how many sites are you guys running?

how many sites are you guys managing and how much time would you guys say you put into each site daily or monthly?

There have been a few polls about both questions, and the answer is pretty much up to each individual. If you are looking for a "guide" on how much time and how many sites, you won't get any sort of consensus here, it will be all over the place

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Depends on the site. Some take daily maintenance (coupon site). Some content sites can run on autopilot for months and even gain ground. Some die a slow death regardless of how much TLC you give them.

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We're gonna go inside, we're gonna go outside, inside and outside. . . And then we're gonna go go go and we're not gonna stop til we get across that goalline! Quotes from the movie Rudy, 1993

thanks loxly sorry I didnt know how to search for that!

hey cheese could you possibly point me to an example of a coupon site and one on autopilot?

thanks

Coupon code sites - http://www.google.com/search?q=coup...lient=firefox-a

I guess I have one autopilot site or site that doesn't really need updating. It's a niche site for something, under 10 pages and it's something that hasn't been made for decades. So there isn't any new info that will be coming out or anything like that. It's pretty much a done site. And it ranked on page 1 Google and Yahoo within a month (still there), got the keywordkeyword.com for it. So it should pick up some natural links every now and then.

Only had about 2 major sites and a niche site here and there and now that I've started with Wordpress, added some more. Trying to stick around no more than 10, give or take.

I have a site on "autopilot" - my first affiliate site and now in a state of disrepair since 2009.
I mean:
if "Autopilot" means the site gets increasing number of visitors
if "Autopilot" means the site gets at least a few sales

And 'disrepair' means there's so much work I could do on the site, but I'm not keeping up with it.
In case you want to look, it's computersecure.net.

(I unclicked 'parse links', so I hope this is okay.)

I wouldn't even mention the site except for the fact that just now I'm questioning - should I keep it or sell it?
I feel I'm not really doing the right thing by the vendors I support unless I can keep their product info and links up-to-date.
(On the other hand, judging from what I have learnt here on ABW, seems like some vendors could make more effort to do right by me.)

In case this relates to your original question - and just my opinion - don't make many sites or hook up with many vendors if you're just starting out.

In answer to the original question: I have two sites (and a few domains) of my own, and one site I look after for a client.

And I second Cheesehead - how much time is needed? - it all depends on the kind of site.

I have about a dozen "main" sites that get the majority of my attention.

sites

one ran on auto pilot for some time and I have tried to sell it at least three times. But after running it since 2002 and knowing how many hours I have put into it I have never had anyone offer what I feel its worth so now I just update it every week or two ....

Love the 'creative creation' stage not so much the ongoing work

I decided to try a new approach when I started out. Instead of having a ton of different websites and domains and hosting fees, I have one domain which has 1 hosting fee attached, but it has a lot of different pages with all sorts of different product landing pages. It has worked out for me pretty well so far.

too many
too much

Also, I don't really put a lot of time into managing sites. Whenever there is a new product I am marketing/endorsing and whenever there is a new deal, I'll pop up a new page, but other than that there is relatively no maintenance for my site. Blogs are the area that take up a lot of time. It takes about 10 minutes to put together a decent blog post for me. In theory it would be good to post a new blog post daily. That way people can just get into the daily routine of checking the next blog post for that day. I have a number of different blogs, including one that isn't for marketing purposes, but just for helping other affiliates out if they need. So in general, I spend almost no time on website work (maybe an hour or two a week if that) but quite a bit on blogs.

does the time people spend come from coding your sites and such or...? doing marketing stuff?

also for the people who have TOO MANY did you build all those yourself or buy them?


thank you all for responses

Don't buy sites. Build them yourself.

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Trust already gave you the link to many different coupon sites. A content site that could run on autopilot would be an informational site like one found on this search: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#h...abfa38a30232193
These "how to" type sites don't need frequent updating and are monetized with Adsense and/or Affiliate ads. Typically such "how to" sites do not attract targeted buyers but if your content is good enough you can get good rankings and a nice amount of free traffic that tends to naturally grow on its own.

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This World is Not My Home
We're gonna go inside, we're gonna go outside, inside and outside. . . And then we're gonna go go go and we're not gonna stop til we get across that goalline! Quotes from the movie Rudy, 1993

One main site, Daily, 8 hours +

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I put a lot of hours into pages and sometimes new sites. The problem with new sites is more expense but sometimes you have to seperate them. I think the most successful affiliates tend to have one good site where the bread and butter is made and they often venture into new things but they arent always a success. This is just my guess so now I've opened myself up to potentially thousands of nuh ughs! (isn't that a cute little icon?)

