Landing Pages OR Authority Website?

IMO, it's almost always better to focus on one niche, become an authority, develop a audience of targeted buyers and create products that you can sell them.

It's obvious that you're leaning toward the "less work" alternative. There was a time 5-7 years ago that building a stable of affiliate sites was all the rage. The thinking was . . . "I'll build 100 or 500 sites, and even if I make only $1 a day on average from each one, I'll have a nice income."

Few people received a full time income going this route . . . in fact, as Google began slapping "thin" sites (those that were of little benefit to viewers), it go harder and harder to make money with this model. Not only that, it's a heck of a lot of work building so many sites, maintaining them, and trying to keep them fresh. If you don't, you'll have a stale site that will never climb the rankings.

When you take the time to become an authority and build of following of folks interested in the niche, you open the door to understanding exactly what your followers want and you have the ability to gain their trust so that they will buy from you over and over and over again. The same is not true with "thin" site buyers (it's one and done.)

When you are an authority you can create your own products and charge higher prices for them because you understand how to give extreme value to those that follow you. Don't believe that some niches are only good for small sales - I have not seen that to be true.

Good luck to you,

Steve

I agree with Steve, focus on building one website and add more content all the time, its good for the readers and search engines. you have more traffic and able to earn more money.

Authority sites gets my vote, but that doesn't mean you have to build a site like Microsoft. You can go into a super small niche like "how to install a hardware firewall" etc, and write articles about it, and serve some of the people in the computer networking field.

There's alot of sites about computer repair, but how many sites do you strictly see that deal with routers and switches, and WAN and LAN connections, crossover vs straight-through cables, gigabit ethernet cords vs fiber optic, and etc.

Become the guru in that niche, and you will probably get a call from Microsoft or Cisco about some consulting work. Or they might just offer you $100k-$200k to work for them.

Authority sites all the way. The days of building tons of micro-niche sites ended 2 to 3 years ago already. Granted, making an authority site profitable can take a lot of time so you need to prepare yourself to be in it for the long haul (like 6 months to year or even much longer) but if you stick to it, you can make it a success. An authority site is also easier to manage than tons of sites with lots of landing pages etc.

It all depends on how much cash you have

If you want to cut to the chase and you have the money to do so, I'd focus on buying traffic and testing a landing page and evolving it until it converts at a PREDICTABLE RATE

However, if you are like the rest of us mere mortals,I'd suggest you do the AUTHORITY PAGE route

There's a lot of misconceptions regarding Authority pages

Let me just break this down to one key fact: Considering how fast Google is evolving, if you are not building authority sites, you are simply wasting your time.

There will come a point in the future when only authority sites will rank.

Start now and get a head start

Hey there!

Well, let me tell you my opinion, from my own experiences.....

I would work on building an Authority Blog Site - and then monetize that blog with high converting landing pages/squeeze pages.

And by the way, Google is not penalizing sites monetized with affiliate programs. Unless the site is publishing very crappy and generic content with the only purpose to make a sale.

You have to lead with SOLUTIONS, with VALUE, when you are building a blog site online. That is what the search engines like.

Remember; the search engine's main priority is to offer their users with the best content possible. So, you must provide exactly what the search engine user is looking for - this is really how you can benefit from the search engines.

Give the search engines what their users are looking for - and the search engine will love your site for it. In return it will drive free organic traffic to your site. It really is not very complicated stuff!

Most people just over complicate search engine optimization. Keep things simple!

If you are looking to build a Long-Term Business Online - having your own Authority Blog is a must. Your own blog online will be like your own 24/7 store, pretty much!

Think about it!! ..

Imagine you own a store, is open 24/7 - people can come by, take a look, learn some valuable information, and perhaps buy something they are very interested in!

That is what a successful blog online can do for you. It can sell for you on autopilot. But you have to build it right, and it does take the right knowledge and a lot of massive consistent action.

It would take more work, to build a successful blog and gain a lot of authority - but the beautiful part about this, is that you only have to put in the hard work ONCE.

Build a blog on a niche you are very passionate about. That will help a lot. Because it will take a lot of time, patience, and effort to make it happen.

If the affiliate programs in the niche you are very passionate about, are not paying much - no problem! ... the simple solution would be to just increase the number of sales! .. thats it!

Don't make the affiliate commission percentage a big issue. You will do a lot better, a lot faster, with a niche you are very passionate about.

A blog online can generate a lot of free organic traffic for a very long time. It is a very smart investment!

I hope this helps!

Keep up the great work!

Have an awesome week!!

It honestly doesn't matter because they each have different avenues. Just choose one and focus on learning everything about it. I personally would prefer authority sites. It isn't attractive to constantly be posting landing pages on social networks. LP are things you would most likely want to pay for.

Depends whether you are going to build a model
that:

a. creates free traffic through having amazing content (authority)

b. Has a great product/squeeze page and buys the traffic (adwords/facebook)

Both models work but the bought traffic route will start making money faster
assuming that you have a good squeeze page/back story.

I remember someone said a while ago you always PAY for traffic
either with money or time

So if you have lots of time and no money...go the authority route.

If you have Lots of money but little time...pay for traffic

If you have No money and little time...forget internet marketing.

.

Just don't think about it too much or else you are going to question on where to start first.
Landing Pages = money spent for traffic or allot of time on tedious tactics. Free kindle books, youtube videos, webinars etc....

Websites = free traffic from social networks for a few weeks or months and then focusing on seo.


As far as the website goes, don't think about what it should be about. Just make a bad ass website about something. It's your choice if you want to develop something where you have to update it weekly or every few months. If anything learn about the types of websites you can create. Spend a month coming up with a few ideas, conceptualizing them, analyzing profit potential, market research and then make a final decision, once you feel 10 million percent comfortable with your decision.

My first and very quick comment. While I'm new to I'm really I have been building a site for over a year and no special marketing tactics just offering real value and leading links to products I believe in...nothing more. No squeeze page no funnels no upsells no down sells no products of my own...nothing!. Just a blog on a topic I'm interested in and products I believe in and articles and reviews written from the heart. No work on back linking, no social media noppc no AdSense or AdWords just plain old organic traffic and click through.

Its making me about 300 per month with about 1 hour per month time invested writing articles or reviews. Maybe I just got lucky and I no 300 nothing to brag about but for little to no work at all I ain't complaining. And its nowhere near an authority site...imagine what I might pull down if I invested the effort to give it authority status.

In other words...there's money to be made no matter what kind of site you decide to build so don't run yourself in circles trying to work out the deets, just get to work doing something.