How
To Build Profitable Mini Sites To Sell eBooks, Software or Physical
Goods
Mini sites are highly
powerful sales tools to promote and sell products be it digital
like ebooks and software or physical goods like hardcover books.
Mini sites are usually comprised of 5-10 pages and its main
purpose is to make a sale. As compared with a content site which
can consist of hundreds or even thousands of pages, mini sites
don't need that many pages because otherwise that would deter
its primary objective which is to get a sale.
When building a mini
site, there are some fundamental factors you need to consider
in order to make it profitable. I am not talking about crafting
a powerful sales letter here which of course is important but
I am focusing on the design aspect. How you build your mini
site can have an effect on your sales. Visitors to your website
are in a hurry and it's up to you to control where you want
to lead them on your website. You can easily lose a visitor
simply by directing them to another site or page or you can
make them stay on your site longer hence increasing your chances
in making a sale.
But how can you make
them stay longer and not losing them too early? The answer is
in your navigation menu. Don't forget that you have other pages
on your website that can contain some content here and there
and people are usually distracted by links. Your goal is to
make them as undistracted as far as possible and convincing
them to read your sales page ultimately leading to the order
page. You have different ways to place your navigation menu
on your website. You can place it at the top, at the bottom,
on the left or on the right.
For me, I've seen
that it's better to put the navigation menu at the bottom because
this is the last thing that your website visitors will see.
They might have already clicked on the order button, hence not
seeing your menu. The purpose of this method is not to hide
your menu because it's visible but rather to focus on the sale
instead of encouraging people to click on your links and pages.
Another crucial aspect
in building a profitable mini site is to go overboard with the
usual number of pages which is 5-10. I've discovered that by
adding more pages and content in the form of useful articles
more or less related to the topic of your site, you build a
more valuable site which has more chances to even get repeat
visitors and at the same time getting more value in the search
engines, hence better rankings. Search engines love content
and if you can provide them with that, you will be duly rewarded.
Do you think you
can build a mini site with 30-50 pages? Why not. Here I will
rather call it a super mini site which has the characteristics
of a mini site and that of a content site but whose main purpose
is still the same ie to make the sale. Of course, you might
lose some visitors to your other pages and probably some external
links but think about the other rewards like repeat visitors
and search engine traffic.
Sure, you can build
a simple mini site with as less pages as possible in order not
to distract your visitors but it depends on your methods of
generating traffic. If you are building this type of mini site,
you will probably focus on pay per click advertising because
such a site will unlikely get good rankings in the search engines.
Usually, it's recommended to drive pay per click traffic to
a landing page like a small mini site because you don't want
to lose that visitor quickly due to the fact that you are paying.
Otherwise if you want to get some search engine traffic and
probably some repeat visitors, you might want to focus on a
super mini site.
Mini sites are responsible
for selling thousands of dollars of products because they work.
And depending on the way you generate traffic, you might want
to think well before you design your mini site because it can
have a positive or negative effect on your efforts. For example,
it can have a negative effect if you consider building a small
mini site and hoping to get search engine traffic or on the
other hand, a super mini site and planning to generate pay per
click traffic to it.
To Your Success!
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Jean Lam is the author of the highly acclaimed eBook "Top Search
Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed", a concise, step-by-step
guide to high search engine ranking for the beginner to intermediate
level webmaster - available now at http://www.top-ranking-strategies.com