Guest Post by SR Connell

One of the greatest implied conflicts in the "make money online" community is the debate whether we should focus on creating small "niche" websites or larger "flagship" websites. As someone who has found success in both niches, I've found the debate to be completely wrong-founded.

This article will introduce you to the two most popular website business models, and will compare them for you to choose.

Small Niche Websites

A small niche website is a website that has just a few dozen articles and is written to rank well for a very specific niche. For example, I built a website that details the basics of information dealing with short term loans.

The website details the basics of student, personal and business short term loans. It isn't amazing. The content isn't breathtaking. But I still make $20 per day.

That website is geared towards the search engines specifically. I focus on content and links -- and that's it. By focusing on writing a good 20-30 articles, you have enough content to rank in Google. By building links, you'll be increasing your ability to rank in Google as well as the other search engines.

The total amount of time to build a website is less than 2 days if you're a fast writer. The time to build links depends, but I usually spend about a month working on a new niche site.

The income is usually limited. I usually make no more than $5-10 per day per website, with the exception of the short-term loan site. But when you build 20 or so small niche websites, you have a relatively easy income stream.

Here are the reasons people like to try small niche websites:

-You don't have to constantly update
-You don't have to constantly manage comments
-You don't have to build links for years
-You can expand as you see fit

Large Flagship Websites

Large websites are different from the small niche websites. They aren't written only for the search engines, but are wired specifically for people. The goal is to get a large following of people to read the website. These readers will give you a huge level of traffic every day.

An example would be my How to Make Money Online website. My biggest money-making page is the affiliate page, where I help others make a few hundred per day who aren't looking to actually create a website.

You make money specifically by selling products, placing ads on the website, etc. You don't make much per visitor, but the theory is that with enough traffic, you can still pull a profit.

The idea is that you generate traffic by writing and publishing fantastic content every single day. Some blogs publish literally 5-10 articles per day, trying to shock and awe the Internet into gathering them a great income and following.

-It takes a lot more work
-It takes more time to succeed
-The competition is usually worse
-But the payoff can be lucrative

This is where most people earn millions online -- by publishing a flagship website in a competitive and high-paying niche.

Conclusion

There you have it. If you are willing to work harder to get the money, a flagship website might be for you. Of course, if you're just starting out a niche website is probably the best bet. I have used both and both methods work just as well in the long run -- it's really just up to you.