Making One site or Several Micro Niche Sites?

I have been in the internet marketing world for quite some time now, and I have noticed that the latest fad (I don’t know why I am calling it “latest” since the technique is quite old) has been to develop several micro niche sites, in order to earn passive income via Adsense.

Exploring many forums I often come across one simple question, which is not answered correctly anywhere at all:

Should I make a single big site or make several micro niche sites? which would earn more? which would require less maintenance, etc.

Most people answering this question give a non-straightforward answers like: it depends, or according to your budget, or whatever.. So, here I’ll give you my take on this- you might like it, or you might have another point of view, but this is exactly what I do and it works pretty well for me, and helps me get the $$$ .

Whenever a question like this comes to my mind, I think of two things:

1. What are my expectations from a particular site/project?
2. What is my involvement – money, time or energy?

Now, when working with Micro Niche Sites (MNS) – I consider them as small passive money makers (which I would not have to look back upon in the future). However, big or authority sites require maintenance, and constant promotion.

Some pros and cons for you to consider before making a decision.

Micro Niche Sites:

Pros

• Easier to make – you can churn them out pretty quickly.
• Quickly monetized – If you do your research correctly, you can start earning as soon as your site gets indexed by Google.
• No maintenance and only little initial promotion required.

Cons

• Hard to manage, if you want to scale this up (think 50, 100 or 250 sites).
• You can only put in little effort – as you total effort – time, energy and money is divided.
• You must do your keyword and competition research correctly (not really a negative factor, you actually need to get this right for about any site).

Authority or Big sites:

Pros:

• Once your site gets good trust rank in search engines, your pages (even new ones) start ranking easily for competitive terms.
• You can establish a brand, credibility and trust among readers and search engines.
• Management is easier.
• An authority site is very scalable and this is where big bucks can be made (look at ezinearticles.com)

Cons:

• More risk, since you are putting all your time, effort and money into one project – your risks obviously increase (imagine if something goes wrong, after months of hard work)
• Harder to promote and reach the authority status – takes time.

Ok, so above I have just laid some basic points, so which is the route to take?

My answer lies in one word: OUTSOURCING!

Growth of any big business means scalability and the ease of scalability. Let me explain:

The benefit with building Micro Niche Sites, is that the complete business model including building and promotion can be easily outsourced. I shall analyze the life cycle of the micro niche business model and that of an authority site – and you will yourself be able to figure out what you should do.

A MNS comprises of the following:

• Keyword and Competition research [Do it yourself]
• Registering Domain name [DIY]
• Writing keyword rich articles (can be rewritten  content). [Fully Outsource]
• Adding the articles to a WordPress based site/ or static HTML template. [Fully Outsource]
• Uploading the site – go live. [Fully Outsource]
• A bit of link building after the site in live (article submission, bookmarking, and blog commenting.) [Fully Outsource]

Job done! move on!

Now let us analyze the life cycle of an Authority site or a Big site, with lots of content and lots of traffic

• Select niche or broad area for the site. [DIY]
• Register domain name. [DIY]
• Write good quality content – constantly. [DIY + Outsource]
• Keep adding content to a CMS like WordPress or Joomla – Good quality content which people would genuinely like to read, re-read and bookmark. Content which other authority sites would want to link to. [DIY + Outsource]
• Keep promoting the site over a period of time (not merely article submission and bookmarking, but something above that, like linkwheels, linkbaiting, press releases, etc.) [DIY + Outsource]
• Keep doing the all the above.

Therefore, as you can see, for the MNS model, apart from keyword research, you can have a team of outsourced workers (or hired full time) working for you, and pumping out sites one after the other – you just rake the moolah. Whereas, with an authority site your involvement and supervision increases many fold - I would not have a site where I have invested big buck, in the hands of a third person (of course they can assist you, but not do it all.).

So what is the answer?

DO BOTH. Build Micro Niche Sites and Authority Sites. If you are serious about a business, outsource the creation and promotion of MNS to a team, whereas you focus your own efforts on the big site.

After a couple of months of hard work, you will see, that the model is sustainable and profitable.

I hope I made my point clear, if not go on… Ask Aditya!

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