Your Opinion Please
 

Which is more logical - Mini Sites of 2 or 3 pages that sell, or Theme Based Content Sites of 50-200 pages, that provide information and Pre-Sell people and refer them to merchants ? There seems to be a great deal of disagreement on the Net about these two subjects and which is best for profits in the short and long term.

I tend to favor the second option because I think people are looking for information on the Net, and if they find a Sales Pitch instead, would it not drive them away ?

Any thoughts on this ? Has anyone ever tried both concepts ?

Thank you in advance.

Combine the two
 

Hi,

You wrote
> Which is more logical - Mini Sites of 2 or 3
> pages that sell, or Theme Based Content
> Sites of 50-200 pages, that provide
> information and Pre-Sell people and refer
> them to merchants ?

What you should do is make mini sites that pre-sell people and refer them to merchants.

You wrote:
> I tend to favor the second option because I
> think people are looking for information on
> the Net, and if they find a Sales Pitch
> instead, would it not drive them away ?

That's like an urban legend. Don't ruin your business by basing it on a myth. The fact is this: if you could list all the profitable websites on the net, and divide them into two classes (mini sites and portals) you'd see that there are vastly more mini sites on the list than portals. Here's the facts about sales pitches: What makes money for Ford Motor Company (TV commercials) annoys channel surfers. What makes money for webmasters (sales pitches) annoys web surfers. What web surfers love (freebies) makes webmasters go broke and commit suicide.

When you have a surfer on your site, sell him something.

Hope this helps,

- Boyd

Re: Does it matter?... and here's a third choice
 

Hi,

That's a really good question, but here's an answer you may not want to hear...

It really DOES NOT matter which one you use...

What matters is:

1. You're passionate about what you're doing and
2. You're providing value to your visitors

The more years I spend in business, the more I realize it's NOT about *me* making money... it's about creating and providing something that my customers *value* more than the money they spend with me...

However, I tend to lean toward mini-sites because it's business a model that's inexpensive to create, can be run on 'auto-pilot' and still provides tremendous value...

Portals on the other hand have to compete with MSN, Netscape, About, etc... a tough business and expensive to promote properly.

A third alternative, which you didn't mention, is the 'community' site... where people who have a common interest chat and share resources...(kinda like SowPub:-) ...that can be a good choice but very time consuming for the webmistress (or webmaster).

That's my 2 cents...

-Dave




My Son said, "Dad it's not fair!" When I Make BIG Chunks of Money

Re: Your Opinion Please
 

Thanks Boyd and Dave for the information. Please see my next post to this forum today called Mini Site Courses. Thank you.

> Which is more logical - Mini Sites of 2 or 3
> pages that sell, or Theme Based Content
> Sites of 50-200 pages, that provide
> information and Pre-Sell people and refer
> them to merchants ? There seems to be a
> great deal of disagreement on the Net about
> these two subjects and which is best for
> profits in the short and long term.

> I tend to favor the second option because I
> think people are looking for information on
> the Net, and if they find a Sales Pitch
> instead, would it not drive them away ?

> Any thoughts on this ? Has anyone ever tried
> both concepts ?

> Thank you in advance.

Three reasons...
 

Ken:

Different types of site seem to work because people go to them for different reasons...

1: People go to them to find solutions to their problems. Just like people search the Yellow Pages. In this case, they already WANT what is offered and don't need a long pitch explaining WHY they should be interested in the product. They just want the product/service.

2: People want to educate themselves on a topic. Like looking up something in an encyclopedia.

3: People stumble onto the site. And in this case, the typical long sales pitch is at home because it tells the reader WHY they should be interested in the subject before hitting them with the offer.

For example: Lets say I have a cold sore and want to get rid of it. I do NOT want to know what a cold sore is, nor why I should want to be rid of them. All I want is a solution to my problem... I want something to get rid of the cold sore.

On the other hand, if I don't know what a cold sore is and want to know, the last thing I want is a cold sore removing product. All I want is to know what a cold sore is.

