Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1)
Posted on January 9, 2007 by
Adie 
Affiliate Marketing, Minisites 
122 Comments
One of the easiest ways to make money online today is by creating “niche minisites.” The internet is huge, and it’s growing bigger everyday. You can always make a site that attempts to compete in large content areas, and you can succeed if you put enough time, effort, and money into it. What if you don’t have a lot of time? What if you don’t have much startup money? What if you’re lazy (even too lazy to start a Myspace turnkey)? Well then maybe you should give niche minisites a shot.
A niche is “a distinct segment of a market.” A minisite is simply a very small website (typically 10 pages or less).
When you combine these two ideas you get a small site that targets a specific people or product rather than a large site that attempts to encompass a large group of people or products. The benefit of this is that everyone who visits your site will be looking exactly for what you provide. This means higher conversion rate and more money for you.
Rather than bombard you with more theory, I’d rather show you step by step how to create, launch, and market a typical niche minisite.
Step 1: Find a Niche
This is obviously the most important part of creating a niche minisite. There are millions of niches just waiting to be filled, and finding one, quite honestly, isn’t very hard. You can make money off of just about any niche if you work smart.
One of the first places to look for a niche is at your favorite news portal. In my opinion it is much easier to create a niche site for a new product or trend rather than an existing one. Although one can create a niche minisite for an older product, it’s just harder. Everyday new products are being announced that have the potential to become successful. What you have to do is look at these new products and decide which ones you can grab at least a smidgen of the market for. Some easy ones to keep an eye on are new TV shows, movies, rising artists (I hate rap, but rap niche sites are some of the easiest to turn into money makers), cars, and then your typical new inventions/products.
At last year’s E3 a weird little gadget was unveiled called the Nintendo Wii. Everyone instantly started jumping on Wii-related domains, including myself. One little nugget I managed to grab was RedSteel.co.uk. Red Steel is supposed to be one of the first Wii titles to make use of the Wii remote in all it’s glory. The domain is decent, but it isn’t anything to jump over joy for. If you remember from Domaining 101: Extensions, .co.uk isn’t as good as .com, .net, or .org; however, this domain does contain my main keywords and will do just fine for the niche minisite I plan on putting up. I’ve had this domain for months, but simply haven’t gotten around to putting up a site for it yet. You’ll find that happens sometimes when you’re constantly finding new markets to exploit through niche minisites. The beauty of it is that if I never use this domain, it’s less than $10/year loss, and I can always revisit it and put up a new site.
Keep in mind that I registered RedSteel.co.uk based on speculation alone. When setting up niche minisites for future products you will be doing this often; however, if you are creating a site for an existing product then you will need to do extensive keyword research before investing. In the case of Red Steel, it was a safe bet that the game would build enough publicity upon release to make this minisite profitable, so I went ahead with the purchase.
Step 2: Research
When building a niche minisite you will never stop researching. Before you solidify your niche, you want to get an idea of the search traffic. A nifty tool you can use for this is Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. This tool compiles search data from the big 3 engines (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) into one easy location. However, since Aaron’s tool isn’t working for me at the moment, I’ll just be looking at the Overture Suggestion Tool (which displays only Yahoo results).
A quick search for “red steel” brought up the following results:
For those of you who have never analyzed Overture results before, I’ll go ahead and tell you that these results are WIMPY. They’re very lame. If I had to guess looking at these numbers about how much monthly traffic my minisite will get through SE alone, I would say about 50-60 uniques per day (keeping in mind that these are only Yahoo results).
Lucky for me, the domain RedSteel.co.uk although not premium, is good enough to get some type-in traffic:
The fact that this domain is not only getting type-ins but that the traffic is converting at a very nice rate (especially on SEDO’s ugly as hell parking pages) is amazing news. The screenshot above is from the month of November which makes it seem like the numbers could be inflated due to Christmas shopping; however, just over a week into January I’ve gotten 32 type-ins. So even if the numbers do fall some from this screenshot, they’re holding up enough to give me some motivation to get this minisite up and running.
