would you use subdomains? ie: about.com style?

[jayk]

What's up? I'm Jake. And I'm stuck down here in the orientation room until I spike the punch bowl and get the mods drunk enough to release me. Until I get my flask out, though, I thought I'd introduce myself. At least, then, you'll know who's responsible for the party changing gears.

I made a bunch of money from autoblogs and exact match MFA sites for a few years. That dried up after a while, and I didn't give much more thought to the passive income dream.

Since then, I've tried a few different avenues, doing web design for people, copywriting for other people, local seo for some other people, pretty much, working for other people. Tt's paid the bills, but I want to get paid in my sleep again. Building content sites is the best way I know how to do that, and what comes most naturally for me.

My big question is whether there is anything wrong, or risky, about using subdomains like about.com does? Instead of being general, though, using the main domain as a viral style site, and the subdomains to service different niches, each with their own demographics.

In my head, all of the promotion is working to help the other subdomains out, and as long as it's interlinked properly, it's win-win? The audiences, being segmented, is what I'm looking at 1st, SEO is a close 2nd, branding being 3rd.

Or should I stay with smaller, tighter sites for some reason I'm not experienced enough to see? Instead of focusing on all automobiles and using subdomains to segment the niches, build a site around tuner hondas, instead?

Edited: toptenreviews.com is another site using subdomains.

 

[Ryuzaki]

My main concern, but you dealt with it as you kept typing, is interlinking the subdomains, otherwise they just act as separate sites.

I suspect there's some SEO seekret as to why some sites are using subdomains. I'm not sure if that's slapping your keyword at the very front of your domain: honda.sweetreviews.info or what. There are people making that choice deliberately, but I'm not clued into it.

I'd suggest a smaller tighter site as a one-man army. About.com employs a ton of people and have even more working for free. These toptenreviews guys and others like them... they typically are funneling in cash from elsewhere and outsourcing massive amounts of work. I've seen behind the scenes of these Top X and Best X style review sites, the ones actually doing it big and winning. You might compete but it won't be on these big affiliate offers they are targeting. They'll own that day in and day out. They don't have brand audiences either. They are all organic SEO with lots of spam, straight and tiered, lots of bought links.

I certainly couldn't aim that broad without losing my mind. You're talking about tons of verticals, let alone just one and trying to manage all of the various niches within that vertical. I don't want to presume anything about your experience or assets, but me personally I couldn't handle it and wouldn't' want to. I'd want to stay narrow, build relevancy around my domain to the max, and crush one niche at a time. It only takes one to retire. Taking down the entire world would be great but the chances of doing it are slim and that also lessens your chance of even taking down a single niche. Or you can focus on one niche from the start, stay focused, and dominate.

 

[jayk]

The initial goal was to minimize starting over on every new site, but it is what it is for now. I for sure want to get a couple flips behind me this year to pad my bank account and give me some breathing room. Picking that one idea to retire off of is the problem now, I guess.

It's funny you mention taking down the world. I want to dethrone Arriana Huffington and her $300 million empire. I don't think I'm on that level yet either, though. All that free premium content, and the writer's bitching about not being paid for it. There's an opportunity for a rev share platform, I think. Hubpages/Infobarrel the right way.

I've got quite a bit of experience on the web, programmed as a teenager, and made a bunch of money with CJ, Google Affiliate Network, Amazon, and AdSense back in the day. I want to get back into the niches that made me the most. I think you're right though, one at a time until I get my bearings again. I definitely don't have the budget to compete on a large scale right now.

I never really learned the business side of what I was doing, either. I just did what I was told, and had enough skills to do it a lot. There wasn't any real thinking to the money I made, so now I'm almost at square one, as far as real web development and marketing skills goes.

 

[lion1978]

I suspect there's some SEO seekret as to why some sites are using subdomains

The big "secret" as far as I can see is from the DA of the main domain that might give a subdomain abit of juice, but imho it's not enough to bother with it

 

[jayk]

I'm going to put the idea on the backburner for now, and set myself up to build it in a year, or two. I'm going to get a piece of the HuffPo pie, one day. If not, go full on fatty and eat the whole thing. >

I sat in bed last night thinking about which niche of the 5 or so I'm tossing around would be possible of making me at least $1,000 a day and finally settled on one. Now that I've got enough likes (thanks!) to get out of the orientation room, I'll get together a follow along.