The Great Minisite Review Thread

[melat0nin]

Hi all,

I've read and participated in lots and lots of discussion in the 'How to make a domain earn £1 a week' thread, and I've learned tons from it and tried to implement its wisdom in the minisites that I have created.

Rather than flogging that thread to death with endless updates, I thought it might be good to start a new thread (in honour of that one) showing off the fruits of that thread, along with reviews/tips/advice to improve on people's sites' performances.

So far, I have 9 minisites online, all launched since ~4th January but not at the same time. Some are far more successful that others. Since I started, my average as of today is $1.14 per day. This includes one bumper day due to Gumtree ads which netted $11.35, and which was a total one-off. I get an average of 58 impressions a day, and 2 clicks.

My initial target was (and still is) to reach £1 per day (so roughly $2). It's a small target, and that's why I made it.

Ad Types

Ad types have been very variable for me. My oldest sites (like Noisy Neighbours use the same template, and as yet Wide Skyscrapers set under the site menu have had the most success. Skyscrapers in general have had the greatest success for me, with CTR of 2.24%.

Other people seem to have had great success with Big Square ads positioned on the left of a block of content (like http://www.scottishrealestate.co.uk/scotland-housing-market-2008.html) but my CTR is almost non-existent for this type of ad. I'm wondering if the users going to my sites are too savvy for these types of ad?

Standard 468x60 banners have had some success, but nothing like the Skyscrapers.

This is odd, because Google themselves say that ads which are wide, which people can read easily, usually have the best CTR. Still, I've only got those big squares on my newer sites/pages and therefore the lack of traffic may mean their CTR cannot be accurately compared with the Skyscrapers.

Ideas

I'm wondering where to go to next to reach my initial target (except making more sites). I've got the formula for building a minisite pretty much perfected, but I'm sure I'm missing things with SEO and ad placement. I want my current sites (and in turn my minisite workflow) to be as efficient as possible, so I can be sure that each site is performing at its maximum potential before moving onto the next one.

Do any minisite gurus or SEO magicians have any thoughts for us new minisite creators in that vein?

 

[BFTUK]

I've not had a chance to take a detailed look at your sites and their targeted keywords but i'd suggest the following SEO wise.

a) Build a portfolio site, where you can create a single page with a brief description about each of your sites and feed a (or in the case of a multiple page minisite) a few keyword related links. You could do this in a blog format and mix in other posts in order to try a build a little authority for your portfolio site.

b) Cross link between related sites within your network.

c) Find a couple of reasonable quality sites related to your niche where you can buy / barter / beg a couple of keyword links.

d) Wait 3 - 12 months and your site should (without you having picked a too competitive niche) spring onto the front page.

I could go in to massive detail about keyword difficulty and research etc, but this blog post i did awhile ago covered some of it in a little more detail.

 

[melat0nin]

BFT,

Thanks for your response! Some questions:

A) a portfolio site. Should this be created on an already established site (with inlinks and a PR), or is it enough to create an entirely new site? If so, does the domain matter? Is something totally unrelated okay, like a forum nick (www.melat0nin.net)?

I will read your blog post too.

As regards choosing a niche, I've been using the following method:

Good niche = few google hits + many daily searches + free keyword-rich domain name.

Pretty simple formula, but it works to a certain extent! The numbers are of course flexible -- the number of google hits doesn't always mean very much; I've been looking for niches with less than around the 300,000 hit mark, but Scottish Real Estate is on the front page with over 800,000 other hits. I think the volume of searches coupled with a bit of intuition is the most important thing.

I've not had a chance to take a detailed look at your sites and their targeted keywords but i'd suggest the following SEO wise.

a) Build a portfolio site, where you can create a single page with a brief description about each of your sites and feed a (or in the case of a multiple page minisite) a few keyword related links. You could do this in a blog format and mix in other posts in order to try a build a little authority for your portfolio site.

b) Cross link between related sites within your network.

c) Find a couple of reasonable quality sites related to your niche where you can buy / barter / beg a couple of keyword links.

d) Wait 3 - 12 months and your site should (without you having picked a too competitive niche) spring onto the front page.

