There have been many debates on whether setting up one huge content site is better than many small sites. While the two camps are arguing the benefits and wisdom in their logic, one thing is sure, they are actually making money.

Some say having a huge site is much better for monetization in the long run. I do not disagree here; in fact they are right about having a huge site and to me it’s better business sense. The returns are better and you can focus on one thing at a time. Having many sites will distract you and make you lose focus from making sure your sites are a success. Well, I also do not disagree with that as I have been through this path and I understand there will be a limit to how much things human beings can focus on and multi-task.

Others will advocate setting up many sites. Their reasoning is very simple, imagine if each site earns you $5 a day and you have 50 sites and that equates to $250 a day. Not a bad figures by any means, multiply that by 30 days and you get $7500, an income by no means inferior to a mid level executive. In my country, that’s over 5 figures in today’s exchange rate. Also, small sites are easier and much faster to set up as compared to a huge site.

I have done an experiment on one of my sites using Google Adsense as a monetization method. The test was done over a period of 7 days and to my surprise clocked an average of $6 a day in Google Adsense earnings over that 7 days period. During my highest grossing day, I hit about $9 in earnings. What I do during that test period is just simply write an article each day and manually submit them to various social bookmarking sites. Time spent is just about an hour to two a day. My conclusion from this experiment is that it’s possible to make $5 or more from a single site each day. However, if you asked me to set up 50 sites and maintain them, well I’m not too sure about that.

The key in monetizing small sites is through automating these sites and make them run on auto pilot. But please take note that a lot of small sites are actually dependent on Google Adsense for monetization, whereas there are many more ways that you can monetize and make money from a huge site.

While I have not yet reach the stage to judge the outcome of both opinions, but my personal opinion is to go for both. While you are setting and building up one huge content site, you can also set up many small sites to supplement your income. This is survival my friend! Maybe I should start off with 10 sites or so first instead of being so greedy. Mmm! I will definitely be working on this direction in the near future!

P.S I did not mention Adsense arbitrage here as you need to spend money on PPC (Pay Per Click) to drive traffic to your site. I advocate using free methods till you are making some good money to explore other paid traffic methods.