Why a Mini Site?
Go to any restaurant and you will discover all kinds of evidence that bigger is better. Fast food places make it policy for their employees to get you to upsize your drinks, fries or add cheese at an extra cost to your burger while upscale restaurants pile your plate high with food.
This bigger is better theory has been adopted be many web sites. Look at the sites of the super stores, Wal-Mart or Overstock.com and you will find hundreds and thousands of pages. These sites do very well for themselves.
I understand you may think with so many large sites online what is the use in trying to compete and get a piece of the pie. The average person doesn’t have the time or money to set up an operation on that scale let alone running it. The thing is you do not need to compete. A mini site can be successful in the land of web giants.
The reason is easy. You are not running with the big dogs, you are not in direct competition with the big companies. Instead of trying to sell everything a mini site sells one item. It is aimed at one particular group of people and seeks to do well within this small niche.
Most successful mini sites target small under served niches. You find the need and you fill it using a mini site. This will also put the site into a position to get better ranking with the search engines because there is less competition. The reason is the keywords people use in their searches are more exact, long tailed is the term. The mini site webmasters targets these keywords where the larger sites don’t. With some good SEO the mini site operator gets targeted traffic for very little time or money.
Once the visitor arrives at your mini site having a good sales pitch will get them to respond and buy. Those that are undecided may take up the offer of a free newsletter or free course. This provides you the opportunity to keep in contact with the future customer, to build a relationship. Also you want to capture the e-mail address of the customer who bought so you can keep in contact with them and build a relationship with. It is easier to sell to a customer than it is to a future customer.
A mini site will do well even against the millions of sites out there. You only need a good niche market, a quality product and a strong sales pitch.
What Is A Mini Site?
You have probably run across a mini site or two if you have been on the internet for any length of time. Many users don’t know what they really are and some have never heard the term mini site.
It is just a web site a few pages, usually one. Very often the main page is a sales letter. Well researched, well written and offering something for sale. Unlike the bigger sites like Amazon or eBay, these sites are the opposite. Instead of trying to sell everything they usually offer one item and most of the time it is an information product that is down loadable instantly.
The greatest thing about mini sites is you don’t need to have your own product, although you can make more with your own product. You could write an e book or come up with your own course on some topic people are looking for, something in demand with few others providing anything, but it is not necessary. To get started quickly you sell other peoples products.
You do this by joining affiliate programs or by purchasing the resell rights, master resell rights or the plr rights to the information products.
You can earn money on autopilot with your mini site. You can set up automatic payment, auto delivery, and even add the customer or future customer to your mailing list automatically. Once it is up you don’t need to touch the site again if you desire not to. You just need to drive traffic to the site.
Very successful mini sites can make hundreds and some even thousands of dollars a month. Most usually bring in a trickle but you don’t stop at just one site. Add more and that trickle soon becomes a river of cash adding to your income. Creating multiple sites will give you multiple streams of income that can last for years.
Using mini sites is a great way to bring in passive income. Money that you work for only once. It takes a little work at first but once everything is set up you need do nothing more but send people to it, that can even be automated. Than sit back and reap the rewards. What is really neat you, can get started with little or no techie know-how.
Are Mini Sites Right For Me?
I am sure you have your ideas on making a living. You may like to work with others, or you may like to work by yourself. You may like a job that keeps you active and thinking, or maybe you are the laid back type and the type of profession you want to be in. This is what makes us all unique and different individuals.
There is not a single method that is right for everyone. However after saying that, there is one thng anyone can do to make money on line, operating a mini site.
I know what you are thinking. I want to make money online but I don’t have the skills and know how to run a web site. You don’t have to be a web wizard designer to profit from mini sites. I know you can turn on your computer because you here reading this. You know how to get on line because you are here.
The question is, are you willing to learn a few simple things to be able to run a mini site?
Okay, let say you have had some experience with web hosting and domains, you already have some of the required knowledge. Once you have those two things out of the way you are ready to put up your mini site and you don’t need your own product to sell. As stated before you can sell someone else’s products.
In case you missed it, you can purchase resale rights, master resell rights, private label rights or join affiliate programs for free. Never join an affiliate program where you have to pay to join it. Ninety nine percent of the time you won’t make a thing and just loose money. With affiliate programs you usually get some, and in lots of cases, all the material you need to get your mini site going.
You may want to make your own products. This takes more time and maybe some investment of your dollars to do so. You need to do some research on your target market (the peole you are going to be selling to) The best thing is you get to keep all the profits.
