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While, it can be important to fill a nitch with your domain name, it may be more important to choose a domain name that will allow you to expand in the future. I've created a number of websites where I was shortsighted at first and later regretted it.
You've had an idea for a website for a long time and you finally have the time to start building it. You are serious and you intend to build a website that will be filled with content for your visitors. You want this to be a website of real value. You actually want to people to get something out of your site and in exchange you would like to make a few bucks. This seams like a fair deal.
Niche vs Everything The beauty of the way a website / domain works is it's versatility. You could have a very broad domain name and still cover niche topics via the use of subdirectories. Let's say you want to create a mainstream music site. You could go with mainstreammusic.com or something similar, but would this be too limiting? If your music site takes off, you may find other things that your target demographic is into. For example, I'd guess that the mainstream music crowd is typically under 14-25 years old, give or take. What else to 14-25 year old people like to purchase besides music? You could be getting affiliate commissions off of blue jeans, perfume, McDonalds (I'm not sure about that one), etc. By limiting your site to just music, you are missing out on a large chunk of visitors.
Getting Started In the beginning, you must focus on your niche. In fact, it's critical. If you spread yourself too thin too fast, you'll be in trouble. So focus on whatever it is that you are doing, but keep the future in mind. Take "Baby Steps" from "What About Bob?". Start small. After you conquer your music subdirectory, you can then create your fashion subdirectory, but not until then. Launching a fashion portion of your large site will be much easier. You will already have traffic coming to your site. Members of the forum will automatically see it and visit it. You'll get a boost right off the bat. Then when you start your comedy subdirectory, just think how easy it will be to get that going. You already have two fully function websites (but under subdirectories) One mass email to your members and you'll get big time traffic the first day.
The Advantages of Big Websites Here's more food for thought. Would you rather have one hundred websites that all fulfill one niche or would you rather have one astronomical website that has one hundred niche subdirectories inside itz/ The laws of synergy kick in. Your site will be much more successful if you can house anything under one roof, or in this case one domain. Users only have to join one forum or one mailing list to use everything in your site. You can still cater to each niche specifically, but it sure would be nice to have a sitewide mailing list that mailed all of your members.
You also have to remember that people like to stay where they are comfortable. You know it's very annoying to start using a new graphics program, for example. It's sometimes hard to navigate through a site that you've never been to before. People enjoy familiarity. If you can give this to them, you will be more powerful and more successful.
When it comes to search engines, they like sites that have lots of content. So why would you build one hundred sites with 1,000 pages when you could build one site with 100,000 pages? You can quickly see the power in this setup. Why have one hundred PR 6 sites when you can have one PR 8 or PR 9.
Imagine how difficult it is to start up a new forum. Some experts say that developing a successful forum is one of the most difficult tasks for a webmaster. Why would you want to do that one hundred times? You would do it just once! Even if your music site doesn't explode your forum, chances are that a comedy site, a fashion site, and a music site will explode your forum....Synergy.
The next time you consider buying a domain name, think long ahead, and think big.
About the Author
Brandon Drury has a paid the bills using the internet for years. If you want more traffic for your website, check out theseoplace.com