Don’t Put All Your Eggs In 1 Basket - Bad Advice for Affiliates

[Linda Buquet]

Do you find yourself so scattered on numerous projects you aren't having success with any of them?

Or are you just getting started and wondering whether to diversify and start a bunch of mini sites or to just focus on one niche?

Gyutae Park of Winning the Web just wrote an EXCELLENT post that you need to read if you feel like you aren't as focused and effective as you could be. Be sure to see the screenshots that show the success level of working on 3 sites at once vs starting one at a time!

“Don’t Put Your Eggs In One Basket” is Bad Advice for Internet Marketers

"However, that’s not what I want to talk about in today’s post. Instead, I want to discuss a big misconception about the phrase, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” that a lot of Internet entrepreneurs have. What am I talking about?

A lot of smaller Internet entrepreneurs hear the advice about diversification and incorrectly apply it to their time and attention - something that they simply cannot afford to do. They go into a variety of different web projects at the same time in hopes of making money (e.g. PPC affiliate marketing, blogging, membership sites, consulting, and SEO). In essence, they spread themselves too thin and never get to the point of seeing success. Is this you?

The problem with diversification for Internet entrepreneurs just getting started is that time and attention are extremely limited. Without money to outsource common tasks, these people try to do everything themselves working on multiple projects - a recipe for failure."

Read the rest and check out those screenshots.

I commented on his blog: I try to explain this to affiliates all the time and advise to carefully research then pick ONE site to start on. After you get it to critical mass, start getting decent traffic and some sales MAYBE branch out. There is something to be said for diversification - BUT with planning and focus and with a one at a time strategy.

But I see so many start with this scatter gun approach. They are all over the place and wonder why they never get anywhere.

At any rate I’ll be linking to this post every time I get affiliates at my forum who start getting too scattered.

[undoIT]

Hi Linda. I absolutely agree. In my experience, once the aha moment comes for a website idea that could potentially earn some money, it is important to be diligent and focused on that idea, to bring it to a certain level of fruition. Then, when it is earning solid income or bringing in a good amount of traffic, it is okay to start branching out to new projects. There will be more time and resources, and less stress. Otherwise, it is too easy to get spread thin and end up not getting any results after having wasted a lot of time. It is a huge amount of work to build a successful website, and most beginners probably don't realize what they are getting themselves into.

Foresight and a fair amount of time spent analyzing whether there is earning potential, what the obstacles are and whether an idea will actually work is important before getting started. Even if the website doesn't succeed financially, you benefit from the learning experience and can apply the skills / knowledge gained to another idea. That in itself is a success.

[mikedelong]

Very true. The main reason is most of the internet marketers are only a 1-man team.( Thats what we want anyway, no staff, no office)!

Manpower are tight and thus time should only be spent on the potential lucrative project. Or until you are outsourcing.

With so many competitors online, you need to be the best to garner the most attention and profits.

I don't know for you. I feel that Humans are designed to focus on one task at one time. This is where the power of focus comes in and creates tremendous results at the shortest time.

Unfortunately, most cannot focus on one project. They are always looking in left and right for the next money making project.

Thus Focus everything you have on one project and you will have already beaten 95% of the competition.

[James Martell]

This is a topic that rings near and dear to my heart. I can't tell you how many times I have heard someone say "...my next website is going to be about..." when there first one is far from complete or profitable.

I think when I am elected king , I am going to allow everyone only one website. Doing this will allow everyone, myself included, to focus 100% of our energies on one website. What a different outcome it would be for all.

I was looking at a thread I was involved in almost two years ago on a similar topic " How to Start - when to Quit Day Job". I could add to the 10 points listed dramatically now that web 2.0 is in full swing.

11. Twitter

12. FaceBook/MySpace

13. YouTube/Viddler

etc, etc...

It is such a new era. The old micro site model needs to be put out of it's misery. Personally, I am down to working on only a handful of websites, and I am still pruning. I am finding it is so much easier and much more profitable to focus my efforts.