How Much Money Will You Make?
Just as with any business there are no guarantees you will make anything. You may make lots. It depends on much effort you are going to put into it and if you are one that quits easily or one that keeps trying. Usually you will make just a little, probably not enough to support yourself off one site. Here is the good news. You put up more than one site, the more you have the more streams of income.
You need to know you are offering the right product to the right market. You can’t sell kitty litter boxes on a dog training site, well maybe but you won’t get many takers. You need good compelling copy to get your readers to buy. Promoting your site is important as well. You can’t just put it out there and not tell the world it is there. No one will come if they don’t know about it.
There is a lot of potential to make money with mini sites. One will probably not make you enough money to live on but put more up. Once you test and tweak a site until it is successful you do another. Don’t worry right now about testing and tweaking it will come later. Once it is successful you have one line of a stream of revenue. (In time I will share a secret that is not really a secret, now is not the time).
After you set up a site and get it running you need to do very little or even nothing more with it. That is the beauty of mini sites.
Using Graphics on Your Mini Site
Vast numbers of mini sites are not flashy for a good reason. You don’t want to detract your readers attention from your message. Too much flash and that is what will happen. You have to get your message across quickly. Don’t forget your mini site is made of one or maybe just a few pages.
That being said, plain old text is boring even if you format it to make certain things stand out. A bright and well displayed graphic is better to get your customers attention and to get them to read your message. Graphics should be used sparingly on a mini site so it is important to make them effective.
The first graphic your customer should see is your header. It should be attractive and capture their attention. Don’t make it a work of art so your customer ’s eye is moving from one point to another on it. Make it colourful, include the name of your product and maybe a few more words but not too many. Let your headline provide the detail and intrigue to grab your customer’s imagination.
Use bulleted lists on your mini site. Bullets outline the important information. It should be your products key features and benefits. You can use two bulleted lists, one for each, features and one for benefits your customer is going to enjoy. The use of bright colours for your bullets and the white space produced will attract your customers eye. The next graphics used are buttons and boxes. Boxes are used for testimonials and calls to action. The button is usually one and that is the buy or add to cart button.
A mini site is not the place for a graphic design exhibition unless you are selling graphics. The ones you use should be bright and prominent and professional looking, but not too flashy so as to over power your text. It should get your readers attention and lead them into you text.
Choosing Profitable Mini Site Topics.
Mini sites are called mini sites for one reason, they are small. Usually one maybe three pages. Another thing about successful mini sites, the focus.
Your mini site should be targeted on people with a common interest or a specific need. This is called a niche and is important to the success of your mini site. A niche mini site is key to not competing with the sites that have something for everyone. A mini site cannot have something for everyone but it has the specific thing for certain groups of people.
Picking your niche topic is very important to the success of your mini site. If you choose one that is too broad it will have lots of competition. On the same hand if you get too narrow there will not be enough demand for the site to make a decent profit.
For example recipe books appeal to a lot of people. There are countless general recipe books on the internet already so another one is not going to get much attention. Now you may decide to get really specific so you write a recipe book on French onion soup with two types of onions and cheese croutons. Some may like this but not everyone will like that specific combination. Instead write a recipe book on french onion soup with croutons and cheese. It covers a little more ground and will appeal to a wider ranch of people while it is more narrow than french onion soup recipes.
In choosing your topic you don’t need to rely on guess work. Guessing usually leads to failure. Investigate your topic, there are free online tools to help you. One is Google ad words keyword tool. It tells the search volume of any keyword and will give you a general idea of the competition. The higher the search volume and the lower the competition the better chance of a profitable keyword.
Mini sites are small for a reason, to focus. The sites maybe small but the earning potential can be huge. Taking the time to research your topic a choose a good niche will give maximum return.
Multimedia and Your Mini Site
Just a decade ago the internet was a land of only text, a sea of letters stretching endlessly across cyber space. Today it is alive with animations, graphics, audio and video. Not only has the internet made the world smaller but filled it with a new form of entertainment and ways to get information.
Improvements in hardware and software, added with sites like YouTube has opened the door to webmasters to use multimedia on their sites. Not all agree this is a good thing. Some companies have stopped their employees from using certain sites as it tends to reduce the performance of the employee. Some internet users do not like audio or video suddenly popping out at them without warning.
Some mini site owners have not utilized the advancement in audio and video for the above reason. They just stick with graphics and text. Is this really necessary?
Audio and video are great educational aids that impact on people the way text and graphics can’t. The truth is most internet users are use to audio and video when they are surfing or looking for information. Those that need to keep things quite for whatever reasons
general turn the sound down or mute it altogether.
