day.

Assuming you can achieve the stats above, you could have one site that gets 100k views/day or 100 sites that get 1000 views/day. The smaller sites will obviously be easier to build but that quantity could be a maintence nightmare. Your best bet is to shoot for somewhere between those numbers.

[Sootah]

Find a compromise. You don't want to be starting out with 75 different sites where you micro-niche each aspect of a widget, but you also don't want to focus too much on a site that's way too broad.

I do computer stuff for a living and while I could make all of it nicely into one site, I've split it up into 4.

Also, use a Content Management System right off the bat. Don't bother with static HTML. It's WAY too much maintenance later on when the site gets bigger, and if you set up a CMS right the end user/bot can't tell the difference anyway.

[Bddmed]

Also, use a Content Management System right off the bat. Don't bother with static HTML. It's WAY too much maintenance.

I Know it's off-topic, but why the hell it's too much maintenance.

Static html can do as good as an CMS. Many well known, established webmasters on this forum are using it.

[edited by: Bddmed at 7:44 pm (utc) on May 15, 2006]

[elguapo]

We've used HTML since we started in 1999 and never had maintenance problems.

[Sootah]

Really? I found updating my sites to be way too tedious after a while. It was doable because I was using SSI for the menus and stuff, but manually adding links to the articles and all that got old in a hurry.

With TextPattern now I've been able to add way more stuff much easier. Not to mention that I only have to backup a database now as opposed to tons of pages.

The conversion was a pain though, that's why I was suggesting doing it from the beginning.

[annej]

Do some research on your topic though. Be sure AdSense has plenty of ads for it. Use keyword tools to get an idea of what people are searching for. You need a topic that is of interest to people but that doesn't have too much competition.

Picking good topics for a site and for articles makes a big difference.

[motorhaven]

Build content that would have merit and advertiser potential even if AdSense did not exist. That has long term potential and is not an mfa. Plus you would not be putting your eggs in one basket and contributing to the amazing amount of crap so called content we see so much of.

I get so tired of wading through serps of shallow content obviously made for AdSense....

[workingNOMAD]

This is what I have...

2 larger sites over 400 pages...
2 medium sites over 50 pages...

and 7 mini sites around 6-8 pages that are highly targeted niche sites.

I also add blogs to my biggest sites and this has helped my income as well and makes it easy to update on the fly.

[Rx Recruiters]

I've found it easier to focus on one site. That being said, you should always have a few "back-up" sites in case something drastic happens in the SERPs with your main site. That way you don't have to be totally at the mercy of the alogos for your income.

[r3nz0]

You could do it with one huge site.

I have several sites i think 5 or 6 and some domains that i have rented to affiliate programs.

The most important thing is that you have total control! Now and in the future. Building a quality network will IMHO give the best opportunity to earn a stable = descent income.

Dont putt all your eggs on one ad supplier, after a few years of stable building you should get cheques from different companie's if you do right.

Build a site for users that search for houses! hehe High income in that niche.

Im a PHP man, but for little static sites HTML rocks! Back to basic... Goooooooooooodluck