When it comes to making money online and building a niche affiliate blog there are 2 ways you can do it.

#1.   By Topic

#2.  By Product

Both have advantages and disadvantages.

If you are creating a blog based on a topic you have a clear road to building a much larger website but you’ll sacrifice some of the targeted content.

A topic covers a more broad range of a niche rather than a product which is focused mainly on one item or type of item.  Let me give you some examples of blogs based on topic using certain keywords:

Celebrity Gossip

Landscaping

Home Improvement

Pet Care

Self Help

That is just a few of the millions of possible topics.  You’ll notice the ones I mentioned above could easily have thousands of pages/posts added to the site.  This makes it easy to build a massive website that can gain mass exposure and make you great money online.

So what is the downside? 

You need to be organized or you’ll get lost while you’re in the building mode.  Staying focused and writing down several keywords early on will help immensely.

You’ll also spend much of your time working on link building on a site like this.  But, you’ll be able to do a little each day or week and your site will grow to a pretty amazing site.

Slower start up is also expected.  Since your blog will be about a topic ranking the home page will be more difficult. 

To get the most out of a site like this I recommend using tools like Market Samurai for keyword research and 1 Way Links to automate your link building process.

On the flip side of selecting a topic let’s take at what a product style website might be based on keywords:

IPhone Accessories

Flat Screen TVs

Tractor Parts

Knitting Supplies

Beer Recipes

This is just a few of the millions of possible niche sites based on a product or type of product.  Below I’ll explain the good and bad.

Let’s look at the good stuff first. 

Much easier to start and get ranked in the search engines for.  It’s much easier to exact match and try to rank for a keyword based on a simple product.  The reason?  Usually a product has far fewer monthly searches than a topic and that usually means much less competition (but not always).

A product based website is usually a quick build.  Often, a website build around a product will not be a large build.  Because there aren’t that many keywords based on the product you can usually build an entire product based website in less than 20-30 pages/posts and as few as 5 or 10.  This means that you can usually build an entire website with full content in under a couple of weeks.

Product sites also lead to not becoming overly bored.  Because you can build them quickly you’ll be less likely to get bored with the topic.  When we get bored with things we are less likely to work on the things that make us feel that way.  This is the part we can damn our short attention spans as humans.

Less confusion is another great thing about building a small website.  If you are building a site with 500 pages it can become more confusing to work with than a smaller site with 20 pages.

Let’s take a look at the bad side of building a product based website.

Product based websites are limited.  Let’s face it; they can only grow as the industry grows.  Let me give you an example.  Let’s assume you built a website based around a certain toy.  Let’s assume that toy has currently about 20 different keywords that you can base certain pages of your site on.  Unless the company adds to the product selection of that toy or adds new features your site can’t possibly develop many new keywords based on that particular product.  Therefore, you are limited whereas with a topic you wouldn’t be.

Limited searches are also a problem.  As I mentioned above building a site by topic usually allows you to build a big site with many pages.  Typically, the fewer amounts of pages/posts you build, the less amount of traffic you’ll receive.  This can limit your growth as well.

These types of sites have a lower income in the long run.  The larger the site the larger the overall income for the long haul (typically).  A site that you can continue to add pages/posts to over a longer period of time usually can make much more money as well.

In closing I just want to share what I believe you should do if you’re just starting out.  I always say, start small.  Go for the product site, learn, get your feet wet and then as you get better and start making more money build the larger more competitive sites!  But, start small.  Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and it started with one block.  You should use Rome as an example minus the whole internal implosion thing!

By starting with smaller sites it allows you to stay focused, construct a site that you can make money with and at the same time you’re learning a lot of new things.  The knowledge you’re learning is the most important thing because you’ll never lose that!  Start with the small products sites and work your way up to the large scale topic styled sites.