Don’t worry about upsetting visitors to your site. You can always code your site so the audio and video does not start unless it is clicked on. Those wanting to hear and see it can play it while those not wanting to can just read your message.
Audio and especially video can bring your personality to your site. Your words have life breathed into them and it makes it easier to get your message or information across to others. Embrace it, use it, and your site can be more attractive and useful.
Monetizing Your Mini Site
If done right a mini site is a powerful moneymaking machine. After you have it set up and everything in place you don’t have to do a thing while it churns out money to your bank account. Now before you throw something up you need a way to make those dollars, something to exchange for the greenbacks.
A well done mini site focuses on a particular niche, you need something appealing to the niche market. If your niche is rubber ducks don’t sell cat collars, focus on products related to rubber ducks. There are several ways of doing this.
1. Create Your Product.
Creating information products are great ways and the easiest way to make money. An example: A simple ebook can sell for $20.00 or more, a series of ebooks or online courses can draw in hundreds of dollars. If you like to write and you are good at it this could be the ideal method for you.
If you don’t like to write get your hands on PLR content, rework it a bit so it is not the same wording and even add some to it and you have a product to sell. If not writing or rewriting try making an educational video series.
2. Buy The Rights To Someone Else’s Product
If you are not inclined or don’t have the time to create your own product buy the master resell rights to someone’s reports, courses, software or whatever, including the sales page and graphics. You just need to upload them to your hosting service and start promoting the site. For a one time investment you get unlimited moneymaking material.
3. Join An Affiliate Program.
For a small investment of time and money an affiliate program is a great method to make money. All you do is promote other peoples products or services. Once you make a sale you get to keep a percentage of the money. You only spend time and money to set up your site and promote it.
You may be sizzling with creative energy or maybe you just want to have an easy way to make a little passive income. There is a mini site monetization method that is right for you. With just a little knowledge about setting up a website you will be up a running in quick time. If you know nothing about setting up a site it is not hard to learn. Anyone can do it.
How To Promote Your Mini Site For Free
Websites like Wal-Mart, Sears and others have huge advertising budgets and spend obscene amounts on advertising. Billboards, full page ads, radio, TV and more. How can you compete with that?
You don’t need to. Your mini site is aimed at a specific group and not a wide range of people. It would be overkill to put a full page ad somewhere.
Promoting your mini site is easy on a small budget and is completely doable for free. Getting traffic may take a little time and some effort on your part but your bottom line will be much greater.
Try some of these free methods.
Do your own SEO. There is little learning curve but once you have it right, your search engine placements will keep traffic coming for free.
Submit articles to article e zines, free reprint sites in particular. Ones like EzineArticles.com. Include a link in your resource box pointing to your site. Anyone that reprints your content must include your resource box so that will get more links pointing back to your site. This makes the search engines think you are important enough to have others link to your site.
Join forums that appeal to the members of your niche. Take part in the threads and include a link back to your site in your signature.
Leave relevant comments on blogs. Don’t just say nice blog, thank the person, very briefly say what it has done for you or that you will have to try it out. Most blogs will include a link to your site. Search engines love links and this will help boost your click through traffic.
Contact the bloggers that reach your target market and ask if you can write a guest post for them to post on their blog. This produces an interest in your site and will help establish you as an expert.
Write a special report, give it away, encourage others to give it away. Contact other people who have a product in your niche or who sell information and ask them if they would like to give it away as a bonus with their product.
write a press release and submit it to press release websites, online publications and bloggers.
write testimonials for other peoples products, make sure you use it though, and include a link in your signature.
You don’t need to spend lots of money to get your word out about your site. Be a little creative and get traffic without spending a dime on advertising.
Your Site and SEO Search Engine Optimization
The top priority for any website should be search engine optimization or SEO for short. Each page of your site should be optimized for targeted keywords. The reason is simple, it opens the door to more traffic and more customers.
Mini sites can compete very well with the huge sites in SEO. They don’t have as many pages that can be indexed but that is not really a problem.
Mini sites actually have an advantage over the larger sites because they target specific niches, specific wants and needs. Mini sites target specific keywords, more long tailed which is simply two or more words, a phrase that describes the niche and the service or product. Larger sites tend over look these long tailed keywords. For example a large site will target red shoes while the niche will target red shoes lace up, or red shoes lace up Kodiak. The target phrase is more specific to your chosen niche. This means it is easier to obtain a higher ranking. Being too specific however will reduce the target audience. Example red shoes lace up Kodiak pink laces size seven. That may not appeal to a lot of people and they won’t be searching for that.
