You Want A Full Time Income – How Many Websites Will It Take?
By James Martell
Back in 1999 when I first got started in affiliate marketing I had another full time business that I wasn’t particularly thrilled with. I wasn’t making enough money to support my family the way I wanted and I didn’t see that condition changing anytime soon.
So I took a risk and decided to try out this internet thing with hopes that I would succeed and make enough money to quit the full time job. Sound familiar?
I was fortunate in that I was lucky enough to build a stream of revenue that did allow me to work full time on my new affiliate business. Remember that things were different back then and the internet was in its wild, wild West phase and I was convinced that the only way to grow was to build multiple sites and develop a ton of content. At one point I had nearly 90 websites running.
But if you asked me today how many websites you need to make a full time income I would respond with…one.
The Power of One!
I know it may seem counter-intuitive to put all of your eggs in a single basket and I certainly don’t follow my own advice on this subject as I still have quite a number of sites up and running. But if I were to start over today, I would focus on a single site.
Why? For a number of reasons not the least of which is the technology that is available today that wasn’t available five years ago. Think about it for a minute. Five years ago there was no Twitter there was no FaceBook there was no Google Plus there really were no “social media” platforms as we understand them today. These tools represent a huge source of traffic that when combined with organic search traffic can create an enormous audience.
And what if they were all pointing back to a single site.
If you’ve been around for a while think back to all the effort that you have put in trying to promote your various sites. All the backlinking, all the optimization, all the content development…think about every promotion you’ve ever done…and think if all that effort was for a single site rather than multiple sites.
Where would that single site be today?
Pick your favorite site say the one answering questions like does Nutrisystem program really work or whatever.
How many indexed pages would it have. How many backlinks? How big would your email list be? How greater would the sales be? Do you see where I’m going with this?
With a single website you can
* Influence merchants more effectively because of increased sales. In all likelihood you’ll receive more help in promoting their products.
* Streamline your operation by eliminating the need to manage multiple websites. Now you’ll be able to focus all of your time on a single profitable project.
* Focus all of your social media efforts to promoting a single site. No more multiple Twitter or FaceBook accounts to keep track of.
* All content creation, for the site and for building backlinks is now for a single website. Imagine how fast that site will grow and imagine the impression you’re making on Google.
* The more focused you are on a single topic the more authoritative you become.
* With increased traffic comes increased feedback from visitors giving you a much better feel for what is on your audience’s mind.
* More traffic means more sign ups for your email lists. When you have that kind of volume and if you’re using the right technology, you can now segment the list out based on behavior and laser target them for products of interest.
* As your site increases in sales, you can consider selling off your other sites either to fund growth or simply to invest.
Think about it for a moment. This model of single site development closely follows that of a traditional brick and mortar company. How many B&Ms do you know who would open a high end bike shop and simultaneously open a dry cleaners, law office and grocery store? Nobody right?
But that has been the conventional idea of success in the internet marketing world. Put up more sites, add more content and rinse and repeat.
While that model will still work, it’s the one I’m using currently; I believe that the most efficient and most sustainable way to earn a full time living is to focus your energy on a single site.
And the beauty of this is it applies to any niche. You’re not going to be competing against the Amazons and eBays of the world so you could easily earn a full time living with sites that deal with almost any topic or products.
