What's better? One big site or many small ones?

[gigamasterhammer]

Hi everyone.

I plan to build a website with 2 good friends about fitness and sports rehab. We have a lot of things to write about (for example topics like back pain, training plans, improving your stamina, weight exercises, nutrition, motivation, fatburning and so on).

But is it better to make one big site with many categories (with SBI) or should we make one website for each topic?

What are the pros and cons?

With a big site we could build a real brand. But it will be hard to compete for the big keywords. Of course, we would start with a category high in demand and then add the other categories over time. We also plan to make a fitness test, so the visitor knows his personal fitness level. After the test we would link to relevant categories to improve his fitness.

With a small site we could target a profitable niche and also rank faster for important keywords.

What do you think? What's better?

Thank you very much.

[joelr]

One big site with everything. Plus small free sites and blogs that will lead people to the main site.

A friend of mine worked in the website field for ~10 years. He did really well, supported a family, had a nice car, lived in an upper class suburb. Towards the end he was having trouble with competition and he also wanted a career change but overall he made a lot of $$.

[mikethedrummer44]

A big site. It might take more work, but it will make much more money, and have a lot more authority.

[iDreamCatcher]

Originally Posted by gigamasterhammer

Hi everyone.

I plan to build a website with 2 good friends about fitness and sports rehab. We have a lot of things to write about (for example topics like back pain, training plans, improving your stamina, weight exercises, nutrition, motivation, fatburning and so on).

But is it better to make one big site with many categories (with SBI) or should we make one website for each topic?

What are the pros and cons?

With a big site we could build a real brand. But it will be hard to compete for the big keywords. Of course, we would start with a category high in demand and then add the other categories over time. We also plan to make a fitness test, so the visitor knows his personal fitness level. After the test we would link to relevant categories to improve his fitness.

With a small site we could target a profitable niche and also rank faster for important keywords.

What do you think? What's better?

Thank you very much.

Few small branded sites - one for each narrow niche. It will be much easier to gain high ranking for narrow niche and you'll get more excited about this ongoing project sooner. This is important to keep your inspiration and drive you.
Generic fitness keywords could take you 5+ years to rank anywhere close to the first page on google (that is unless you hire me, lol).
Small, narrow niche sites are joy to work with and easier to massacre naive competition who launch "generic" sites on a daily basis.

Gleb

[Rebecca800]

If it were me I'd crunch some numbers. Find a really good keyword tool and calculate the supply vs demand for your top 100 keywords. I use Site Build It (which uses Wordtracker) and it is excellent for this kind of thing - even telling you a profitability figure for each keyword.

So instead of going after highly competitive words that are already well catered for by other sites, you can go for less popular keywords but which few people have covered. It's a winning tactic which really boosted the success of my site "Improve Vision Naturally" - this in itself was a secondary keyword which few people had recognized the potential of - everyone else was going for "improve vision" etc.

If you do thorough keyword research, I think it will soon become obvious whether you should do a big ultra-competitive site or several niche sites. Every niche is different but I imagine fitness is quite saturated already by the flat belly crowd. Good luck!

[iDreamCatcher]

Originally Posted by Rebecca800

...Every niche is different but I imagine fitness is quite saturated already by the flat belly crowd. Good luck!

Lol, love that comment about flat belly crowd!

[LauraJane]

I would say one big site is the ideal, otherwise you spread yourself too thin. However, if your niches are really unrelated then it may be impossible. Still, I'd start with the goal of starting with your *best* idea and running with that.

PS: I shouldn't really be given advice on this because I have a ton of small sites, which is a bad habit that I can't break. But I can't help it! Do as I say, not as I do.

[borisg]

Go with one big site. Having multiple associated topics will help draw more traffic to the same place. Having more than one author will keep you from burning out. Will also help you generate more content.

Don't use SBI if you have multiple authors. They do not support multiple logins..you will have to share the same login. Go with WP instead.

[Crushable]

pros of a big site:

a "big" site is only big by the level of traffic it recieves. Like stevepavlina.com is a "big" site. Not by how many categories or how BROAD of the topics you cover

pros are:

you develop a loyal audience
you develop a rather large audience
search traffic become less important over time since people spread the word about you through twitter, email, stumbleupon
you can make a lot of money that is more safe and consistent than any job

cons:

It takes years to do the above. Like Steve talked about on this site, he waited a year 1/2 before he made any money. Glenn at viperchill says he makes 100,000 a month. But it took years to get their

their is no guarantee you will be successfull. You could end up putting a lot of time in and money into a dud.

the health niche is very competitive, the odds are stacked against you. BUT you can do.

Pro of a small site:

You can rank small targeted sites more easily for keywords.
By ranking, you will quickly discover if their is money to be made

Cons:

You can only go after keywords that are not competive
In the health and fittness niche, most keywords are already dominated

So to wrap this up, GO BIG or GO HOME. Also, focus your idea a bit more. What specific health or fitness topic you going to attack? Try to become the default resource for tennis or baseball or whatever. Then you can make products around your brand expertise.

[Curtis2011]

You really need to decide on the purpose of your website first.

Will the purpose be to sell ebooks? Or to have a big forum with hundreds of fitness-interested people talking on them? Or to sell a training video of some sort?

"To make a website" or "to share what we know" isn't a clear goal. You should have some form of monetization strategy in mind before you start, if you are intending to make money from your website.

[marc lee]

A big site could be easier to create because there is more focus. When you create many little site, you have to switch you concentration a lot and this is probably more energy intesive.
Reagrding income, the long tail says that you can make with many small products the same amount of income as with one big product.

[gigamasterhammer]

First of all, thank you so much for all the answers.

But now I'm more confused than before.

One of my friends is a fitness instructor and sports scientist. So we will offer private coachings and online coachings. Some other things we think about are: eBooks, online courses, affiliate marketing.