Should you start another site?

How many times have you gotten an idea and thought you should take what knowledge you’ve gained and start another site? If you’re like me and you continually renew domain names just because you have a good idea for them, you know what I’m talking about. So many ideas, so little time.

The question is should you start a second site?  I believe the answer can be derived quite easily.  So let’s talk about the pro’s and con’s as it pertains to branching out and starting anew.

Another Fork in the Road

Work Load

It’s not easy building a website that makes money and is profitable. It’s not hard to drive traffic to one coupon, one affiliate deal, one promotion or even a monetized lead capture page.  In fact there have been cases where people made money on their very first tweet.  But that’s not a business.

A profitable website is one where you’re making more money than if you were to have spent your time working elsewhere. If you would make more money as a clerk at Walgreens,  I would submit that  you’re losing money working online.

But that’s not necessarily bad.

The question is how long must you be “building” your business before you reach the profitable point? And what amount of content, links, pins, videos and tweets will get you there the quickest?

Let’s use some math as an example (oh no! not Math!!!):

For the purpose of this example, let’s say it takes 500 hours of work to make a profitable website from scratch. If you have 20 hours/week to work on your site it would take approximately 25 weeks of work to get there. Make sense?

What happens to that time if you add a second site? Even if it is in the same general niche, you become less efficient. If you divide your time up evenly, it now takes at least 50 hours of work to get there. But being less efficient, I would say that it will take a bit longer.

Can you afford to not be profitable for that period of time? Do you have the stamina to continually be encouraged throughout the duration? And will you get burnt out without seeing the joys of good income sooner?

Family Sacrifices

Do you consider your family’s sacrifice when you’re spending time on your business? Every moment you toil away is a moment away from helping your kids with flash cards, spending time with your spouse, or making your home a more wonderful place. And every moment they spend without you, they are agreeing to the sacrifice and are equally dependent on its rewards.

Think of them when you’re considering starting a second site. Will you and your family’s sacrifice be better spent on a new idea or diligently working to make your current site profitable?

Expert Status

Much of what you bring to the table is bound up in your expert status. Some would call it your brand, others your reputation. But it all boils down to whether people perceive you as the expert or not.

Once your expert status is known around the world, doors open up. Rarely do large organizations hire non-experts to speak. Rarely does CNN interview generalists on a topic. And rarely do the big brands ask weekend hobbyists to be their spokespersons.

Are you that expert now? If not, can you afford to divert your attention to something else while you become that?

If your new idea doesn’t directly tie to your current site, enhance your brand or reputation in your field, should you really take on the burden? Think of Bob Villa, the home repair expert. If Bob Villa were to start something new, should he take on the role of Dancing with the Stars host? Or do you think his empire would benefit by becoming the host of Extreme Home Makeover?

Empire Building

That leads me to the overall empire. If you currently run a wedding site and are thinking about starting a Bahamas Travel site, will you be building an empire?  Will you be able to cross sell the two sites? If you develop a good relationship in the wedding niche, will you be able to email that to your Bahamas list?

This idea you have should both support and be supported by your current site. In building your list, your relationships and your cheerleaders do you really want to start from scratch on idea #2?

Remember Grey’s Anatomy and the TV spinoff Private Practice? Can you sense the synergy that came from moving one audience to the next?  Do you think they would have received funding if they had proposed a car racing spinoff show? Probably not – the built in synergistic empire is not there.

Some people suggest that once your site has become profitable that you first clone yourself in that niche before branching out. That idea makes a lot of sense but for me doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. However there is definitely rewards to be reaped when you rank #1 and #2  for your keywords with two different sites.  You truly do have an empire then.

If you’re at the  point where you really just want to start something new, write a book. There’s a ton of credibility provided by a book. Your audience will love you. You’ll have a new product from which to derive income and you’ll have reached a new rung on your Empire ladder.

Podcasters will tell you differently as I learned at BlogWorldExpo. If you’re interested in their opinion, read this post.

Dan R Morris is the founder of LettersFromDan.com, a website dedicated to improving your revenue stream from online efforts. Dan is an infomercial producer, niche website owner, product developer, author and Mastermind leader. Dan actively encourages marketers to take that extra step so that “Hope” doesn’t become the marketing plan.

(Photo Credit: Ali Shevlin)

This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. Lauren

    Great post as always Dan. I started a second site and it lasted 3 months. I felt my brain was too divided and all I wanted to do was to put my newest posts content on my older post because I knew it would get more weight via SEO and make more money. I decided to take my second site down, and it’s been so freeing!

    I should have just set up a seperate category, sub-site, or tag within my big site to support the newer idea. With it’s own newsletter, sidebar etc. I could have used this post about a year and a half ago.

  2. Dan R Morris

    If you are going to write a book, which is fantastic if you do, start by writing a completely crazy outline. Include everything you would ever think of in your book.

    You could then turn that “outline” into an editorial calendar that includes blog posts, teleseminar transcriptions, articles, etc. . . If you cross things off as you go, you could write your entire book WHILE serving your audience. Just put them all together at the end and you’re done!

  3. Dan R Morris

    I’m glad our mastermind group is useful. :)

    I agree that one site concept could be hard to be “in-love” with forever. My thought is think through how much easier it will be to start a second site if you can leverage what you built in the first.

    A great XBox video game tutorial site probably can’t be leveraged very well if you suddenly want to build a Flowers of Western Australia site. My question would be do you love it so much you really want to start from scratch?

  4. Dan R Morris

    I think most people don’t consider how much a slave they can become to the concept of their site. Sites where you have to update every hour or every day are almost harder than working for someone else in a day job.

    Choosing a site concept that is timeless, doesn’t require constant updates and is fun is my ultimate desire for sure. Sounds like you may have picked a winner.

  5. Ashley - Embracing Beauty

    This is all fantastic advice. Thank you! I really need to sit down and work on that book!

  6. I recently made the decision to start a new blog. My niche was over saturated and keeping it updated as frequently as it needed to be was a huge time suck. I made the decision to sell my blog and start a new niche area. So glad that I did. This new blog doesn’t require me to blog hourly or even daily, so I can still do what I love but on my terms!

  7. Sharyn Sheldon

    Hey there Dan! Just caught this post now that I found Crystal’s blog through your ever-informative mastermind group.

    Starting a second (or third or fourth…) site is always at the back of my mind. Especially when you have lots of different interests, it’s hard to imagine just working on one forever. That’s why it’s great to have something that can be diversified a bit to keep things interesting, but build on what you have at the same time. However, I’m definitely focusing on really building up one before expanding to another site.

    Love the book idea . I’ll have to keep that in the back of my mind too!

    – Sharyn

  8. Dan R Morris

    Thanks, Sami.

    It’s so exciting to start something new, isn’t it? I think Shiny Button Syndrome is powerful.

  9. Sami Cone

    Great post, Dan – all the advice I’ve been gleaning from you in one, neatly wrapped package ;)

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