Alright, I’ve been blabbing on about “authority sites”, “kindling sites”, “mini-sites” and all the rest of that crap for the last couple of weeks now…
And I’ve also been bombarded with questions, and I am now wading my way through what’s known as ‘email hell’.
So let’s just get to the bottom of all this:
Is it better to build one big site in your target market to begin with?
Or is it better to start off by creating a series of “mini-sites” that target a tightly-focused theme?
The answer isn’t so cut and dry, unfortunately.
My book preaches the latter. I’ve done the latter – it works. Still does, and will for a very long time.
It’s just that it’s hugely profitable to have an authority site, because the traffic is more stable, your rankings aren’t just hanging by a thread, your visitors will build many of your links FOR you, you’re building a BRAND, and over time, anything you add will get indexed and ranked highly – FAST.
When the search engines value your updates, making a fortune from long-tail, mid-tail and even competitive keywords is nearly effortless. You simply slap up pages about a given keyword, link to them from your normal navigation structure and sitemap, and “poof” – you have almost instant, free traffic for practically any keyword you want, whenever you want.
(It takes awhile to get there, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to do THAT then it is to try and get your mini-site, squidoo lens or whatever indexed, ranked and “stabilized” for any given keyword. Each new mini-site you create starts out with no authority, no pagerank and in general, no advantage – other than the “lazy affiliate-style” keyword targeting…)
But, even with all that said – starting out with the Mother Site right off the bat might not be the smartest move.
Why?
Because rolling out 2 or 3 (or more) mini-sites in the market BEFORE releasing an “authority site” gives you the opportunity to fail fast, ride the winners and drop the losers.
No matter how experienced you are with marketing, business, copywriting – whatever – many of your projects will fail. It’s inevitable.
This is why simultaneously testing the effectiveness of:
* layouts
* ad copy/placement
* approaches, overall site strategy
* products to promote
* and so on…
is the SMARTER way to do things.
From there, you simply pick the winner after each site has had a consistent influx in traffic for its target keywords and then scale it up. It’s working the best, the layout’s working and the keywords it’s targeting are currently the most profitable. Or you take the components that made it work and apply those to your main authority site.
This also makes sense because your “mini-sites” can be rolled out easily, quickly. There’s nothing to it – but the test results are GOLD.
Once you have those results – your “winner” – building your actual business around the things that made that site “win” is going to pay off HUGE for you in the end – exponentially.
There’s no sense in building a barrier-to-entry (authority, value) around something that’s untested.
This is why mini-sites, or perhaps better described as “mini-tests”, are still the way to START, in my books. Just imagine the power of having the torrents of future traffic from a massive authority site all hitting offers that outperform your other tests by 200%, right from the start…
Too many marketers don’t realize that it’s those “small differences” that can be the difference between extra cash, or a full-time, residual income stream.
Visitor value is everything.
And speaking of value, well – read the previous post on what kind of “difference” that can make 
-Chris
13 responses so far ↓
1 Richard Peck // Jan 19, 2008 at 6:53 am
Having created mini-sites and authority sites in the past with great success, I want say personally I prefer to make one giant site right off bat, and here’s why:
Having watched all John Reese’s Stomper vids on his income.com blog, I can really see how important it is to build a real business online. These sites, according to his teachings, are “money makers” which in itself isn’t bad at all – but in the wider picture, can only work against you (as it has with Chris)
You see – building mini sites will get you some traffic, some exposure and a collection of sales – however because of the lack of content and the nature of the site… it will undoubtedly get overtaken by other “mini-sites” which have been better marketed.
Now, when those sites start to fall in rankings and start to be less profitable – it diverts your attention to organise the reincarnation of those sites either yourself or with your “team”.
JR said a VERY wise thing in those vids which is: “The top 5,000 sites online control EVERYTHING”. Although the figure is a lot more than that, I saw that it’s really essential to stop tip-toeing around several niches pumping out several small sites when you could SO easily invest all your time & money into a single site which has an even greater market share and position in the market than the mini sites could EVER have.
If you want a real life example of an authority site, look at http://webkinzinsider.com.
This site is so big that it EVEN has it’s own Google trend. It’s totally captured a market and earns very well (I used to be in contact with the owner). When it had 10,000 members it was earning $150 a day from ADSENSE. They now have 50,000 and a dedicated online shop.
Now imagine taking the information Chris has given about finding a niche in his book and creating a site like webkinzinsider with it?
Although I have a bunch of mini-sites, I’ve got to say that “authority” is the way forward and you can see it too. There’s so much garbage online that everyone who is a buyer can see it a mile off.
What’s more, with authority sites you can build a business, have customer data and even your own product. Neat huh?
2 admin // Jan 19, 2008 at 7:49 am
Rich,
I actually agree with you, it’s just that it’s easier to “start out” small, and then develop the winning, most-profitable mini-site into one with real authority.
It’s possible to work very hard, building tons of content, and earning a fraction of what you could if you’d tested offers, different layouts, etc. to begin with, simultaneously.
