The Perils Of Having Multiple Websites & Blogs

Posted by Lea

June 26, 2008

At the last count here at Project Woodward HQ we were the proud owners of 5 active blogs and 10 live websites (almost, we’re about to launch 3 of them).

For me, being a blog & website junkie that’s nothing new and actually not that many but there is one major difference these days…but before I tell you how we do it now, let me tell you how I did it then (and why it was doomed to failure)…

I’d be happily moseying along running a business (usually based on some sort of coaching), then I’d have a great idea for something else that could help or something that was missing so I’d create a new website which helped me sort out in my head how the business would work. Then I’d launch it, attract new clients & customers, get bored of doing it and get another great idea….rinse, repeat, rinse repeat. And the same with blogs…great new idea to blog about something so I started a new blog.

Before I knew it, I had blogs and websites coming out of my ear, hundreds of domain names for each new idea and a bit of a headache when I thought about how many blog posts I was supposed to be writing each week for my own blogs, as well as guest blog stints on blogs like Problogger, Freelance Switch and Vagablogging.

It got to the stage where I realised that I was spending over 80% of my time every week thinking about blogs & websites - what to write, writing, looking for images, drafting posts, editing posts, updating links and the list goes on.

…which would have been fine if they were money-making sites and I was being paid to write/blog/manage them. But I wasn’t and the sites themselves weren’t my actual business.

The crucial thing that I forgot was this…my strategy had never been to create a site that made money in and of itself but to create sites that were tools to promote our business activities.

Yet there I was spending 80% of my time as a slave to these tools when very few of them were the money-earners. They certainly helped generate money by attracting clients but that activity itself didn’t directly generate any income and spending that much time on non-income generating activity didn’t seem to be too smart to me - not when I’d made a resolution to fly business class as of this year and needed the income to pay for it!!

So here’s what we did:

Reviewed each site and decided what it was doing for our business.
Decided which tools we actually needed for our business.
Revised each site to fit with the business requirements and if it didn’t, we ditched it.

These were some of the questions we asked ourselves:

Do we need a site that brings everything together?
What does this site do for our business?
Does it have the potential to generate income?
If we change something in our business, how many sites do we want to have to update?
Is this site an asset or a liability?

The end result?

We now have a stable of sites where each one pulls its weight; no dead-weights and no ‘wait and see if it takes off’ sites. These days each site has a strategy & plan and each site has a specific purpose and role to play. These days I am no longer a slave to my sites, they’re slaves to me. And that’s exactly how it should be!