Niche down or go broad..

[relentlesseffort]

Hi guys,

I've been weighing down the pros and cons of either niching down or going broad with a website. There is this blog post by Nat Eliason that made me think more about this. When you niche down you can focus on specific things and it's usually easier to rank for your main keyword set. Having a broader site will make it harder to rank but you have more options to built out or pivot in other directions and can hit a lot of different keyword sets. If one area becomes irrelevant or gets extremely high competition you can choose to take a different direction in the main genre you choose.

I think both come with their pros and cons and depending on your goal, either one can outweigh the other.

Sure it will take longer to gain traction and it's a bigger game plan but I kinda like the idea of going broad and then focusing on subsections in the broader genre. Take entrepreneur.com for example...

You could built any niche site that might not be relevant one day or when the competition starts upping their game you might get outranked and have to work harder at it which might not be worth your time.

What is your opinion about this? Anyone has some epic future visions you want to share?

Ben

 

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[Dignium]

My lap count is currently 0 so take my opinion accordingly. I've registered for some races, and I'm still working on my mind (clearing out limiting beliefs and other nasties).

To me, going broad when you're just starting out implies polygamy.

I would rather niche down and then broaden. Gain domain experience > begin building ONE thing > get the feedback loop started > become great at it > systemize it > scale it > and once I've built my core value out and polished it up, begin broadening out and adding legs to my table while expanding the area of the table.

Dropbox solved one problem with a unconventional, novel solution at the time they started. You can watch the founders video explaining Dropbox after he developed the core of the ecosystem. Once Dropbox started to snowball, did they start trying to please everybody right away with unstable features? No. If they did they would likely be a footnote in software history instead of the multi-billion company they're today. They would have scattered their focus, giving competitors the oppurtunity to gain grown and pass them.

Dropbox's USP is 'It Just Works' file transfer and sharing. The code is spaghetti but it's been well developed, well designed, and well polished to be Ayers Rock steady on 99.9% of Windows and Mac Operating Systems.

Dropbox secured their pole as the leader in File Syncing, they "completed" their verticle before adding horizontals. Most people just want it done for them, in a way that just works. Like Apple, Dropbox is serving the polished and stable end of the market.

You might ask, why not delegate different teams to make features while a team polishes the core offering? Because at that time Dropbox the company wasn't at the scale where they can be good to great at multiple USPs before a competitor could catch up.

Large Companies were once Small Companies. They grew up, earned their place and can branch out to new or related places.

It sounds like you need to read Unscripted .