1 year to go!

[James]

And let's not forget that big bucks from big sites can let you buy other sites with those bucks, so you have the ability to cross-promote, benifitting both sites allowing for an even higher profit.

[incka]

I would suggest trying to compete before trying to buy out the competition. That's Bill Gates' stratergy...

[Emancipator]

Emancipator, I find it unlikely you could use $3.65 to keep your sites up--domain names cost more than that!

*pissed off rant removed*

[Emancipator]

So are you saying that establishing a large website is a good grounding for the promotional aspects of your other web sites rather than for been a sucsess in its own right?

And regarding the popularity of smaller niche sites, I was also under the same inpression as Blue Cat. I know of a some other webmasters pulling in at least a $200 per week on just 5 - 10 pages of content??

I cant say to much on this, since i typically design sites for others, not run them for myself. I have found that alot of content results in alot of people from VARIOUS niches reading.

If your selling product then 5-10 pages of content can make more then a 2000+ page site like mine. But if your relying on advertising I would think a site with more content will perform better.

I cant say for sure, I dont have enough sites to be a fair judge, but that is my cent and a half

[Cutter]

Big sites earn lots of money, but so do small sites. The real issue is what your strategies and goals are and how you go about achieving them -- not the size of your site. I have one very large site, and several smaller ones.

Now, here is my reasoning behind having a large site. If you have a bigger site it means you have more to offer than your competitors. In the short term this may not be an issue. 2, 3, or even 5 years down the road you may need to do some work to keep your 5 or 10 page site at #1.

That being said, I have one site that is somewhere around 400 pages. It took months to build. I have another site that took 2 days to make. My first site may be big, but it also has a lot of information you can find elsewhere. The small site has exclusive information you would be hard pressed to find on the internet. The small site started making money almost instantly, the larger one took several months. My big one is making more than the small one right now. As far as CPM earnings the small one is doing a whole lot better. Once traffic picks up on it I expect it will earn a lot more.

Heres another reason multiple small sites are better: diversity. If you are relying on Adsense you know how much advertising rates fluctuate. No matter what kind of site you are running, you know search engine rankings change. If you have a single site that is relying entirely on search engine traffic and something changes, you could be in big trouble.

Look at the big picture. I don't think its fair to say that a Ferrari is better than a dump truck. I wouldn't want to haul around gravel in a Ferrari anymore than I'd want to race a dump truck. Look at it that way. Check your expenses and income and see what works best for you. We all may be webmasters, but some of us are better in some areas than others. Some of us are running affiliate sites, other adsense, and some of us rely entirely on banner ad revenue.

Should you run big sites or small sites? My answer -- try both and see what works best for you.

[moonshield]

try both... have both. A small site is not hard to make at all.

[topcat]

ok will do both...

will let you know how I get on.

thanks for all your help.

Cat

[Emancipator]

yeah you know poorman you hit on it. A small site is easy. I did mine in about 2 hours. Content sites however take a bit more. Let us know how you make out topcat.

[topcat]

...sorry, one more thing

This should probably go as a seperate post really, but....

Is it better to aim sites at the american market or the english one. E.g. I've noticed a lot of sites from English web masters are aimed at America, therefore my first one, Dr. Phil is also aimed for an American audience. However, I know the English markets much better? Is it a waste of time aiming sites at an English audience because there are simply not as many people here? Has anyone had any sucsess with an English only based site?

[incka]

I would go for US market.

[Emancipator]

topcat I would not target the US market. Target a topic not a demographic. My site is a nice broad mix of people and thats important when you are looking for readers.