A mini-site is a small website of just a few pages targeted towards making money from either a very specific group of people or by selling a very specific product to everyone. Mini-sites are the opposite of online stores like Amazon
.
A mini-site will typically have just a few stages. These will grab the visitor's attention, take their email address, sell them the product, take the money and then thank them for calling - maybe a total of only five pages!
Examples of a Mini-Site
You could use a mini-site to sell a product that you have manufactured or purchased for resale. The point is that it's just one product not a whole range and if you have several products then you have several mini-sites - all producing money!
Or it could be a range of products to appeal to a very small group of people - like collectors. For example, you might sell high quality models of World War Two aircraft to those who collect them.
Alternatively, the website might be designed to attract a specific group of visitors who are shown simply content. This content might be a series of well written and informative articles that convey some useful knowledge. Then, while on the site, the visitors are shown a series of affiliate adverts for products similar or related to the content. An example could be a mini-site targeted at those interested in Tai Chi and containing informative articles and photographs of the movements required while affiliate programs look after the money.
But it could also consist of a forum on a specific topic with related advertisements for affiliate programs so, as you can see, there is a lot of scope for innovation.
Getting One
Obviously with such a small site it's easy to create the pages yourself although you can purchase sites ready-made and ready to go. To find one ready-made, search for 'mini sites' in your favourite search engine.
To create one you need some website knowledge - but only enough to take an existing template and modify it for your own use so the creation part involves very little money.
Again, templates are available either as paid-for or free and a search in a search engine will reveal a host of template sites.
Making Money
You've got your mini-site and you know that demand for your product or subject area is high so now you're ready to go? Well, not quite, there's one more thing you need.
To make money you need customers and to get customers you need visitors so the first job, after floating your site, is to drive traffic to it.
This is as important as designing your site and so needs your full attention. Make a point of learning and reading about ways to promote your site and then spend some time doing just that.
The main reason that mini-sites fail is that they don't get sufficient traffic to generate customers to buy the goods. But there's no magic to generating customers, it is all down to hard work in the promotion department.
Mini-sites are a good way of making money and, once made, they can be left to do their job so, ideally, you need several all producing income at the same time. However, if you are new to world of ecommerce, they are also a very good way of dipping a toe into the water of this fascinating and lucrative online world.
