The Case Against Mini-Sites

Hi,
I've recently just joined Warrior Forum for exactly the reason you mention. I've been tempted into buying Ansel Gough's mini website course at £197 per month for 3 months and am wondering if I've done the right thing. I don't want to just have websites that are of no personal interest to me and want to be able to nurture them along the way - but also am interested in making money also. So I'm really asking whether any of your readers have any insight into this. Your post left me thinking quite deeply into whether I've wasted my money - although I've only just purchased this and am within the cooling off period???

Hi Shane,

I think one of the reason mini-sites are so popular is that they are quick to set up, or at least they seem quick to set up.

That being said, I don't see anything that would keep people from turning a mini-site into a full-blown website. So, for those who do mini-sites, why not have the best of both worlds? Go ahead and get those mini-sites built, but then start adding to them; using them as a foundation for a larger, more involved site.

Just a thought.

All the best,
Michael

I agree with some of your points but there are a few places where I don't.

Primarily, the idea behind niche targeted sites isn't necessarily to build what I term an 'infotainment' site that gets return social visitors, builds an audience and email list, sells your own product or brand, etc., etc.. There is a place for sites like this and I have a few of these as well as numerous niche targeted sites. The nice thing is that if you've done it right you can switch between the two business models rather easily. So, if you decide to really get into dog training you already have a site prepped and ready to build upon and, likewise, if you've given up on training your dog not to bark, you can still retain considerable search traffic for your affiliate offers or product.

The idea with a niche targeted site is to put more or less timeless information out there that doesn't require constant activity, aka 'fire and forget' to some extent. The visitors don't need to know that in addition to your barking dog site that you also have a janitorial supplies site and a 4 slice toaster site or be distracted enough to check out your Facebook page or Twitter feed. All you want to do is to provide decent basic content and steer them toward what they're looking for to solve a problem or to get what they want at a good price.

The real advantage of adding additional content beyond just a few pages is that you can target more long tail keyword combinations. This is one of the keys to having a very successful niche targeted site. I do have some laser targeted one pagers out there that do well, but I've found that having a larger site (100+ pages) with well targeted long tails to be a much better investment of my resources.

Shane I can say from personal experience, (I wont go into lengthy detail here) that having built dozens of authority sites myself, or "BIG SITES" as you call them, takes years of hard work, time and a lot of money.

Niche sites, or "thin sites" can be done in as little as 2 days or less, and can be generating income within weeks.

I believe in a mix of sites...Authority, hub, mini/niche, direct sales letter, etc.

Another benefit of mini-sites not mentioned above is that each is an individual asset that can be sold to increase cash flow to work on other projects.

This potential of added cash flow for people short on cash is something that shouldn't be underestimated...

Also, sites and pages pass on any link juice, so you can create a mini site, add links to it, then pass on the link power, giving you TWO sites that benefit from the same linking power.

IMO, this:
link => mini site => big content site

Is much better than:
link => big content site


Mini sites also allow for more domain names, which means more options when linking, the ability to target more keywords in domain names, plus it's possible to control more top rankings with multiple domains.

I have been primarily focusing on mini-sites. But last week I purchased my first domain for a large authority site. Oddly enough, I was able to secure an exact match domain for a fairly large search term! I admit, I did a little dance after purchasing it. I can definitely see the wisdom though in having some smaller mini-sites up to support the larger site.

A mini-site that stays a mini-site will gradually lose presence as the engines get smarter.

I do both.

The biggest 'risk' in going the large authority site route is getting your niche right. If you don't, all that hard work could end up being for nought.

I like the point Kurt made - very much. After reading THINK Links (his ebook on linking strategy), I've evolved a plan that's pretty much like what Kurt explains - link -> minisite -> large site.

Also, going the minisite route lets you quickly test multiple niches, find winners, and then scale up more confidently.

But everything you say about 'authority sites' is valid. That's why I also build those

All success
Dr.Mani

Hi Shane,

I think i'm 99% in agreement with your sentiments, and this coming from a guy that initially did almost entirely mini-sites but in recent history have transitioned to building more authoritative sites.

I did want to give some specific thoughts on one of your notes though, since i've been participating in some "contests" lately and I think sheds a good amount of light on the subject, at least over a 3 month window.

There are a number of sites that run "SEO contests." Typically you have X amount of time to get a new site, or a new page on an existing site, to rank for a given keyword in Google.com. Sometimes the keywords are real, sometimes they are actually made up.

Now, i've participated in 3 of these in the past several months, and also reviewed the previous contests to confirm my findings.

[Note that these contests were for 3 months, so a smaller or longer timeframe might yield different results.]

Anyways, my conclusion is without exception, the top 5 ranking sites (after 3 months) fell into one of 2 categories: (1) exact keyword domain in .com, .net or .org variety, or (2) aged/established domain of at least a PR3 at the root level.

Since the contests required new sites or new pages, the people with established sites created new interior pages optimized for the given keyword on their established domains.

There was no site that could match these 2 categories of pages/sites over a 3 month period. I even tried hard! For one of them, since the exact keyword domain was taken, I added an "hq" to the end of the keyword, so it was keywordhq.com. I was able to get to the top of page 2, but no matter the SEO effort I put up, it was an uphill battle fighting against either the exact keyword domains, or the pages on the authority domains. To test it further, I slapped up an interior page on a PR4 root domain of mine. I through about 1/3 of the # of backlinks at it that I did for my "almost" keyword domain, and my authority domain finished 4th compared to the 13th of my new site.

This experience has led me to re-evaluate my thoughts on micro-niche sites and as a result, it just seems like once you get some authority to one of your sites, you can optimize any new page on that domain and start ranking it well right out of the gate.

