1 Niche, 2 Niche, 3 Niche, 4…How Many Niche Sites is Too Many?
Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Motivation & Success Do-Follow CommentsBy, JR
I read a lot of blogs, and I have seen bloggers who recommend to beginners that they build 50, even 100 niche sites at once and especially for BANS users.
Yes, you can build 50, 75 and even 100 great niche sites with BANS and do it fairly quickly because BANS is designed for easy and fast niche site building, which is one of the main reasons that I recommend BANS to all my readers. But I would like to ask, where is the fire?
I do not believe building a lot of niche sites is the best practice for beginners. There is a lot involved in Internet marketing and Internet marketing strategies must be applied to each and everyone of the sites for optimal results. I recommend that beginners have NO more than 2 (maximum 3) niche sites.
As I have said before, success in this business is greatly based on hands-on experience and doing it by applying what you learn.
Picture credit: rriderlausd.org/
This experience is best gained, when there is only a few niche sites on which you focus. If you are a beginner and learning and applying all the traffic, link building, article marketing, SEO and all other Internet marketing strategies and on top of that you have to do it for 50+ sites, it greatly diminishes your chances for success. Talk about spreading yourself thin?
Now, I do think that having several income sources via niche sites is best, however, there is a time and place for everything.
I promise you that as you apply the Internet marketing strategies and you are learning and getting more and more experience you will become an expert and these techniques will become automatic for you. Along the way you will also learn a ton more from the testing and tweaking and your own personal niche journey. And, THEN you become an expert and THAT is when you can build an empire of niche sites!
Believe me, for beginners there is enough to learn and master without adding the huge stress of too many niche sites, and this could become a recipe for failure through massive burn out and simple frustration!
Also, chances are great that if you have to apply all the marketing methods, before you actually master them all, to a lot of sites, you will start to take shortcuts and this will affect all current and future online campaigns because your expertise and learning of the correct way will be flawed.
Don’t set yourself up! There is nothing wrong with taking the time to really learn Affiliate Marketing and all the correct Internet marketing techniques by focusing on less niche sites. Believe me this will pay off in the long run, and not crush you in the short run!
What do you guys think? I have some expert Internet Marketer readers, I’d like to hear your opinions? How many niche sites is too many? Not Enough?
Print Post
Get 1st month from the best website host for 1 Cent!
Coupon Code: 404PAGE
Have You Subscribed to Updates Yet? Get New Content Delivered via Email or RSS Reader Here!
Related Posts
- For Internet Marketers Quit is a Four Letter Word!
- Nothing Beats Experience With Internet Marketing So Just Do It!
- Don’t Let Negativity Kill Your Online Business!
- Internet Marketing - Role of Commissions in Choosing a Niche
- A Harsh Message From Google Leaves No Doubt About The Importance Of Quality Content
July 29th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I love the cartoons illustrating this article, especially the one with the “espresso concentrate” intravenal drip (IV).
July 29th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I really think it’s a bad idea to market 100 sites for beginners. I mean, learn to build some traffic and make a couple of bucks with a single website. Learn how to optimize and market a single website correctly, then you can go on with managing hundreds of websites at once. There’s so much to learn when it comes to Internet Marketing, why on top of that add the stress of managing hundreds of websites?
Good post!
SEO Horrors last blog post..Follow-up on my BlogCatalog sponsorship
July 29th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I think your advice of 2-3 for beginners is RIGHT ON THE MONEY!
So many people think they’re going to launch a niche site and then sit back and cash checks. You’ve done a GREAT job of outlining the basics here! It takes time and it takes effort.
Once those 2-3 sites are situated and established, then you can move on to launch your next batch of 2-3 niche sites.
EZ Marketing Tools last blog post..Wickedly Wise and Wonderful Wordpress Plugin for Keyword Research
July 29th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Nice drawing of me at work.
I think the number of sites should be determined by your skill level at things like keyword selection, link building, SEO and a few other areas. The more you understand these things and the more research and site management tools you have, the more sites you can launch and manage at a time.
