When I hear people talk of riches from niches,
my eyes start to cross and I get the twitches.
The trick, so you know, with niches and riches,
is not in the pitches, but scratching the itches.

I've come to realize that a lot of people confuse "mini site" with "niche site." They are not the same.

You know what mini means right? Most people do, which explains those obnoxious Viagra ads. Mini means something that is distinctively smaller than others of its type. In a website, mini means less than 10 pages. Often less than 5 pages. Sometimes only one page.

It's a no frills kind of site. Buy what it sells or leave. There's nothing else here for you. It's about the pitches, not scratching your itches, unless what it pitches scratches what itches. Then maybe you'll buy.

But, do you know what niche means? Even the pronunciation is confusing. You can say niche, to rhyme with rich, or you can say neesh, to rhyme with sheesh.

No matter how you say it, niche means "a situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature." Go ahead, look it up at dictionary.com. I'll wait.

I read an interview with a guy who makes his living with mini sites. He said he has hundreds of them. He said that if he has hundreds of sites making even a hundred dollars a week, it's a pretty good living. He builds a few more every week. His only regret is that he didn't start building more of them earlier.

The math looks good, but it seems to me that having hundreds of domain names to renew every year and hundreds of websites that you need to host and hundreds of websites to promote maybe isn't the ideal solution for everyone. Especially if you're a newbie in the first place. And the glitch, according to the rich nitch snitch, is that you won't get rich with just one mini-niche.

Each mini site is, of course, a niche. I mean, really, how many products can you cover in 1-5 pages? Unless you have hundreds of blinking banners on one page, but we all know those sites don't work.

Then I think of Adam's site at dogproblems.com. (How ironic that his last name is Katz, hmm?) Now there's a niche, but it's no mini. If you click on the articles page, you'll see what I mean.

Know what Adam's site does? It's not just a pitch, it scratches an itch. If you have a dog, you will find something helpful there. Maybe lots of somethings. It's not just a one page "buy my ebook or flake off" kind of website. He makes his living from that site.

Know why it works so well? Because he actually knows dogs. He doesn't just play a dog trainer on tv (or the Internet) - he's a dog trainer in real life. He actually knows dogs and how to make them behave.

It's all a matter of perspective. You have to decide what's right for you, but to do that, you have to know the difference. So here it is.

A mini site is usually a niche site.
A niche site doesn't have to be a mini site.
Mini sites are like potato chips. You can't just have one.
See?