To be honest, you can just look at forums to see the power of authority domains. I check Google Analytics regularly on my forum and it is truly astonishing the Google search traffic that we are getting from a wide variety of keywords, some of which people are optimizing hard for, but we are beating them in Google due to the power of the domain.

Tom

Hi Shane,

Why not do both?

That's what I do. I don't like to put all my eggs in one basked. I have one huge site with 1,400 or so articles which pays the largest part of my income. And then I make a few mini-sites. So work great (like a couple of hundred dollars per month), some work less great (about $10 per month), some only pays the yearly domain fee.

But then again, the risk is small with a mini-site. You only have to pay for the domain and spend a few hours setting it up. Do it with enough mini-sites, and it pays nicely. Combine with big sites with lots of quality content, and you do very well.

Or Zombie Blogging, for that matter.

I don't see the minisite contrast here. Isn't this the idea no matter what kind of site you build?

Basically. But here's the thing:

Only a tiny few people are saying you can use these sites as your only source of income.

An even tinier few people are actually trying to do it in any sensible fashion. (A lot are believing the hype and trying to build lots of sites, but they're really not trying to build a business at all - nor are they likely to build a better business with some other method.)

Minisites, to me, have always been a way to get a small income stream running that can be invested in larger projects. A minisite that pulls in $8 a month will pay for many hosting accounts, for example. Another that pulls in $15 a month can be used to run occasional short PPC campaigns to get a dozen subscribers to a list.

There are really not that many people trying to build their entire business on a notion of "2,000 sites making $5 a month" out there. The ones who are, however, do this with multiple income streams - AdSense, Amazon, other affiliate products, CPA offers, text ads like Chitika, list building, their own products, banner ad sales. So the eggs aren't all in one basket.

That said, I believe most people should have at least a few eggs in the quality-content authority site basket. Not so much because other baskets aren't as good, but because it's a model everyone should at least consider making part of their business... and you can't really make a good decision about it without testing it.

Minisites are good under certain circumstances. If you are targeting keywords where the visitor is likely looking for something specific and quick, they are good.

I've tried both, and so far I have found more success with larger sites.

Mini sites can line your pockets with money.

Whether your site is mini or not does not matter so much in rankings. Its the quality of the back links and how relevant it is that matters... link love. If people love what you are doing and link to it you can dominate.

Large authority and content sites are great but when it comes to longtail keywords and sucking in the cash effective mini sites are like vacuum cleaners because its all about converting the visitor into a buyer.

I have mini sites that not only dominate the number 1 position on google for cash pulling keywords in their micro niches and which convert... discussions about them and articles about them and affiliates promoting them dominate many of the other slots on the top 10 results...

Of course that is natural discussions from third parties on blogs and such and affiliate articles not search spam.

Quality offers on mini sites that people love can get ranked and stay ranked for years...

Uniqueness, differentiation, and wow factor matter though...

And if you can't write good enough copy or follow up well enough to build credibility and trust then... forgetaboutit! If your mini site sucks then your visitors will be unforgiving... in that case try something else like authority sites.

If the niche is deep and broad do both.

It don't have to be pretty... it just hast to convert.

So Tom was it clear to you that .info sites just did not rank OR did people in the contest not use them?

If you were determined to go after a certain niche and your keywords were taken would you rather have exact name in a .com or add a qualifier such as best or top etc to the .com, .net or .org?

As much as it pains me, I am fore-going the mini-sites and striving to build something in between a mini-site and an authority site.

I consider an authority site something like Wikipedia.

Whoa, looks like this thread got resurrected and I almost missed it!

Thanks for all the input and comments. I've gotten some great value here and some input that made me take a step back and reassess my position and I'm very greatful for that.

Looks like many here have very good systems for combining smaller and larger sites in their overall marketing strategy.

It really depends on what your business model is. If you are happy to just promote affiliate offers and providing solutions to people then an army of micro-sites could possibly be the best option.

If you have created a solution (digital product) for a very specific problem then it might actually become more work to try and convince people searching for slightly different solutions to give yours a try.

I like to build the larger sites for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't have any of my own products and not looking at creating my own products for markets outside IM. I don't like to put all of my eggs in the one basket. The unreliability of Google's search engine traffic numbers makes me cautious to spend a lot of time promoting a domain for a limited number of keywords. I don't want to be stuck with a domain if the numbers are wrong.

I have 'seen the light' with list building and know that I can use some pages to load up a list and then use the other pages to target both organic traffic and promote items back to the list. I want to make sure I make a site that has the scope to support this.

One of the most time consuming parts of creating sites is building the backlinks. I'm sick of having to start fresh with each new domain only to have to move on once content for the site is exhausted. The authority can only be built up so far before it becomes ineffecient. Each new link helps multiple pages on a site and I want to make the most of that.

I find it is easier to approach other bloggers and sites to write about a site if it doesn't come across purely as a MFA site. I want people linking to it naturally. Sure, this can happen to micro-sites too, but usually a micro-site is straight to the point of promoting the offer and then moving on. It is very targeted so only useful to a specific audience.

I also like to be able to sell banner space on a site for a more reliable source of income. It is harder to get the impressions up on a micro site to make this worthwhile.

If I had more time available I would probably be building a lot more micro-sites but at the moment I have to remain focused on spending my time wisely. I have found it easier to manage a handful of larger sites than my numerous micro ones.

The micro-sites did get the ball rolling though and gave me a sniff of what IM can do...

You bring up a good point. Landing pages convert more than websites. Websites will never die out. That is why you should use your landing page to drive traffic to your website. Good thread.

A mixture of both are good - why put all your eggs in one basket? Mini-sites do still work.