If I was starting over as a brand new affiliate just starting out ...I would work and focus on one website.

Here's an interesting question: How many websites does the Markus Frind, the $10,000,000 affiliate have...ONE.

James

PS - The "put all your eggs in one basket" comes from a famous quote: Concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket... Carnegie, Andrew (America's first billionaire)

[Linda Buquet]

I agree James. I often quote your line when you talked about:
if you could start over you would have one site - just one.

[Bryan Zimmerman]

Originally Posted by James Martell

I think when I am elected king , I am going to allow everyone only one website. Doing this will allow everyone, myself included, to focus 100% of our energies on one website. What a different outcome it would be for all.

PS - The "put all your eggs in one basket" comes from a famous quote: Concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket... Carnegie, Andrew (America's first billionaire)

I'm going to disagree with this. This is not directed at you, but just the whole idea in general. I think people are crazy for putting all their eggs in one basket! For a beginning marketer I think it is the worst thing you can do. I think one of the big reasons many new marketers get frustrated and give up on internet marketing is because they don't see any results. Here is an example that happens ALL the time.

A new marketer comes in and is all gung ho and ready to work. They spend their time researching a niche (which for new marketers, they always wind up most of the time getting into either "make money from home" or "weightloss") building a web page, blog, squidoo, or hubpage....or all four, submitting rss feeds, writing articles, blog commenting and everything else they are told to do. For weeks if not a month they bust their butt to try and make some money but nothing happens. No money, no new motivation no nothing. Maybe if they are lucky, they make a sale or two. But most times it's nothing.

How can new marketers be told to put all their eggs in one basket before they know the basket is worth a crap to begin with. I know from experiance that trying to make money from weightloss or "make money online" is very very difficult for newbie's. Those two niches are so competitive, if you do not really know what you are doing you will make nothing! But those two are usually the two that most new marketers pick to try out.

I would suggest BEFORE you build your "basket" you need to take some time and find out what is going to SELL FIRST! Pick 3 or 4 different products and write 3 articles per day for each one. If you cannot do that then write 1 a day for them. Through some links around Yahoo Answers, build a quick squidoo page and submit the rss feed. What you need to do is test, test, test. Once you have gotten a good amount of hops (700) through your affilate link, you will have a good idea if a product is going to be profitable or not. If you have not made a sale after 700 hops I would dump the product. I would like a product that sells at about 1-60. Even 1-100 I could live with. Most of the weight loss products, if not all of them, don't convert worth a crap. If your doing adwords then that is a whole different ball game. But if you are building virtual realestate then it's going to be tough.

Then and only then would I say to begin putting your eggs in the basket.

I think lack of results is the one thing that makes more newbies give up and quit than anything else. At least if you are testing out different niches by writing articles that go to a landing page, you have 3 or 4 more opportunities to make sales than if you just go with one. What if you get lucky and find 2 products out of the four that sell really well? Thats great. While your building your site around one, continue writing articles to them both. What if all four of them fail? If they do, at that point i'm going to be glad that i did not spend a lot of time building this vast virtual real estate that is not going to make me any money.

Just my opinion. But I've been pretty successful by doing exactly the opposite.

[ajcones]

Ouch!!! It hurts me. Thanks for the great advice. Yes, it's true. Before, I had only 3 sites in which I got a decent income, but when I started to add them and now it reached to 20+ sites, my earnings will decresed too. The simple reason is, I can no longer managed all the sites and I can no longer promote it.

Again, thanks for this great advice.

[Meanna Blog]

So how do you work out the best niche to be in?

[thehotspotguide]

Great advice but how do you know that the one site that you have chosen was the best decision like Meanna Blog said.

[Linda Buquet]

Originally Posted by Meanna Blog

So how do you work out the best niche to be in?

Originally Posted by thehotspotguide

Great advice but how do you know that the one site that you have chosen was the best decision like Meanna Blog said.

You can start off by reading the stickies in our Niche Marketing Forum.

1st read "How to Pick Your 1st Niche"
2nd read "How to do Niche Keyword Research"