So I don't know exactly where this fits, but I figured it would go best here because I need help asap. I am stuck about ideas on either building a very large site that contains many things, or building a network of sites with specific domains... For example: cars.com >>including >>car talk >>car reviews >> and so on... 1 huge site that contains everything. (putting them in subdomains or directories) OR Register and build cars.com cartalk.com carreviews.com etc. And link to them via the main site cars.com What are the pros and cons of this? Anyone?
I've had a similar issue, and I went the subdomain route. There are good points: indexing and passing PR seem to have been awesome, but OTOH, try submitting subdomains to directories, and you'll see that the pool of directories who'll take your link is smaller and it usually costs more.
I would recommend register one good domain and get all the content under it, you could always use subdomains. One big website is easy to maintain than many small websites. IMHO There are advantages for using one domain, you could concentrate more on design aspect, otherwise you'll have to get a unique and good design for every domain, link building and getting reciprocal links for one domain is easier and could be managed in a more mannered way. But if you take flip side, if you have multiple domains, you could have better search engine presence, but again that requires a lot more work. It all depends how much time/workforce you've. I personally would go for one good domain, actually i am already working on this concept, i am building a pictures/wallpapers website which has around 2500 categories and would've close to 1M images. I had the same confusion. The choice i had was to dedicate one domain to every section (that turned out to be around 35 domains) or get one good domain, i chose one domain.
HAHA silly me! I went with subdomains and used a different design on each! I am treating them as different, but affiliated sites, not as different sections of one site. That is quite a bit of extra work.
It just takes some extra time, but the basic idea of getting different domains, i think is OK. But in your case since its completely different topics, i think its better to get different domains.