And on the third hand, if I stumble around and land on a cold sore product site without actively searching for the site, I need to be enticed to stay. And this is where the majority of sites of info. products seem to lay - telling me why I should be interested. In this sense, it would make more sense to give me an immediate choice...

For a product to get rid of cold sores within one day Click Here.

To learn about cold sores Click Here.

This would cater to the main reasons why people go to a site - to learn and for solutions.

A site like this could be three pages - index page which gives the choice, smaller "sales" page, and longer education page.

Michael Ross


Subscribe to The Great Ideas Letter today. Click here for more info.

Mini Sites are definitely very popular
 

I have touched base with every one of my customers that bought something from my mini sites. The majority of them liked the fact that they could go to a site that sold something they were looking for and buy it all from one simple, small site. The others just did not have an opinion.

One thing that I have found most mini site designers to agree with is when designing a mini site - keep it mini. I see a lot of mini sites that are miles long. The reader has to keep reading and reading to get all the content. Might as well be a full scale site. If it is kept simple and short with good content, a 1 to 3 page mini site can be very successful. If the content is good enough, you won't have to pack your site with tons of info to get the point across.

Good luck.

Dennis


Mini Site Templates and quality products with resell rights

Re: Three reasons...
 

Related to Michael's post, here's an article by Jakob Nielsen regarding the three big (according to him) reasons why people browse the internet:

Collect, Compare, Choose

Best,
Phil Gomez

Re: Your Opinion Please
 

With MINI sites, there is nothing that will make visitors come again and again...

But, that is not their purpose anyway. Their only
purpose is making a sale. Someone who visits minisite
is not there because of content, but because of product he is interested in.

It is proven that mini sites works, and there is no
questions about that, but only if you can generate
highly targeted traffic.

CONTENT sites, on the other hand, can generate traffic
on their own.

BUT... There is a lot work to do to build a good content site. Content needs to be really good to make visitors come again. A lot of time will be spent before you see results...

But, it is proven that content sites also works, and there is no questions about that.

Wich way is better?

Well, both ways are proven to work.

On the other hand, both ways are proven that they don't work.
Yes, it is proven because people are losing money with both, as same as it is proven that both ways works because people are making money with them.

So, wichever way you choose,make sure that you do your job good and it will work for you.

Sorry for my (terrible) English:)

Bilal




FREE DOWNLOAD: Actual Steps to Making YOUR Living Online! (Retail: $39)

To Tell the Truth: Go With "Robust" Mini Sites
 

Interesting discussion. To me, Ken, it depends on what you’re good at.

For instance the pure mini site model requires you know how to drive traffic to your mini site - affordably. Probably using PPCs, ezine ads, article marketing and the like.

While marketing using a web site theme requires search engine optimization skills so you can land top search engine ranking. Which in turn drives traffic to top ranked content pages with in-text links to your sales letter.

And you don’t need 50-200 pages either. Depending on how competitive the market is, sometimes as few as 10 high demand/low competition pages will suffice. Each reinforcing a popular but harder to rank in focus keyword. Pushing it to it to a top 10 search engine ranking. BTW, to find out how competitive keyword phrases are, you can use the FREE Keyword Competition Wizard, http://www.aboriginemundi.com/kcw/. This tool will tell you how stiff the competition is and how likely you are to attain top search engine ranking. Try it. You may like it.

Anyway I tend to go with what I call "Robust" Mini Sites. That is 15-20 pages of content focused on a web site theme with each content page designed to both rank high and drive traffic to a sales page. Which I also market using ezine solo ads and article marketing.

Hope this helps.

John Gergye




Are You a Search Engine Whiz? Take the Search Engine Quiz and Find Out!

How to estimate traffic from mini sites: the answer!
 

> BTW, to find out how
> competitive keyword phrases are, you can use
> the FREE Keyword Competition Wizard,
> http://www.aboriginemundi.com/kcw/ . This
> tool will tell you how stiff the competition
> is and how likely you are to attain top
> search engine ranking. Try it. You may like
> it.
There's even a better tool now, from the same makers: Keyword Traffic Estimator. It will give you a fairly accurate estimate of the monthly traffic you will get for any keyword.




Download Keyword Traffic Estimator (freeware)