MOVED – How Many Sites Should I Have

One question I am often asked is “how many sites should I have?” It’s an important question and one worth considering carefully.

I often speak with people who have 5, 10 or even 100 websites. In almost every one of those cases, the people are struggling to make any money.

They are confused, overwhelmed, and tired.

Confused because they fall for the myth that more is better. While more can be better sometimes more is just more.

Making a quality choice in the beginning can save you hours of heartache, save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars and create success faster.

All very good things.

Here Is My Take

I believe any person who wants to succeed online needs to start with one site.

And I believe that site should be a WordPress blog.

Why WordPress? Here are my top five reasons.

1. Setting up a WordPress blog is easy.
2. Building your list (a key to success online) is easy from a WordPress blog.
3. A WordPress blog saves you money.
4. Plugins extend the power of the WordPress core.
5. WordPress allows you to blog AND publish pages.

Since this is not an article about blogging, I’ll stop there. There are many articles on my blog about blogging if you are interested in that.

Why ONE site?

People are surprised when I suggest they have one site in the beginning. Some customers have rightly pointed out that I sell over 40 products from many different sites.

But what they don’t know is that I didn’t start that way.

And they were not there for the terrible, and expensive, mistakes I made along the way.

If they were, they would understand my strong position on having one site.

Let me share with you four reasons why I believe you should start with one site, and then scale as you achieve success.

Focus = Power

Doing business online is time consuming. It requires total focus and dedication to a goal.

To make money online you have to be thinking about your business the entire time you are working.

• Where will I get traffic?
• Are they joining my list?
• Are they converting to sales?
• How can I best help them?
• What product should I create or promote next?
• What information can I give away to help them?

These questions, and more, consume the days of most successful online business people.

Now imagine this – what if you had to ask those questions for 100 websites?

The process would take all your time!

And, ultimately, you would have to choose one over the other.

Which leads us to the biggest problem of all … traffic.

Where Will I Send The Traffic?

When you have one website you know where you are sending all the traffic you can get. To your website!

But when you have 5, or 20, websites, you are going to have to choose where the traffic goes.

And that one dilemma often spells disaster for the would-be online entrepreneur.

Here is the situation …

You have $400 to spend on advertising. You feel like that $400 can generate 800 clicks, meaning you pay 50 cents per click.

A reasonable rate in today’s world.

Now let’s assume you own five websites. And further assume you want to spread the traffic around evenly. Most people do.

So you will spend $400 and send each of your five sites 160 visitors.

With me so far?

HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THAT … it takes 200 clicks for your site to convert strangers into buyers.

By sending 800 clicks to 5 websites you end up with ZERO SALES simply because no one site received enough traffic to make a sale!

But if you sent all 800 visitors to ONE website you would have made FOUR SALES instead of zero sales.

I see this happen all the time.

This one choice, choosing to focus your marketing on one site, can be the difference between making a profit and losing money!

What Is My Core Goal?

In any online business the core goals are basically the same.

• To make a profit.
• To serve customers.
• To grow.
• To build your list.
• To deliver quality.

That list could be much longer of course.

But doing these things – delivering a quality product or service that serves customers while earning you a profit – is the core of all business.

So you need to ask yourself this – can I focus on those core goals while maintaining multiple websites?

For most the answer will be no.

The reason is because we humans are finite. We have finite time, energy, budgets and staff. Even a Fortune 500 business has to have boundaries.

If you don’t know your core goals now take some time to discover them. Doing that is the fastest way to cure information overload.

And while you are at it, write down the core tasks you need to do every week to make progress.

For me those are easy. I have an article here that reveals them.

Learn From Failure And Repeat Your Successes

This is perhaps the most important point.

Success, once achieved, can be duplicated.

But achieving that first success … that is the challenge for most of us.

When asking yourself “how many sites should I have” put this thought in the front of your mind.

What skills will you need to succeed online?

Here is a short list …

• Driving traffic
• Building your list
• Publishing helpful content
• Providing customer service
• Choosing or creating products
• Thinking strategically
• Working with others

That list could be much longer. But those are the “must do” items in my experience.

Now imagine trying to do that across 5 sites. Or 50 sites.

It is far better … FAR better … to learn these skills on one site and then duplicate your success as many times as you like.

Using my own business as an example – the same skills that took me from being a member of the Directory of Ezines to being the owner of the company in 18 months are the skills I am using this week to market my 40 other products.

Are my skills better now than they were 15 years ago? Yes.

Are the core tasks different? Not very much.

Vince Lombardi, the infamous coach of the Green Bay Packers, focused his team on the basics of the game. Block, tackle, run and pass. Then score.

The San Antonio Spurs, a legend in pro basketball, have a very simple game plan compared to other teams.

The point is this … to succeed in an online business, either as an affiliate or a product owner, is not complicated.

It comes down to doing the basic things very well, and doing them over and over again.

And, for me, that means beginning with one website and putting your total focus there.

Because focus is a beautiful thing indeed!