The flip side of having too many sites is spending too much time fretting over 1 or 2 sites. I’ve seen people becoming stats-o-holics, worrying about every search engine gyration, constantly playing around with the layout of the site and so forth. Take the time you need to get the niche site launched but don’t get bogged down in the details afterward.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I’ve only been doing internet marketing for about 3 years and I still consider myself a beginner. I can’t imagine how anyone could have 100 niche sites….my head would explode!
I concentrated on my first one for the first 2 years and then added one last October and then the newest one in May. I’m considering letting my first one go since it’s not really been that successful. It served it’s purpose as the site where I learned the biz and made the most mistakes.
I definitely agree with your sage advice….learn the biz with one site and add more gradually. No more than 3 until you can hire a staff to do the marketing.
Eunices last blog post..Jul 28, Avoid Get Rich Quick Scams
JR reply on July 29th, 2008 5:36 pm:
@ Sacramento Weddings
I love this pics too!
@ SEO Horror
Thanks Ben!
@ EZ Marketing Tools
Thanks, you are totally right…lol…launch a few sites and wait for the money to roll in, yeah right!
@ Frank C
You make a great point Frank, over tweaking and over analyzing can be a detriment.
@ Eunice
Thanks Eunice, and I am sure that your method will bring lots more success because your expertise will be solid.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
JR
Great article - wish I’d followed that advice in the beginning. I went the shotgun route. Now I find myself scrambling to keep all the balls in the air.
Oddly enough however, sites that I have neglected the most, after setup, design and modest amounts of SEO, have done the best. I have one site, (my first born) that I give the most attention and is getting slammed by google…hmm - maybe I should leave it alone?
JR reply on July 30th, 2008 7:14 pm:
@ Ron
Interesting, what do you think is the cause of the slam, is it a PR slam or complete sandbox?
July 30th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for the response JR
I’ve got a PR2 for the site but I’m thinking they believe I’ve violated their guidelines somehow. When I do a site:iscoredtickets.com search I find almost 1500 pages but when I search with site:iscoredtickets.com/* that number goes down to 11 - the rest banished to the sandbox. Even my main page is in the sandbox! OUCH! The only pages in the main index are from my blog in the /talk subdirectory. Need to start posting more I guess.
I’m partly to blame for poor choices in the and tags for my main pages but have since tightened the focus for those. I have content and resources for each team but I have other sites without all the bells and whistles and they haven’t been hit nearly as hard so I’m at a loss.
JR reply on July 30th, 2008 11:45 pm:
@ Ron
I personally have not experienced, the sandbox, knock on wood, however I have heard a lot of talk about this, I can give you this link to an Internet Marketer that I trust completely, Court Tuttle and a link to his post about sandboxing, and it sounds like it may explain what you are going through: What Do if Your Site has Been Sandboxed check it out.
Also, there are actually over 1200 subpages that are indexed, not 11, when I searched site:site:iscoredtickets.com, that’s the result I got, and all of those are YOUR subpages, usually searching with the extra fancies like, /* does not always return accurate results.
Considering the fact that you have so many subpages still indexed I cannot believe that it’s a true penalty on you for anything you did wrong and I think the main page will come back and when it does it will sit higher in SERPS.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:22 am
What search criteria are you using to get the 1200 number.
My straight site: search brings up 1490.
I don’t really know what the ‘/*’ does in the search. It’s something I read in the BANS forum that’s supposed to show only non-sandboxed pages.
The thing I do know is that I don’t show up in results for any ticket related searches and that includes longtail searches taken directly from pages of my site.
A month or so back I searched (don’t remember the exact term) tickets and a few pages down - 5 or 6 maybe - an “out of the box” BANS ticket store came up. Speaks to the SEO qualities of the product if you ask me. Also speaks to how much I apparently mucked it up tweaking it though.
Also, off topic, I noticed your CommentLuv didn’t show the first post of my blog. I hope you don’t mind but I’ve changed the url in my posts a couple times to gain some backlink exposure to pages in my site. If it’s a problem, you can delete my posts with no hard feelings.
JR reply on July 31st, 2008 7:21 pm:
@ Ron
I used site:iscoredtickets.com, and it returned 1260 results, but I am not surprised that you get different results, searching your site stats that way usually comes up with different numbers all the time, also there are several databases that Google uses, and that could explain the discrepancy.