Another important piece of data to gather is your competition. The easiest way to do this is simply by doing a Google search:
What caught my eye when doing this search was that the number 1 result was the Wikipedia entry for Red Steel. Believe it or not that’s fantastic news. One of the rules I follow when making a niche site is that usually if Wikipedia appears within the top 5 results on Google, I can get my minisite to show up in the top 10 (after it gets out of the sandbox). This doesn’t apply to large, general terms (such as “Poker” or “Duct Tape”) but usually holds true for more specific niche terms. Other than that the competition consists basically of review sites. There doesn’t seem to be any community or portal sites that have a firm grip on the niche. That’s also good news.
Step 3: Analyze the Data
Now that you have your niche and the research to go along with it, you need to take some time to sit down and think it over. A couple questions you should ask yourself are:
- Is there a large enough buyer pool?
- Can I compete with the other sites?
- Can I get a quality domain for SEO purposes?
- What will be the life span of this niche minisite?
As I’ve already shown above, RedSteel.co.uk has all it needs to become a successful niche minisite at this point. The buyer pool, although small, does seem large enough to create profit, especially since I don’t plan on spending more than $20/year on this minisite. The competition is scarce, and I already have a good domain. The main problem with this minisite is going to be its life span. Video game minisites usually don’t last as long as other niche minisites; however, I expect this minisite will bring in money for at least a year which is long enough to produce a good profit.
Once you’ve looked over all of the data, you have to decide whether or not to pursue the project. I’m going to go ahead with the RedSteel.co.uk minisite.
Step 4: Decide on Monetization Techniques
One thing a lot of people want to do as soon as they’ve found their niche and done their keyword research is dive into making the site. Then once they have it up, slap some Adsense on it and call it a day. This isn’t what you want to do. I always develop a plan for monetization before I launch the site.
Adsense will always be in the plan when it comes to developing a minisite. Others use YPN, but in the end I suggest always using one source of contextual advertising on your niche minisite. Adsense can be used on any niche minisite and will always be targeted.
So Adsense is a gimme, but I don’t plan on it being my main source of income for RedSteel.co.uk. The bulk of the revenue I plan to generate through commission from selling copies of the game itself, and maybe some other merchandise/accessories. So how do I get started doing that?
The first thing I do is do some searching through my favorite affiliate program: Commission Junction (aff). After searching for a while I found an offer that I didn’t really expect. In addition to selling copies of the game, I can sell GameFly
memberships so users can rent the game, and I also get a lead payout if users just sign up for a free trial. I also found an offer for a Red Steel strategy guide. So now it’s clear to me that affiliate marketing on this minisite is going to be the majority of my income from it. Setting up affiliate marketing on your minisite takes a little bit more time than slapping Adsense up, but it pays off a lot more in the end.
Click here to continue to Part 2…
Popularity: 26% [?]
If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed.You can also subscribe by Email.Related Posts
A very interesting, useful and well thought entry. Have learnt new things and hope will help me to have a better site and business too. Good job. Congratulations!
Well done!
Nice little article for newbies, but a few things I’d point out.
Seeing as this tutorial is targeting new webmasters, you might have also wanted to include things like how to assess competition. You’re telling them what they know already, instead of what they need to know.
All the same, good luck with your blog.
[...] Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) One of the easiest ways to make money online today is by creating ?niche minisites.? The internet is huge, and it?s growing bigger everyday. You can always make a site that attempts to compete in large content areas, and you can succeed if you put enough time, effort, and money into it. What if you don?t have a lot of time? What if you don?t have much startup money? What if you?re lazy (even too lazy to start a Myspace turnkey)? Well then maybe you should give niche minisites a shot. Read the full story - Net Business Blog ? Blog Archive ? Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) [...]
Great article, Look forward to reading the rest
thanks. great article…
Brilliant article, I have yet to see niche marketing explained in such detail. Thanks to this I finally get it. Now just to find time to actually do some.
Thanks a lot!
really good article, got to here from digg (I guess that at the end you will have about 600-700 diggs).
as a website that talks about making money you don’t have advertisements on your website? I really liked the article and because I can’t help you in any way I click on ads… but you don’t have any!
Helpful article — and way to go with the Digg 1st page!
It’s all really a no-brainer for me but still I can imagine this helping a lot of people. Good article nonetheless. Cheers :)
Great write up, very informative!
