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View Full Version : cranking websites out, hows this model?



Snowballer
04-25-2005, 08:47 AM
Hi,

I've read some people just crank websites out, build em, then submit em, then forget about them.

I guess the idea is to get $1/day per site, own 400 websites.

what are your thoughts on this?

Is it just making management of things much harder, and maybe going the subdomain route better?

this sounds very lucrative to me, anybody into this numbers game? hehe

r2d2
04-25-2005, 10:59 AM
You need to talk to MarkB - he has/had a 1 website/wk thoughout 2005 goal :)

Definitely wouldnt use suddomains as a way of making it easier to manage - a. I dont think it would make much difference and b. if you are taking shortcuts like this that will affect the professionalism of your sites, then you should probably cut down the number of websites, rather than cut the effort on each one.

Most people on here though have numerous websites. But remember more websites != more cash. You could spend your time better by building/improving existing ones.

Chris
04-25-2005, 11:35 AM
I do not recommend subdomains, a domain makes it easier to get listings/links and is cheap enough that its worth it to get one for each site.

MarkB
04-25-2005, 11:52 AM
Heh, my 1-site-a-week aim fell apart after about 5 sites; it takes time, energy, and enthusiasm which I just don't have after building sites all day at work :)

And I agree with Chris and r2 - forget the subdomain route.

Snowballer
04-25-2005, 11:56 AM
Chris,

You a 1-man shop right? how many domains do you have?

paul
04-25-2005, 12:52 PM
I figure it only costs $1/mo to register and host a site, so anything you can make above that is profit. I have always been attracted to collectibles domains and decided to see if one or two pages sites in these tiny niches would pay so I could afford to keep them.

They have no back links and "content" is whatever I could write off the top of my head. For reasons I do not understand, some have been given high rankings and get some traffic. Some that I actually put effort into remain invisible.

The more I learn about SEO the less my results make sense.

Snowballer
04-25-2005, 01:02 PM
Well to register a domain costs $8, the cost of a IP address costs $1/month.

So basically yearly cost to run a domain is $20 year (8 + (1x12) = $20).

The next cost is a dedicated server if you want.

I mean, generating $1/day is not rocket science, so the key is automation.

r2d2
04-25-2005, 01:37 PM
I run all my websites of a $20 a month reseller account - unlimited domains and 15Gb a month which Im no where near using, so hosting is a pretty small part of the cost, especially as your number of domains rises.

As you get more into web development, the cost of domains and hosting should really pale into insignificance as your income starts to grow.

People try to cut corners when they start with a bunch of subdomains and free hosting, but you really are shooting yourself in the foot, so I would really recommend getting full domains for each site and some proper web hosting - but it sounds like you are planning on doing this anyway, so good on you.

Blue Cat Buxton
04-25-2005, 02:23 PM
Whilst this format looks attractive there must be some on time in managing a number of sites and I have to wonder if the time spent in making an existing site larger/better/adding links etc isn't more productive than adding a new site.

Snowballer
04-25-2005, 05:45 PM
BlueCatBuxton,

Your right, but at the same time there are always many ways to skin a cat right?

Having 100's of domains also spreads the risk, and i'm sure your bound to hit some jackpots along the way which you can further develop.

Nobody said you can't further develop a site. Nothing is written in stone now is it?

I'm just saying, its a numbers game here, $1/day is something everyone can do. But creating a single site that makes $500/day is def. something not everyone seems to be doing hehe.

paul
04-25-2005, 06:24 PM
" $1/day is something everyone can do"

Based on the posting in threads about income, I get the feeling many make less than that in spite of their best efforts.

What I appreciate most about the low cost of starting multiple small sites is the opportunity it offers to learn about a niche, who the visitors are, what the concerns are, what kinds of ads they respond to, etc. You can do all that at almost no cost. They also make a test bed for templates/skins and other experiments.

Chris
04-25-2005, 06:50 PM
domains? 100 or more probably.

The New Guy
04-25-2005, 07:51 PM
Is there a good way to make the domain pay for itself while your not using it? Without getting it banned from search engines?

Blue Cat Buxton
04-26-2005, 12:55 AM
BlueCatBuxton,

there are always many ways to skin a cat right?


