As I go through my list of sites trying to rebuild my network from the ground up I keep asking myself: Should I build a lot of sites and try to make a little bit of money off each? Should I try to build a handful of sites and make a decent amount of each? Or should I put all my energy into one site and try to make as much as possible off that one site?

The answer will be different for everybody, especially depending on what you are trying to do. But if you are trying make money publishing web sites my advice would be to do as many sites as you can do well. That number will vary depending on your skills and resources but I think it’s a good idea to diversify your income. You can do that even if you own one site and I highly recommend it. Building one site and trying to take it to it’s full potential has a lot of appeal, but for me one of the problems is that even when I love something I lose interest if it’s all I do. So for me I have two reasons to build more than one site: Diversify my income and Multiple Topics of Interest.

Having one site has certain risks, especially if the site is new. What if your main source of income for the site went away? What if your competition draws away a large portion of your visitors? What if the search engines don’t love your site anymore? On the plus side though, having one site usually lets you stay on top of issues like this. By devoting all your energy to the one site you can have the best content, cultivate strong relationships with other sites and know when your market is shifting and take action accordingly.

My plan, however, is to do 5-10 medium - strong sites. Mainly to try a few new things and see what works and what doesn’t. As I see which sites rise to the top in terms of earnings I’ll focus more on those and either apply what I’ve learned from those sites to my others or if their just niches that don’t perform start culling the heard. My plan is to get to a handful of really strong properties over the next year and only adding new ones when the timing is right or a new niche just can’t be ignored any longer. Of course I’ll probably create 25-50 sites over the next year to try and see what works before I narrow it down to the strongest, but that’s part of the fun.

The hardest part for me is deciding which site to do next. To help I looked at my ideas for new sites and my existing sites. I may end up Refreshing my old sites before I launch new ones. One in particular gets pretty good traffic and just needs some TLC: We Heart Pets. It’s always been well liked and linked to and needs to be updated to my new theme style and fresh content and have a look at how I want to monetize it. I’m still pouring over my notes and I’ll have a plan in place by this weekend so I can get crackin.

Review Back sounds like an excellent idea: I review your site in exchange for you reviewing mine. It’s worked well for John Chow in the past, but with Big Brother, er Google, cracking down on webmasters doing what they can to get links is Review Back in danger of getting sites in trouble like Pay Per Post did? For those who don’t know, Google gave more than a few sites a PageRank 0 for buying reviews through PPP. They’ve even banned PPP from the search engines all together. A few weeks before that Google also hit anyone selling Text Links, especially through the Text Link Ads service with lower PR. Review Back is probably still small enough not to be on the radar but I’m sure Google would probably frown on the idea if not down right denounce it. Don’t confuse my opinion on what Google would do with what I think about the service: I love the idea. I’d love to use it.

There are other services out there like this and I’m not trying to disparage Review Back in any way. As I said, I’d love to use it and think it’s a great idea. I fear I’ve become gun shy of trying things lately because of Google’s extreme smack down on links. Will they target trading links next? Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: Link Building, Review Back

Facebook recently launched a new service called Beacon which tracks, via participating partners, the purchases of it’s members. The partnership seems to be monetized by the posting of recent purchases to “friends” mini-feeds further driving traffic to affiliates. I don’t think very many people want what they are buying being the business of anyone, let alone being broadcast to all their friends without their permissions. Aside from the obvious problems, like spoiling a Christmas surprise present or a more intimate product purchase, this is just plain wrong. They launched the service quietly and made it OPT OUT, meaning you are part of it unless you tell them you don’t want to be. Opt out just isn’t how things are done anymore. We live in a double OPT IN world. You have to ask me if it’s okay and then confirm that I’m the one that said okay.

But this isn’t my only concern with Facebook and them keeping my data “private”. I recently did a Facebook application for a client and during the process I realized that I had access to just about everything in a users profile that visited the application. Most of it’s just fluff data, nothing personal like credit card info, social security number, email address, etc. But my real name is in there and, if I choose to, my political, religious and other affiliations. Someone could use that to target me in a number of ways that I’m not comfortable with. I haven’t seen an option to hide my data from 3rd part applications. I signed up to use Facebook and granted them and my friends access to this data. The odd thing here is that Facebook used to be a completely closed system and now the door has swung way back in the other direction and in my opinion, is playing it loose with their members privacy. I’m not easily spooked by privacy concerns but fir the first time since I’ve been online (1994!) I’m actually considering closing my account with a company due to how lose it is with my personal data.

