Building a Niche Minisite (Part 2)
Posted on January 10, 2007 by
Adie 
Affiliate Marketing, Minisites 
80 Comments
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.
Now down to business. By now we have selected our niche (Red Steel), done keyword and traffic research, and laid out a monetization plan. Believe it or not the hard part is done. All that’s left to do now is actually build the site.
Step 5: Lay the Foundation
The foundation of your niche minisite is of course the design. With a minisite, there’s no need to go overboard with a design. I would suggest you do it yourself if at all possible, even if you have little to no knowledge of design software. With niche minisites the design isn’t going to be the say all end all of the user experience - they’re going to be visiting for the content. That being said, there are two things you need to accomplish when designing your site:
- Make it obvious what the site is about
- Design around ad placements
The easiest way to make your topic clear to the user is by creating a good header. Don’t go overboard - just Google search a logo of your product and then add some relevant stock photos. The other thing you want to do is design around your ad placements. You want to make the products you’re selling stand out, and blend your Adsense with the content. The best way I can get these two ideas across is to show you the design I came up with for Red Steel. It’s really basic, and it only took me about 10 minutes to do.
Click here to see the design in .jpg format
Now that you have the design done, you need to code it into HTML/CSS. That’s not very hard to do, and if you don’t know how then you really should take the day or two needed to learn it. You don’t have to be an expert (I certainly am not), but knowing how to code your site so that it works on as many browsers as possible is definately a requirement. The only bit of non HTML/CSS code I’m going to use for this site is a bit of PHP includes to make editing the sidebar and menu text easier.
Click here to see the design coded in HTML/CSS
Step 6-7: Generate Content / SEO
I grouped Step 6 (Generate Content) and Step 7 (SEO) together because you can’t really do them separately. While you’re creating your content you always have to have SEO in mind, otherwise you’ll find yourself going back over the work you’ve done which is a real pain.
So here I am making a minisite about a game I’ve never played on a system I can’t stand (I’m sorry but Twilight Princess blew). How do I get content? Wikipedia.
Now before you run off and start copy/pasting to your heart’s content, I should warn you. If you steal content from Wikipedia Google will zap you, and your site will fall from the top 10 search results into the hundreds. What you should do instead is skim Wikipedia and put the content in your own words. It’s just like writing a “research” paper in college.
Wikipedia gives you all of the information about the game you could possibly want. It even has a nice little stock photo of the box shot on the right that I can use to advertise my affiliate (affiliates usually have really lame graphics with their campaigns). I spent about a half hour writing all of the content for Red Steel - it’s not gold, but as long as you provide what the user is looking for, that’s all that matters.
When writing your content you have to keep SEO in mind. Since my niche minisite is only going to have about 5 pages, I want to make every page and even every word count. My main keyword is “red steel”; therefore, I want to use it as much as possible. I also want to include it within my h1 and h2 tags for extra emphasis both to the user and to search engines. In addition to my main keyword I also have a bunch of secondary keywords: red steel cheats, red steel walkthroughs, red steel game, red steel reviews. If possible I should try to work these into not only the content itself but also to the page filenames and headers.
For example, I’m going to create a page with the filename: red_steel_cheats.php. I’m also going to include this in the page title and throughout the content. This way search engines know exactly what that page is about. Little bits of SEO like this is all you really need - it’s easy. Just browse the site and view my source to see exactly how I did the SEO.
So after about a half an hour of writing I have enough content and pages to call this a minisite. Like I said, it isn’t gold - but it doesn’t have to be. The users want to know a little about the game, see some screenshots, etc. If they want more information on the game they will hopefully click on your Adsense ads, but for most people (the mom shopping for her son for example) this will be enough information and should land you a sale.
Step 8: Setup the Ads
Now that you have your content and SEO sorted out, it’s time for the final step in the development process: setup your ads. First thing you should do is throw in some Adsense since that’s the easiest, but don’t forget to setup the colors so that they blend into your site.