Again, this is my PREFERENCE – not a “rule” of any kind.
It’s just easier to get going initially, for me.
Also, the only reason my mini-sites in that one niche ($800/day down to $290ish/day) weren’t pointing to an authority site yet is because I’ve been living out of a suitcase, travelling the world for the past 3 months.
Otherwise, that wouldn’t mattered at all. It still doesn’t, really.
It’s a valuable lesson, and the sites are actually already picking up steam again.
And the authority site is almost ready to go, also.
I also have a wide network of mini-sites, and a few authority sites. Obviously, the real money’s in owning big property – BUT – it’s faster and less-risky to quickly gage a niche (or an angle in a niche) by rolling out a mini-site to see how it does, before investing tons of time and money into an authority property.
I say this from experience, because when I first started out online, I spent probably at least 2,000 hours on one site that only generates about $200/mth maximum – with much higher hopes, of course.
Obviously, this was years ago, before I knew anything about the business.
But that’s where a lot of people are right now – just starting out.
I’d rather have them “fail fast” with the losers, and let the winning sites prove themselves before investing a ton of time, effort and expense into developing a real business for a given market.
That’s all I’m saying.
Thanks though – valuable input, as usual, Rich.
Cheers,
-Chris
3 Richard Peck // Jan 19, 2008 at 8:49 am
Thanks for the compliment
,
I can see where you’re coming from and it’s totally valid however once you get the traffic to your big site, you can still test a bunch of stuff on there, I feel.
You could easily create “mini-sites” from your big site too. So if you had a webkinz site, you could have “cheats.webkinzinsider.com” or “games.webkinzinsider.com” etc.
The Webkinz niche is pretty poor but it’s an example. I just don’t think creating “reviews” for reviews’ sake sits well with visitors any more. For example, the registry site you posted a vid of (I actually found it online) actually looks like a giant ad, as do every other “review” site I’ve found up to now.
The visitor is generally wisening up to this, I feel. I can bet that you don’t earn half as much per visitor from that site as you do your other sites…
As you said in your post, the barrier-to-entry for this stuff like non-existent which means that literally ANYONE with their business hat on could easily take your “market share”. Whereas with a site like WebkinzInsider, you have an instantly recognisable, trusted brand which means you can review any product in the niche and the people who trust the brand will literally take it all as the truth.
It’s all down to marketing to mimic the Internet. If you create a little site, you can at best hope for likewise results. Imagine capturing a steady share of the market with a huge site. Especially in niches which have constant needs – you can really build a solid income off just a few continual buyers than a load of casual ones.
Anyway that’s what I think personally. You’re more successful than me based on the figures you posted alone which is why I look up to you so much.
Let us know about how your site bounces back
4 Mark // Jan 20, 2008 at 6:36 am
Chris,
Total newb questions for you. I just bought your ebook…amazing, but keep in mind Im brand new to this so Ive got some ‘idiot’ questions for you.
-I understand the purpose of the PRODUCT pages for the mini site, but what is the purpose of the 13 or so articles?
-At the end of all these articles I would use my affiliate link to go to a related product correct?
-I plan on outsourcing these articles, do i just give them the keywords to weave in and thats it?
These are total newbie questions, but if you could answer those 3 things Id be ecstactic.
Cheers-
Mark
5 Wim // Jan 20, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hi,
I own several mini sites in one niche + one authority site in the same niche but the real money for me is in my own product i have developped. Because the product is in the same niche, it’s very easy to promote it with less efforts. Up-to-date, I’m having +-500 clients paying me €49.95/month with no refunds.
Clickbank brings me some money also but I really hate those refunds. I was planning to build some more mini sites in various niches but you did explzin the problem above, it is very difficult to keep any posistion in the search engines because other will promote their site better or add some more content and how can you keep 50 mini sites alive and up-to-date?
That’s my opinion.
Wim
Best,
Wim
6 Franck Silvestre // Jan 23, 2008 at 4:38 am
Hi Chris,
I like the minisite approach, it reminds me Mike Campbell’s mininet.
Your approach is effective, and I think I’m even more lazy than you, that’s the reason why I start with only one or two sites (not a full network) and a couple of blogs as well (I love blogs, because you do almost nothing to get traffic).
When I have enough data on my niche, through my blog and newsletter, forums, etc… I will expand or start with the big site that Google will love.
Franck.
7 admin // Jan 24, 2008 at 7:23 am
Hi Mark,
Here’s the answers to your questions – and they aren’t “idiotic”, not by a long shot.
You have a better grasp on the fundamentals of this than you might think, based on your questions…
———————————————–
You asked: “I understand the purpose of the PRODUCT pages for the mini site, but what is the purpose of the 13 or so articles?”
Simply to create more avenues of being found via search engines due to more content. It’s not required. If there’s more than 10 competing products in your target niche, you could simply create a quick little 10-pager with a review for each product.