Thats not nice :p

I see where you are coming from. But the energy and time to make 400 sites must be enormous, even 2 or 3 pagers - they still need research and promotion and then monitoring to some extent.

I just think it would be easier to make say 10 sites that made $10 a day than 100 that each made $1 a day.

James
04-26-2005, 07:48 AM
There's a difference between diversity to keep your income steady as markets drop a bit,
and bitter insanity.
If you have 1 high quality site, it'll likely do better than 1000 search portals. The best route is to make more than one site, but less than what you can't handle.

Snowballer
04-26-2005, 09:23 AM
James,

True, so the formula is then:

# of sites to create = can't handle - 1

hehe

paul
04-26-2005, 09:31 AM
I think many are looking for "Truth" or "The Answer"; and there isn't one. Everyone has a different skill set and life experience. An approach that makes sense for one won't work for someone else. It comes down to what works for you.

A person with good technical skills but little life experience may find it easy to develop semi-automated methods/tools that make it easy to build/maintain lots of sites.

Someone who has worked various jobs in several industries may have a wealth of content.

Some people like to know everything there is to know about a particular subject. Others are easily bored and like to flit from project to project as their interests change.

I think success will result from finding the approach which is the best "fit" for each individual.

AndyH
04-26-2005, 10:48 AM
I never liked the idea of making hundreds of lower quality websites.

You can make money that way, but if you make something great you can set yourself up for life.

paul
04-26-2005, 12:30 PM
I guess I am thinking more in terms of tiny niches with little or no competition. I don't see why they have to be low quality. How many people will ever be interested in Mainzer cats? I'll admit www.mainzercats.com isn't the worlds most attractive site, but it's the only place where you can see many of the cards all in one place. It's made $2.52 so far this month :) and will make a great test bed when I want to write a program that lets people who don't know a cards number find the card they are interested in by entering some of the distinguishing features.

Who knows, maybe someday a collector will make an offer for the domain, site and my card collection. In the meantime, it pays for itself and was good practice.

chromate
04-26-2005, 03:38 PM
Going the "large qnty of smaller sites" route has advantages and disadvantages. I've thought about doing it myself, but quite often it's not worth it. I can target a new small search term that pulls in 50-200 uniques a day just by creating a new page to an existing site. Because it's an add-on to an existing site, it gets crawled and ranked almost within 24hrs. No need to worry about sandbox or anything like that.

Small 2-3 page sites wont make any money from CPM based networks because the traffic is always going to be too low on a per site basis. So although you may have 400 sites pulling in say, 40k+ uniques a day in total, you're not going to be able to monetize that traffic by running normal CPM banners / popunders. If you do the calculations at say 3 page views each and CPM of $0.40 - that's some serious money you'd be missing out on.

paul
04-26-2005, 03:49 PM
Chromate, thanks for that comment. Since none of my sites have that much traffic I would not have considered it. Clearly there are some advantages to thinking big when selecting a domain to work on.

woollymammoth
04-27-2005, 10:37 AM
I run all my websites of a $20 a month reseller account - unlimited domains and 15Gb a month which Im no where near using, so hosting is a pretty small part of the cost, especially as your number of domains rises.

As you get more into web development, the cost of domains and hosting should really pale into insignificance as your income starts to grow.

People try to cut corners when they start with a bunch of subdomains and free hosting, but you really are shooting yourself in the foot, so I would really recommend getting full domains for each site and some proper web hosting - but it sounds like you are planning on doing this anyway, so good on you.

I pay $35/m for my reseller account. What provider are you using?

Thanks.

William.

chromate
04-27-2005, 10:54 AM
Woollymammoth, I know your question was aimed at r2d2, but thought you might be interested, as I'm in a similar situation to him.

I have 2 reseller accounts. Both are very good indeed.

dathorn.com - $13.50 a month (2GB storage, 30GB bandwidth) and lightningservers.net - $24.99 a month (1GB storage, 50GB bandwidth).

