Niche or Mainstream

Interesting question and no doubt one that's been discussed before.

Most 'gurus' or im ebooks recommend finding a niche when starting an online business. In fact, terms like micro niches and mini niches are becoming popular as people narrow down their target audience to a few hundred targetted searches per month.

The thinking behind this seems quite logical. Find markets that are unsaturated, build small sites related to this niche and if you build enough of these sites it adds up to a decent income.

While I started doing this, I tend to move toward the larger site model now.

For example if I find a niche for say dog collars, in the past I would have created a site that just sold dog collars but now I would create a pet accessories site but focus a lot of the optimisation on the dog collars section.

I also don't shy away from mainstream topics like celebrities and news. In the past I thought I would never rank for these, however Im finding that brand new blogs with 0 pagerank and few inbound links are getting several hundred visitors a day unlike my niche, optimised sites.

What's your vote? Niche or not?

I've had much more success going for larger site models. Micro niche success is very hit-and-miss. You can try to size up the numbers and say "this keyword will be hard to dominate and this one will be easy" but nobody will ever know the answer to that until they try. I've taken high positions on big keywords with just a little work, but have been bafflingly unable to advance past page 2 on some of the easiest looking long tails.

So I would say spread your bets.

Sounds like good advice.

Im really rending to lean toward the bigger sites now.

Like you say it's amazing when you can't rank or an easy term and then jump up to page one for what was supposed to be a competitive term.

But i guess all of this depends on the keyword research.
bigger sites have only one thing going for them. they are easier to maintain.
Also, the answer depends on what is your long term goal as an IM.

I am trying to build some micro sites. hope to post results in three months.