Which one would you rather have?
Let´s say you want to create several niches such has: Technology news, movies, programming tutorials, games etc.

Would you rather register just one domain, and then add a sub-domain for each niche? I.E:
www.tech.mysite.com
www.movies.mysite.com
www.tutorials.mysite.com
www.games.mysite.com

This way, everytime someone visites www.mysite.com, they could pick their favourite niche from the navigation bar and have access to a full blown specialised niche website, instead of having a bunch of links linking to other websites.

Sure, several independent small websites have obvious advantages such has:
- Unique IP address;
- Focused content;
- Specialised forum community.

But they also have some disadvantages:
- You have to pay domains and respective hosts for each niche website, which will be expensive in the long-run;
- They will be less popular, than one huge website covering all the said niches;
- You need to buy several vBulletin licenses if you want to add forums (and you should because forums greatly increase the value of your website if you with to sell it in the near future).
- You need to spend much more time, advertising and optimizing for each small site.

I have seen some sucessful websites that cover a wide range of subjects (non-related) and they usually generate tons of revenue, because the ads placements are limited and thus, more valuable.

Think about it.

Focus: You are more likely to be successful if you work 100% focused on one website, than spreading your attention on several smaller ones.

Time: It´s much easier managing one website, than 5. If you find one very sucessful ad placement, you just need to change the settings on one config file. If you have 5 small websites, you will have to waste 5x that time.

Cost: Although one big website will probably need a VPS or DS, it might be cheaper than 4-5 different hosting packages. And don´t forget the domain renewals that will be over $50 dollars, if you have 4-5 small sites. And if you want to buy the .net and .org of those sites (and you should), you will need to pay over $150 dollars every year (domain renewal + Whois Guard).

Popularity and Advertising: Perhaps the most important aspect. With 5 small websites, you must spend tons of time optimizing and advertising for each website.
With one huge website, even if one website starts losing steam (you stopped posting for a month in your movie site), people will still visit, because the said site is a vital piece of the big site. They are all connected.

Interest: Sooner or later you will lose interest in one of your small independent sites, so you will stop advertising and optimizing them, which will probably kill your revenue on that particular site. And if you forget to renew the domain and somebody snatchs it...goodbye.
With a huge site, even if one part becomes inactive, the other active cells will keep redirecting visitors to that sub-domain, which at least it will grant some additional revenue.

And to finalize it, if you have one big website, you can add one forum which covers a wide variety of niches. Otherwise you need to setup 5 different forums.
And we all know one big forum >>>> five smaller ones.

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Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

My vote is for many smaller. That's because internet is about niches, and you have to go for something specific in a site.

There are very few sites that can have all in one.

Also when you have more web sites, you can learn better from the promotions that you do. For instance you can apply one SEO tip that you learned to the one, one to another, and then compare the results.

Also this way you can give more interest to your "bored" visitors by sending them to another site of your network

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One large site that covers many different niches is definitely better than many sites that cover their own niche, in my opinion. Just look at Yahoo. They are a behemoth. It seems like they have it all...

tv.yahoo.com
games.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
movies.yahoo.com

And those are only the one's off of my head...each one of those sub-domains is packed full of great information.

Also, regarding the vB licenses, separate forums, etc...You could still set up separate forums on one domain, just use subdomains...for example:

games.yahoo.com/forums
news.yahoo.com/forums

Each would be a separate forum...which also means that you would need to buy separate vB licenses. Regardless of whether or not the license is being used under the same or different domain, you must have a vB license for each separate installation of it (except for one test copy)

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I like the idea of the one big site... you stated quite a few good points in that first post. im looking to open another site which hopefully will be broader than my one specific niche i have now... but it wont be until i go to uni and get some decent lessons in it all... im quite basic in what i can do but hopefully in september that'l all change

so yeah, my votes for the one big site.

JoRd

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Id rather have one big one. Not to much work to do then .

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Immortality will come to such as are fit for it

One big one is definitely best, but it's incredibly hard to start. You're far more likely to have success with several smaller forums, imo.

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A big one is a good choice when you have the resources to support them. Yahoo is a very big company, but remember that they started as a web directory

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I do like the bigger sites that cover so many different things

I will always go with each niche on seperate domains .... it really doesn't matter for seo in my opinion ....

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I say start off with one niche. Once you get that going, start another. After you get all going, then network them into one big website!

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