Niching Up

Interesting question Mark. I'm not an Expert on SEO or Minisites (etc.) ... However I would go with putting all the content on one Website.

Sure. Although I don't see a problem with that ... The Website can be divided into "categories" and potentially still rank well in Google (etc.) for the Keywords.

2C

I think in practice, it would be rare for someone to have arrived at 15 successful sites without having outsourced a part of the workload already.

It's more likely that out of the first 15, there'll be maybe 3 or 4 that are worth continuing with. So if you close the non performers as you go and concentrate on the others, that makes the growth more manageable.

But you're really just talking about scale. If the plan is to build a portfolio of sites to flip later, you'll probably have a formula with a standard template for each site and a tried and tested method for growth. Depending on your preferred time scale, you could do all or most of the work yourself, or have a team do it.

If the plan is to end up with a single, authoritative site, you'd probably create the starter blogs with that in mind and select a niche or market that would be compatible with that subject. Then you could roll all the blogs into one if you wanted. Although, personally, I think it would be better to start off with one catch-all site and build out the categories as you go.

I wouldn't try running 15 plus sites when I could use that time and energy to drive traffic and build community on 1 site .

Instead of focusing so much on a niche learn skill sets and use the skill sets to generate income .

For every topic there are sub topics to choose from .As long as the topics are relatable and you can add value why not write about it .

As usual... I am going to play a bit of devils advocate. 15sites that need articles written... and ads and etc etc etc

and I am going to assume that those 15 sites have an amount of traffic built into them?

So where exactly are you going to be saving work? your still writing articles for 15 sub niches... you are still running 15 targeted ads.

I am more than assuming your not just going to dump the 15 sites? so now you are writing across the 15 x 2 sites / sub topics?

Niched single topic targeted sites will win out over a huge site with many topics all day long... in both the ability to build traffic and the ability to convert to your offer - if nothing else there is fewer points of distraction... Oh im here to lose weight before my wedding... but they are reading how their husband can lose weight... The ad that drew them in was about X..and they end up ready Y and we all know how that ends in terms of conversion... a ZERO

So my suggestion would be to start a site with the same generalized topics - skin care but go more evergreen.. people that buy skin care are also going to maybe eat healthier... or be interested in sun screen or or or

Use the NEW mega site within the email outreach of the 15 other sites to draw that base into a more centralized after you buy X you may also be interested in A B and C

Selling skin care to a list for 3 years... and probably the same skin care system at that... how is that going? you are only really speaking to the new people on the list. You or "They" need to convert the traffic over to an evergreen ever changing offer to leverage actual BUYERS over time.

The 15 site convert today.. and keep converting today tomorrow and 3 years from now.. but you then get those lists over to the evergreen site that you can speak to a large number of interested people on a variety of products / services for years and years to come

For ecom stores transitioning to 1 site has it's benefits, especially being able to concentrate on one set of social media accounts and email list. Also it brings options of adding products more easily and could generate more value from cross selling and up selling, the trick though is being able to merge them without losing he's perceived authority in each niche.

Creating content for 1 category is already quite taxing, what more for a blog with 15 categories?

The truth is, most are afraid to pick one area and become an authority on it, usually because they believe they are boxing themselves in but, once you have learnt how to market successfully, getting new businesses off the ground is much simpler.

Master one thing and then move onto the next.

Hi Mark, I would definitely push it onto one site. Focus the site build on laying out the content in a logical structure with good navigation, menus and home page so that the traffic knows where and how to use and go through the site and what it's there for. I would suggest he re-brands it as a single brands with all the other sub-niches bundled within that brand. Remember that search engines will be sending people directly to individual pages and not just the home page so migration of these pages to the new site with redirects will be important, but a developer can sort that out. You don't want to lose that existing traffic to those pages. To be honest, if his products/topics are all about the same skin system then I don't consider it to be a broad new site, especially compared to some sites. Quite doable I think.
Cheers
Blair

I don't recommend moving lots of little sites to one big site, because Google gives you more traffic the more focused your content is, so little sites are likely to get more traffic than one big site.

You can always link the sites where appropriate.

I tried this some years ago . . . I had a few little sites that were working OK, and thought it would be "better" to have them all on one big site. The result was that the big site got a lot less traffic.

Chris

It depends on how you do it. I had the opposite experience to Chris-. Redirected a group of smaller sites to one large site and it worked well with traffic going up and consistently on the large site. As you say, it all depends on the content and strength of the smaller sites.