Subdomains vs. several domains

I suggest you to buy a domain name for a niche........

and use subdomains for the sub niches...


that way u can decrese the cost.......

When a domain costs less than $10, buy domains

If you can afford to do it, buy separate domains and set them up using a variety of hosts. This probably is the best way to take advantage of cross-linking the sites.

If all the niches and sub-niches are related, consider combining them into one authority site.

If cost is an issue, using one main domain with sub-domains is fine to start with.

I started out using subdomains instead of seperate domains for each niche. I saved a load of money doing this because 99% of the niches were duds.

But...

What I discovered is that if Google or any of the other big SE's decide to drop a site out of the index then ALL the subdomains go not just one. This happened on several of my domains and every time it happened I lost 15 or more sites out of the SE's and they took more than 2 years to come back again. Some are still lost in space.

If I was starting again I would use one domain per niche and plan to drop any that were still duds after 2 years.

Steve

This is a good thread. Lots of worthwhile points. I have always used domains rather than sub domains so I am interested in what others think.

Norma

This was my exact same question... Because I was considering buying a domain, (something.com) then trying to have a bunch of different niches off of it, by doing something like this (niche.something.com). This is a very informative thread.

Maybe I should think of buying a domain for each niche.

I wrote earlier that it would cost me about 60 bucks for each domain name.
I've looked deeper into it today and found out that I can actually buy a domain name for about $10.

This is good news

And thanks for all the answers. You guys have (once again) proved to be very informative. Thx.

I think there are two reasons why you want to go with separate domains.

The first is what Steve said about getting de-indexed.

The second is that if you use separate domains then you have a bunch of separate "businesses" that you can sell if you lose interest in them or need the money.

Lee

Hmmm, if they were decent sites and if you had enough of them, you would still be able to make a living from non Google rankings i.e msn etc if you got delisted in Google.

It's all about scale isn't it?

Personally I do both strategies, which is a strategy in itself.

Either don't put all your eggs in one basket OR if you do then look after the basket.

I think it really depends on what you're trying to achieve in your business plan and what you have in available resources. Business objectives can change but ultimately, that's where you'll find your answer.

Let's say that you, your family, and friends are lifetime fishermen.
Let's say that you've acquired a site that's all about fishing called
EXPERTFISHERMEN.COM (which is available by the way).

You cover bass fishing, sword, shark, cat, pike, trout and just about anything that can be fished. You converse information such as weather climate conditions, regions, lakes, seas, safety, etc. You hold contests, blogs,forums, photo and videos, how tos, etc. You sell equipment, PLRs, media and so on. You've got advertisers from manufacturers / marketers out of the wazzoo.

Now, your site becomes so popular that Alexa loves you because
you're getting monstrous daily hits. Your visitors /customers deem you as the afficianado of fishing (pun). They also politely suggest that your site is way too cumbersome to search. Everyone in your back office from sales all the way down to the network administrator suggests that they're getting complaints as well.

At this point having multiple domains for cross-linking doesn't seem to make sense because you're getting a plethora of traffic and your branding will suffer if you do. Think about all the big successful sites like craigslist, ebay, network television online. They use sub-domain strategies. If the subdomain doesn't work in their business model, they can easily drop it.
They don't have to "think about a name", try to locate it via internic (whois), put dashes if it's already taken or pay someone their ransom fee to take over the name because they have it parked.
Talk about creative frustration.

Then...
You remembered this thread on Warrior Forum about domain structure. You implement a subdomain strategy for such a vast topic like fishing. You're able to streamline and implement various strategies based on visitor/customer needs.

The aforementioned is just one single scenario. Not everyone wants this. Some marketers would rather have mulitple niches for redundancy. For some, the simpler the better.
You can also paint a picture for having multiple domains that is just as robust and just as attractive to your business plan.

IMHO, get the rudiments of your business model down and that'll get you closer to your answer.

I am pretty new to this niche domain stuff.
After I realized that I can have one server and multiple domains pointing to that server (with differen DB's) things seems a lot easier and cheaper.

A domain name only costs about $10 in denmark also. I was not aware of this when I wrote the OP.

I think I'll start with buying a new domain name and try my stuff.
If it looks like it will work, then I'll try in another niche with another domain name and so forth...

Thanks for all the replys. I am so grateful for all of your guys help. Really

i think you should by your domain name.it will potray you as a professional