Micro Niche Sites: Still Working?

I quit my job about 2 years ago thanks to micro niche sites.  I built lots of sites, ranked them quickly in Google, and made money with Google Adsense.

And even though I constantly blog about both micro niches sites and larger “authority” sites.  You can read more on the niche website hub here. I still receive lots of basic questions about what micro niches sites are, and how they work.  So, this post is meant to answer your basic questions on the subject.

What are Micro Niche Sites?

A “micro” niche site is typically a site that is only 1 to 10 pages that targets only 1 primary keyword.  Because it only has a few pages of content, its called “micro”.  Because it only targets one specific topic or keyword, its a “niche” site.

So, what's the difference between a regular niche site and a micro niche site?

A niche site could be a site with a lot or a little bit of content.  “Niche” simply means that it targets a specific topic.  There are sites that cover nothing but convertible vehicles that are thousands of pages.  Or there are sites that cover nothing but how to build a scrapbook that are thousands of pages long.   These are both examples of niche sites because they cover a very specific topic; but they are not micro niche sites.

In addition, a micro niche site is very often also an exact match domain.  So, if you are targeting the keyword, “how to train monkeys”, then your website would be those exact keywords: howtotrainmonkeys.com, .net, or .org (typically).

My Experience with Niche Sites

I've personally built hundreds of micro niche sites and have done very well with them.  I began building these small sites in 2008 or so and was about to quit my job in March 2011 because my income from Google Adsense was more than my corporate job.

The primary benefit of these types of small sites is that you are able to quickly target a keyword, and having an exact match domain often provided a benefit for ranking in Google.  In addition, by targeting such specific terms, I was often able to write articles about exactly what the searcher was looking for; whereas my competitors, sometimes only generally discussed the topic.

So, targeted keyword relevancy was vital to my success (and still is, but read on).

What About Authority Niche Sites?

Although, I've built hundreds of small niche sites, times have changed.  Google has updated how they rank sites with the Panda update and the Penguin update.  This has added some hurdles to how easily sites used to rank.  You most certainly can still rank micro niche sites, but is that the best strategy?  I wrote recently about my switch to focusing on fewer sites with more content.  I personally think a strategy of building larger authority sites is a better long term strategy.

I actually still do quite well with my existing micro niche sites, but for the amount of time it takes to rank, why not build something more significant that can bring in even more money?

Overall, I wanted to share what micro niche sites are, how I made my money, and my current thoughts on the subject.  You can certainly still use small sites to test markets, make a quick buck, and for other reasons.  But I would advise that a better long term strategy is building up your small niche sites with more content, higher quality, and attracting natural links.

If you have any questions, I would love to hear your thoughts!