There is no limit to the number of websites you can start. The bottleneck is how many websites can you manage based on your skill, experience, time, goals & budget.
So today’s post is about a common question that many bloggers and affiliate marketers ask who are at beginner level. “How many websites can I build and manage at a time. This is a very common question. And at some point in your blogging or affiliate marketing journey, you might have thought that you have a successful website or blog which is making you some passive income. And you thought, why not multiply this income. Why not start with a few more websites?
So maybe you try to start a website, or maybe you’re wondering whether starting with three or four sites simultaneously is a good choice or not.
So, today I will share my experience, and maybe it will help you understand how many websites can you realistically handle and manage on your own. 
So as per my experience, There are four things you need to consider. The capability of handling a website depends on five things.
Skills You Own For Running A Website
Let’s talk about skill. So if you are a beginner and you have started with your first site, you are at it for four to six months, and you’re getting a bit of traffic maybe getting a few users every day, or 100 users every day. So you have learned that it is possible to bring traffic to a blog, maybe you’re even earning a few dollars from Google Adsense or Amazon affiliate.
Initially. Many users have a shiny object syndrome. What I mean by shiny object syndrome is that people read on Reddit and Backhatworld and quora, and they get new ideas. And then they start working on this new idea.
Suppose you’re going on Reddit, And someone said why not start a website on “Socks”. It’s a nice niche. You can build a website to sell socks, custom socks. So why not try starting another website that’s on a niche product. You would buy a domain name, buy hosting, and started a website, and start writing. But the thing is, you shouldn’t be creating more than one website in the beginning. When you are a beginner your skill level is at a basic level, and you don’t have the skills to do perfect keyword research, you don’t have the experience that you can gain by running your website for at least one year.
You start two websites at a time. And then your focus will decrease, and it’s hard to manage time and budget on two projects simultaneously.
So, you will be doing keyword research for both & writing content. And that will make it very difficult to progress. It’s like putting your legs into two boats at the same time.
So, if you are a beginner and you’re just started a new site, I wouldn’t suggest starting a new blog with your project.
Apart from that, if you’re an intermediate blogger or affiliate marketer. I will say you can, if you have spent time working on a website that is more than one year old, and it’s making some good profit. And if you have such an experience, then you can start investing your time and money into other projects.
Experience You Have From Previous Projects
So let’s move on to the next point. Experience. What I mean by experience here is that you have a website that has been running for six months, and you’re doing good, and suddenly a new update comes in like the core update came in May 2020.
Many website owners, lost their majority of traffic. And if you are a beginner and you don’t have any experience. Then you might feel discouraged. You will lose traffic and the patience to optimize your site so that it can recover from the core update. And apart from keywords, content writing there are a lot of things that you have to learn. Like you have to learn how to do onpage, you have to do keyword research, and you have to learn how to interlink relevant posts.
So, if you don’t have experience in this field, or you have been at it for less than one year, Then I wouldn’t suggest you to start another website.
Time Available To Dedicate
And the third point is time. These days, the side hustle culture is growing rapidly. As you all know that COVID has cornered many people to work from home, and they are looking at some side projects to earn some passive income.
And that’s a good thing. But the thing is if you work nine to five, for eight hours a day, that’s really hard to find two to three hours for a side project. So, if you think a single website is easy to run, then you are not experienced enough to learn how much time it takes to properly run a website or blog.
A new website takes a lot of time. Although as you get more experience that time will diminish as you learn to delegate tasks to other people and outsource tasks. But in the beginning time constraints may severely limit your ability to serve more than two websites. So think carefully that, do you have the time to dedicate at least two hours daily for your projects. And daily two hours, might not do much.
You have to dedicate at least five hours on weekends. So I would suggest that instead of starting another project you should focus on working on a single website for at least one or one and a half years.
Then you can begin new projects or sites, and you can outsource the work for the other site. By using the money from your first project.
Long Term & Short Term Goals
Another thing you want to look at is, What are your long-term and short-term goals. Suppose you’re in a niche that is very easy to write like you’re making a “jokes” website, which is very easy to make, and you might rank quickly on that niche, and you might make a few bucks, like $100 /month. That’s good. That is a short term, you don’t have a long oversight. There is no plan to scale this website.
So, such a project is good to start with your main website if it doesn’t include any short or long-term goals. Starting a new project as an experiment or earning a few bucks is fine.
Although, if you are planning to create a website that you want to scale as a very large business. You want to become an authority in a niche, and you have a very long-term goal: Like suppose you want to become the largest e-commerce retailer or you want to be an authority like Searchenginejournal is an authority in SEO.
So you want to make a site like that. That kind of project takes time & that kind of project will continue for two years to maybe ten years. So, if you are starting another project. That is attached with a long-term goal, then you can only start it If your first website was in a very easy niche.
Budget To Outsource Tasks
Okay, my opinion is that you have to focus on a single website to succeed at first and yet another factor that is very important is the budget.
If you are earning a good amount of money from your regular job, and you have a good sum of money that you can invest in buying the domain, hosting, and the main thing, creating content and link building. Then you can easily create another site. Because you can outsource the majority of your work. And if you don’t have the budget then I think it’s not possible.
Wrapping Up
So, the conclusion is that running a single website is good. Running two websites is somewhat manageable. And running more than two websites is not going to work unless you are very experienced. And you have the budget to outsource and you have the time to dedicate to projects.
Running one website is good, two websites are difficult and three websites create chaos unless you outsource repetitive work.
So, make this decision wisely. Please consider these points when you’re starting a new project. And, please, stay away from shiny object syndrome.
