Niche Sites vs. Authority Sites: What’s the Difference?

Niche sites and authority sites are completely different things.

Or they?

There are so many different definitions being thrown around that it’s easy to get confused. Your niche sites, authority sites, micro niche sites, affiliate sites, amazon sites, amazon review sites, adsense sites, blogs and of course mini-micro-meta-sites about micro-machines.

I fixed the last one.

Or did I?

In most cases, most of the definitions overlap. I am certainly guilty of using some of these terms interchangeably. However, there ARE different types of sites and different strategies that can be followed.

People can argue until they’re blue in the face about which method is better, and they all end up being right. What I’m going to do in this post is look at some of them different types of sitessee where these overlaps might be and weigh the pros and cons of each.

Generally, when people talk about an authority site or a niche site, they are referring to the reach and perhaps the quality of the site.

It’s actually pretty clear when you look at the definitions I gave above. The problem is that it can lead to a lot of double thinking. It’s either an authority site or a niche site, and that’s not the way to think about building profitable sites.

I’ve never believed that niche sites and authority sites should be mutually exclusive. Every authority site still operates as a “niche” and at one point an authority site had only 10 articles anyway.

And who’s to say that a “niche” site can’t be built and expanded later? That’s exactly what I do with my sites and how we’ve built ours for you. Check out our latest spot here silage stacking.

To understand a little more why these different definitions persist, let’s take a closer look at the history of how affiliate marketers build niche sites.

A Brief History of Niche Sites

Years ago you could exact match-domainpost a few posts on it and be number one on Google within days or even hours. Back then, adsense paid a lot of moneyaffiliate marketers will take out many of these sites and either earn money with Adsense or create a few more pages on the site targeting their products and earn affiliate commissions.

This loophole was closed in October 2012.

However, it took a while for the concept of “authority site” to really catch on. People were still building little 20 page sites and making lots of money with them.

It started to become less successful as Google made it harder to rank sites and made the sandbox era more of a reality. You can’t just put a few hundred words on a few hundred pages and send some links to a site.

Now you should have demonstrated that your site is an “authority” or in other words, one of the best sites in your niche.

This is where the concept of an authority site really came into being.

What I don’t like about the definition is that it implies that smaller sites are not reputable. As these sites are just making stuff up about the topic to get sales.

Which is not the case at all.

This kind of low-quality affiliate site still exists in some niches, but that doesn’t mean every small site is low-quality. You can have a 10 page site on a small topic that is very comprehensive and deserves the term authority.

Likewise, you can have a large site that covers many topics and has dozens of pages, but it does do you guarantee that it is authorized?

You can see how confusing this can be.

So I will conclude this section with just this:

There is a clear trend towards sites being built on a larger scale, with both longer articles and more.

However, there’s no reason to automatically assume that every site you build will be a giant 100-site monster. You can have great success with a 10-50 page site that includes just a few related subsections. You don’t need to keep deleting content every week unless you really want to.

Niche Sites Vs. Authority sites

In my definition above, I tried to point out that there are overlaps between authority sites and niche sites. When I gave the definition of each type, I also said that they exist need not be mutually exclusive. Niche sites should be expanded over time so that they become authority sites.

So essentially all authority sites are niche sites to begin with. They are the babies of the authority site in a way, but if you want to start an authority site, you need to create a niche site.

However, the two types of sites involve different strategies because the site is at a different stage.

It also depends on the type of affiliate business you want to build.

For example, someone who wants to maintain a portfolio of sites and outsource most of it would be better suited to niche sites, while someone who wants just one site will eventually build an authority site.

I have covered many of these topics in a previous post you can read herebut I will summarize again below.

Pros and cons of niche sites

A basic strategy with a smaller site is to just build it to a certain number of posts (I recommend 30-50) and then focus on link building from there.

If the site starts to become successful, you can develop it further and turn it into an authority site, or you can leave it as it is and switch to another site.

