How Many Sites Can 1 person Handle?

[formanllc]

I have been trying to manage my time like everyone and wanted to know from the 'One Man Shops' out there on how many websites you can handle on your own? 2..or 10?

 

[antropy]

Surely it depends on lots of things such as how many products you have, how often your prices are updated, the volume you sell, whether or not you're sending out your products yourself or whether you're drop-shipping...

 

[Paul_Rosser]

As paul says, depends on the volume of sales.

If you have 1 site doing 1000 sales a week this will be roughly the same workload as 10 sites doing 100 sales.

 

[technician27]

depends how many products you have on your site and category and also depends on how much time you want to spend on SEO. If you are doing all the work inc web design seo etc no more than 2 but i prefer 1 website and spend more time on it for design and SEO myself.

 

[profitmagnet]

You can handle maximum 2 websites full time imo. But if you outsource the tedious boring job to VA then it can be raised to 4-5 not more than that.

 

[SamuraiTrader]

If you are building niche websites you could easily handle 100 or more, assuming you outsource a few small tasks here and there.

The reason why is because done properly each site takes only a certain amount of time to set up, optimize, and rank. After that it can run on auto-pilot for many months while still bringing in money. The only task would be to occasionally check your rank and give a little bump if needed.

Of course doing the above requires that you have a system in place and know precisely what you are doing. It's all rather simple when you have it down but it's not easy to get to that point.

Now if you mean websites/blogs that require constant daily updates then yeah, I wouldn't be looking at doing more than two or maybe three at a time.

 

[OliviaSSLGuru]

I have been trying to manage my time like everyone and wanted to know from the 'One Man Shops' out there on how many websites you can handle on your own? 2..or 10?

It depends on strength of man, knowledge, and the situation, but personally, let me tell you that i m handling 4 to 7 web sites.

 

[Toni Toni]

I agree. It all depends on what your capable of and the capacity of the website shop! I think in reality the most you can probably manage is three average sized shops?

 

[puresilva]

It's an interesting question, because if you can repeat success across various niches, then you're protecting yourself if one particular niche suffers a downturn or if a site gets whacked by Google (be it your fault or not your fault) - it's good to have contingency when selling online.

I'd rather make £100K per year from 10 sites, than £100K per year from 1 site. With the former scenario, you have protection if one site suffers, but also you likely have a lot of potential for growth too across the various sites you sell from. Or in other words, do not put all your eggs in one basket if you can help it.

As to scaling up, you should sort your tasks into ones only you can do (i.e. critical tasks, tasks that may require expertise or ultimately TRUST), and menial tasks. You can outsource the menial tasks on sites like odesk.com. Hiring people can be a pain - they may not do the job right, they may require training, they may leave - but if you can eventually find trustworthy, reliable workers, you can scale up.

 

[Raging Bull]

It's an interesting question, because if you can repeat success across various niches, then you're protecting yourself if one particular niche suffers a downturn or if a site gets whacked by Google (be it your fault or not your fault) - it's good to have contingency when selling online.

I'd rather make £100K per year from 10 sites, than £100K per year from 1 site. With the former scenario, you have protection if one site suffers, but also you likely have a lot of potential for growth too across the various sites you sell from. Or in other words, do not put all your eggs in one basket if you can help it.

As to scaling up, you should sort your tasks into ones only you can do (i.e. critical tasks, tasks that may require expertise or ultimately TRUST), and menial tasks. You can outsource the menial tasks on sites like odesk.com. Hiring people can be a pain - they may not do the job right, they may require training, they may leave - but if you can eventually find trustworthy, reliable workers, you can scale up.

What do you mean whacked by google, taken down?

If so, why would they do this?

 

[puresilva]

What do you mean whacked by google, taken down?

If so, why would they do this?

I mean hit by one of their algo updates and you rank lower. Many sites overly rely on Google for traffic so any change they make to their algorithm can severely affect your business if you do over-rely on traffic from their organic listings.

 

[toshyte]

From personal experience I would say one. For all online shops that I have created I have done set-up, text writing, pictures and all other stuff all by myself. Now I am at the point where I run only one website and concentrate all my knowledge on SEO for one website.

 

[SamuraiTrader]

He likely means the infamous "Google Slap". Basically Google updates their algorithm for ranking sites continually and makes major changes occasionally. A couple recent ones are known as Panda and Penguin.

When these major changes hit it can cause massive changes in rankings even for well established sites either up or down because they now have alerted Google on some new criteria.

For example, Penguin put in some big changes to the type and quantity of links it likes to see for a website to look "naturally built". Some big sites who had bad SEO done were basically crushed by this update and had their sites unranked until they fixed their old links.

So by having 10 sites instead of 1 you can help minimize the risk of getting a massive traffic hit by a Google algorithm change since it would be unlikely to hurt more than a couple sites at once.

 

[jackjame]

depends how many products you have on your site and category and also depends on how much time you want to spend on SEO. If you are doing all the work inc web design seo etc no more than 2 but i prefer 1 website and spend more time on it for design and SEO myself.

 

[D.Wakefield]

Build one domain, one site, and one brand only. Consistently improve and refine. I learned the lessons the hard way. Focusing on multiple sites is not focusing at all. You will soon get tired yet none of them gets anywhere substantial.

You will be doomed with linear growth but never get to exponential growth by which the business grows itself. Billionaires become what they become by one business that is the best, not more.

 

[anna stacy]

I have been trying to manage my time like everyone and wanted to know from the 'One Man Shops' out there on how many websites you can handle on your own? 2..or 10?

Its a debatable question, as it depends upon many factors like what are the level of sites which you are supposed to manage?
How many keywords you are targeting.
What is the competition of those keywords.
Who are your competitors and how long they are working in the same niche.
Personally i believe that a person should focus on only one site, so that he can work properly in one dimension. Even In extreme cases you should not go for more than 2 sites.
Thanks