If you have only one site, how do you diversify risk?

[crick]

Both in terms of income (which currently is totally reliant on adsense) and traffic?

[irock]

You need about 3 main sources of income - ones that keep flowing in like AdSense.

And you will need several more that supplement the the main three.

As for traffic source, try to keep search engine traffic to 50% of your total. Of course, lower this number, the better.

Regardless, how you go about reaching these goals really depends on your market. Some sites like Wiki never get daily repeat visitors due to its nature. So I would say you should position a site as a blog, a info library, and shopping portal. But that's just me.

[vincevincevince]

You could try to sell your site and buy shares with the money (?)

[crick]

"Regardless, how you go about reaching these goals really depends on your market. Some sites like Wiki never get daily repeat visitors due to its nature. So I would say you should position a site as a blog, a info library, and shopping portal. But that's just me."

Wouldn't getting healthy traffic from all 3 search engines rather than just 1 diversify risk to an extent. Just in case you lost some SERPS on one, you still have traffic from the others. Also, what do you exactly mean by turn your site into a shopping portal. Are you talking about teaming up with affiliates and providing pages that also sell products besides the information pages thus getting more returning traffic?

[irock]

"Wouldn't getting healthy traffic from all 3 search engines rather than just 1 diversify risk to an extent. Just in case you lost some SERPS on one, you still have traffic from the others. "

That's not what I meant. I think if you manage a popular site, you should be getting more and more search engine traffic, to an extent in which your repeat and referral visitors couldn't keep up. So, try your best to keep traffic from the BIG 3 search engines (G, Y, M) to 50% of your total traffic. The rest of the traffic should be from RSS, referral and others. If you run a tech site, it's nearly impossible to distribute traffic 'healthy' among the big 3 since 90% of the geeks use G exclusively. I suppose the chicks use Yahoo & MSN... idk

"Also, what do you exactly mean by turn your site into a shopping portal. Are you talking about teaming up with affiliates and providing pages that also sell products besides the information pages thus getting more returning traffic?"

Well, I can hardly tell you what to do. But i'm just trying to point out that in my case, i turn my tech site into a news blog (current stuff), a info library (wiki-style user contribution), and a shopping portal (one that lists all the good deals around the web). Forum is great too... but I can't seem to find a way to organize all these conversations.

I mean... if you can make something as revolutionary as Digg & Wiki, you may as well borrow ideas and use them to your own advantage.

Lastly, for the Wiki part, I didn't mean you should leesh. Wiki usually doesn't have EVERYTHING covered. If your site is very niche, try to focus your Wiki to the specifics of your topics.