One of the most popular questions that I have seen floating around the Keyword Academy forums is whether a person should build several niche websites or simply focus on one or two supersites. The answer to this question is always going to depend on the person and their own personal experience and opinion, but I thought I would look at the pros and cons of each of these paths. I figure this may help some people decide which path they should take or maybe open their eyes to something new.
The Difference between a Niche Website and a Supersite
The general idea of a niche website is a website that has less than 10-15 posts on it. A niche website isn’t necessarily a “thin” site that has one or two posts and that is it. A niche website could have several posts on it and actually provide some in-depth information for readers.
On the other hand, a supersite has hundreds of posts and pages. I would consider this blog a supersite, or at least that is my plans for it. It can be on one specific topic or it could be a wide range of topics that are related. Some supersites actually start out as a niche website and then are expanded on. I usually look at a supersite as a bunch of niche websites thrown into one.
The Pros and Cons of Niche Websites
—Pros of Building Niche Websites—
1. Niche websites take less time to build. It’s much easier to post 7 or 8 posts rather than 200 of them. This gives you the time to build several of these sites and get into a few different niches rather than just concentrating on one.
2. If anything ever happens to one of your sites, like you get Google sandboxed, you still have other sites that you can make money from or you can build a new niche website rather quickly.
3. Niche websites can be a good starting ground before you start building a supersite. Let’s say you build ten niche websites and then you wait 6-9 months to see which one is the most profitable. You can then build the most profitable niche website into a supersite, while still maintaining your smaller sites.
—Cons of Building Niche Websites—
1. When you are looking to make money from niche websites you have to realize that you have to build several of them to see any a good profit come in. I would suggest that you start with at least 10 niche websites before you really analyze your passive income earnings. You will also find that some niche websites may take off and make more than you expect while others may never take off and make a lot less than you projected.
2. If you are building several niche websites you will have to dish out more money in the beginning than if you were just making one supersite. If you start off with 10 niche sites, that means you have to pay for 10 domains, which can range anywhere from $7 – $11 for one of them. I usually buy most of my domain names from namecheap.com and you can always find a coupon for them so they end up less than $9. There are plenty of other places to buy domain names but just make sure they are reputable before you purchase one because there are scams out there.
The Pros and Cons of Supersites
—The Pros of Building a Supersite—
1. With a supersite you can simply concentrate on one or two sites rather than having to worry about 10 or more websites to check on and keep updated.
2. If you build a supersite about something you are familiar with, there won’t be as much to research for your site. A lot of people like to build supersite around something in their life such as a hobby, a profession, or a certain situation that they have dealt with such as debt.
3. Once you have built up your supersite so that it has some authority with the search engines, it becomes much easier for you to rank for keywords. The thing that you have to remember is that you can’t build authority overnight and most of the time it takes a site at least a year before it has this kind of authority. This is why building any type of website is a long term project.
—The Cons of Building Supersites—
1. If you only build one supersite and solely depend on this one website for your passive income, you may be in trouble if something happens with your website. It could get deindexed by Google or something else may happen to it and then you may lose a substantial part of your income or all of your income. If you are doing everything according to the book and not employing any blackhat methods this will very rarely happen, but you have to keep in your mind that it may happen.
2. A supersite can take longer to rank for keywords in the beginning. With niche websites you should definitely take advantage of exact match domains to rank for your keyword, but with a supersite you can only have one exact match to your domain. The rest of the keywords you choose to target may take longer to rank for if you haven’t built up authority yet. This is why some supersites don’t start making money until they are close to a year old.
3. If you pick a topic that you aren’t that interested in for your supersite you may find that you get burned out quite easily and can’t find motivation to work on your site. Make sure if you plan on making a supersite you not only go for keywords that you can rank for but also a topic that you can stand writing several hundred articles about. Counting the articles that you post on the site as well as the backlink articles you will be writing (or outsourcing if you have the money) at least 200 -300 articles need to be written.
The decision of building several niche websites or instead focusing on a supersite is your decision alone. As you can see each path has both pros and cons and it’s up to you to decide which one you want to pursue.
As for me, I am actually doing a mix of niche websites as well as a few supersites. At least that is my plan. I already have several niche websites that I am finishing up and then I have the domain names for 3 supersites that I plan on eventually working on. So, I definitely have my hands full of plenty of domains and just need to start getting content on them.
I think that whether you are planning on building a supersite or 20 niche websites you need to remember that it is all about the keywords. Make sure you are choosing your keywords properly and if you don’t understand the whole keyword concepts and ranking in Google, I recommend you check out Keyword Academy…it’s only $1 for the first 30 days and you can have access to all the information you need to start building your niche websites or your supersite.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
It sounds like your plan is a good one. Creating a few niche sites to start with and developing others into supersites makes sense. You could even expand those niches further if you find one to be very profitable as you mention. I think it is wise to diversify your income streams as well. I would hate 1 or 2 years worth of work to be destroyed overnight.