No you can change URL’s in comments any time you like, Comment Luv must have been trippin, it happened to me on recently on a couple of blogs I comment on, if it happens again let me know and I will look into it. Thanks.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I initially started like 30 niche blogs and soon realized that there isn’t enough time in a day to build backlinks effectively for each site. Setting up WP and all the plugins is easy, but getting content together, promoting and commenting takes a lot of time. So I’ve toned it down to focus on 4-5 sites right now and bring them up to speed. Once they are on auto-pilot, I’ll go back and continue working on the rest. I do have a life to live.
Garage Floor Paint Blogs last blog post..Garage Floor Paint: Floor Mats
July 31st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I don’t think theres a limit in the niches you should use. I would suggest using as many niches as possible because you always have to open up yourself to new readers with new interests.
Germzs last blog post..Youtube Alternatives to help you out.
JR reply on July 31st, 2008 7:42 pm:
@Germz
I think we all agree that branching out is great, but only after you have experience and expertise, not having 100 niche sites when you are new.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:03 am
Thanks for the feedback and info JR.
If you’re ever in the neighborhood (iscoredtickets.com) feel free to stop by the blog (MLB Discussions) and leave a comment. I found CommentLuv through your site and would like to return the favor.
Rons last blog post..What’s A TicketWidget?
JR reply on August 1st, 2008 6:29 pm:
@ Ron
Thanks I will do that!
August 1st, 2008 at 11:49 am
never tired BANS alwas create websits myself… takes alot of time
saltwater aquarium advices last blog post..Red Algae (Rhodophyta)
JR reply on August 1st, 2008 6:15 pm:
@ Saltwater Aquarium
Exactly why I use BANS, it is so easy to build great sites quick and even upload your own templates, because to create a website from scratch takes a lot and many of us are NOT web designers and that really makes it a huge burden.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:43 am
Thanks for the link. Sounds like interesting read
August 14th, 2008 at 5:29 am
I always read your blog in high spirits. Thanks
August 14th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Lovely post. Please add my email address to your list and email me the updates if possible. I always like to read your blog and comment on it.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
JR, great post! I have a question. Suppose you are doing research and find that your blog is too broad, or that the niche is saturated. Can you keep the blog the way it is and subtly start paring down the content to a more narrow niche, including the title of the blog. And, if you ping the blog, will the new title automatically post to all of the search engines. Thanks in advance for your sage advice
JR reply on September 7th, 2008 1:43 pm:
@ Success
@ Success
Basically, yes, the search engine spiders, crawl the web constantly, not just once when you first launch, and each crawl they read whatever is there and make changes accordingly. And ping services show what is actually there each time you ping.
But, how old is the blog and how many posts are there now?
Are you completely changing the niche to a whole other niche or just a narrower version of the original niche?
Success Factors reply on September 7th, 2008 6:03 pm:
I am probably going to do a narrower version of the niche.
JR reply on September 7th, 2008 6:49 pm:
@ Success
then I would go back re-optimize for the new keywords, like title in header, blog title within posts, see 6 Step Checklist for On-Site SEO to make the relevant changes for the site wide keywords.
Then once the changes are all made the next time the SE’s crawl your blog all the changes will be implemented and when you ping, new posts will be reoptimized for the new keywords.
Also, if, you are using the All In One SEO Pack for wordpress, (which you should be) then change the title and description in your settings and it will automatically change your title tags for each new post and each old post.
September 12th, 2008 at 7:02 am
[...] same bloggers that give the bad advice to build 100 niche websites, as we previously discussed in 1 Niche, 2 Niche, 3 Niche, 4, How Many Niche Sites is Too Many?, only because it is through taking shortcuts and not [...]
November 14th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I think a few good niches to start with is certainly better than large numbers of niche sites. Once you have a few sites working for you and you have proven the concept, only then should you start looking into other niches.
Ben
February 5th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I have just started 7 niche sites. I cannot imagine 50 or 100 sites. None of my sites have taken off, but I hope soon
Matt McGuires last blog post..McClatchy suspends 401(k) match
JR reply on February 5th, 2009 11:20 pm:
@Matt McGuire
It does take time just keep working on it and build those links!