Driving traffic to one or more money sites through the use of a private blog network, or PBN, can lead to long-term passive income.  Each website in this network contains content on a specific topic that directs a targeted audience to the pages that really matter.  The most important factors to decide before establishing a PBN are: what types of domains to use for niche sites, how many domains to use, whether or not content will be outsourced, and where to host each site.

Individual Domains, Bulk PBN Domains, and Dropped Domains

• For beginners, building a network from scratch can be quite helpful.  Doing so allows PBN owners to understand exactly what it takes to create a decent network and presents a much lower risk.  Cheap, unused domains are the best way to go for this, as it is largely a learning process.  Five to ten domains at most should be enough for beginners; more can be purchased and added to the network as experience is gained.

• Buying cheap domains is not only for beginners, however.  Those with an entrepreneurial spirit often purchase said domains in large quantities with the sole purpose of boosting their rankings and reselling them.  This is great for both the sellers and the buyers; purchasing the domains for an already established private blog network removes the initial difficulty of building them up.  Many bulk sales involve 50 or even 100 domains.

• Finally, dropped domains are always worth considering as long as they are well researched.  They can be littered with bad reputation and poor rankings, or they can be absolute gold mines.  This is a high risk option, but with enough scrutinization, it can be profitable.

Generating Content 

Content for niche blog sites needs to be unique, genuine, and varied.  Each blog must appear as if it was written by a different author, and must not appear to serve only the purpose of funneling traffic.  As such, writing each post takes some time and effort.  Spun or reused content is also not acceptable.  For smaller networks of five to ten websites, a single person – even the owner – can easily generate the content.  Outsourcing to other writers becomes a viable option when the amount of content begins to take up more time than it is worth.  Regardless of whether or not content is outsourced, it is prudent to insert contextual links manually.

Hosting Options           

Three options exist for hosting websites in PBNs.  Each site must have a different IP address or, ideally, a completely different host.  The first option is the most straightforward; each site is hosted by a different service.  This is tedious, but one of the most effective methods.  The second option is utilize SEO Hosting services, which are capable of providing one customer with several IP addresses.  The final alternative is to purchase a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate for each website, which also provides a unique IP address.  Each option is more expensive than the last.  For larger networks, only SEO Hosts and SSL certificates are viable avenues due to the sheer volume of websites.