I had a realization the other day about my progress thus far. I’ve done pretty well the past few months, but I seem to be in a little rut where I’m not going to pump out too much more revenue with my current setup of sites. As of now I’ve decided to take a good chunk of the money I’ve made and reinvest it into some more long term websites/blogs. I don’t want to be depending on one or two sites every month for my income, so spreading myself out seems like a good idea.
I’m taking clues from some of the bigger publishers out there and how they operate their network of sites. Networks like Gawker and Rudius have a much better situation to present to advertisers than someone like myself who earns revenue from article marketing, press releases, Hubpages and some small blogs. Being able to sell ad space across a wide variety of websites is a huge advantage since you can sell ad space for branding as well. I used to intern at Rivals.com(recently bought out by Yahoo! for $100 million), and the amount of pull they had with such a large network of sports sites was amazing. Their ad sales lady was selling out MEGA deals every week to Coors, Nike, Under Armor etc…
I’m finally starting to realize that the only way this is possible is if you have websites that are scalable…and the key to having websites that can scale is a solid foundation. If I can build up a network of 5 blogs/sites with similar looking designs and similar themes, I can leverage that to better ad money and affiliate commissions very quickly. None of this is possible with the way I’m operating right now.
As of now, my plan is to add the following sites to my network over time.
- Sports betting blog covering NFL, NCAA, NBA and the MLB.
- Might put all these on one, or have a separate blog for each topic.
- Casino blog covering craps, blackjack, roulette etc… (don’t know a lot about casinos)
- Same as above…
- Poker website I’m currently working on
My plan over time with these sites is to outsource the content writing and find a qualified writer for each site. I know this will be tough, because most people could just start their own blog and keep all the profits. However, other people would rather have the security of a steady paycheck from me than struggling to make it on their own. I think the next 3-6 months are going to be exciting for my sites. Might even have to start working 8 hours a day :0
{ 6 comments }
Good thinking man. I know a lot of us including myself are re evaluating what it takes to build a large, profitable and scalable network.
Hey Justin
We went for a similar setup when we started out, and it definitely paid off for us. We’ve got 3 poker sites, a bunch of casino sites, and a sports betting site, all branded as “The King” sites. Building the brand is important, as is creating a strong network of sites. I think that if you stay the course with this approach, you won’t be sorry.
You have my email address if you ever want to chat.
http://jobs.problogger.net is a good place to find freelance bloggers – tons of people will write for a blog for reasonable pay – $10-$20 an article seems pretty standard.
Justin,
If you are going to launch a network of sites, you should host them all on seperate I.P. blocks as well. I just opened up an account at SEOHosting.com and it is very reasonable. This will help you leverage them for SEO purposes as well. Knowing you, I imagine you are already on top of this though.
I like the ambition here. Should be cool to see the sports blog go up as well. Don’t forget to add MMA Fighting to the list of topics. You’ll be better of blogging about this when seeking sports bettors than discussing baseball in the off-season.
On the multiple domains I would suggest something like this under ONE domain.
http://football.yourdomain.com
http://ufc.yourdomain.com
Greg, I already run MMABettingBlog.com, so I no use for another MMA site. There’s not enough news and betting events in MMA to have numerous sites for it.
Jeremy, great idea with the IPs. I actually totally forgot about that. I’ll def. set that up when I get my hosting goin.
Thanks everyone for the comments…
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