Niche site Vs Authority site – Which one is better?

Majority of internet marketers build small niche sites before they go for a full-scale authority site that dominates their niche. Since a successful authority site takes a lot more effort and dedication as compared to a small niche site, many shy away from starting their journeys with an authority website. In this blog post, I will explain key differences between both models and finally I will help you make a choice.

Since this blog post is a part of my ‘journey’ posts, I will also be discussing my own preferences and deciding whether to go with a small niche site or a full-scale authority website.

Niche site vs authority site is an ever-green debate for internet marketers. Many marketers have shifted their focus to building authority websites due to recent changes in Google algorithm but still a lot of marketers are finding value in niche sites and they continue building them.

In this post, you will learn about

• Arguments in favor of a niche site
• Arguments in favor of an authority site
• Why I chose to build an authority site

Arguments in favor of building a niche site

There is no doubt that internet marketers love building niche sites. They are easy to build, you don’t need to have a great looking site and still you can bank quite a lot with these sites. Once you have built a niche site successfully, you can easily scale up the method and build dozen of similar sites within different niches to generate a lot of money through affiliate sales and Adsense (but there are other ways to monetize as well – we will discuss monetization later during the journey).

Basically, a niche site leverages the power of ‘ignored’ keywords. The trick is to find keywords with good potential and build a site around those keywords. The income model is often selling Clickbank and Amazon products coupled with Adsense.

Niche sites offer a chance to test market

Niche websites can be used to test a market without investing a lot of time and money in it.

Although niche sites aren’t going to make you a millionaire, they are a good starting point for any internet marketer. You don’t have to add a lot of content on the site and still you can make money from it. Most importantly, niche sites are a great research tool. You can use it to test a market for building an authority website later.

It is easy money

Even though you can’t possibly make a six-figure income consistently from a niche site, it does help you make some easy money. Let me be clear on this that there is no ‘easy’ money-making method out there but still niche sites are relatively easy compared to doing a full-scale authority website. You have to add less content, there are fewer pages and posts to promote and you are going to promote everything to a very small niche instead of promoting to a large community of similar minded people.

All this simply means that you can create a niche site even if you are new to internet marketing and actually make some money with it.

More chances of generating actual revenue

Those internet marketers who vote in the favor of niche sites believe that instead of building one massive authority site, it is always better to build a lot of small websites that target different niches. This way there is minimal risk as one of the niche sites is definitely going to make money even if others fail. With authority website, you just have one single website which means you won’t be making money if your authority site fails.

Arguments against niche sites

Niche sites are a great way to start making money from the internet. It gives you the confidence to go ahead and serves as an important tool to test different markets and customer behavior. However, there are number of problems and risks with niche sites. An authority website comes without these risks and therefore offers a much better business model.

Niche sites are more likely to get penalized by Google

For a niche site, you are depending entirely on Google. Your niche site will only generate revenue if you are ranking on the first page. This means that if Google, for some reason, doesn’t like your site, you aren’t going to make any money with it.

The problem with niche sites is that they are mostly build by people who are looking to make some quick dollars. As a result, majority of niche sites today are nothing more than spam. They don’t provide much value and therefore Google looks at them as ‘useless’ resource.

With recent Google algorithm updates, Google has been really harsh on niche sites. I’ve seen few of my own sites going down the gutter with these updates. Since majority of niche sites will have minimal content with a focus on answering just one ‘search query’ instead of offering a lot of value around that ‘query’, Google doesn’t favor these sites anymore.

Niche sites aren’t a reliable business model

There is no doubt that you can make a fortune with niche sites and people have done that in the past, but niche sites can’t be called a reliable business model. Since these sites rely heavily on Amazon or Clickbank products in addition to Adsense, there are chances that a niche site banking six figures today might bank nothing at all the next month in case Google bans Adsense account used on the site and Amazon refuses affiliate program for the area you are living.

Niche sites aren’t reliable business. You can’t always be sure that you will be making money with niche sites in the next five or ten years.

Arguments in favor of building an authority site

Unlike niche sites, authority websites provide a lot of value to the user. These sites don’t just focus on one keyword trying to answer a single query from the visitor but these sites have a lot of unique content and therefore answers multiple search queries from within the same niche.

To put simply, an authority website will offer you tons of content before asking you to purchase anything whereas a niche site focuses entirely on pushing you through with the ‘purchase’ rather than helping you out first.

As an example, think of a weight loss niche. An authority website will offer you tons of useful articles, videos and other information on the topic. It will be selling various weight loss programs but the focus will be entirely on providing value and help the reader make an aware decision.

On the other hand, a niche site on weight loss will be focused entirely on a selling a particular weight loss product, let’s say ‘weight loss guide for women in their 50s’. AS a result, the website will only offer a few articles on the topic and push women to purchase a product.

Authority websites offer better Return On Investment (ROI)

When it comes to ROI, authority sites clearly win. Unlike niche sites, an authority website is an actual business model that can help you generate massive ROI.

With an average niche site, you can be making anywhere between $100-$500 a month but this isn’t guaranteed. Google might dislike something about your site and decide to take it out of its index. That will mean your business is dead and you have lost all your investment.

An authority site takes $100 to get started, just as is the case with a niche site. However, you will have chance of unlimited ROI with an authority website. All you have to do is to attract loyal audience and once you do that, you can offer them what they want. Once you align your website to what your visitors want, you can easily make a full-time income from an authority website.

There is less risk with authority sites

Unlike niche sites, authority sites face less risk of getting de-indexed or sandboxed by Google since there is a lot of valuable content on the site. Authority sites are build around audience engagement rather than affiliate products. Once you have a loyal audience, it won’t matter even if you are not ranking in Google. Your visitors will continue coming to your website.

Income comes from varied sources

Moreover, authority sites usually generate income from various sources instead of relying on a single source, any major shift in internet marketing space will not kill the business as is in the case of a niche site.

Why I chose to build an authority site

This should be quite clear by now. I was initially planning to get back to earning money with a niche site in my journey (follow my journey to build a massive authority site). I could have probably started making some money in a month or even before that. However, as I explored, I found many reasons to go for an authority website instead of a niche site. Here are factors that changed my mind.

• Niche sites are temporary and chances are that I won’t be making money with a niche site after a year or so. There is every chance that Google will tighten its claws on niche sites and we will start seeing less and less of them in search results.
• Niche sites generate income from few sources, which means there is a risk of failing. If I can’t make money with Adsense or Clickbank products, I’m doomed. That’s not the case with authority sites. Even if I fail to make money after 8 months, I will have a great asset at hands that I can sell.
• The hardest thing with a niche site is that I will lose interest in a week or so once I’ve written everything out there about a very specific topic. Tell me how much you can write about ‘electric shaving razors’? I’m sure all of you would have 10-15 ideas to write about at max. On the other hand, think about what I can do with ‘razors’. I can even write about different hairstyles, latest hair fashion and so on. There are endless possibilities of adding quality content to an authority site as opposed to a niche site.

 

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