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