Earning a Passive Income from your Blog

[billbenson]

I think the affiliate guys that make a lot of money have a lot of sites. Just managing what you have, even if you can farm a lot of the work out, takes time. Lets say you have spent a number of years building 100 sites that make $500 per month each on average. With that much time into it thats your kid so to speak. And that scenario isn't unreasonable.

You can, however, put site down and other alarms on your sites and take a month off doing very little work.

[vangogh]

I'm not sure that's true. I think you're thinking about a certain kind of affiliate site. For example I'd bet Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame makes a good deal of his money through affiliate sales. As far as I know he runs 3 sites. All very popular of course, and perhaps he has more than 3. It's not hundreds though. He built high quality sites and over time has been able to pull a lot of traffic to each.

Granted most of us are never going to build the following Darren Rowse has, but it is possible.

Also if you run 10 sites each making $500 a month that's a total of $5,000 a month or $60,000 a year. That's not bad for running 10 affiliate sites.

[billbenson]

And I was using $500 per month as a very doable figure. I suspect a well done site with some aging could do much better than that. I've heard of people making $250K per month on an adwords site. I'm sure it happens, but I wouldn't put that kind of number in my business plan

The 100 site approach is just one business model. The people I know that are making a good sum of money, are always building new sites. I think it actually is a case of throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. If you end up with one site that is really going well, go for it.

On edit; one other reason to keep building new sites is testing. Testing affiliates, designs, strategies, etc.

[vangogh]

I think it actually is a case of throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

True. You may have to build 50 sites to get 10 that make decent money. The thing is if done right I think you could have a lot of sites that take very little time if any to maintain. And much of what you do to maintain one site might be be duplicated across sites. For example say most of your sites are on WordPress and you need to update the version for all of them. There are tools or you could write your own scripts to log into all your sites and update them all. Then you could run another script to check and make sure they're all up and running. It might only be a few minutes of work on your part assuming things went well.

[billbenson]

And if the other 40 at least pay for hosting and registration, maybe they turn into something down the road.

[orion_joel]

I think a part of the reason Affiliate marketers would continue to make new sites would to some extent lie in the position that not everything is always in demand.

Something that will kind of put it in perspective for Darren Rowse of Problogger. is that Problogger has over 5,000 posts. Which includes quite a number of really detailed posts. Maybe they have not all been written by Darren himself, as he has guest posts as well. But it is still quite an achievement, the time and dedication put into creating that is worth i am sure every cent that he gets from it. But this is where the different between him having just 3 (or whatever he has) and an affiliate marketer that may have 100+ sites. The affiliate marketer probably is lucky if he has 50 pages on a site, and probably not anywhere near as detailed in some cases as most of Darren's content.

The work is probably the same but it is how you focus your time and attention, as to if you end up with 3 high profile content rich sites, or 100+ sites that make there break even or more month.

[eborg9]

I think a part of the reason Affiliate marketers would continue to make new sites would to some extent lie in the position that not everything is always in demand.

Something that will kind of put it in perspective for Darren Rowse of Problogger. is that Problogger has over 5,000 posts. Which includes quite a number of really detailed posts. Maybe they have not all been written by Darren himself, as he has guest posts as well. But it is still quite an achievement, the time and dedication put into creating that is worth i am sure every cent that he gets from it. But this is where the different between him having just 3 (or whatever he has) and an affiliate marketer that may have 100+ sites. The affiliate marketer probably is lucky if he has 50 pages on a site, and probably not anywhere near as detailed in some cases as most of Darren's content.

The work is probably the same but it is how you focus your time and attention, as to if you end up with 3 high profile content rich sites, or 100+ sites that make there break even or more month.

You have to have multiple sites. It is very difficult, unless you own a great domain like "Cars" or "Flowers" .com, or have a large ad and marketing budget to utilize TV, to make it off of one site.
Not only that, you need to be diversified. A hot site this quarter can take a nose dive the next, or competition can catch up to you and sales take a dip.
There are always going to be a few sites that are steady money makers, but the prospect of relying on one site is too scary for me. Anything could happen to that site, or the program that it is attached to could change the rules, or commission rates.

It is totally possible to get a hit site. Sometimes a site will just take off. You do everything the same as the others and you can have one that you just have no idea why it's more popular than the others and why it converts well...those you try and recreate as much as possible, but sometimes you'll get a boost from an unexpected link, mention in an article, or a news story that just fell in your lap and you just happen to be there to reap the rewards. The best thing that can happen to you is a news cycle will use terminology that matches a domain you already have...rare...but totally possible if you chose domains wisely.

We have all seen sites that are really nothing special design wise, but are wildly popular.

I have a bunch of sites that I know have potential, but haven't given 100% yet, and some that will never be more than $20 a month, and some that were just bad ideas. At least with the bad ideas, when I let them go, or don't renew the domains, I always have more sites on the assembly line so I'm not lost, starting from total scratch when something doesn't work out.

[billbenson]

The affiliate marketer probably is lucky if he has 50 pages on a site, and probably not anywhere near as detailed in some cases as most of Darren's content.

The affiliate site builders I know shoot for at least 100 pages of good content. They aren't tossing up small sites. And they aren't blogs either, although there is a trend to add blogs to the portfolio.

[eborg9]

The affiliate site builders I know shoot for at least 100 pages of good content. They aren't tossing up small sites. And they aren't blogs either, although there is a trend to add blogs to the portfolio.

It can go both ways. You can make good money from a well designed landing page (one page), with the right product and decent SEO.
The goal is to get them to click through to the sales page, or the action page.
If it takes 300 pages of content to do that , then that's what you have to do.
If it only takes one page, and a video, then that's the ticket.

There is not really a rule. Some loan and mortgage sites are nothing more than affiliates, yet are filled with information, regulations, calculators, videos, Government Feeds, scrolling interest rates...the whole kit and caboodle.
And some people have a good traffic on a niche blog and can do well with a simple text link.

Travel agents are a good example of affiliates that spend a lot of money on presentation, and yet have had to re adjust to catch up to online affiliates with snazzy domains and good designs that spend only a portion on presentation.

For every affiliate site with hundreds of pages of content, I can show you an affiliate site with very few pages of content that make the same amount or more money...barring companies that have huge advertising and media budgets.
Just depends on the product, the commission scale and the marketing.

Until recently, people were making thousands without a website. Just a snazzy domain, a redirect with a marketing campaign.
Most affiliates have outlawed that now.
There is more than one way to skin a cat online.

[billbenson]

Interesting eborg, and thanks.

I think this is one you have to do to figure it out. Not a surprise!