I could go in to massive detail about keyword difficulty and research etc, but this blog post i did awhile ago covered some of it in a little more detail.

 

[melat0nin]

Any thoughts about this?

A) a portfolio site. Should this be created on an already established site (with inlinks and a PR), or is it enough to create an entirely new site? If so, does the domain matter? Is something totally unrelated okay, like a forum nick (www.melat0nin.net)?

 

[woopwoop]

Nice thread that you've started here.

I'm not sure about the portfolio site but I've been trying to do a few more mini sites. I still have a bit of work to do with them but will post them here maybe in this thread.

One thing that I noticed with the scottish real estate website is that you have a mortgage calculator. Not sure if you already have this attached to it - don't think you do - but there are probably mortgage affiliates that have their own tool that you embed and you might be able to get paid per referal, per mortgage or per calculation etc.

I think that there needs to be more content on your sites too.

I'm not sure if that defeats the point of a minisite, but personally I prefer a beefier minisite to bring in traffic from google than a lean one.

One thing that I'm trying to do is build a useful niche directory with one of my sites, this will hopefully bring in a lot of repeat visitors. With carefully placed adsense, they are more likely to click the links alongside the directory listings of similar companies...

Am yet to go live but will post my findings here. Would be nice to see other peoples sites, and learn more about not just the SEO side of things but also the adsense placement.

 

[BFTUK]

Either or. Not a huge amount of difference.

Where are you getting your traffic estimates from? Seems very high to me.

I ran Scottish Real Estate through

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Which shows minimal almost zero traffic.

 

[melat0nin]

Either or. Not a huge amount of difference.

Where are you getting your traffic estimates from? Seems very high to me.

I ran Scottish Real Estate through

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Which shows minimal almost zero traffic.

I mean there are 800,000 hits on SERPS for the term 'scottish real estate' (it depends which version of google you search for, i'm getting 640,000 from my FF search bar). As for searches, there are 12 per day for that term (very low) but I get plenty of long tail hits, particularly 'scottish housing market 2008' (or similar), which is the reason I added another page to the site with that as the file name and relevant content on it.

I think I'll register a domain and get a mini directory together.

As regards getting more content; I (and my brother in law) researched and wrote all of the content for my sites - some topics are much easier to write about that others -- it's much more interesting to research and write about the Scottish housing market than ceramic straighteners. Oh well.

Any ideas for getting more good content cheaply (read: for free) are welcome! I saw a script/program on Digital Point designed to rephrase articles to create 100% unique content, and I was tempted to get it, but really I wasn't totally convinced. I'm quite particular about grammar and spelling and whatnot (I'm a content editor for my University's website!), and even if I'm throwing some content together, I still want the text to flow and sound good.

 

[melat0nin]

How much work do you guys with successful minisites do to keep them running? Is it a case of doing the inital legwork (content, indexing, some SEO) then just letting them run?

I'm not sure where to strike the balance between doing little work (which is the point of a minisite) and keeping working at it to increase revenue. I've got bags of experience making sites, but very little making money off them or getting them ranked well -- so I'm not really able to gauge the potential a site has. My promotion has basically consisted of forum posts/signatures, some link building, links from my personal site and gumtree. I've also done some SEO using phrases from Wordtracker. Once I make a mini directory site I don't suppose there's anywhere to go, except (perhaps) adding more content?

