Paul wrote a week or so ago about his decision to scale back his blogs to those which are most profitable in a post titled One site or one hundred sites?:
‘a couple of weeks ago I sat down and made a spreadsheet of all my sites and where my revenue was coming from. I found that over 90% of my revenue was coming from two sites. That left me with two options:
1. Drop the non-performing sites. These sites obviously have the potential to be successful otherwise I wouldn’t have started them, but they also take time.
2. Work more on the non-performing sites. This requires that I spend less time on the sites that are performing.I chose the first option because it’s much easier working on two sites opposed to twelve sites.’
It’s an interesting piece and an issue I’ve been wrestling with a bit of late. As I look at my 20 or so blogs there is a huge difference in earning capacity between the highest and lowest earning blogs.
When I first started rolling out new blogs in greater numbers about 12 months ago I remember promising myself that I would cull the ones that did not perform. What I was doing was putting the feelers out there to find which worked and which did not. The ones that worked I’d work more on, the ones that did not I’ll let die.
It’s a nice theory but in practice I’m not sure I’ve really seen it work for a number of reasons.
1. I’m a hoarder – This was evident when I sorted through the boxes that I keep under my desk before we moved house a couple of months ago. They were filled with all kinds of sentimental and ‘useful’ (well they might be one day) bits and pieces from my past. I find it hard to let go of anything that ‘might’ one day work – this includes my blogs.
I have a number of poor performing blogs that I hold onto with the hope that they might hit it big one day. The thing is that they actually could hit it big – but how long is it feasible to wait before I turn my attention to other ventures?
2. It takes time for blogs to take off – The reason I have this hoarding approach is because on a couple of occasions I did hold onto blogs that in time did take off. One that is currently seeing increases in traffic is my laptop review blog which I started last October but which has only really begun to grow significantly in traffic over the past couple of months. It’s still not massive but the signs are there that it could be significant down the track.
In fact this is the story for most of my blogs. The first 6 to 12 months can show few signs of growth (particularly if you’re using a completely new domain) and then out of the blue can come success….sometimes. It’s a hit and miss game.
So I find myself living in a bit of a quandary at times – torn between ruthlessly culling or selling off my slow growers and playing the waiting game for that burst of traffic that may never come.
Luckily for me, I am in a position to be able to play the waiting game to a point – I have some blogs that have already risen to a level of paying me enough to be able to put time into the slow burners. However I often find myself wondering what would happen if I was to take the time that I spend on the low profit blogs I write each day and put it into my profitable ones or even put it into new ventures – some of which could be cash cows. Am I being wise in the way I spend my time?
How long would (do) you sit on a non earning blog before giving up?