But, as your site gains in ranking and “trust”, meaning that the engines start using your content more frequently and prominently in their results, then the MORE content you have, the MORE traffic you’ll get as well, relating to the keywords, phrases and the overall “theme” of your content.
You asked: “At the end of all these articles I would use my affiliate link to go to a related product correct?”
Not just the end. I recommend promoting the product at the TOP of the pages as well. Test this, but I’ve yet to see less click-thrus and sales as a result of doing this.
Not all of your visitors are going to read through your articles, let alone scroll down. Make it easy for them (and easy for you, too).
You asked: “I plan on outsourcing these articles, do i just give them the keywords to weave in and thats it?”
Your articles need to be well-written and authoritative. DO NOT WRITE FOR GOOGLE. Write for your visitors.
Only worry about optimizing your pages in regards to your title tags, your meta description, your header tags and your internal linking.
Beyond that, just follow the content creation guidelines in Part 1 of “Confessions” and everything will work out.
I truly believe that “keyword density” and those types of factors are something you should overlook, being as backlinks, site-trust and the basics of onsite optimization are WAY more important anyway, and more than make up for having good article content that’s actually useful – even if it’s not “keyword optimized”.
As for how to outsource effectively regarding what the articles should say, there’s two things I can say:
1) Find a competing site with great content, and give the writer some examples from that site. Tell him/her NOT to simply “re-word” the article, but rather to educate themselves about the subject matter and write similar articles of the same quality.
I then give them a headline and a brief synopsis of each article.
2) Choose a good writer from the start. Don’t cheap out and go for the lowest bidders. They’ll just produce garbage – and many are simply in the copyright infringement business, copying & pasting other people’s work and then selling it to you as “original”.
Instead, look at the writers feedback rating AND several of their samples. Then start out with a small project and see how it goes.
If you stumble across a great writer, treat them well, pay them well – and NEVER share your source with other marketers
All the best,
-Chris
8 admin // Jan 24, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Wim,
First of all – congrats on the successful product, great going.
Second – you use the mini-sites as an INITIAL strategy for generating easy traffic and eventual search engine “juice” that can then be transferred to your authority properties, and product sites.
This way you have an easy start with some results already in place BEFORE going full-fledged into product creation, or creating highly valuable content for the niche on an authoritative site.
The idea isn’t to “juggle” 50 mini-sites and try and keep them placed well.
It’s to enter into ONE NICHE at a time (once you’ve got a winner) with a number of mini-sites focusing on different keyword clusters, and then using that traffic, your list (if applicable), as well as your pagerank, to give your “real” assets an instant boost when they’re launched.
Just like how I described in my ebook in the later chapters.
Thanks,
-Chris
9 admin // Jan 24, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Franck – sounds good.
That’s the idea.
You’ll WANT to scale things up once you hit a gold-nerve anyway. That’s the beauty of this strategy, the motivation isn’t “forced”…
Rather, your excitement based on your current wave of results from “lazy” strategies will drive you to build a business out of it and create massive, long-term profit streams.
Cheers,
-Chris
10 Yokee // Jan 25, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Hey Chris,
This post was indeed insightful. I can attest to what you speak of with respect to trying to build an authority site first with hopes of a big payout.
I built one such site in the Wedding market only to have my Wedding toast page be the biggest performing page in both affiliate sales and adsense on my 50 page site several years ago.
At the time, I didn’t know how to build a website and only had a SBI site platform and let everything lapse.
I knew I was onto something but didn’t know how to capitalize on this because of my technical ineptness.
My question for you is twofold:
1. Do you first research/select your industry and find the most profitable keywords within that industry first?
2. If this is the case, once you’ve found/selected your keywords and set up your mini sites for corresponding keywords, how long do you allow the site to perform before building your authority site.
Thanks!
11 admin // Jan 25, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Hi Yokee,
Good questions – here’s my thoughts:
1. Yes, definitely. I find proven sellers within a market and then I compete in that market. ClickBank and CJ are a good place to start looking for proven, hot sellers to identify profitable niches.
THEN, do your keyword research, etc.
2. There’s no real time-limit. What I look for is the general “ease” of getting traffic from organic sources, and the conversion.
Some niches are generally quite easy to get free traffic out of, while others have stiff competition, as only a few keywords have major traffic.
(You want to be in niches where there’s TONS of traffic to spare, even on the long-tail keywords.)
Part 1 and 2 in “Confessions” at thelazymarketer.com describe this process in full detail.
Niche selection is by far the most crucial component in all this.
Thanks,
-Chris
12 Jeremy Hier // Feb 21, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Great thread,
Chris, with social marketing gaining ground wether it is a mini-site or authority site, is it better to build a website, blog, or have both.
Thanks,
Jeremy
13 admin // Feb 21, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Hi Jeremy,
Blogs are great for niches where you want to interact with your visitor base.
They do lend themselves to social traffic, but it’s not a necessity.
However, comments are a great way to get more targeted, unique content, for free…
-Chris
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