Diversify or Dominate Single Niche? VOTE!

[Linda Buquet]

VOTE - Then let's discuss it!

Some super affiliates, gurus and ebooks advocate building a ton of niche sites. Others say focus your efforts on 1 - 5 primary niches and sites. So which direction should you take? <strong>Build wide</strong> with a variety of sites or <strong>go deep</strong> focusing on one site? Well it depends a lot on you and each strategy has it's own set of pitfalls and benefits.

At the end of this post, I'll tell you what I would do - knowing everything I know - if I ever decide to sell 5 Star and focus on doing affiliate marketing myself instead of helping others do it. (Which of course I do fantasize about from time to time.)

The following 3 super affiliates; <strong>Paul AKA SUP3RNOVA from UberAffiliate, David Fiske & James Martell</strong>, outline the pros and cons of each strategy.
<blockquote>UberAffiliate writes: <strong><a href="http://uberaffiliate.com/philosophy/diversification-or-domination/">Diversification or Domination?</a></strong>

<strong>Domination</strong> (one of his list of pros)
"More time to work on single projects. If you diversify, you may do SEO twice a week, affiliate marketing twice a week, and blogging twice a week. By focusing on just affiliate marketing, you get 3x the productivity and then 3x the results. It takes less time to test & find what works, less time to scale it."

<strong>Diversification</strong> (one of his pros)
"More potential to strike gold. The more things you do, the higher chances you have of stumbling upon something really nice. Believe it or not, many highly successful entrepreneurs got their kickstart to success by getting lucky. You could be the next one to find that completely random diamond in the rough and then scale it like crazy."</blockquote>
David Fiske also just wrestled with the pro and the cons in his blog post" <strong><a href="http://davidfiske.com/item/2007/10/one-large-sites-or-many-niche-sites">
One Large Site Or Many Niche Sites</a></strong> - "Here's a dilemma that gets banded around the interweb on a fairly regular basis: which is better - one large but fairly broad website or many small niche websites?"

<strong>James Martell</strong> (Super Affiliate, Acclaimed Guru, Author) at the 5 Star forum said:
<strong>?If I HAD to Start Over - What would I do Different???
I would build one site. Just one. ONE!"</strong>
Read the rest of what James had to say and find out his rationale.
<strong><a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/newbie-affiliate-forum/2251-if-you-had-start-over-what-would-you-do-different.html">If You HAD to Start Over - What would you do Differently???</a></strong>.

So what do I think? (I voted combo) If I ever decide to break away and just do affiliate marketing full-time, which direction would I go in? I would focus most of my energy on one niche site that would support several related categories of products. Example: a financial site with a generic enough name that I could have separate category sections. I already own BeyondLowRates.com so that could work. Then I could promote various offers like mortgage, insurance, loans, credit cards but everything I do would be focused on the finance niche, yet I could diversify within that niche. The other benefit of this strategy is for PPC quality score. A landing page I built for an auto loan would be on a tightly themed site that also offered auto insurance, other types of loans and articles centered around financial info.

<strong>NOTE:</strong> I wouldn't actually pick the finance niche. It would be WAY too boring for me & too competitive - it only served as a good example to illustrate the point.

<strong>So what do you think? Go wide or go deep???
VOTE IN THE POLL then VOICE YOUR OPINION!</strong>

 

[cdorob]

I would chose to dominate. It's harder to become an expert in more domains.

 

[bobang]

Linda,
I remember, sometime ago, I said I would go really deep with a single niche if I were to start all over again.

But I came to think that I was able to say that mainly because I was in many niches already. I know what works and what doesn't. Only after that I was able to go little deeper with certain niches.

So my theory is, get into many niches, find out which one works, drop (or test more) the rest, and go deep with the find. And get into more niches, repeat the process.

That's how I did and it worked for me. I just need to do more deep drilling with some of my niches.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Great points Bo. I consider you a real expert
when it comes to niche affiliate marketing.

Great to have you posting here again.
Don't be a stranger!

 

[joniki]

Diversify The Dominate

I think it is probably best to start off with a couple of niches because this gives you the ability to get into a couple of markets.

I have have found that if I put in a modest amount of research in a handful of areas and launch campaigns. Sit back a little bit and see where I am getting responses.

If one of the areas seems to be hitting I then dig in and try to dominate that niche.

For new IMers I think this is the best method because there are enough low cost and free marketing techniques that you can throw a couple campaigns out there and see what sticks.

It can be very discouraging for a newbie to put a ton of time and effort into a single niche and get little or no return from it. It leads to many people quitting.

Research 3 or 4, put your info out there and then be prepared to hit it hard when you identify which os going to be the best money maker.

You never know, you may get lucky and they all hit at the same time.

 

[stephfoster]

I do both. I have one site that is doing quite well in its niche, and others that I focus on less, but are smaller and more tightly focused. My big site gets the most attention, and it's by far my favorite to work on. But the little ones bring in a bit of money and can be fun too.

 

[Reynolds]

I lean more towards dominate, though I certainly have made sites in a variety of niches. Now I'm starting to really hone my focus. I'd rather become a known expert in one field than be an unknown in many.

 

[Arun Lakhera]

It is wise to work on a couple of niches as a newbie. You can easily choose a niche to dominate out of the niches you have worked upon.

 

[CoachDeag]

100% focused on 1...or smatterings of focus spread all over the place?

In my business outside of cyber-space I teach focus. So when I started affiliate marketing I diversified like crazy. Answer this: how many eBooks and videos are sitting in your folders waiting to be read and viewed? If you are like me then a great many will not be read or watched.

As a coach or a teacher often that which you coach and teach is needed by you! Look inside...

Saw a short youtube video by Ewen Chia. He recommended that is start up, you put your entire focus towards one site, one product, one result. As humans the more we spread ourselves the less effective we are. ONLY when you experience success in one field can you then look outside and into diversification.

Yep, I should hold a mirror to myself when writing or saying things like that. Indeed I will be spending the Christmas break creating a business plan and marketing plan for my affiliate sites and my business site.

You should too.

 

[Edwin]

I would take the combo approach.

Explore various opportunities thus niches and when you see one of those niches starts to grow or new opportunities arise to build it out more, then figure out how much time you require to make the most out of these opportunities.

Very important in my opinion and i am not an point i can do this, but delegate as much as you can to qualified people that you can find to work on the stuff you need to get done.

Don't try it to do it all on your own!

I think the combo approach requires a thought out process to attack various tasks involved to start diving into a new niche and test the waters, this being through PPC or organic search.

Who knows the niche that turned into a big project and money maker is giving you the opportunity to dump all the smaller projects, until then...i would focus on the start ups and floaters, floaters would be the initial start ups that shows potential and are starting to bring residual income.

Dump some of the start ups after evaluation if they don't show any further growth potential and figure out if you have enough time to spend on your floater projects on your own and to maintain the work involved to keep earning that residual income.

If you don't have enough time then research what you can outsource, outsource as much as you can.

Then the floater projects can become star projects (5 star projects ) and you have your own network of well performing sites with diversified risk.

It's difficult to write it all down as you never know what and how things will develop, but i would rather have a network of great sites then a single one and you need to look around and test the waters (test various niches) to be able to come to that point...of having the chance to operate even one great site!

 

[SolomonZhang]

I agree with those who take "combo". You need to diversify to dominate.