Finding the right keywords is only the beginning of the SEO adventure. The next step is to use them in your web pages so the search engines take notice of them. There is no 100 percent formula for a number one ranking but certain techniques will provide you an edge over the competition.
These pointers will be of help to you:
Use your most important keyword phrase in your title. Where possible put it at the beginning of the title. Title tags are a favourite of search engines so it to your advantage.
When you write your description tag make it rich in keywords describing the tag, your site. This tag isn’t worth as much to the search engines as it use to be because of the abuse or the way people used it because their site content was not relevant to the tag. That being said it is still worth the time to use it correctly.
Use your keywords in headings. Search engines look at these and can see the relationship of the heading to the text, the content of your site.
Use keywords in the alt tag of the graphics and pictures you use on your site, It is important the graphics and pictures are relevant or used as a depiction. Also put a caption under or beside any pictures and use keywords in these where possible. Most people don’t do this.
Use keywords through out your text, However use them in a natural way. Using keywords in your content is important but overuse of a given keyword can get you penalized.
Mini sites are so small that good SEO is important to the success of the site. Finding and using the right keywords will bring you the targeted traffic that is desired and if your mini site is doing it’s job the traffic will turn into sales.
Pros and Cons of PPC, Pay Per Click
Pay Per click (PPC) advertising is claimed to be an economical way to advertise, like placing an ad in a magazine or newspaper etc. You only pay for the people who click the ad and not for the amount of times your ad appears, (impressions). Is it really as great as what the PPC gurus tell you?
PPC can bring great results for you but there are disadvantages you need to be aware of.
Here are the pros and cons of PPC.
PROS:
PPC or advertising campaigns allow you to target keywords of your choice. careful research and using descriptive keywords with little competition, and a reasonable search volume will bring you good targeted traffic.
Prices are determined by bidding. Keywords with little competition can get great placement for a reasonable cost. The highest bid does not always get the greatest amount of exposure.
SEO can take awhile to achieve the traffic you desire to your site while PPC brings results very quickly.
CONS:
Choosing the right keywords takes time, testing and expense. The wrong keywords may bring traffic but not convert to sales. This results in lost money.
Some internet users become blind to ads and will over look the paid ads and opt for the natural listings that SEO produces. They over look your paid advertisement.
A big mistake lots of people make is concentrating too much on PPC and overlooking SEO which is free traffic and this can be a huge costly mistake.
All mini sites can benefit from PPC campaigns. However don’t start thinking this is the only way to get good targeted traffic. It is a good way to supplement your SEO but don’t use it as your main source, it is not a great substitute for natural or organic search rankings.
Conclusion
I have left one module out of the course as it no longer, in my opinion, relevant to mini sites.
Mini sites are small websites of one or maybe up to three pages not many more. The main reason for using a mini site is targeting specific niches and not trying to cover all things for all people.
Anyone can operate a mini site. Don’t try to learn everything at once. start by researching a specific niche or something you know about. Find the people who have a want or need and produce a product, find a product or the information they are looking for. Check the size of the market, the amount of people looking and make sure there are enough people in it, check your competition.
Add the product or service to your site. You can even use adsense or sell advertising space on your site.
The use of graphics is a must. You need to grab your readers attention so they will read your content. Do not make it too flashy so it takes away from your content. Unless you are selling graphics no not use too many. The use of pictures is appealing to most people but beware of before and after pictures. I have looked at a lot of sites using them and you can tell the before picture is not the same person as the after picture. That is an insult to my and your intelligence.
The use of videos, audio or slides is also a gret way to present a product, service or give information. It grab the readers attention and is easier for some people to understand. Do not have the sound or video start by itself as this may discourage some people from staying on your site, give them the opportunity to click on it to start it.
There are many ways to promote your site. Links from forums, testimonials you give to others, articles directories, blogs, buying advertising space on other sites, viral methods of giving a related product away with links back to your site, press releases etc.
Seo or search engine optimization is also away of promoting your site. It is done by using keywords of relevance that attract the attention of search engines. It is not so much a promotional campaign as it is giving the search engines the keywords people are using to find what they are looking for.
PPC is a great way to get fast results. I don’t not use it myself at this time. If you don’t know what you are doing with PPC you an lose your shirt. It is a great to supplement your SEO efforts but not a substitute for it.
I hope you have found this course informative and enjoyed it.
