OK. For the sake of argument, I am an authority on veterinary medicine. I could build an authority site.

Why would I want to do that? How could that make me money? Does the desire to make money reduce my "authority"?

I really do believe I'm already a personal authority on my niche subject area, I literally live it, so even though many established sites write in a way I can only aspire to, I'm absolutely determined to build a recognised and revered authority site, and no-one's gonna stop me. Thanks again for the inspiration.

Hi Jay, your timing is impeccable. I remember Brian Johnson talking about Authority sites last year when I was doing the Halloween Super Affiliate course and I should have taking that route then.

But, a couple of weeks ago, I have decided to move all the good content from my 20 something Halloween sites to one big site and incorporate recipes, news, and a how to section as-well as other related sections, and the timing of all your training will fit in perfect thank you.

I have way to many sites in to many non interesting niches I need to clear away (when I started here it was all about the mini sites, how quickly things change) and have decided to concentrate on 4 authority sites with my fitness site, my personal writing/literature site, my IM site and Halloween and that will be it and intend to soak in all your great wisdom before I leave WA.

Thanks Jay for all you do here.

Great job on the explanation Jay. This was much needed as many people were starting to get a little confused about what exactly we're talking about when we're talking about building authority sites.

For the most part when we're talking "Authority Site" here in WA we're referring to what you've labelled as "Relative Authority Sites". These are sites where you become an authority in your particular niche. You may even be considered an "expert" in the topic purely based on the amount of quality and helpful content you offer to your audience.

Huffington post is a great example of an Absolute authority site that started out as a blog by one person. This is a rare case that it was bought out but it can definitely happen. Before Arianna Huffington was bought by AOL her authority site was making a lot of money from the traffic she was getting. She started small and worked her way up to being one of the best news sites out there!

For anyone wanting to work on an authority site, you can start small with your "niche" website. As you add helpful content to it your audience will naturally grow. Continue doing this over time and you will have 100's of pages that reach (and help) many people. Every site in my opinion has the potential to become an authority site.

Offering value and focusing on ONE website is the key.

I'd much rather see people with websites that are headed in the "Authority" site direction than see multiple mini-sites with only a handful of pages. These really offer little value to your visitors and are generally used to get ranked for specific keywords.

Thanks for the clarity Jay!

Jay, great post. Definitely something that was needed after your Wabinar to clearly layout what everyone was talking about in regards to an authority site. I like how you differentiated something that Google defined as authority vs. what we at WA define as authority.

Excellent. Thank you.

This is a comprehensive and useful resource which I have downloaded. Thanks