Mini-Sites

Mini-sites are great aren't they? They're quick to create, and they focus on one thing only - making the sale! Either you sell your own product on the mini site, or - and this is what this article concentrates on - you PRE-sell someone else's product and make affiliate commission on the sale.

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What makes a good affiliate or associate program? Is it a program with high commission rates, or lifetime commissions? Is it a program based around a product that people actually want to buy? Is a good affiliate program simply one that has a high visitors-into-customers conversion rate (Amazon.com comes to mind here!). Or does the affiliate program just need to provide excellent tracking and reporting?

A good affiliate program may have some, if not all, of the qualities mentioned above. The following sites can help determine a good affiliate program for YOU, too:

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com

http://www.affiliates4u.co.uk
http://www.LifetimeCommissions.com
http://www.shoptour.co.uk/webmaster-profit

(The first two sites both have affiliate forums, where you can find out what others currently think of as good (and bad) affiliate programs. (Never be afraid to ask for advice).

Or, a good affiliate program may simply be determined by answering this question: would YOU buy products from the site?

If you're really keen to know more about what makes a good affiliate program, then I highly recommend Dr Ken Evoy's FREE 5-day Affiliate Masters e-mail course. This intensive course shows you what to look for in a good affiliate program, how to pre-sell
and so much more. To take the course send a blank e-mail -

mailto:tamsshopping101@sitesell.net

Step 3) Build A Mini-Site That Gets The Sale
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Firstly, it's important that you design a clean and easy-to-use website. It's vital that the links work on your site, that the pages load quickly and view correctly in a variety of browser versions; and, there should be no spelling mistakes! Good web-authoring tools like Dreamweaver allow you to check these things before your mini-site goes live; otherwise use Netmechanic once your site is up:

http://www.macromedia.com/dreamweaver
http://www.netmechanic.com

And here's a beautifully-designed web-site that can also help, providing free website design advice:

http://www.jessett.com

You must choose your words (website copy) carefully, too; use the often-cited acronym AIDA in crafting your copy - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Also, there are many online resources that can help you build a website that sells. Use one of them!

Here are a couple of resources I recommend:

http://myss.sitesell.com
http://www.minisiteprofits.com

If you really want to understand the importance of words in selling - including a better explanation of AIDA - I'd recommend you take the free 5-Day NetWriting Masters email course! To take the course send a blank e-mail - mailto:twmsshopping101@sitesell.net

Step 4) Promote Your Website
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The first step in promoting your website begins with steps 1) and 3) above. You MUST design search-engine friendly pages, making full use of keyword meta tags, and inserting your keywords sensibly in the copy of your pages (including headings tags H1 or H2 etc.). A brief explanation of how to design search-engine friendly pages can be found at:

http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl'keywords

Once you've created a reasonably search-engine friendly site then you can either hand submit your site to the major search engines, or let JimTools or AddMe take the burden. It's your choice:

http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl'site-submit
http://www.jimtools.com/submit.html
http://www.addme.com/submission.htm

Do make sure you get a link on the following search engines and directories:

- Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
- DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org
- Inktomi: http://169.207.238.189/search/search.pl

Google is becoming *the* search engine of choice for more and more people (it even powers Web Page searches on Yahoo!). A listing on DMOZ (or Open Directory Project) can definitely help your Google ranking. And Inktomi provides search results for a large number of search engines including MSN, AOL and even Overture.

Inktomi provides a service which guarantees your page is re-visited by Inktomi's 'spiders' every 48 hours. This means your mini-site can be listed on many of the major search engines within 48 hours of creation! Sign up to Inktomi here:

http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/bin/ap.pl'search-engines

One extra (and recommended) way to promote your new mini-site is to link to your mini-site on other sites that you own. Not only do inbound links increase traffic, it also helps your Google listing too. However, do make sure that you:

a) Link to the mini-site using your chosen keywords, and
b) Submit that linking page to the search engines too (particularly Google)

Step 5) Measure Results
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You're nearly done. Now you just need to measure your results, and adjust or tweak your site a little if you're not happy with those results. Don't be hasty, though - you need to get a reasonable amount of website traffic before you can really know if your mini-site is a success!

Measuring your site traffic means knowing how many visitors your website attracts, how many page views it gets and which search engines are bringing the visitors to your site, etc. For more information about monitoring website traffic read these articles:

- Analyze Your Website Traffic:
http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl'web-traffic

- Learn From Your Visitors Using Cookies:
http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/cookies.html

Or you could just sign up to the free version of Webtrends and let Webtrends do all the work for you: http://www.webtrendslive.com

(Your web host may well provide adequate site statistics, however, so using Webtrends may not be necessary.)

You also need to measure the success (or otherwise) of your affiliate program.The best affiliate programs offer great tracking and reporting, so that you can quickly determine what works and what doesn't. If your affiliate program is a little bit lacking in this respect, then learn how to track your own links:

http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl'know

The combination of affiliate stats and site stats should allow you to measure your results. If you *do* need to change anything on your site, make sure you change one thing at a time, so you can truly measure the effectiveness of that change. Mark Joyner, famous Internet Marketer and owner of Aesop.com, explains the importance of controlled testing in his article, Why Test? :

http://www.AnyoneCanSellOnline.com/why-test.shtml

But if mini-site success still eludes you, then you may need to review steps 1)to 4) again.

And that's it - five steps to your mini-site success!

If you're willing to be patient there's absolutely no need to spend time and money on pay-per-click search engines, either! (It's becoming harder and harder to get your mini-site listed on Overture now, anyway!). Simply rely on Google and the modestly priced Inktomi instead.

So, to summaries, if you want to make money from generating small 1-or 2-page mini-sites simply follow these five steps:

Step 1) Choose High-Demand Low-Supply Keywords
Step 2) Find A Good Affiliate Program
Step 3) Build A Mini-Site That Gets The Sale
Step 4) Promote Your Mini-Site
Step 5) Measure Results

No idea what a mini-site is It's all explained here...

http://www.AnyoneCanSellOnline.com/build-minisites.shtml

Steve Nash shows how anyone can sell online at his brand new website. Visit his FREE beginners guide now! http://www.AnyoneCanSellOnline . Learn how to promote your mini-site in his highly regarded FREE 7-day e-mail course: Promotion That Works! Send blank e-mail mailto:mailto:promotion_that_works@getresponse.com