To see how these ads show up on the site, click here. It’s always better to have blended ads rather than ones that are sectioned off with borders. You’ll also see that this Adsense setup is completely within their TOS. One thing about Adsense on this site, however, is that there aren’t enough Adwords campaigns running for the term “red steel” as it relates to the Wii game. So much of the ads are off topic. Sometimes Adsense figures out your content and begins displaying more appropriate ads; however, if it’s still showing ads like this in a month or two, I would definately take them down altogether and switch to another source of ad revenue.
Before finishing up with Adsense, you should also be sure to add a URL channel to your Adsense for content so that you can keep up with ad impressions and CTR for your new minisite.
Now that we have our Adsense up we can move on to setting up the CJ store. A lot of people get intimidated when you start talking about adding an online shop to a website, but the kind of shop we’re going to setup isn’t a big deal at all. Basically we find CJ products that relate to our topic (in this case Red Steel game, walkthrough, and rentals) and set them up on a page. Users who visit that page and click on the product will be redirected to a secure eCommerce site where they can follow through with the purchase and we can earn our commission. We don’t have to ship anything, track orders, etc. Just collect the commission.
The first thing I have to do is search for relevant products.
I got the code for the GameFly pre-played offer (which also includes a lead payoff for whoever signs up for a free trial) and for the Buy.com strategy guide offer. However, I could only find one advertiser selling new copies of the game: CompUSA. Unfortunately they review all applicants to their program manually, so it may take a day or two for me to get in. When I do I’ll add that link to the top since it would have the highest payout. I’ll update this when I get approved.
Step 9: Setup Hosting and Transfer DNS
Well now we have a fully functional minisite. I have to admit it was a bit harder finding content for this site seeing as I’ve never played the game, and there isn’t a huge fanbase. However, I think there’s enough on the site to please most visitors and hopefully land me a couple of commissions. So now all that’s left to do is publish the site.
A couple people have asked me what hosting I use for my minisites. I use iPowerWeb, not because of their amazing service (their service stinks) but because they’re as cheap as you can get. I have their biggest plan paid annually. A nifty little feature that comes with this plan is domain pointing. Domain pointing lets me setup as many little sites as I want as if they were each on their own server when in reality they’re all contained in subdomains on my main website. It only costs $1/mo to add a new domain pointer to my account, which makes my earlier statement of $20/yr operating costs for niche minisites true.
If you want to learn how to setup your own account with iPowerWeb and setup domain pointing, visit their site. Be warned - they’re cheap but if you ever have a question for them be prepared for the worst customer service experience of your life. There are a ton of other services that allow you to setup domain pointing, but I’ve only ever used iPowerWeb, so I can’t give any alternate suggestions for you.
After I setup domain pointing, I go to my registrar (I use Namecheap) to change my A address to the new pointed IP.
Now all I have to do is wait for the domain to start working (which takes a couple of days).
Step 10: Link Building
Since this whole tutorial was basically teaching you how to create a minisite that was dependent on search engines alone (rather than PPC, paid traffic, etc) link building is important. You want to do all you can to get your new minisite into directories, on other relevant sites, etc. If you provide enough quality content you may even be able to sneak a link into Wikipedia. Simply put - the more quality inbound links you have the better your SE results. So you want inbound links. I’ll save more detail on link building for a future post since I’ve already been working on this one for the last couple of hours.
Now you know how to create a niche minisite from scratch. You may have to experiment yourself to find what works best for you, but I hope you have learned the foundation of researching and developing a niche minisite.
If you like this Article then please subscribe to my full RSS feed. You will be entered into our Monthly Competition with a chance to Win some great Prizes! You can also subscribe by Email.Related Posts
http://www.digg.com/design/Building_a_Niche_Minisite_Part_2
Will definitely give this puppy a test drive! Thanks for taking the time to put this down in print. Big Digg for you!
Step by step - niche site building…
…
Thanks for the article and ideas, I had a similar idea before for minisites but now I have it all laid out for me. :) Thanks for the effort!
Nice little guide here! Thanks for taking the time to write up a decent piece.