Too many sites
for the first year and a half all my waking hours learning, learning to program, playing with design, setting up datafeed automation. still not perfect. Slowly cutting back on sites starting with niche sites.
Unless I detect a problem or decide to fix a remaining bug, most affiliate time is spent on replacing merchants, glancing at affiliate spam, and adding posts.

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Werd -

If you are lucky enough to have one or two successful sites, it allows you to go out there and play around with ideas...

If you are going to build targeted sites for specific products or niches, you build them one at a time and throw your ppc skills into the ring...

Now that you have your site up and your credit card is being pounded by the minute, that's when the fun starts.....

IT'S ALL SKILL AND CASH FLOW -

Lack of either and you should be spending your time doing something else and get out of the sand-box before you get hurt...

Don't let anybody tell you different.

I've shit-canned a ton of sites over the years.

You can have 5 sites, 50 sites or 500 sites.

As long as you can afford to stay in the sandbox, keep on keeping on...

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Do What You LOVE & LOVE What You Do! ....

The online business is TOXIC MOLD MAX ... You do your homework, put up the content and links, get some traffic and you either die or not. But like biological systems, the internet adapts and one day your best site, page or whatever will go the way of the dodo bird or humpty dumpty. Then you have to reload and re-aim and such.

Sometimes it takes a decade to die, sometimes a month ... you just have to keep on trucking. How many sites is irrelevant ... you want sites or pages that make a profit.

Normally it takes at least two or three domained sites ... one so you can run some personals or adult type (NOT PORN) pages and such ... which convert very well. But the major CPM folks do not let you join their programs if you have ANY such links they see or can find ... and they do check.

So you need second site that should be the 'prinstine' goody two-shoes site with nice graphics, and all the stuff Google thinks is good ... then you can get into the good CPM programs and run those so you can cover your basic costs of running the website, broadband and such. Sales are the gravy you make. Sometimes they are great, sometimes not. But they are always profitable, because you set it all up the right way.

Your third site should be a content only site ... a blog is good ... so you can run Adsense PROPERLY. Pick a niche you LOVE and start there ... then add more content sites as you get the hang of it.

Here's a trick ... if you can create ONE content site a month for a special niche you have REAL interest in and you make a whole ONE DOLLAR A DAY from Adsense, in a year you will be making $360/month ... which is more than 3 BILLION people on planet earth make every year.

It is not hard to make $5 a day from Adsense, if you do it right. And of course you can plug in a sales link and any sales you get make it more worthwhile. In some niches it is not hard to make $100 a day from Adsense.

Some people say you should mix Adsense with affiliate links ... well you can do so, but
you make fewer sales that way ... If you want to do that, make Adsense the last thing they see at the bottom of each page they scroll down.

IF you get approved for a Big time CPM player, then one of the best way to make a PROFIT is put the CPM banner at the top, a killer presell with a text link and banner for a product everyone seems to be buying, with an Adsense banner at the bottom as the outlink.

What I find amazing is that people don't make a profit ... I think the word to learn is FOCUS on what you like best then when that is doing well, add another leg to the mix.

I disagree that an adult or fringe site is necessary, or even helpful.

I do really like the suggestion about content sites, though.

Content sites can serve another purpose, as well. When you start a sales site, you can link from your relevant content sites (not all of your sites) and get immediate free traffic and backlinks.

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i have 4-5 of my own that are all in different stages. I go for content as it seems to make me sleep better at night not wondering if i'm going to get google slapped one morning and be out of business. I am also for the not having all your eggs in one basket. I have a core site and then several smaller niche sites that i'm working on not having those be so labor intensive once up.

I know people that own hundreds of domains and I still don't know how they manage them all.

I am running five websites including a blog, Allot of my websites are well managed with automatic kind of things. but I have to divide time for them. and in near future I ll hire staff as well

Mike,

I don't think you NEED a more adult oriented site ... it's not a necessity, but it does convert better than most.

The content sites offer good backlinks and such to a sales page. But they also offer a way to go the otherway ... sales to content.

One of the key things to remember about traffic, is you can get one visitor and if your site is set up properly, that one person can visit a bunch of other pages or sites you have ... and each visit is an opportunity for a click, sale, and the impression.