 

[senty4love]

Hi Melot....Thanks for creating and updating this thread...since that £1 thread, I also got into minisites trend...I just started with one idea (still under construction)...Your sites look great...Can I ask you what cms did you use for these sites? I am pretty new to website creation..i am familiar with Wordpress but for minisites i think other cms would do better....Your thoughts please

 

[melat0nin]

Hi Melot....Thanks for creating and updating this thread...since that £1 thread, I also got into minisites trend...I just started with one idea (still under construction)...Your sites look great...Can I ask you what cms did you use for these sites? I am pretty new to website creation..i am familiar with Wordpress but for minisites i think other cms would do better....Your thoughts please

I haven't used CMS on any of my sites

For a site with only a few pages, I find it quicker and more efficient just to duplicate the pages and enter the content myself. I also like the flexibility of being able to quickly define one-off styles and whatnot without being tied to a central framework.

Another consideration is that the host I'm using for my .nets is currently selling them for £1 for a year. They are really quick (and obviously cheap!) but the price I pay is that I don't get PHP/MySQL. Still, with 10megs and 1gig data transfer it's more than enough for a minisite.

As regards Wordpress -- I have installed it a couple of times and played with it, and to be honest it seems pretty feature-packed. With plugins and themes I don't really see what else you could want for a minisite.

That said, Scott made a post in the £1 thread (http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/affiliate-marketing/15996-making-domain-earn-1-week-18.html#post82191) about how Wordpress duplicates your front page, which is something to think about. Obviously that can't happen with static pure (X)HTML sites.

 

[melat0nin]

4 clicks and just $0.44 today so far

double my average clicks but crap return. Oh well, got to take the downs with the ups!

 

[RSK3000]

I have been thinking a lot about this.

Making £1.00 per week sounds great but in my experience it is fairly tough to do.

I was looking for a way to cover the renewal costs of my domain name portfolio. In July of last year I set myself the challenge of earning £1.00 a week from minisites - inspired by the thread on this site!

I set up a blog and blogged about my progress during the rest of 2007here.
I now have around a dozen minisites (mostly just on page each) and am averaging around $0.16 per site, per week.

On one hand I've been a complete failure. On the other I have learned a lot about mini-site development.

What is clear is that the one word and two word generics that I own are not necessarily ones make a lot on Adsense. With a portfolio of over 300 domains, mostly UK ones, I think if I just cover domain name renewal fees I will be doing well.

Still, if I could find a way to bump up the average to $2.00 (£1.00) a week then I would definitely give up my day job. So I will keep trying to improve my formula. However, if anyone has any suggestions or advice I would appreciate it. Typical minisites are unsecuredpersonalloans.info, careerhandbook.co.uk both one page sites and a blog made up of free ezine articles espressos.org

Any advice?

 

[melat0nin]

a blog made up of free ezine articles espressos.org

Any advice?

Hmm i think using ezine articles isn't a good idea because it's duplicate content, which search engines don't like. Since your site doesn't (and likely won't ever) have the reputation of the article sites that the articles come from, SEs will always assume that you copied them and not the other way around.

Much better to do a little research and turn those articles into new, unique content, I think.

 

[melat0nin]

A thought o CTR

I've been thinking about CTR and earnings, and I've come a kind of conclusion..

I've been worrying about low earnings on some of my sites. But it occurred to me that with the levels of traffic I'm getting, my earnings are probably pretty good. My best site, Noisy Neighbours, gets average earnings of $0.65 per day over the course of its life so far, and that's with average visitors of ~15 per day.

It occurred to me that the site might actually be extremely efficient, and by mucking around with ad placement etc trying to get more revenue I might actually be doing more harm than good.

If I could maintain the CTR I'm getting (which I don't think I can write here due to Google's TOS) while building traffic, then it could be a really good earner.

Therefore, I think the focus has to be on building traffic rather than tweaking the site itself.

It can be quite easy to think that the site needs more and more optimisation internally, because that's the thing that one has most control over, when in actual fact once you get it to a reasonable state the only thing left to do is offsite optimisation to get people going to it.

