Steps,YOUR,Mini-site,Success,M DIY 5 Steps to YOUR Mini-site Success

When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in

Mini-sites (minisites) are great aren't they? They're quick tocreate, and they focus on one thing only - making the sale!Either you sell your own product on the mini-site, or - and thisis what this article concentrates on - you PRE-sell someone else's product, and make affiliate commission on the sale.But where do you start with mini-sites? And how do make sure thatyour mini-site is a success time after time? (If you're going tocreate one mini-site you may as well create ten!)Simple. Follow these 5 steps to success: Step 1) Choose High-Demand Low-Supply Keywords Step 2) Find A Good Affiliate Program Step 3) Build A Mini-Site That Gets The Sale Step 4) Promote Your Mini-Site Step 5) Measure ResultsLet me explain...Step 1) Choose High-Demand Low-Supply Keywords==============================================Quite simply this means discovering niche keywords; popularkeywords with little or no competing websites. Wordtracker, anoutstanding webmaster tool, does exactly this for you, free.Wordtracker's free top 500 keyword report shows the 500 mostpopular search terms on the web. Use suitable keywords from thisreport, or choose your own keywords and feed them intoWordtracker. Wordtracker then generates many similar keywordcombinations and quite literally tells you the chances ofachieving search engine success with those keywords.Wordtracker's free trial will probably be good enough for mostmini-site owners' needs:- http://www.wordtracker.com(To find out more about high-demand, low-supply keywords visit:- http://www.AnyoneCanSellOnline.com/learn-more.shtml )Step 2) Find A Good Affiliate Program=====================================What makes a good affiliate or associate program? Is it a programwith high commission rates, or lifetime commissions? Is it aprogram based around a product that people *actually* want tobuy? Is a good affiliate program simply one that has a highvisitors-into-customers conversion rate (Amazon.com comes tomind, here!). Or does the affiliate program just need to provideexcellent tracking and reporting?A good affiliate program may have some, if not all, of thequalities mentioned above. The following sites can helpdetermine a good affiliate program for YOU, too:- http://www.AssociatePrograms.com- http://www.affiliates4u.co.uk- http://www.LifetimeCommissions.com- http://www.shoptour.co.uk/webmaster-profit/(The first two sites both have affiliate forums, where you canfind out what others currently think of as good (and bad)affiliate programs. (Never be afraid to ask for advice.))Or, a good affiliate program may simply be determined byanswering this question: would YOU buy products from the site?If you're really keen to know more about what makes a goodaffiliate program, then I highly recommend Dr Ken Evoy's FREE 5-day Affiliate Masters e-mail course. This intensive course showsyou what to look for in a good affiliate program, how to pre-selland so much more. To take the course send a blank e-mail- mailto:[email protected] 3) Build A Mini-Site That Gets The Sale===========================================Firstly, it's important that you design a clean and easy-to-usewebsite. It's vital that the links work on your site, that thepages load quickly and view correctly in a variety of browserversions; and, there should be no spelling mistakes! Good web-authoring tools like Dreamweaver allow you to check these thingsbefore your mini-site goes live; otherwise use Netmechanic onceyour site is up:- http://www.macromedia.com/dreamweaver/- http://www.netmechanic.comAnd here's a beautifully-designed web-site that can also help,providing free website design advice:- http://www.jessett.comYou must choose your words (website copy) carefully, too; use theoften-cited acronym AIDA in crafting your copy - Attention,Interest, Desire, Action. Also, there are many online resourcesthat can help you build a website that sells. Use one of them!Here are a couple of resources I recommend:- http://myss.sitesell.com- http://www.minisiteprofits.comIf you really want to understand the importance of words inselling - including a better explanation of AIDA - I'd recommendyou take the free 5-Day NetWriting Masters email course! To takethe course send a blank e-mail- mailto:[email protected] 4) Promote Your Website============================The first step in promoting your website begins with steps 1) and3) above. You MUST design search-engine friendly pages, making fulluse of keyword meta tags, and inserting your keywords sensibly inthe copy of your pages (including headings tags H1 or H2 