Is Ranking Small to Medium Sized Niche Sites Still Working?

I've been out of the SEO scene for awhile now.

I went to work fulll-time and my affiliate sites died off.

I want to get back into it and use some of my income from my day job to invest.

Is ranking small sized niche sites still working?

I've been gone for so long I know the industry has changed a lot and things are different now.

Define "small" site to you.

Is it possible? Sure, with proper keyword research, you can rank anything, but the question then becomes "is it worth it".

If you want to build a small site(5-10posts), simply find a no/low comp keyword. With some good on-page and backlinks, you'll be ranking.

Yes, it can still be done for low competition keywords.

Though, many SEOs have switched to larger sites. Couple of the reasons being able to take advantage of more long tails and it seems like the better option to them from a ROI standpoint.

It's very much possible to rank sites with 5k-10k words if you do the kw research right and build the right kind of links. But what you need to think of, is the ROI which is way higher for bigger sites.