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I personally love what you are doing with all these small/mid exact match domains - I would make a goal of continuing to improve them, and you can also supplement your income selling these sites off later to a more dedicated owner.

I love the hustle.

Kev I feel you man. Hard choices....

benefits of having lots of mini sites
1. diversification. If one site gets penalized it's likely the others will not and you also diversify your income streams
2. easy to naturally rank for main target keyphrase
3. easier to sell than if you built out a section on your main site
4. it feels like "a shame" to leave such a sweet domain parked...
5. easy to generate new links for yourself when necessary


drawbacks of mini sites
1. New setup for every site (wordpress customization, logo, sidebar, re-directs, analytics etc etc etc..
2. Individual maintenance (upgrading wp, plugins, banners etc)
3. Some dilution of link power... where as if you have a main site all of your linking efforts help it directly going more towards authority
5. worry of the sandbox from lord google
6. hard to focus on 1 and take it to it's full potential

I'm sure there are tons more in both lists really just what i could come up with here quick. Love to hear some others opinions as well.

Trying to create an authority type site that covers a lot of stuff is TOUGH. Very tough. There's so much more work involved, and there's so much more to do. It can be very rewarding, but I guarantee you will make many mistakes along the way. And it's very possible the first big site could be a megafail, or you completely miss something obvious or bla bla bla. Plus there's a big difference in conversions - smaller exact match often get instant conversions upon launch, bigger ones can take a lot of time and you will most likely have to rely on LTK for awhile.

I'd plan one big authority site. But I wouldn't launch it right now. I'd focus on the smaller sites, perfect your skills at those, get that down pat. In the meantime, once the authority site is planned out, start wrting articles for it. But don't put them up anywhere. Just keep them, and get it ready, so that when you start the site you're going to be going with 250 articles to start with, so it is an authority from the get-go. Even if you turn one of your websites into an "authority" - again, get a new design all ready, get the content, but wait. Build it all locally first. I think the worst thing anyone can do with an authority site is start it page to page, day to day. Try and be an authority site right from day one.

I have been in the same situation.

I have started condensing my sites and focusing on a few now. I will create some more mini sites but want to make sure I have an authority site in the niche first.

What Dealer Dan said makes sense and is how I would approach it.

With all the sites you have Kevin, one of those needs to be a big 300+ page site. You could really get some links back to that one site using all of your others. Sell a few of those small sites off and use that money for some content!

Thanks for all the pointers everyone. I will have to think it over, but I do know I want to at least have a main site that gets a good chunk of my focus... maybe try and create a brand with The Sports Geek or something.

I had a similar decision to yours Kevin, albeit on a smaller scale.

For what it's worth I decided that I'd be able to move forward faster if I was focused on doing a good job on a couple of sites rather than doing a half-arsed job on a load of sites.

So I've got rid of most of my mini sites (with the exception of a couple with good domains) and I'm focusing pretty much entirely on two much larger sites and making sure I do a good job with them.

The right decision? No idea - I guess I'll find out in a few months time ....

Kev authority sites rule! I'm sure I will again be shot down for this but exact match domains simply don't have the power they use to have. You seem to have done some research so I'm sure you now are realising that 1 big site, lets say with 500 pages, will rank far better then 10 sites with 50 pages. Once you have built an authority site you will be able to rank for hundreds of keyphrases even with mostly internal links.

I did exactly the same as you and this time last year I had over 100 domains and 60 sites of which most were unfinished. I already have one of the biggest poker sites in the UK so I realised the power it had. For a year I got busy with a brandable bingo domain, built it up big time and now I'm reaping the rewards. Last month for my bingo site I had over 200 sign ups for the main site I promote! I'm now ranking for hundreds of key phrases without even trying!

Build a brand, build it big and reap the rewards!

I love hearing success stories like that ramchip, they keep me motivated! thanks.

I'm thinking of selling off like 10-20 of my sites over the next few months. That way I can still have a good number of smaller sites for diversity, but will also have time to make a couple of the sites bigger portals with a lot more content.

Still undecided on everything though, I hate selling off sites I've built.

kev maybe you can keep your smaller sites, and use the profit they make to make your bigger site; rather than selling smaller sites for profit.

I like that idea too, and if they are minisites even remotely related to the main portal, it's a lot of potential link juice.

Just an update for anyone who is interested... I ended up selling off a good chunk of my sites.

I am now focused on building out one big site, a couple medium ones, and continue to work on my smaller sites I have left as well.