My Take on Mini Sites

A good, balanced post about mini-sites, well done. I think there is a place for mini-sites online that are done well and provide useful information.

minisites suck… really they do.

@Mikey

What the heck is electronical.com? Your “Enter” button doesn’t work… how would you classify your website?

BTW, my mini sites are making more money than they were when they were parked, and when I sell them, they are generally already listed in search engines, saving the buyer valuable time.

Agree Elliot!

when I got into domaining, I purchased a collection of longtail domains for a particular concept/project .

Many told me that my domains are worth nothing! That’s NObody’s going to type in such long domains on their address bar. Some said that they would not even exchange their old toothbrush against thebestTOOTHBRUSHintheworld.com
THEY WERE RIGHT!!!

my domains were getting ZERO traffic.

until.. I experimented with thebestVODKAintheworld.com
(which I consider a social -minisite)

2 days of coding,
and that thing is now getting a thousand visitors a month!

But, Adsense,.. Beeurk!!,. No No NO! It’ll instantly make the site lose credit, appear less professional!..
and I don’t want to help make google ..’THE INTERNET!’

I’ll find other ways to monetise it!

Cheers,
R.

Of course, never rely solely on Adsense when it comes to make revenue, try to win direct advertisers. Of course, that is not easy as it may sound but at least if you won´t work really hard and rely on the so called “easy Adsense income” than better go out of that kind of business, like in every business, hard work comes first and you have to know the market you are focussing your web development ventures in. I am starting with my own travel website network, a very tiny one as for now, but the keys are gaining good positions on the big G wek after week and I have not plans to put Adsense onto that websites, I try to win direct local advertisers, some that can make a good addition to that information I provide. It is not easy but if you want to win visitors, traffic and revenue you have to work very hard, no question, Rick would say the same thing.

your results may vary, but here are my current minisites and august results:

#1: Computer related – $228 in August on 6700 impressions. It’s a 12 page site that I haven’t spent 3 hours on this year.

#2: Golf Related – $33 in August on 1400 impressions. 10 page site.

#3: Baseball related – $10 in August, 700 impressions. 10 page site.

#4: Medical Related – $9, 26 visits. 1 page site.

#5: Wedding Related – $8, 400 visits. 6 page site.

Only site #1 makes me any real money, though I haven’t spent more than an hour on any of these sites this year. That site however will bring in $2500-$3000 this year – just like it did last year and the year before. Still nothing compared to a real site you can build (and where I spend my time), but there is obviously value there….some would say I just need to build 10 more sites like that and I’d make $30,000 per year doing nothing.

If you do build a minisite, choose your topic wisely (if the product doesn’t sell for over $200 don’t even think about it).

Can anyone explain the method the use to get direct advertisers. Approach, call, email, how do you sell them your idea etc. This would help those of us who would like to move away from adsense

@Dave,

mate, from my humble experience,
(being a small nobody, domainer, on an island , lost in the middle of the indian ocean)
With thebestVODKAintheworld.com , I’ve had 1 Vodka company (Texas-based) approaching me to get their link redirect to their
websites. No deals done yet, but I see a potential-
(since they contacted me)

2 others (big brands!) showed interest (with me sending them emails)..
but they want stats,.. and that’s what I’m building now.

best regards,
Ritz
from DeliciousMauritius.com

Ritz,
Thanks for that heads up mate.
Key thing is to build your traffic?

Yes Dave,
else it’s catch 32,
you contact Marketing/Advertizing dept of companies, they show interest, but want to know where their money is being invested – since they too need to give explanations further up to their bosses- so they ask for traffic statistics.

And with no traffic, you basically don’t have anything to offer!
build traffic and use it as a leverage.

glad to see you post this elliot.. its an oppotunity for all of us to gain search engine traffic, to get indexed and not having a parked page imo.

i have been testing various models, tweaking things since jan and some of things im testing on have been very encouraging, somethings didnt work but yet again its a learning experience and i encouarage everyone to run there own testing on things.

i used to have the mindset that ok-i gain traction on search engines, i throw some adsense and update the site every couple weeks. the past month however that had changed(remember the word testing!). now my take is this:

i am not worried about my adsense revenue and yes i earn roi from sites. @gordon-look at his stats-pretty impressive if you ask me. but now i am more concern about gaining more traffic my network of names and going forward. thats all i care about for me right now. its the eye balls. i dont care how much adsense is making me right now but i do get excited to see 8 dollars on a name in one day.

