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One Authority Site or Multiple Niche Sites – Which is Best?

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If you want to earn income online, it’s pretty much a given that you need to have your own website. Sure, you can write for revenue sharing sites or try to use something like Blogger…but I would never consider something like that to be a long-term income stream.

Most people won’t argue that you need your own site. Where the debate gets heated though is if it is better to have one main authority site or to have a handful…or dozens…or even hundreds of niche sites. It doesn’t take much looking to find people who earn six figures per year at both ends of the spectrum.

I know one blogger personally (that would prefer to remain anonymous since he’s not in the MMO niche) who makes around $15k per month from his one authority site. He has had the site for over 10 years and swears that you should never have more than one site.

I also know two guys that are also making $15k/month, but they run around 150 sites. They both swear that is the best way to do it.

(Aside: I met both of these guys though The Keyword Academy. It’s an awesome program for people who legitimately want to earn passive income online. If nothing else, you should check out their free trial. They have lots of great content. That’s also my affiliate link. I earn a commission if you decide to join)

Then you have people in the middle. A well-known example is Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income. He has a small handful of projects that make up his very substantial earnings.

Benefits of a Singular Authority Site

When I talk about an authority site I mean a site that is an authority on a topic within a niche. It takes one main topic and covers everything related to that topic.

If I loved potatoes and I was incredibly passionate about potatoes, then I could start a site that only talked about potatoes. And I mean everything related to potatoes. If I kept at it, I would eventually become known as an authority in the potato niche.

This concept is awesome for people who are super interested in a topic. Their dream job would be to sit around all day and write about their topic, make videos about it, go to conventions about it, and on and on. In fact, they would probably be happy if they never made a dime off their work. They do it because they love the topics.

This model is also great because as you become an authority, you will naturally gain backlinks. You don’t need to know much about SEO. You really don’t have to worry about anything other than writing and engaging your audience.

Because of all this Google will begin to recognize you as an authority and your new content will rank better in the SERPs and you gain an even greater exposure which leads to even more authority.

Everything sounds great so far, right? Well this approach has one big down side.

You’re putting all of your eggs in one basket.

A few months ago, I was happily plugging along building a huge authority site in the health niche. I was just on that edge where new content was ranking in the top 20 for keywords with a moderate level of competition. For me, this was a big deal. I really felt like I was making progress.

Everything seemed to be going well, until I got hit with a big fat –950 penalty. I’m still trying to work my way out of that one. If I was depending on that site for all of my income, I would be sunk.

Thankfully it wasn’t a massive loss for me. But it could have been if that was the only site I worked on for the next 2 years.

Pros:

  • Simplicity

Cons:

  • Higher Risk

Benefits of Multiple Sites

The other option you have is to build out multiple sites. This might be 3 sites or 12 sites or 200 sites. The idea is to have your income split over several properties.

This approach gives you diversity. You get revenue from different niches, different monetization models and different audiences.

Let’s say you have a site on sticky notes and you make money as an affiliate for companies that sell sticky notes. Tomorrow you wake up to find out that 3M has just come out with this amazing replacement for sticky notes. They have a patent on it and they are the only ones that will sell them. Now, no one wants the dumb old type of sticky notes. They want the new ones! Your traffic slows to a trickle and the site eventually dies. If that was your only site you would be in a tough place, but if you have 4 others then you’ve only lost 20% of your income.

Multiple sites also allow you to jump around to different topics when you get bored. This is a huge problem for me. Since I don’t have one really strong passion, I have a hard time focusing on one project for extended periods of time. Multiple sites allow me to work on something else when I get bored.

Multiple sites also make it easier to throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Earning money online is as much of an art as it is science. Sometimes you don’t know what will work until you try it.

I have a coupon site that’s been running for the last 2 years. I knew nothing about the coupon niche so I just threw a site together to try it out. It ended up taking off and doing really well. Over the last two years it’s made somewhere around $3k. I won’t be able to retire off it, but the site only took a few hours to set up and consistently earns $100 – $200 per month.

If I only focused on 1 site, I would have never tried setting up this coupon site. The same is true for several sites that I have.

It’s Easy To Spread Yourself Too Thin

With all that said on having multiple sites, there are some big pitfalls. The biggest of which is what I call ‘shiny object syndrome.’

I have to fight this all the time.

When you already have 5 other projects, what’s one more? Right? Then it becomes one more and one more and one more until you have way too many sites. With all the recent changes Google has made to its algorithm, quality content is more important than it has ever been.

There are only so many projects you can realistically give your full attention to. Without your full attention, a website will never reach its full potential.

Pros:

  • Diversity

Cons:

  • Without focus, you may never get anywhere

So…Which Is Best?

That my friends is the million dollar question. A question that only has two answers…neither are best….and both are best.

That is to say, you should do whatever works best for you. Some people love focusing on one site. They have a topic that they are totally passionate about (important!). If you’re totally passionate about a topic then it is easy to pour all of your energy into one site.

Other people (like me) don’t have that one topic that they would love to write about for the rest of their life. I have a lot of different topics that interest me. I’m interested in music, games, business, gadgets, health, philosophy and probably a dozen other thing if I really set down to think about it.

There isn’t a risk free path in this game. Without risk there’s no reward. Right? You need to take the path that gives you the best chance of success.

What about you? Would you rather have one main website or several niche sites?

 

The post One Authority Site or Multiple Niche Sites – Which is Best? appeared first on WallerBlog.com.


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