After several years of buying and selling websites, I came to the conclusion that I needed some sort of sanity check in my portfolio of websites. Far too often I had purchased websites because I got a great deal, and I knew I could resell the site for more. A lot of them I ended up keeping for various reasons, but what I ended up with was a helter-skelter portfolio. I was all over the place, and there were far too few synergies among my portfolio. I’ve been working on fixing it for well over a year.

Five years ago, in 2003, it didn’t matter so much whether you had a focused portfolio. Especially so where organic search optimization was concerned. Interlinking your websites, however unrelated, worked. All you needed was some strong PageRank sites, and you could get pretty much anything off the ground if you planned it out well. It doesn’t work so well anymore.

For most people, who are going to buy one website and make that their sole focus, this won’t matter much. However, if you’re considering buying that second site, third site, and so on, then I’m here to help you keep from making the same mistakes I did. Focus! Focus! Focus!

There are two main ways that you can focus your portfolio. First, you can focus your portfolio by platform. For example, I enjoy working with forums. I know guys who do blogs, and that’s it. A nice portfolio of ecommerce websites could be gold. A portfolio made up of five page content sites built on flat html files could be very easy to manage, if not the most profitable type of sites out there.

Alternatively, you could focus yourself into a specific market niche. We’ll say for example, you’re nuts about slamball. You’re a slamball fanatic. So, your first site is a slamball forum. Your second is an ecommerce site selling slamballs and related products. Then, you’re doing a blog about slamball. Maybe you add a couple of “how-to” type sites with basic instructions and tips. Get the idea?

The benefits you’re going to be able to reap when you follow a well thought out plan are that you’re going to be able to outperform the competition. You’re going to be able to move more quickly than the competition when a site comes up for sale, because you know better what the site is worth and how to take it over and run it successfully. You may even find yourself taking sites before they even come up for public sale.

It does seriously limit the range of sites that you’re going to be buying to keep in your portfolio. For guys like me, who are addicted to the thrill of the deal, there are other outlets that will keep you active in the marketplace. You can always buy sites that are specifically intended to be flips. And, one thing I’ve personally been involved with is helping other people buy websites (what better than to be able to get the thrill of the deal without spending my own money).

In the end, I hope to have a well focused portfolio that make sense and has huge opportunities for synergies across the portfolio. If you’re starting new, do yourself a favor by plotting it out now before you end up with a mish-mash of unrelated sites.

I originally wrote this for the SitePoint Market Watch Newsletter.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0112/p17s01-lifp.html

I’m not sure if that made it into their print edition.

http://www.johnchow.com/the-web-site-revenue-maximizer/

Watch the video too, I think he did a good job of letting everyone know what the book is about.

Thanks John!

Hitting all the Targets

When I founded CoinTalk.org in the fall of 2002, I simply wanted to provide an alternative to the USENET newsgroup that I had been participating in, as an escape to the burgeoning load of spam and trolling that are ubiquitous in an unmoderated newsgroup.  I’m amazed at how far it has come.

In fact, until recently I didn’t really have any plans for it at all.  In fact, in 2004, I even thought of just closing it down because it was becoming more of a pain than anything, and wasn’t catching on fast enough.  Thank God I kept at it.

The community is over 15,000 strong now, and more importantly it’s 15,000 of the right kind of members as well.  We’ve written over 440,000 posts.  Uploaded countless images of coins, both common and rare.  It’s become what most would consider an invaluable resource to numismatists and coin collectors.

My main goals going forward are to increase membership and traffic to the site.  Enabling members to more easily spread the word is the primary tactic.  Also, creating a wider array of resources and tools to allow collectors and numismatists to explore and learn about the hobby is at the top of the goal list.

I’m more optimistic about Coin Talk now than ever, and looking forward to where 2009 will take the community.

I do try to keep up with what new platforms are becoming popular, what’s on the horizon and such.  And, for a practical reason as well.  I’ve mentioned that the platform I use has not evolved with the times, and over the past year I’ve gone from having a portfolio of over a dozen communities on the vBulletin platform now to just three or four.  Three if you count only the ones that have actual communities on them.

Look at all the options available now.  I’ve been looking at Ning, Community Server, Expression Engine, and many others.  I just found one called KickApps today.  I got a start at a new community site with Expression Engine, but then heard about the upcoming new version of EE and decided that I should just wait and get the ball rolling when that is out instead of doing it once and doing it again when the new version comes.

But that presents me with a problem.  After so many years of developing online communities using vBulletin as a platform, my eyes are open to the new possibilities yet there are so many good choices that I’m having trouble settling into one.  I’m comfortable developing with vBulletin, and that provides some drag with making the decision.

What has really been helpful in the past is seeing what others have done before.  What have you built with an online community platform?  When I visit one of the software company websites I usually click around to see if they have a portfolio where they list client sites.  Some do, some don’t, some have just a few listed.  A lot of them just list corporate sites and those don’t fascinate me so much as the ones that individual developers build.  You know, if Coke or Nike is developing an online community there’s millions going into it and the way I see it is that it just has to look good, and if it doesn’t there’s a serious problem there.  But, if the platform can allow for smaller companies or individual developers to build something great, then that’s the kind of platform that gets me excited.

About the Zealot.com Deal

This is one of my longest term projects.  I’ve put a ton of heart and effort into building up this community to where it is today.  As it stands, Zealot.com has over 30,000 members all of whom are very zealous about their hobby.

And what a bumpy road it was.  Along the way there were numerous points when I thought I would loose everything, or ready to just throw in the towel.  Thank goodness I kept with it.  I’m very proud of what I accomplished with Zealot.com and that I didn’t let the community down in the end.

I won’t go into much detail about the transaction, other than to say they paid 50% cash, and the other 50% in equity.  So, I remain involved with Zealot.com, but now there is an incredible support team involved that can do much more than I ever could on my own.

And, that leads to why I choose this time to transact with Zealot.com.  It may have been overdue.  For some time I felt that my technical skills were holding back the community from climbing to the next level.  In fact, if Zealot.com were the only project I had on my plate, I am sure I would not have had to worry about it.  Juggling multiple projects often meant that all of them got second class treatment, and now that’s not a concern anymore for Zealot.com.

http://www.seobook.com/buying-selling-websites

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008078932_webflippers290.html