This strategy is more suitable for those who have limited time or want to outsource a lot. You can build and promote your site in stages.

Sites that we build for our customers are also in this style, but we do not tell people to leave them as they are. We encourage our customers add more posts visits their sites and we choose domain names that don’t force you to limit yourself to just one niche. For example, “Bestsafetyrazorhq.com” is a bad domain name and does not allow for subsequent extensions.

This strategy certainly attracts a lot of people, but there must be some downsides, otherwise why would people bother building authority sites at all?

The answer is that the authority site has a higher profit ceiling. If you’ve built a site that dominates your niche, you can add new products, move to new subsections, and leverage your existing authority. You can do a small amount of work to increase your income.

Niche sites on the other hand have more linear growth. Yes, there is a point where a niche site starts to become more authoritative in the eyes of Google and it becomes easier to get page 1 ranking, but there is less opportunity to scale easily. Niche sites are often not concerned with building a loyal audience or fanbase and many don’t even use an email list.

It is much easier to make $10,000 per month with 1 authority site than $5,000 per month with 2 niche sites.

This assumes you have a lot of time to devote to a site. If you only have a few hours of free time a week, you won’t qualify for an authority site.

So, to summarize, for niche sites:

• Greater ability to outsource and a degree of ‘set it and forget it’
• Takes less time (but still requires patience)
• An easier way to earn money
• Ability to catch and repeat and set up multiple sites.
• In any case, the possibility of expansion to the authorized site later.
• Could be more gray hat.

But at the same time you have:

• Lower earning potential (but still quite high)
• Less ability to leverage your audience later for easy scale
• There is little opportunity to create your own products/services.

Pros and Cons of Authority Sites

As already discussed above, authority sites require more time. Once you reach a certain level of success (or even “authority”), things get a lot easier. A site with an existing audience and fan base that keeps people coming back to read new content will always be able to add new revenue streams relatively easily. When you have an existing customer base to sell to, it’s very easy to start offering your digital or physical products.

The road to get to this stage can be long and hard, especially when authority sites really only want to rank with white hat link building techniques, but once you get there, it’s worth it. We interviewed Doug Cunnington on this very specific topic – from the gray hat to the white hat.

There should also be a lot of authoritative sites higher quality content. Niche sites don’t need to be that good. I’m not saying that a niche site can have poor contentbut since you’re not trying to build a base of repeat customers, your content should be exclusive it’s good enough to earn commissions.

Authoritative sites want to be the best on the web, so they need to write better content. If you’re outsourcing content, it’s expensive and will require you to be more serious about hiring.

It is more difficult for beginners to outsource content for authority sites because as a beginner you are less likely to learn how to train writers or how to distinguish between good and bad content.

An authority site also requires you to focus on just one site. This can be more frustrating for some people, especially if you’re impatient like me! This is an advantage, though, because focus always leads to more success.

As with niche sites, let’s summarize here about authority sites:

• They have higher earning potential
• Once you have traction, you can accelerate scaling
• Google likes bigger, deeper sites
• You can create more assets like email lists.

But equally

• They take more time
• They are more difficult for beginners
• They cost more to run

So Which Is Best?

If you haven’t realized by now, there is no right way to skin this cat, but there will definitely be some people who are more suited to one style of the site and some who go the other way.

My personal method is to build the site as a niche site but leave the door open for it to grow. I don’t want to choose a very narrow subsection with limited potential unless I know the site will rank on its own. Which won’t happen. Not anymore.

For example, start with safety razors, then move on to brushes, stands, other types of razors, and other grooming products.

That’s exactly how we designed it our ready-made sites.We get you started with a sub, but we really don’t want you to leave the site like that. Grow it, expand it and succeed.

We have clients who put our niche sites together. Attack low-competition keywords first in the shoulder gaps and then weave them together. It makes more sense than finding a low-competition sub-niche and then moving to the same niche when your site is available. still very young Being Google-friendly.

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