ok so I have been thinking about starting my own private blog network and building it up over the next 3+ years or so. It would ideally consist of 200+ sites all with quality content, no spun shit. What would be the best way to host something like this?
I can get hosting for around $3 per month so x 200 that would cost $600 per month which is not too bad but then I would need to find 200 hosting companies, which i am sure there are that many available but managing them becomes a pain.
sorry if you have covered this above but its a bit too tech for me.
It would be a lot to manage that many hosting accounts.
The question is: do they all need to be on separate ip/hosting accounts.
Lets say they all link to the same place, e.g. a money page. Ideally it would look natural, if all the links came from all over the place. But if you look at reality, you'll find that there are going to be network locations (hosts), which host lots of sites that are all pointing to the same location.
A good example is internet marketers who recommend say: host gator, dream host etc. and those that do their hosting there. Those hosts have a ton of sites which are likely to be pointing at the same sites/pages.
Having a bunch of sites at big hosting company's will be natural, in the mix of thing. It may look un-natural if you don't.
So adding a few sites into those networks won?t make you stand out, but more likely blend in (depending on the ?niche?).
What I'm trying to get at is: if the sites need to be on different IP addresses/hosting accounts, because they will all link to the same location, you can minimise the amount of hosting accounts by using big shares hosting providers. You can use their popularity to your advantage. But you will still need a lot of accounts unless you are willing to risk just using a few big shared hosting providers. Some of them even give you different locations that your account will be located/hosted at. E.g. in the US, in the UK, in Canada etc - 1 host, 3 locations).
Personally I prefer the next option:
If all the sites in the blog network are not going to be linking to the same end location, but a group of them will be linking to say one money page and another group will be linking to a different money page and other groups to other money pages. For example 10 groups of sites which cover say 10 different topics.
If it's something like that, then you would only need say: 20 hosting accounts (for 200 sites, divided into 10 groups), where you randomly add sites to and link to the money pages as needed. This is more a: don?t put all you?r egg?s in one basket, in both: markets you are targeting (multiple markets vs just 1) and revenue protection (if a host goes down, you only lose a small portion of the network - not the whole thing).
You spread the 10 groups over the 20 accounts and your done. If the groups don't mix, then there is no real need to have each site with it's own IP address/hosting account. Instead you can share hosting accounts, having just 1 site from each group, per hosting account.
It's getting late, so I'll wrap it up here. If I'm not clear - please let me know...