So with that 'revelation' in mind, I'm going to start the (rather unattractive) journey into link building and all that

Any tips to make this unpleasant activity better would be much appreciated

 

[retired_member12]

The way i'd look at it is if your 'noisy neighbours' site is seemingly bringing in £118 per year (at a simple $2=£1 rate), minus say £3 yearly reg fee and £5 yearly hosting (Vidahost 1+5 add-ons for example), therefore profit is £110 on your £8 investment. You tell me any other industry which brings a better margin than that? Not many i'm sure!
I think i'd leave that one alone for now and try and repeat that success on another of your sites, especially as you can't be sure that any extra effort in the 'noisy neighbours' site will bring in significantly extra revenue.

 

[melat0nin]

The way i'd look at it is if your 'noisy neighbours' site is seemingly bringing in £118 per year (at a simple $2=£1 rate), minus say £3 yearly reg fee and £5 yearly hosting (Vidahost 1+5 add-ons for example), therefore profit is £110 on your £8 investment. You tell me any other industry which brings a better margin than that? Not many i'm sure!
I think i'd leave that one alone for now and try and repeat that success on another of your sites, especially as you can't be sure that any extra effort in the 'noisy neighbours' site will bring in significantly extra revenue.

Hehe I hadn't really thought about it like that! In actual fact, the host I'm using only cost £1 for a year's registration and 10mb of space, so on current trends I'll make £117 which is a 11700% return. Can't complain!

I am taking your advice by looking for new niches to get into. Too much obsessing about existing sites is likely to make my enthusiasm evaporate, so by increasing my portfolio steadily I keep the buzz going and continue to increment the income.

 

[jwm]

The way i'd look at it is if your 'noisy neighbours' site is seemingly bringing in £118 per year (at a simple $2=£1 rate), minus say £3 yearly reg fee and £5 yearly hosting (Vidahost 1+5 add-ons for example), therefore profit is £110 on your £8 investment. You tell me any other industry which brings a better margin than that? Not many i'm sure!
I think i'd leave that one alone for now and try and repeat that success on another of your sites, especially as you can't be sure that any extra effort in the 'noisy neighbours' site will bring in significantly extra revenue.

The only problem is that this isn't a true investment return as you won't have factored in the time it takes to both build the site and link build.

 

[melat0nin]

The only problem is that this isn't a true investment return as you won't have factored in the time it takes to both build the site and link build.

With that site the link building is minimal, save some very little effort with gumtree, this and a couple of other forums, and that's about it. Admittedly that site did take some time to develop, but that's only because it was one of my first attempts and so I hadn't worked out the proper minisite workflow at the time, and I was constantly reading this site and others and generally learning a lot as I went along. Now I've done the groundwork, knocking out a site in double-quick time is much easier.

That said, it has taken a tremendous amount of discipline not to revert to 'designer mode' to try and make everything look perfect, in order to reduce the amount of time outlay my minisites create. That is one of the biggest things I've learned.

On the back of that experience I've got another site which I plan to get online tonight, which I registered yesterday and have finished the look for. It's very simple with only minor CSS tweaks, and if I can get a turnaround of a minisite in 24 hours (including all other commitments in my life) then I'll be very happy with that for the future.

 

[melat0nin]

On the back of that experience I've got another site which I plan to get online tonight, which I registered yesterday and have finished the look for. It's very simple with only minor CSS tweaks, and if I can get a turnaround of a minisite in 24 hours (including all other commitments in my life) then I'll be very happy with that for the future.

Just launched my 10th minisite, Solar Powered Charger. From purchase to going live has been about 24 hours, not bad.

Using a trés simple template and concentrating on content has helped. So there we go folks, for all your environmentally friendly (and cheap) energy needs, try Solar Powered Charger.net!

 

[scooter]

I would change the page layout. Everybody likes pictures and this has none.

dental implants = good!

chargers= not good.


What i have found is people like a colourful page.
Once you get a nice template, stick with it.

My rev increased 50% by changing templates from no graphics to one with a couple of graphics. I now stick to the same template.


.