How Many Residual Income Sites Should You Write At: Splitting Your Eggs Into Different Baskets

You’ve likely heard of the term “don’t put all your eggs into one basket.” Squidoo, Yahoo and Helium members will understand the importance of this phrase when it comes to writing.

When you’re making money online, whether it’s through freelance writing, affiliate marketing or other forms of residual income, you need to open up your opportunities. It’s important to sign up to different sites, and try out different methods of residual income and revenue share. As a writer, you need to try out different revenue share sites and set up your own blogs.

But is there such a thing as having too many baskets? Just how many residual income sites should you write at? How many blogs should you set up to make money from online?

While you want to diversify your income, if you have too many blogs and sites to write at, you spread yourself too thin. You can end up having so many places to write that you don’t add enough content on each one to make money online. Your blogs become dormant and people decide not to check you out anymore. Why should they? You don’t give them up to date or new information.

When you do take on a new site, you need to determine whether you have the time for it. This isn’t about definitely avoiding the site. You need to decide whether now is the right time to add it to your list of residual income sites. The next time you get a new idea for a blog, authority site or niche website, you need to consider your schedule and determine whether you have the time to spend building them up.

You may have eight hours to write every day. That should be enough to tackle multiple residual income sites and blogs each day. However, if your time management is poor, you’re not going to have the time for it all. It’s important to organize yourself and commit to a schedule for posting.

To management multiple blogs and residual income sites, I create a plan every week. I’ll have rough ideas for posts, and set times in the day for all the work I need to do. Not all my hours are taken up with writing. I give myself breathing room for when something goes wrong, because it always does.

This will also depend on the type of content you write. When I was covering history, I would spend hours in research. It was rewarding for me personally, but my time was zapped up quickly. Other topics don’t involve as much in-depth research—and I don’t get sidetracked following the life of someone else!—so it takes less time to research and write an article, blog post or hub.

If you need help improving your time management skills, Michael E. Reese has an excellent book that will help you.

My biggest recommendation is to add new sites slowly. When I started writing online for money, I picked three websites and placed content on them. I built my portfolio to have 100 articles on each, and then added two new residual income sites. I wouldn’t add any new ones until I had a good portfolio on each site. 100 hubs, articles, blog posts...whatever they were called...was enough for me to then focus on another site.

A few of the residual income sites closed down, and I transferred the articles elsewhere. I also decided to start blogs to make money online.

Building up the portfolio means that the content on one site will start earning, while you build up the earnings on another site. You don’t end up spreading yourself so thinly, while splitting your eggs into different baskets.

I recently decided to stop writing at one residual income site. Right now, one article is pulling in a decent amount of money each month (between $5 and $25 per month) but the rest get no views whatsoever. I made the decision that it wasn’t worth spending my time on that site anymore.

It’s important to keep your eye on earnings on the various residual income sites. This will help you find ones that are worth your time and ones that aren’t working out to be great baskets for your eggs. Sure, try different things and try to help the earnings but sometimes they’re just duff baskets. Get out and spend your time elsewhere.

You may be nervous about giving up on a residual income site. That's understandable, especially if you put the hours in. However, it's time to make the most of your content and the most of your time.

In the end, it really depends on you. Some people can managed 30 or 40 residual income sites and blogs easily. Others will struggle with three or four. I decided that having three at least was a good amount to start with. From there, I could build up my baskets, get rid of the bad ones and try out newer ones to see how well they worked.

Think about your own schedule and time management. Consider other events happening in your life and be honest with yourself. The last thing you want to do is stretch yourself too thinly and not make any money online writing.

How many residual income sites can you handle? How many blogs are you able to deal with at one time? For me, I'm managing five blogs and five residual income sites quite easily, especially now that I've built the portfolio up.