etc.). Abrief explanation of how to design search-engine friendly pagescan be found at:- http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?keywordsOnce you've created a reasonably search-engine friendly site thenyou can either hand submit your site to the major search engines,or let JimTools or AddMe take the burden. It's your choice:- http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?site-submit- http://www.jimtools.com/submit.html- http://www.addme.com/submission.htm*Do* make sure you get a link on the following search engines anddirectories:- Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html- DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org- Inktomi: http://169.207.238.189/search/search.plGoogle is becoming *the* search engine of choice for more andmore people (it even powers Web Page searches on Yahoo!). Alisting on DMOZ (or Open Directory Project) can definitely helpyour Google ranking. And Inktomi provides search results for alarge number of search engines including MSN, AOL and evenOverture.Inktomi provides a service which guarantees your page is re-visited by Inktomi's 'spiders' every 48 hours. This means yourmini-site can be listed on many of the major search engineswithin 48 hours of creation! Sign up to Inktomi here:- http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?search-enginesOne extra (and recommended) way to promote your new mini-site isto link to your mini-site on other sites that you own. Not onlydo inbound links increase traffic, it also helps your Googlelisting too. However, do make sure that you: a) Link to the mini-site using your chosen keywords, and b) Submit that linking page to the search engines too (particularly Google)Step 5) Measure Results=======================You're nearly done. Now you just need to measure your results,and adjust or tweak your site a little if you're not happy withthose results. Don't be hasty, though - you need to get areasonable amount of website traffic before you can really knowif your mini-site is a success!Measuring your site traffic means knowing how many visitors yourwebsite attracts, how many page views it gets and which search engines are bringing the visitors to your site, etc. For moreinformation about monitoring website traffic read these articles:- Analyse Your Website Traffic: http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?web-traffic- Learn From Your Visitors Using Cookies: http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/cookies.htmlOr you could just sign up to the free version of Webtrends andlet Webtrends do all the work for you:- http://www.webtrendslive.com(Your web host may well provide adequate site statistics,however, so using Webtrends may not be necessary.)You also need to measure the success (or otherwise) of youraffiliate program. The best affiliate programs offer greattracking and reporting, so that you can quickly determine whatworks and what doesn't. If your affiliate program is a little bitlacking in this respect, then learn how to track your own links:- http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?knowThe combination of affiliate stats and site stats should allowyou to measure your results. If you *do* need to change anythingon your site, make sure you change one thing at a time, so youcan truly measure the effectiveness of that change. (Mark Joyner,famous Internet Marketer and owner of Aesop.com, explains theimportance of controlled testing in his article, Why Test?:- http://www.AnyoneCanSellOnline.com/why-test.shtml )But if mini-site success still eludes you, then you may need toreview steps 1) to 4) again.--And that's it - five steps to your mini-site success!If you're willing to be patient there's absolutely no need tospend time and money on pay-per-click search engines, either!(It's becoming harder and harder to get your mini-site listed onOverture now, anyway!). Simply rely on Google and the modestlypriced Inktomi instead.So, to summarise, if you want to make money from generating small1-or 2-page mini-sites simply follow these five steps: Step 1) Choose High-Demand Low-Supply Keywords Step 2) Find A Good Affiliate Program Step 3) Build A Mini-Site That Gets The Sale Step 4) Promote Your Mini-Site Step 5) Measure ResultsI wish you success!Steve NashPS No idea what a mini-site is? It's all explained here... http://www.AnyoneCanSellOnline.com/build-minisites.shtml Article Tags: Choose High-demand Low-supply, High-demand Low-supply Keywords, Good Affiliate Program, Mini-site Success, Make Sure, Choose High-demand, High-demand Low-supply, Low-supply Keywords, Good Affiliate, Affiliate Program, Search-engine Friendly, Search Engines, Website Traffic