God bless,
-en3r0
Thanks for the helpful info. Look forward to seeing the rest.
AD
What a usefull , common sense well done article.
Wish there were more like these.
Function and simplicity is a feature lacking in most planet zoltar articles which fail to hit the mark and you wonder who these articles are written for.
[...] One of the easiest ways to make money online today is by creating “niche minisites.” The internet is huge, and it’s growing bigger everyday. You can always make a site that attempts to compete in large content areas, and you can succeed if you put enough time, effort, and money into it. What if you don’t have a lot of time? What if you don’t have much startup money? What if you’re lazy (even too lazy to start a Myspace turnkey)? Well then maybe you should give niche minisites a shot. netbusinessblog.com wrote a good article on how to make a niche minisite with little startup money and use it to generate nice, passive income.read more | digg story [...]
great, another spam site
Congrats for this great article. Really helpful with tons of good info. One question that came to my mind was whether subdomains will count as qualified for a niche site ?
Building a Niche Minisite…
A good article on how to make a niche minisite with little startup money and use it to generate nice, passive income….
Excellent article.
One question though - if you are registering a domain name that is trademarked, aren’t you risking being taken to court? A lot of product names would be trademarked by their manufacturer.
Nice article! Thanks for the tips!!!
I have a couple of niche minisites, and all I can say is that it works very well.
[...] Here’s a good article on how to make a niche minisite with little startup money and use it to generate nice, passive income. Hmm… mebbie I need to try this???read more | digg story [...]
I didn’t think you could actually make any decent amount of money from a site based around a video game. I’m sure it’s hard to say this early but from past experience can anyone say how much you expect to make on a monthly basis from a site like this?
I would have thought a game on its own is too small a niche to target. I love being proved wrong though so I’m looking forward to further posts.
@z999 -
I don’t really think it’s a great idea bombarding a new blog with ads, but eventually there will be some more up on the page (not many more, but a couple).
That CJ url… tsk tsk tsk
You can also make your niche not so specific, or let your visitors decide the contents they want, dinamically.
We made a tag search single-page site in Spanish with relative good results, as a metasearch engine.
I’ve been hearing about niche sites and niche marketing for a few months now, but I never really understood what was meant by niche. Your explaination finally cleared it up. Thanks! I’m looking forward to the next post. I’ll probably try to start up my own niche minisite in the next few months.
Yeah but… the $7.30/month you make isn’t going to make for much of a follow up article. lolz.
We’ll see mr. popo <3
Great article but it’s important to point out at some point that even though this seems easy in theory, in practice you need a lot of discipline. I’ve seen a few skilled webmasters fail at it while some people who knew little about the internet made quite a bit of money by following such a plan.
My advice would be, learn how to make a plan and how to schedule your work day before you even begin to think about building your niche sites.
Trust me on this one. Take it from someone who tried and failed many times.
great tips! great resources for webmasters & bloggers!
I love your article! I was asked to review a b book for beginner SEO’s and it was not ass useful as your posting. Our website has a PR 6 but we are not getting enough traffic converting to sales and we are also experimenting with building “mini-site”. So far, we are at the same point you are at. Where are you hosting your website for $20? The lowest we had found was at 1and 1.com
Thanks, Becky
Thanks for the great article.
Another similar tactic that you can use to make money on the net is to create your own custom toolbar using a site like Conduit (http://www.conduit.com).
Using the same research and monetization techniques described in this article you can create a niche toolbar that generates money for you (usually more money than just a niche site since you get 100% face time).
Thanks for the info. Keep up the good work. Need to find my niche now.
Here’s a niche: Create a blog about doing business on the internet, buy the SEO-friendly domain “netbusinessblog.com” then write an article about yourself and get it on Digg.
matt, thank you for the informative post on building a niche minisite. i wonder what the actual return on investment is for one of your niche websites. If you don’t want to disclose dollar amounts, how about percentage figures.
thank you for this mini-tutorial. i plan on launching a blog centered around house music/dj pod casts that i’ve found on itunes and other pod cast aggitators. like you suggested, i’m approaching it from the aspect of monetizing out the gate via adsense and affiliations; and have been doing the vast amount of my research coming from this perspective. thanks for your wisdom, i look forward to you’re future posts.