Facebook could easily fix this by making Beacon opt in and making data captured by 3rd party developers optional in my profile as well. A simple check box for both would be both easy and make me feel pretty safe. I’m not sure I’d trust it to actually work at this point. I guess with rumors that the creator of Facebook stole the code from friends at college make this seem even more shady. Hopefully they’ll be able to solve all these concerns and make everyone happy. I know they need to make money but that’s never an excuse to violate your members privacy. Not ever.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Privacy

I’m trying to decide if I can go to SXSW in March. I had a blast last year but this time I’m paying for it out of pocket which makes it a little bit tougher of a decision. I’m also torn because I’d really like my wife Aeryn to go as well (she’s a blogger, it makes sense!) but it’ll cost more, naturally. While the panels are decent, the real magic at these events is meeting people, hanging out and just soaking in the energy of the thing. Sure, by the last day your ready to get the hell out of dodge but I had a boat load of fun laster time and seeing all the hype about Blog World Expo is making me want to go even more. I hate having missed BWE! I’m going to be there next year for sure.

There’s no doubt it’ll be a good time. But I’m trying to debate if going is the best use of my money and my time. I’m very much in the mode where I want to make my money work for me the best way possible. But I also don’t get to travel much and where I am there isn’t a lot of people in the dot com / web 2.0 type crowd. My pal Steve has offered to let me crash in his hotel (right across from the convention center!) so I’d just need the ticket and and air fair. About $600 ish and then food, which is about like anywhere else. I’d be spending that money anyway. The only travel I’d need would be to/from the airport and that’s not much. If Aeryn goes we’d need our own hotel and while she’s into blogging, and I know she’d have a blast at the parties, I don’t know that meeting a bunch of web geeks is exactly her thing.

So, I need to decide if I’m going and if I’m going to take Aeryn. Anyone else out there going to SXSW?

Technorati Tags: SXSW, Blog World Expo

• Eliminating duplicate WordPress content in Google
  Some great tips on optimizing Wordpress from Google’s own Matt Cutts
• Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers
• How to Email a Stranger
  Great tips. Read them and learn them, especially if you plan on emailing anyone regarding a product or your site.
• How to tell if a web page sucks
  lol. Too funny.
• How I Make Money Blogging
  Always good to read how Darren’s making his moola.
• WordPress Hacking Increasing?
  Better get on that.
• Changes to AdSense ad clickable areas means likely lower CTR & eCPM
  Is Google TRYING to alienate webmasters? They seem to be doing a bang up job lately.
• How to mount a power strip (and power bricks) under your desk
  I’m going to have to do this. I hate wires everywhere.
• Is everything you know written down somewhere?
  I carry a notepad with me everywhere and I’m still trying to get better about writing everything down.

I was reading this weeks copy of Entertainment Weekly and they did a feater on the Writers’ Strike. One of the major issues the writers want resolved is residuals and compensation for their content used on the Internet. The last strike like this was back in 1988 if I remember right and lasted several months. The lasting effects were years of recovery for the TV and Movie business. Don’t get me started on the fact that it created the whole reality TV genre. But when TV shows started going to re-runs people found other things to do. Many shows, especially ones struggling to get their legs under them never recovered from the strike. Entertainment Weekly suggested that there’s an alternative now that people didn’t have before: the Internet. The irony is that this could be the catalyst that pushes the Internet ahead of TV.

To be honest, I’m hoping for a prolonged strike. Don’t get me wrong, I love TV but I make my living on the Internet. And I’m just curious to see what effect this will have. Will advertisers starving for eyeballs spend more online during and after the strike while theres little or not content on TV? We won’t know for sure what kind of effect this will have until January or February when scripts for popular shows finally run out. Daily shows will be the first to suffer, but they should all have troubles come the beginning of 2008. If the strike lasts more than say, 2-3 months it could literally be the end of new TV until next year. Even then it’ll have trouble rebounding.

My advice to the rest of you web publishers out there and that’s get ready for a surge in Internet usage in early 2008 or even sooner. Take advantage and capture some of that traffic and turn it into loyal readers. I’m going to give it my best shot.

Technorati Tags: Writers Strike, Web Publishing, Traffic