im building quality links, learning the ropes as 99.9 percent of the domainers need to do. we cant post a silly blog how all they want type in traffic imo and dont want search engine traffic.. only what 50-100 people can say that and lets be realistic. hey if i can say that, i know i am worth millions and can sit back, be a cash machine. nice to dream but i will never be there.

im making progress on my direction on things and taking baby steps to things. i have a great programer, great person and our 3am email exchanges. a few days back i was getting discouraged and he is the one that lifted me up and said go after a niche market, build up quality traffic, email end user advertising and thats my goal. 10 dollars a month for a banner, is it going make me rich over night? nope.. is it a business model? nope but its like walking into a new job or a internship while your in college-do you walk in to work expecting to make 100k and all the perks. lol..keep dreaming folks. we were not lucky to buy solid type in traffic names and ppc parking. well i bought my first name around 2001 and wish i knew the value of names but didnt. so its 2009 and things are messy, worldwide recession worries, people are saying things are improving and all im seeing is debt by our country, a fake market rally imo and yes there are some strengths in the market. i still think were in a tough economic picture if you ask me and dont see things improving one bit to be honest.

sorry got side tracked lol..

as elliot said tropicalbirds.com didnt have traffic, wasnt earning money.. type in tropical birds on google and guess what-he is on number 1 spot. now elliot and his team of coders, writers worked very hard at that, the money spent was high im sure but he is generating daily income, recall he sold a private ad on site and has many things to offer imo. he go out sale leads to people who want to buy birds, he can set up a directory business, he can have banners like burbank.com…and GUESS WHAT, IT WAS STARTED AS A MINI SITE AND NOW ITS MORE THEN A MINI SITE.

there are many business models, some people are annoyed by me saying that.. what works for one person may not for another person… what one person knows very well, the other person may not know that well or is passionate on. i will still say this today: there is no one right business, you can have a paid membership community, you can have a mini site doing a nice roi, you can run 20 mini sites, you can sell a product, you can sell a banner spot, you can read up on what people are doing and test things. palmsprings.com gets it, 7k a month just off one advertiser(again didnt happen over night and the magic words- KEEP TESTING. you can leads, you do affilate marketing, you can start a site and do nothing about revenues but gain traction in search engines, have readers coming back and with your traffic you have eye balls and an audience.. slowly seek out an advertiser if you wish and etc. you get the point.

mini sites work for me. what works for one person may not for another. the sites can expand, you can tweak things once a month.

so thats my take on things. i encourage everyone to learn things, different skill sets, different financial issues everyone is at. dont skip bases i call this, you need to reach 1st base, 2nd base, 3rd base, home run. you cant say i have this great domain name, im going make 100 dollars a day on it. well how are you going to do it? are you going pay a guy 10k to build out a site for you and thats your goal? etc.etc..

now elliots focus is geo .com names as they should be. thats a killer business model. seems to me elliot enjoys taking a break and doing mini sites from time to time. are they going make him 50k a year..probably not, its not his focus nor his tropical birds site. its his geo .com names that will do that. but will he a few hundred dollars each year and a roi..you bet he will!

im staying focused and still learning.. its very frustrating in the mean time, its a long road ahead for me but im in this for the long term and i see where im headed. my so called business model will be an eccomerce site in the future, i know the business. but im not there yet, im working on smaller scale projects and learning. remember 1st base, second base, third base, homerun. thats how im handling things. im behind on progress at same time, and thought i would more ahead on things but im not. i have reached first base, now attempting second base.

i dont know everything, im just sharing from what ive learned and learning each day. just my 2 cents..

elliot,

i just threw a number out there as an example -go out and make 500k a year in the future, lol.. you have the skills to do more then 50k, sorry didnt mean to offend the geo .com crowd or elliot..

low key, but my views, experience??

are your initials JP ?

im in the kiddy pool and just like everyone else ritz.. point is its a learning process and the more you reveal or what your up too, this domain business is dirty and just prefer to keep under the radar or site names @ this time. im not making much money but reached first base

when couple people read this, im sure they will know who wrote and hope they can just respect my privacy.

thanks