Many Niche Sites vs. One Large Site: Which is Best
ByProbably the most common question I get from beginning marketers has to do with finding/choosing a niche or area to market. Next on the list usually has to do with building many small niche sites vs. one or two larger, long-term sites in more competitive areas.
Many people choose both approaches. But until beginners have some success, I suggest beginning with the small niche sites which have little competition.
Either approach can be very profitable. However, in the beginning a new marketer needs quick feedback to confirm the strategy and methods work. It’s important to know as soon as possible if there are flaws with the methods or the strategy. Otherwise, without the quick feedback, a lot of wasted time and frustration can occur.
Again, either a large number of small niche sites or one or two large sites in highly competitive areas can earn good income. But when a beginner with no prior experience begins building and marketing a site in a large and competitive area, it can take many months of hard work before having any indication the methods are correct.
Therefore, I try to guide my new students toward smaller niches where they can quickly learn the basics and see some results. Of course “success” with many small niche sites may only mean $20 to $30 a month. In most cases there is a very low glass ceiling and it’s not hard to quickly market and maximize the potential of these niche sites before moving on to the next.
After the beginning Internet marketer has shown proficiency with driving traffic to an optimized page with their chosen keywords, it’s usually time to think about investing time and focus into larger areas.
Of course, before moving into these bigger areas, it’s important the new marketer’s personality allows for it. I have known some students who only wish to stay in the small niche areas. Their plan is for finding good niches and building sites for them on a regular basis. Eventually, they’ll have many dozens or even 100+ of these small producing sites. Some personalities aren’t able to and/or don’t enjoy having to focus a long-term effort on just one or two sites; many personalities thrive on beginning and completing projects rapidly.
On the flip side, having to create many small niche sites drives some people crazy. Again, this depends on the person’s personality usually. I can’t very well “make” a person go against what feels comfortable. Therefore, I’ll go with each student’s “flow” and help them succeed no matter which path best fits them.
Ok, all that being said, many of us (including me) find themselves somewhere in between. I have many tiny sites and a few in larger areas that I focus far more time and effort on. I for one have just enough ADD in me to keep the tiny-niche-site-side of me going. However, it is the large sites that produce the best for me. The 80/20 rule applies here.
Here’s how I usually progress with advice to my students:
Learn the ropes with a small niche site or two and then begin investing regular and consistent time in a site that has huge potential down the road…even if seeing results in that big area will require much time and work.
It’s OK to continue building small sites along the way if you wish. But let’s be sure and begin a long-term project that offers great potential.
All things being equal (and of course they never are), 2 years of X amount of work on a site focused toward a well selected and competitive area will almost always produce more results than the same X amount of work focused on well selected, small niche sites.
You might read that last paragraph again just to make sure that important concept is clear.
But again, all marketers must go with their own flow and not force strategies upon themselves which feel uncomfortable.
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Thanks Steve for this insight.
I was thinking to create many small sites in different niches but turned out to be unmanageable. Granted each small site needs only minor tweaks from time to time, but it all adds up really quick and the amount of work to maintain all of them is daunting.
So, these days I am more focused on just one site and still keep the other sites around. It seems to me that focus is the key for success, at least in my case.
Yeah, unless you use a good HTML template as in Dreamweaver, or use WordPress, it can be very taxing. yes, I am all for focusing on just one or two sites that have massive potential….it’s a good plan.
Stay with it! Be consistent!
Since google ranks pages why can’t you have one large site that targets several different niches? For example:
http://Www.niche1keyword.com versus http://www.brand.com/niche1
It seems to me that the larger more successful sites develop a theme then have the freedom to target several different niches even if they are unrelated because it can be written under the overall umbrella of the main theme of the site. Example: ehow.com
What do you think steve?
Well, let’s not go to the extreme of putting ehow.com into this conversation. You and I both would be shocked to know just how much marketing ($$) went into that in the beginning.
For a beginner with new site and limited budget, about all the owner can do is on page SEO and as much off page as they can manage, they can’t be too diversified in the beginning. Google likes to see themes (unless your massive backlinking can off set that and prove to them you ARE relevant in all those areas…but backlinking is the only way).
New sites need a very focused theme to let google know the domain is all about “widgets”….now, later, with some respect, you can branch out. For example we started cactus canyon around glucosamine for dogs….later we successfully added and ranked for different things like vitamins and natural drinks, etc. So you can do what you say to a certain extent…it just takes the time (or the $$) to build that respect.
I completely understand that a tightly focused theme will produce the quickest results as far as gaining relevancy in googles eyes; but what I struggle with is containing my interest to one dicipline.
Hi Terry, yeah, that’s a common problem for sure. No one can really help you with it except you. Once you see how the lack of focus has hurt, then you just have to decide to fix the problem….I know, I know…that’s easier said than done.
I am in blogging field for more than 5 yrs and here i agree with what terry mentioned and i am also in similar project momentarily. Google has now become more strict to rank sites in their SERPs. They give more preferance to quality contents apart other seo mechanism. Micro nichs sites are profitable for a short duration, yes if u need to earn quick, u can target some highly searched, lowest competitive with average advertisers. Create some 3-5 pages relating the niche ( pages must be phrase match to main keyword u r targetting). Ur site definitely will be in top 10 of google soon. But, google is tracking and de-ranking these kind of sites rapidly. So gurus of this technique like x-factor is also transforming his micro sites to big one.
So, for a long term profit, why not merge small site techniques to make it huge and authority site in most niches. But to have this technique work , one must have good onsite and offsite seo skills!!!
Analysing in short:::: Micro sites can make u cash quickly, need less work
Huge site covering various niches can make u rich, needs hard work, proper seo skills, consistency and of course time and patience too!!!
Yeah, I agree that going bigger with sites/niches is better for the long term.
However, I’m just not seeing any problem with my very tiny niche sites staying ranking well. Maybe it’s the difference in how we define “tiny” though with respect to the size of the niche. But my small sites in small niches have no issues with retaining rankings with not much, if any extra work on my part.
Yes, off site SEO is the key to it all in bigger areas. Even if your on page SEO is only fair, you can rock with great off page SEO now days.