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I’ll be the first to admit that when I started trying to make money online, I was looking for the easy way out. Sure, I liked building websites, but I didn’t really have any interest (other than making money) in seeing those websites flourish. I would put the effort into building them, but when it came time to continually add value, I fell short. If you want a successful website, you must work hard at it. This is easy for hobbyists, but not so easy for us internet marketers.

One Website At A Time

If you want to develop websites for a living, you must remain focused. It’s very difficult to divide your time between two or more websites and still put the amount of effort required into each of them. I’m not saying you can’t have side projects (like niche blogs) or hobby projects (like this blog), but you must try focusing on one real project at a time.

There are so many processes involved with building a popular website that you can easily become bored or burnt out if you are doing them for more than one website at a time. Here are a few examples of tasks that need to be done on a regular basis:

• Continuous stream of unique and high-quality content
• Constant networking with related sites
• Daily link building efforts
• Efforts to generate press and media coverage
• Well-executed link baiting campaigns
• Direct advertiser relations and management
• Searching for and training volunteer staff members
• Building multiple features to offer a full experience

Each of those things can be done half-assed, but to really create a successful website, you need put everything you have into doing them better than anyone else. Your site isn’t going to grow exponentially if doesn’t give visitors a compelling reason to write about it, tell their friends about it, or even visit it again.

When Can A Serial Internet Marketer Build More Sites?

This is something I have been thinking about lately, partly because I want to build more authority websites and partly because I still want to be lazy and let them run on autopilot. You should only shift your focus away from one site, and onto another, when one of the following two criteria are met:

1. You become bored and/or realize you can’t make it a success
2. You build an income stream that is adequate enough to hire help

Lets discuss those two options in detail.

Giving Up

Decision number one should not be taken lightly. It is all too easy to become bored or discouraged with your efforts and ditch the project prematurely. You will go through times when it seems like no one is coming to your website, you feel like you can’t make it, and you don’t notice any growth… but you need to fight through it.

One great way to combat this is to not place any ads on the site and not expect to make any money from it until you have reached a certain daily visitors goal. Nothing is more discouraging than throwing up generic ads and then watching your site make 10 cents per day. Instead of focusing on the monetary goals and benefits, focus on building your traffic and on improving the website. Make a marketing calendar with actionable goals to help you with this.

Hiring Help

If you’ve read a few my articles on this blog, you probably know that I am a big advocate of outsourcing. This should be your main goal for any website you start with the intent to grow your business. If you become good at getting websites started, you can hire paid staff to keep the momentum going.

The trick here is to hire people that are interested in the website. This means that they enjoy the topic, are happy working on the website, and have direct incentives to improve the well-being of the website. I would highly recommend picking up a book on “human resource management” or “organizational behavior” to help you better understand how to create an excellent working situation for your staff. Hopefully they will be raving about working for you just as Googlers are rave about working at the Googleplex.

Hiring staff to take over your website is a lot different than simply hiring content writers. You need to hire someone who has experience running and promoting websites, so don’t expect them to come cheap.

Again, to find the right person, you should look for someone who is passionate about the topic. Offer them a decent salary ($500-$1000 per month) plus performance incentives (all revenue from certain ad spots) and they will be a happy camper. Believe me, there are tons of people out there who never would have thought they could get paid for their hobby.

Rinse and Repeat

The term “rinse and repeat” is used very loosely here. This isn’t a process that you can repeat once a month. In order to build a largely successful website, you will need to put a ton of effort into it. Once you turn it into a profitable business, however, you can hand the workload to someone else so that you can begin working on your next great website.

If you are trying (and struggling) to make money online, try working really hard on only one thing. If you aren’t interested in building authority content sites, work diligently on creating hundreds of affiliate promotions (PPC or SEO). Whatever it is you choose to focus on, make sure you put the majority of your efforts into it. Treat it like a full-time job and you will eventually be able to reap the rewards.