Newbie Alert. Growth of websites and return on investment

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ecstatic

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Jan 16, 2008
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Right, Lurking around here for too long i expect im about to recieve my first flaming for what i deem a logical question.

My circumstances are i work in a corporate technical side of IT and wish to leave and work for myself in the Web-world.

Which is the better long-term investment?

500 websites that pay 1 dollar a day in revenue that i purchase or 1 website that earns 500 dollars a day that i purchase?

I believe the 500 may be better as it spreads the risk what is the guru's reckoning around here?

Im more interested in acquiring websites than building from scratch as i can funnel money into the project until i reach an even keel with monies in and out as have mortgage etc.

Long term the traffic i assume tapers out by what percentage per year IE: if my 500 websites were making 1 dollar a day in 3 years might they only be making .50 cents a day each? Also if my 500 dollars a day website goes down to 250 after 3 years.

Also in terms of organic growth i assume (please correct if im wrong i need some help!) the best way for growth is through SEO and content for the website is this correct?

Obviously id like to add to the 500 a day constantly and im thinking a mix of PPC affiliate and niche websites. Maintaining the 500 websites is not an issue as thats all i do at work at present (scripter etc).

Thanks for reading
 


500 websites @ 1 dollar a day.
1) broaden your horizons
2) can purchase 50 a month for 10 months ( whatever ) until you have the right mix.

1 websites @ 500 dollars a day
1) less time spent in maintenance ( maybe ).
 
If 500 websites get broken you have to fix 500 websites. Thats a lot of work! If 1 website get broken, you have to fix just 1. It is also hard to prove that certain website actually makes $1 per day every day. In 1 day I can register aged 5 years old domain, put some stuff there so that it will looks like a website, buy some cheap traffic for it and sell it to you, claiming that I make $1 every day for 5 years. :) So I voter for $500/day website.
But don't buy it for more than its 6-12 months income. It can go down not just to $250 after 3 years, it can be $5 after 1 week and if the main source of traffic is google, it can be even worse. There is always a risk, especially if you don't know the area this website is about.
Conclusion: neither is a good inversment strategy, but 500 $1 websites is definitely worse than 1 $500.
 
Broaden horizons you mean you have a minimum per site for generated revenue / stay in a particular niche? Dont think niches are great over long term as they come and go im looking for long term and spreading the risk.

Think ill take your advise purchase 50 per month for 10 months see how things go. Experience best many thanks for response...
 
I'm a noobie.

I meant diversify as opposed to broaden your horizons. 500 sites one goes tits up, you're ok. one site one goes tits up you're hosed.
 
One other consideration: look at diversification across monetization types as well.

I'll take a $500/day website with 3 forms of monetization (lets say, affiliate, adsense, and self-brokered ad sales) over 500 $1/day adsense sites any day of the week.

I do hope that someone eventually writes a 'buying and selling sites' sticky eventually

e^i
 
ecstatic said:
Long term the traffic i assume tapers out by what percentage per year IE: if my 500 websites were making 1 dollar a day in 3 years might they only be making .50 cents a day each? Also if my 500 dollars a day website goes down to 250 after 3 years.
Click to expand...

500 domains * $10 (assume whois protection) = $5000 a year just for hosting. Additionally, no way you are going to build out 500 sites without using very low quality/spam/dupe content. So a more likely scenario is in 3 years they make $0 a day... and thats assuming you can even get the sites to $1 a day average (in which case $5k a year is no big deal.)

I would recommend putting the money into generic keyword/phrase domain names, and then paying someone to build out a high quality site, all built to be SE friendly. Throw in some high quality incoming links, add a forum once there is traffic, repeat.

This isn't a fast track to raking in cash, but it is the only thing I'd put any money on being ong term on the web. If you didn't overpay on the domains, you should be able to get your return on those without any SE traffic, content, or forums.

Trying to make broad assumptions and asking these broad questions isn't a very good approach. I'd recommend learning as much as you can about specific subjects first. Then you can weigh the pros and cons and mak the right judgements on your own. This shit changes so fast no one is an expert on much of anything.
 
i would rather have 500 sites making $1 each and spreading those domains across different shared hosting accounts and whois registrations and then exploiting the link juice I could get out of all of them to one mega site.
 
No need to choose between such extremes, either. If you're only looking at diversification and site maintenance / overhead as factors, there's probably some optimal intersection between these, such as 20 medium sized sites that generate $25 a day each.
 
Right as an update to this post i have been attempting to buy some sites on the usual place dp forums etc.

My god as a newbie once one investigates the amount of fraudulent activity going on and time spent to perform diligence on these websites with a high proportion of having to pull back from purchase due to issues with revenue etc. After reading a lot about all the subjects i am going to go somewhere in between.

Target now is three forms of monetization on website. Minimum 10 USD a day with purchase price of between 6-12 months revenue. This should cut down on all the crap sites people are attempting to flog.

Anyone got a calculator for uniques per month to value by particular subject. Hmmm maybe thats one website that should be around for valuation purposes? General figure of cost for traffic based on particular subject.

Other sites on web are so full of crap any recomendations on good videos to watch / books to read on this subject / conferences to attend very much appreciated! Im on the hunt for knowledge!!
 
Before you do any of this and if you're still working, set up a personal website (one page static cack-type thing) and get a link to it from the websites of some of your corporate customers. This'll come in ver-r-y handy later on. If this isn't possible because they all hate your company then never mind.
 
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