Snowballer
04-27-2005, 11:38 AM
with those reseller accounts, do you have the option of having unique i.p's per domain?

chromate
04-27-2005, 12:16 PM
No. That's why I have two reseller accounts instead of just the one so I can spread sites over 2 IPs.

r2d2
04-27-2005, 02:01 PM
I have mine at BlueWho.com (1Gb storage and 15Gb transfer - WHM with CPanel for each domain). Very good service with daily backups etc - thoroughly recommmended. You get 5 IPs but have to give a good reason for using them for IP rules - I just use the standard two for my nameservers. They would be the same class-C though I presume, so not much point in bothering to use them all?

moonshield
04-27-2005, 05:50 PM
You guys got to watch out doing that type of thing though. Some of these small time hosts have 400 something other domains on that very ip address that yours is on. Do a reverse ip check to make sure. http://www.webhosting.info/domains/ works rather well.

Think about the possibilities that could happen if one of the other sites on that server is marked as spam and your ip is banned. Its always best when you can control as many variables as you can. I don't know if SEs ban by IP but I don't see why they wouldn't.

Just a thought.

woollymammoth
04-27-2005, 07:21 PM
interesting... thanks for this guys. so I'm getting screwed then. well that's lovely. and only 40 client accounts to export and transfer over if I want to make the switch. I can't be arsed...

I like the idea of diversifying your reseller base though... looks like dathorn.com could be a good call. but why are all these places based in texas? is there like nothing else to do in texas but host dodgy infopreneurs' websites?

eMEraLdwPn
04-28-2005, 11:15 AM
texas has the largest amount of datacenters in the entire united states (i think so anyway). bluewho has their datacenter in new jersey though

r2d2
04-28-2005, 11:23 AM
Bluewho has their datacenter in new jersey though

There, plus two more:

Datacenter 2
Phoenix, Arizona.

Datacenter 3
Los Angeles, California.

eMEraLdwPn
04-28-2005, 03:08 PM
ahh, didn't know about those =)... i think the server i'm on is in new jersey though, which is also where i live, woohoo

Snowballer
04-29-2005, 07:04 AM
lets' get back on topic, who's cranking sites out here? hehe

Chris
04-29-2005, 09:57 AM
lets' get back on topic, who's cranking sites out here? hehe

I made 4 this past weekend.

ASP-Hosting.ca
04-29-2005, 10:51 AM
I made 4 this past weekend.

Data feed sites again :)?

Chris
04-29-2005, 12:03 PM
ya..........

Nintendo
04-29-2005, 11:37 PM
who's cranking sites out here? hehe

I just made three more sites. I'm starting to run out of new ideas!! I got over 80 domains!

James
04-30-2005, 01:41 PM
It doesn't take ideas to make sites like you make, Nintendo.

Cutter
04-30-2005, 03:03 PM
I'm just saying, its a numbers game here, $1/day is something everyone can do. But creating a single site that makes $500/day is def. something not everyone seems to be doing hehe.

When I first started last year, from May until July I only made a total of $4. Happily I can say that I'm doing great a year later in part thanks to Website Publisher.

One tip, the newest site is making as much as the one I started over a year ago. Some are hits, some are misses, good luck :D

newsniche
05-03-2005, 03:54 AM
I think having 10 content sites for different topics would give you enough diversity to protect you from changes. Creating and running 200 sites or more isjustgoingto cause headaches, unless you have some sort of management system.

I have 2 sites and 1 in the works.

kdb003
06-25-2005, 05:34 PM
People with lots and lots of sites... do you host your sites on a reseller type of hosting where each site has a different cpanel account or do you just have one big cpanel account or do you not use cpanel at all?

ozgression
06-25-2005, 10:07 PM
I use a reseller account, where each site has it's own cpanel etc.

r2d2
06-26-2005, 02:49 AM
Same here.

Chris
06-26-2005, 05:52 AM
I have 5 dedicated servers.

Cutter
06-26-2005, 09:07 AM
How much bandwidth are you doing?

Chris
06-26-2005, 05:46 PM
I don't know... but its not about bandwidth, its about processor power. With all the DB queries I need multiple servers for my sites to run as quickly as I like. Plus, servers are cheap.

eMEraLdwPn
06-26-2005, 07:47 PM
yeah, cheap compared to how much money you're making, not cheap for some of us :p