What do you guys think: If I had a mega site about [toothbrushes - just making that up] and throw some adsense on it along w/ affiliate products pertaining to the site vs. Ten small niche sites about different products that had 10 to 20 pages each (again w/ affiliate products sprinkled in w/ adsense) Which do you think would win out as far as making more $$$?
It depends on how well your mega site performs on very high traffic SERPs. The reason long tail, niche, sites do weel, even though the keywords they target may have less volume is becuase it's often easier to get high on the first page of a key phrase that has less competition. For example, say your 'mega site' targts the key prhase is 'toothbrushes'. Yes, that keyword get's 27,10o searches per month on Google. but it's *extremely competitive. It's very likely that you'l never even sniff the first page or two on that keyphrase, and 95% of all that traffic for that keyprhase only goes to the first page. 99.9% to the first two pages. So if you're not on the first two pages, you end up with almost no traffic at all, maybe a few hits per month at most. Conversely, consider if your 'niche' site targeted the keyprhase 'soft toothbrushes'. Sure, it only gets 480 searches per month, but it has MUCH less competition. With a bit of proper SEO, you could end up not only on the first page, but in the top 3 results, where 60% of all traffic for a SERP goes. You can easily see how this 'niche' site could end up with 100 times the organic traffic that your 'mega site' does.
I agree that niche micro sites are in a lot of ways an easier road to take. Be sure to do your keyword research before hand and hone on niches that you can dominate. Obviously easier said than done, but be sure to put in that preparation. Also, try and find out if other people are monetizing that keyword. It's nice to see that there are SOME advertisers or sellers out there for a particular niche. You don't really want to be an absolute pioneer in a given niche because it may be hard to make any money...
Doing your keyword research is essential before launching a niche blog, but you can definitely compete with the big boys if you do it well. The short-tail keywords are always the most desirable and competitive so try and choose a non-saturated long-tail keyword.
I'll be trying long-tailed KWs with a mega site (if I do one). There will be many KWs. I'll be staying away from the short tailed KWs.