I talk a lot about creating authority sites as an online business idea in order to build a long term online business. After all, this is what I’ve been doing the longest online and have had the most success with in my endeavors.

Recently, I added a new blog post to one of big content sites. I centered it around a three word keyword phrase that seemed to get decent traffic.

I did nothing else but make the blog post. No social bookmarking, no linking or promoting of any kind.

But because I had built this site up to somewhat of an authority site, that post was listed in all three search engines within a day or to.

I made the post on June 21st. From June 25th to July 13th it was #5 as far as keyword traffic to my site.

It was ranked #9 in Google, #14 on Bing (MSN) and #18 on Yahoo.

Oh, and another three word keyword phrase that I included in the post was #15. In that time period I received search engine traffic from 1,677 different keywords.

That is powerful stuff, making authority site building a powerful online business idea.

Sure, creating an authority site takes more time than other strategies. But it also lasts and it builds equity, if you ever decide to sell.

If you build content sites the right way, you don’t need to worry about it at all. The long run thing is the key. Don’t build them for immediate income (sure, you can get it but it’s not a stable thing to count on).

Just continue to build them out as you do your other stuff. Spend a little time on them each day.

My first ever content site continues to get 1,000 plus unique visitors every day, day in and day out and I’ve been doing literally nothing for it the past year as other projects have taken priority.

My point being, once you establish a content site the right way, the traffic doesn’t really get affected by any search engine algorithm shifts.

Obviously, that takes time, but like I said, do them as you do other things and you’ll see your income grow over time.

The things that affect content sites with ranking shifts are usually a young site, not a lot of content, and maybe some shady or unreliable ways of getting links.

Another site consistently gets over 300 unique visitors a day and I have a few other content sites that do the same (each over a year old).

Done right, content sites are an online business idea for a long term business model. I have numerous sites that get at least 1,000 unique visitors a month that I haven’t touched (added content OR done any link building or promotion) for a year or so.

I am going back to them now because of great potential and I don’t want Google to feel they are abandoned but luckily, once a site is established you don’t have to add content very often and at that point you could add a page every couple of months and even have someone else write it for $5.

Don’t just think about short term cash. Build a long term business as well. And creating content sites is an online business idea that works for the long term.

With these content sites you can:

• Promote affiliate offers
• Make money with per click programs like Adsense or Kontera
• Build your own email list
• Create and sell your own products
• Charge people for advertising on your site in the form of text links or banners
• Sell the site years later for a boatload of cash

When you create a quality content site in a niche, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You control a valuable piece of virtual real estate.

Next time I’ll go into some more detail on this powerful online business idea and getting started building your own virtual real estate empire the right way.