Why Building One Site is Better Than Building Multiple Sites

I just read about someone who’s trying to make 5,000 sites in a year (found via SEO Book). His goal is to make a dollar a day with each site. If he can accomplish his goal, that’s a cool $5,000 each day.

Obviously, building 5,000 sites in one year is an extreme number for most of us. The webmaster in the above post has a staff of 300. Many of us don’t have any staff members, much less 300. But this story got me thinking. How many sites should you focus on?

I’ve written about this before. And my conclusion was to build as many sites as you can without losing quality. However, I’ve come to believe that in today’s online world focusing on one site is the most profitable business model.

Online Business Models

I’ll state my reasons for choosing the one-site model later in this post. For now let’s look at the evolution of internet business models. I got these concepts and pics from John Reese’s 6 minute video, It?s All About Authority.

In the beginning, online business people realized they could make more money by dividing their efforts on multiple sites. Instead of focusing on one site, they built other sites that linked to their first site.

Next, they tried crosslinking between their sites. This proved to be more profitable than the first model.

Then, they thought, “If crosslinking works with a few sites, what would happen if we built more sites?” So, they built huge networks of crosslinked sites. This made them even more money.

However, in the last year or so, the internet business landscape has experienced drastic changes. Because of these changes, the one-site model is the best.

What Changes?

Reciprocal links are dead.

Actually, they’ve been dead since 2005. You can build 10 sites and crosslink them all you want, but those links won’t count for much. Also, Google penalizes sites with too many reciprocal links.

Domain trust has become a very important search engine ranking factor.

Domain trust is a hot topic in the SEO industry (read here and here). Good search marketers all agree that domain trust is a huge part of Google’s current algorithm. In a survey between 37 search experts about ranking factors, domain trust (the survey called it “global link popularity”) was the 3rd most important factor.

How do you increase domain trust? It boils down to getting many quality links on a consistent basis. As you build more and more quality links, your search traffic will increase exponentially. But you need more links than you think. It takes time and effort to build those quality links on a regular basis.

Here is a graph highlighting the power of domain trust.

Notice how the traffic volume grows exponentially as you increase the number of links. Basically, you will get much more traffic from 1 site with 1000 links than 10 sites with 100 links each.

The competition has increased, both in quality and quantity.

I got this principle from John Reese’s video. More people are trying to make money online. Look at all the make money online blogs. Many of these blogs are less than a year old.

Webmasters are more skilled. In the past, you could enter a niche and be the only webmaster that knew about SEO and link building. Links were easier to build, because webmasters didn’t know the value of links. Today most niches are filled with skilled webmasters. Try getting a link today from a quality site. You’ll have to spend more time and/or money.

Big offline businesses are allocating more resources into online ventures. ESPN, a popular sports TV network, recently hired a full-time blogger. USA Today, a popular newspaper, has 20 blogs. Big book publishers are beginning to publish their content online. Business like these have sites with a lot of domain trust.

How do you dominate the stronger competition? By being more efficient with your resources and being really good at one thing. Focus your content production, marketing, and monetization on one site and you’ll build a strong site that will overcome the competition.

It’s like the all-in poker move. Find a good opportunity and push all your chips in the middle.

The social nature of the internet is growing.

Social media sites are growing faster than other sites. Sites like Facebook and Myspace are changing the way people think of the internet. More people are participating in the social web. This growing audience is becoming used to community-based sites like blogs, forums, and social networking sites.

These users don’t just surf the web for information. They also want a social experience. They want to interact with other users. They want to visit sites with an existing community. If your site is not able to provide a social experience, if your site doesn’t have a solid membership base, it will be considered outdated within a few years.

What’s the best way to build a community-oriented site? Put all your resources in one site, because it takes time to grow and maintain a community.

Think about it this way. Would you rather have 10 blogs with 100 subscribers or 1 blog with 1000 subscribers? I’d take the 1 blog. It’s easier to maintain. You can do less writing and marketing while reaching the same amount of people.

Can I Ever Build More Than One Site?!

Am I saying your should never build more than one site? Not necessarily. The one-site model is the most profitable model today. Yet I understand that we’re humans and we like variety. Building only one site can get boring.

I like John Reese’s principle:

Dedicate at least 80% of your time and resources to your primary website.

You can use the other 20% to explore different opportunities and niches. Also, if you want to juggle multiples sites, it’s best to outsource much of your work.

Conclusion

So, take action today. Think big. Think long-term. Think real business rather than a hobby. Think ONE site.

Pick a niche, buy a domain name, and begin pouring value into it as best as you can. While most internet marketers are juggling too many sites and chasing the latest fad opportunity, you’ll be building a big site that will crush all their little sites.