Here’s an idea, instead of creating a site that has no value for a user whatsoever. Why not, pick a niche area and then actually create a site about that niche? Write good content, get good information. It might take you a bit longer, but it will bring more money in the long term than what you are suggesting.
@ Cord -
You’re right that would have much more value. And if you want to take the extra time to do that then that’s great! However, niche minisites provide information to end users as well and are a good source of income.
Great post, looking forward to the next part
http://www.netbusinessblog.com/2007/01/10/building-a-niche-minisite-part-2/
[...] I did find this article on minisites today through WickedFire, and I may give it a shot, I do have some decent niche-ish domains laying around, that I could put to use. Plus it reminds me of the good ol’ days of webmastering, but this involves research and some thought. [...]
Great article. Was a nice easy read.
Can you please explain more about the Commission Junction and how I can join it or something like it?
Thanks
Really awesome article. But I went to RedSteel.co.uk to show some love, but there was no site yet… why not? You would make a killing off of people reading this and then going to that to see it.
Jack
[...] Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) A good article on how to make a niche minisite with little startup money and use it to generate nice, passive income. Get a relevant domain, gather keywords, Google your domain name to see its competition, decide whether or not to pursue the project… (tags: Website_Ideas) [...]
[...] Net Business Blog » Blog Archive » Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) One of the easiest ways to make money online today is by creating “niche minisites.” [...]
You have stated the intial steps in a clear and concise manner. I will look forward to reading more of your blog entries. Thank you.
What tool did you use to determine the type-in traffic? It looks like SEDO, but I can’t find that feature on their website.
Great article by the way, much more straightforward than a those written by some of “probloggers” out there!
[...] Before I begin, let me remind you that if you haven’t read Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1), you should before continuing into this article. I’ve also created another post answering some questions about the first article. [...]
[...] Matt Coddington of the NetBusinessBlog has a nice two part series on building niche minisites for profit. In part one he covers finding and researching a niche using various simple methods. Part two goes into building the site and setting up the monetization of it. [...]
[...] Building a Niche Minisite [...]
[...] Matt Coddington published Building a Niche Minisite on his Net Business Blog. It is a very in depth tutorial on how to create a niche website and generate revenue from it. In his article, he walks through the following steps: [...]
Good info. I used to bild sites with single domain, will try making few mini sites.
[...] Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) [...]
[...] Look for things that will have interest in time, months or years from now. That is forsight, and it’s a powerful tool. For example, if you new Eminem in his struggling days, and you took the domain http://www.Eminem.com, filled it with related information, affilliated products and services, adsense, and you know, you would have cashed in. For the more comprehensive guide on building niche minisights, see Matt Coddingtons 2 part series. [...]
Wow, it’s a free detailed tutorial on building niche site. Info like this sells at least (listen at least) 47 bucks.
Thanks, man and god bless you.
Glad you enjoyed it Fenton :)
You’re dead on with this post. Delivering highly targeted content to a niche market is going to work better than trying to spread yourself thin. Give your clients what they want and you’ll succeed.
[...] A good article on how to make a niche minisite with little startup money and use it to generate nice, passive income.read more | digg story [...]
[...] For such a young blog, Net Business Blog has some great articles that anyone looking to make a living online should check out. The two part series on Building a Niche Minisite (part 1, part 2) details a systematic walk through to learn how to create a simple niche minisite and turn it into an easy-to-manage, passive cash flow site. [...]
Incredible article…well done. Very detailed and easy to follow.
[...] Once again I have to thank Linda Buquet for her post to inform us of Net Business Blog’s post “Building a Niche Minisite“. Matt gave some really excellent information for people looking to make money online. His information is priceless as it gives specific information and examples on what to do. If you follow his advise, anyone should be making money online. [...]
This is a great starting point. I can’t emphasize the importance of research. Once you stop, is the day ur site doesn’t succeed.
