Making Money With Niche Websites: Build or Buy?

One of the most popular ways to make money online has always been to use targeted niche websites to market affiliate products. Many niche websites earn their owners a few hundred dollars per month, with more successful sites having the potential to earn thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars monthly. With this kind of income potential, it's no wonder that niche websites are still a popular money-making option in the online sphere. When getting started in niche websites, however, there is an important choice that every website owner must make: whether to build your own website or to purchase a site that someone else has already built and brought to profitability. Here are the pros and cons of each of these methods, to help those just getting started in niche websites to make this important first decision.

Building Your Niche Website

Many first-time niche website owners choose to build their own site from scratch. To be sure, this method has some serious advantages. To begin with, building your niche site from scratch ensures that you will get a site design and content that is custom-made to your liking. Since you oversee this process, you can create exactly what you want in your niche site. Additionally, building a site is typically cheaper than buying one that is already earning an appreciable income. Building your site also allows you to assemble the team of support people you will need to run it, such as marketers, graphic designers, and writers. When purchasing an established niche site, you will typically still have to assemble such a team, and the pressure of keeping up a site that is already successful makes the learning curve for this team of freelancers much more demanding.

Building a site from scratch, however, does have its disadvantages. You will find yourself putting time, money, and effort into a site that you do not know with any certainty will make you money. Though niche selection plays a huge role in this, it is still possible for a well-built site in a good niche to fail for a variety of reasons. Even if your site is successful, it will probably be quite some time before you are realizing an appreciable income from it. It is also more difficult for a new site to gain traffic through organic search traffic, so your start on a site you are building from scratch will most likely be quite slow.

Buying Your Niche Website

Buying a niche website that is either already a fully matured business or at least through the early stages of growth can solve many of the problems associated with building a new site. Buying a site that is already profitable takes almost all of the guess work out of niche site ownership. In order to grow the site and increase its income, all you will need to do is to continue creating content that is relevant to the site's niche. Meanwhile, the site's existing content will continue to pull in organic traffic and convert leads into affiliate sales, generating income for you from day 1. Having a site which is already successful will also give you a template to work from for your future content, as you will be able to see what type of content previously used on the site generates the most income and copy that formula for even greater future success.

The downside of buying a niche site, however, is the cost. In today's market for high-quality niche sites, a website that is already performing well will typically be priced at a level equivalent to between two and three years' worth of earnings at the current rate. Obviously, this can represent a serious barrier to many would-be buyers, as a site earning even $1,000 per month can sell for well over $20,000. Of course, the opportunity exists to expand the site and increase its earnings after you have made the purchase, but this high cost to buy a website that is already earning a good profit is far from ideal for those without substantial capital to invest.

As you can see, there are real pros and cons to each method of acquiring a successful niche website. Building a site gives you excellent control over your website and can save you a great deal of money, but can also greatly increase the amount of time it will take for you to begin earning an income from your niche website. Buying a website, on the other hand, practically ensures that you will begin seeing income almost immediately, but will cost much more than many people can afford to invest. Ultimately, your circumstances, skill set, and goals for your niche site will determine which method is the better for you. Whatever you do, remember to pick a niche that you are passionate about and that will be profitable in the long term, as this will make expanding your site and keeping it successful much easier to handle