A mini-site is not worth anything without some sort of traffic. Traffic can be converted any number of ways or combination of ways but the amount and quality of the traffic is critical to the success of a mini-site. Since content on a mini-site is a lot less than that on an ordinary website, can you really compete for organic search traffic? Are there other sources of traffic you should be looking at? The answers in my view are “maybe” and “yes” respectively.
Can you compete for organic search traffic?
Maybe. It depends which niche you have chosen for your mini-site. A well established website in a competitive niche is near impossible to beat with a mini-site in my opinion. If you want organic traffic from a search engine, then pick a less competitive niche and aim to take a piece of the pie and not the whole pie.
The advantage of doing this properly is that those visitors may convert very well because they are more targeted. If you can convert 1% of your traffic and earn 50 cents per visitor, you need 200 visitors a day to earn $1 a day. However if you can earn $5 per converted visitor, then you only need 20 visitors a day to earn $1 a day on average.
So the lesson for a mini-site is to maximize the revenue per converted visitor because you are less likely to be driving large amounts of traffic through your site.
Other sources of traffic for a mini-site
Type-in or direct navigation
This is the traffic that parking depends on and if you have visitors already on your parked domain, then you are likely to continue to have that direct navigation traffic.
Traffic from links
Because your mini-site is going to be lighter on content, you may find that one way inbound links are hard to get. This is where having high quality unique content that meets the visitor’s needs is very important. However even if you don’t have link bait content, there are other ways.
Reciprocal links
Reciprocal links (I link to you and you link to me) have been downplayed a lot lately but they shouldn’t be. Much abused in the past, they are really the thread that holds the web together. The key is to get reciprocal links from sites with related topics. This looks good to the search engines but more importantly, you have a flow of visitors that will find your site useful and relevant and can be more readily converted.
Some people go as far as to ignore the search engines and get extensive reciprocal links. They put up with being penalized in search engine ranking and rely instead on the traffic flowing through those links. There is life without the search engines!
I have several websites where the major source of traffic is from other websites and not search engines. So do not overlook this valuable source of traffic.
Social media, viral marketing etc
There are many other ways to get traffic such as social media with myspace, facebook and twitter being some of the largest. Various marketing campaigns such as viral videos etc can work too.
Low maintenance mini-sites
What I aim to create are low maintenance mini-sites because I do not have the time to babysit them. So I generally aim for organic search engine traffic, one way links if possible, direct navigation and reciprocal link traffic. This requires the least amount of work and you can spread out your efforts over time as you want. The relative balance of each of these traffic sources varies depending on the niche, competition and revenue stream I am aiming for.
A side note
I am working on a new look for the blog which I hope to have ready soon. Bear with me if there are some minor hiccups early on. I am trying to maintain daily posts but I have a lot of projects going on so it is possible I may miss a day or two here or there. Hopefully not. Thanks for all the support and the comments.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
“I have several websites where the major source of traffic is from other websites and not search engines. So do not overlook this valuable source of traffic.”
Very good strategy. While optimizing for the search engines is a very smart thing to do it is also very smart to never depend too much on any one traffic source.
Most properly optimized mini-sites with AdSense convert at 10% to 20% CTR.
To expect 100 or 200 visitors per day from organic search is a lot with a ministe setup
Getting 20 or 30 is a good start, as long as there is growth… It’s all good. You have to be realistic in that it won’t happen over night.
There won’t be money pouring in no matter how hard you try. It is a process.
Usually takes a few month’s to break even.
From there on, if you choose to re-tweak and continue to optimize you can capitalize.
Mike
Good stuff! I agree with Mike that the conversion rate on a niched mini-site should convert really well if you have good content and related ands on your site, since the people visiting probably are looking for what you (and your advertisers) give them.
Your posts are great, they really match the stuff I’m learning about and doing right now! Keep it up!
Have you ever had any minisites removed from Google index, and if so, do you know what went wrong? Minimuin amount of pages and/or content etc? Last year I had numerous sites removed and banned. I was sloppy, created many empty pages with adsense on and liked to them in my sitemap.xml – what developing iteratively – took a break and left the sites hangning. Bad idea. :-\
I have recently got into minisites using noomle.com – I put CheapRims.us on there on the 6/2/09 and I now rank number one spot on Yahoo for “Cheap Rims” – Im seeing 100+ UV per day and 90% is from Yahoo – We are ranking higher than CheapRims.com currently at number 2.
Im happy with these stats – I have also got EastScotland.com ranked number 2 for “East Scotland” put the term there isnt search as much and traffic is much lower.
Im building more minisites and hoping for more sucess stories like Cheap Rims.
Regards,
Robbie
Mike,
200 a day is a lot initially but it can be done by combining sources of traffic. What I find key for mini-sites is that you need higher revenue per conversion to compensate for lower traffic. That means AdSense isn’t the way to go in many niches in my experience because it doesn’t pay well enough per conversion.
Johan,
AdSense or any ads on a site with no or minimal content is a spam signal. It is a good idea to get your content on there and then put your ads on the site. Also make sure you have a link or two because this helps “validate” your site and you are less likely to be bouncing around in ranking on the search engines.
Take ads off those sites, add more content and get some links and you should be able to rescue those sites.
Robbie,
Sounds like you are on the right track. Not every one will succeed. For those lower traffic sites, again, check your revenue model and see if you can get more revenue per conversion. I really do believe that’s the key to having a successful mini-site model.
Barry,
Great post, you pointed out some great tips here!
- Richard
Thanks Richard. Glad you found it useful.