Adding a new site to your "network"

Hi :) I haven't been here in a while.  I was just wondering... most webmasters I know have more than 1 website made for profit.  How long do you wait before starting a new site?  How much effort do you put into brainstorming for ideas on your next site?  Or do you guys start more than one site at once?

Please share your experiences here.  I currently run 1 service-oriented website, and the other site that I run that turns a small profit is a webcomic.  I'm thinking of making another site, and so far I've narrowed it down to 4 candidates.  I'm not sure what criteria to use when selecting 1 amongst these 4 (because I don't want to rush myself and create more than 1 website at once). Hopefully I get some ideas on what to do based on your experiences. Thanks!

Very interesting topic.

About the option of making more than one site at the same time, I will disagree. It is very difficult to mantain two begginer sites at once, except if we are talking for 1 page sites (or 1 page script sites if you prefer)

Now as we are talking for a network of sites, my opinion is to create another site that will be usefull to the visitors of the rest network. This way you can promote the new site easily through the other sites. Let me show you my example. I've started with a directory, and when this site got a lot of traffic that was mostly from submittions, I realized that my site is actually is used lot by webmasters. So I created the pagerank tool, and as this site is actually an automated site (it doesn't need any work from me) I made this community, etc. My point is that is allways very easy to promote a site that is related to your allready enstablished sites.

So the first and most significant critiria of choosing a concept for a new site  is how relative is to the rest network that you allready have. Of course in many cases you have to create a seperate site, but that means more work, and advertising dollars for the new site.

Another factor for me is how work the new site will want. I say this because at this point my time is limited and it would be very difficult to spend more time for a new site.

i make websites as a hobby. most of them informative sites on a wide variety of topics with ads on it, the others just experiments, when i have nothing to do.

since i use free hosts and use their subdomain, whenever an idea hits me, i do it right away. assuming that im not doing anything at the moment.

dont force yourself for ideas. just wait for it to come to you. i get new ideas while surfing other sites.

i think its best to concentrate on just one site at a time. after all, making it is the easy part. you still have to promote it (not on surf exchanges where the ones viewing it are other webmasters actively promoting their own site).

These are all good points, Nikolas :) Thanks.  I didn't think that it would also be a good idea to let my sites support each other by making them relevant to each other.  Also, the ideas you mentioned are independent of each other in such a way that making sites that have a connecting theme wouldn't be "putting all your eggs in one basket"

I think I better list the pros and cons of my ideas and see which ones I really care enough about to work on :)

I don't really force my ideas either, but when I brainstorm (even if it's for my art projects like painting and sculpture) it's like I open a gate and they just come all at the same time and I just write them all down.  Of course, not all of them are good ideas - I do a little research to see how feasible and original an idea is before implementing it.