1218 Diggs!!! That’s Huge. Did the traffic suddenly spike?
Hi Matt, it’s a very helpful article you have published here. I’m telling readers about it on my blog.
best regards,
Nelson
http://www.internetmasterycenter.com
[...] Net Business Blog: Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) Så bygger du en nichesajt. (tags: guide howto innovation utveckling) [...]
[...] lot of people have been asking me to post an update for my series on Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1, Part 2). I’ve gotten a ton of questions that I’m going to answer. I hope I don’t [...]
[...] me give you a case-in-point with a two part link bait. Building a Niche Minisite Part 1 got 1221 diggs as of writing this. Building a Niche Minisite Part 2 got 651 diggs. I didn’t [...]
Thanks for the great article, the information has been very helpful as I am planning to give a niche site a shot with a friend of mine.
This has been a great guide on things to consider, as well as how and what you need to get started.
Thanks a lot, much appreciated!
Soultrance
http://www.dingorue.com
[...] me give you a case-in-point with a two part link bait. Building a Niche Minisite Part 1 got 1221 diggs as of writing [...]
[...] me give you a case-in-point with a two part link bait. Building a Niche Minisite Part 1 got 1221 diggs as of writing [...]
[...] Net Business Blog » Blog Archive » Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) (tags: tutorial niche site) Thank you for reading this post. You can now: Subscribe to the Full RSS Feed , Leave A Comment , or A Trackback [...]
[...] a similar subject, you’ll find a very interesting documented niche site build over at Net Business Blog where the author builds and generates revenue from a small site based around a game called [...]
[...] Net Business Blog » Blog Archive » Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) (tags: business web) [...]
I’m surprised your mini sites are only 10 pages. I always considered mini sites around 50-100 pages, but if 10 pages works that’s awesome.
Overall, this is a great article !
I love the minisite piece…great article…I am in the middle of building one and so found it very timely and useful.
[...] I only point this out because many of the techniques outlined in this post carry over to building niche minisites. I’ll be elaborating more on this soonish. var [...]
[...] of years. It seems to me like he has accumulated a wealth of expertise in many fields including mini-siting, web-design, and larger projects that he doesn’t mention much in detail but undoubtedly has a [...]
Nice guide. But you said “Video game minisites usually don’t last as long as other niche minisites” - well, I set up a video game mini-site 10 years ago and I’m still getting nice traffic to it ;) …and I barely touch it :)
[...] One of his Dugg posts is: Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) [...]
Really good tutorial on mini sites and niche marketing kudos.
I really enjoyed your article, although I will most probably won’t have time to implement is myself! I have, however, added a link to your post in my collection of articles on this topic:
http://colorfulmoment.com/en/?p=1302
Thanks again for the information!
[...] to write. Here are some of my frontpaged stories (not to say they’re the greatest, but they work): Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) » Net Business Blog Building a Niche Minisite (Part 2) » Net Business Blog Top 10 Worst Internet Marketing Videos Ever [...]
[...] Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) » Net Business Blog Building a Niche Minisite (Part 2) » Net Business Blog Top 10 Worst Internet Marketing Videos Ever » Net Business Blog The 14 Point Web Design Checklist » Net Business Blog 5 Blogging Methods That Work » Net Business Blog 8 Reasons Why the Masses Love Lists » Net Business Blog ForumRank | Article | Top 10 Tips for Growing a Forum [...]
[...] will draw heavily from an article Matt Coddington wrote on his site, netbusinessblog. Matt shows how he chose, designed and then built his minisite for a new Nintendo Wii game called [...]
I liked this article. The idea is great and you make more money than having the domain and parking it somewhere. BUT there is a problem in all your minisite and I can’t understand why nobody noticed this. “RedSteel” it’s a TRADEMARK and Ubisoft may come after you and even sue you because you used their brand to gain financial benefits. And recently even more big companies start doing this kind of things. My suggestion to all newcomers who want to start doing this is to find niche domains but without trademark infringements.
But the article is great and the minisite solution is very profitable.
[...] complete case studies on SEO for a niche site, my favourite series by far is by Matt Coddington at Net Business Blog and his current series a case study of a niche is a fantastic read, you could also try Self made [...]
[...] This article is quite brief, for more information on building nice web sites see this great article here [...]
Soma to florida….
Soma to florida….