Is it true that Google can tell your sites are all hosted by the same provider, and will rank you lower than if your sites ‘appeared’ as though not operated by the same person?
@ Sabo -
I’ve never had that problem. Do you have some documentation I can take a look at?
[…] Re: Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1) Just to add, this has been updated to part 2 Net Business Blog ? Blog Archive ? Building a Niche Minisite (Part 2) go check it out, here is a quote Step 5: Lay the Foundation The foundation of your niche minisite is of course the design. With a minisite, there?s no need to go overboard with a design. I would suggest you do it yourself if at all possible, even if you have little to no knowledge of design software. With niche minisites the design isn?t going to be the say all end all of the user experience - they?re going to be visiting for the content. That being said, there are two things you need to accomplish when designing your site: 1. Make it obvious what the site is about 2. Design around ad placements The easiest way to make your topic clear to the user is by creating a good header. Don?t go overboard - just Google search a logo of your product and then add some relevant stock photos. The other thing you want to do is design around your ad placements. You want to make the products you?re selling stand out, and blend your Adsense with the content. The best way I can get these two ideas across is to show you the design I came up with for Red Steel. It?s really basic, and it only took me about 10 minutes to do. __________________ If you need vBulletin help, then here is my vBulletin Client List just PM me for help or questions. Blogs/Directories: Brandon Sheley | Alissa Sheley | Loco Blog | Link Directory | Free Link Directory | SEO Article | Free Myspace Styles | L4U Free vBulletin Directory […]
Great info again, Thank you for sharing
maybe I can use this on a few projects and really monetize the site
I am looking forward to you revisiting this topic and sample site in a few weeks and then in a few months to see what kind of revenue the site brings in once it is up and running.
thanks thanks thanks
Once again, great info!
If you can, can you provide more detail on how to spot/find a profitable niche, perhaps in a future post?
Matt,
Awesome article. You opened some doors for me, particularly in the area of keyword hunting (wiki…so obvious). Thanks!
Anyway I was wondering how you make your mini-sites? I am a novice at best with html and everything you described there would take me forever. I have developing copy skills and am able to find those small niches but some aren’t worth the time taken to set up. Are there templates anywhere? OR do you think i could i do this type of thing with a blog?
Thanks,
Corey
Good article… I’m currently building a social networking website in 4 days. This read helped relieve the stress I’m feeling!!
Interesting read, however if your blog used semantic markup instead of tables for layout, it would be much more search engine friendly, which I’m sure is handy if you want to do well! Also, tags like strong have no meaning, but strong is read to be more important than text around it, and SE’s take that into consideration nowadays.
brilliant article, very informative :-)
http://www.wchltd.co.uk
I found both these articles to be very useful.
Thanks, I may be employing some of your tactics and ideas in the future.
Miles
http://www.mileswilliams.net/blog/
Thanks for this intresting article :)
dude, you used a screenshot from prey on that site.
im not sure if you care, or if that was the point.
just thought i would let you know.
good article mang
Thanks.
Finally someone who explains practical items that the webmasters think is self evident like dns pointing.
I’m told that search engines do not see underscores as word separators in urls. You should name the php script red-steel-cheats.php NOT red_steel_cheats.php
Nice article.
I don’t think your allowed to use the - in php. Only the _ is allowed.
I’d say link building is the hardest step here, and you kind of glossed over it. If you go into this further with another part, I’d like to see more info there. Otherwise, great tutorial.
Well written article! Thanks for sharing with everyone. I’m quite curious to see how that site worked for you.
Is it hard to get decent amount of visitors from search engines with domains like redsteel-game.com ?
Yes Pawel, it’s possible to compete with a domain like that, but additional unneeded keywords make competing much tougher.
that’s kinda wrong to take content from wikipedia and not give any credit.
In college that’s an auto FAIL.
In business it’s a legal suit. Not wise :/
What is it about seeing Wikipedia, ranked high in search engine results, indicates to you that you could “easily” get your site ranked high?
Because from what I’ve seen Wikipedia doesn’t typically get much backlink love in small niches. As pointed out, Wikipedia ranks high for “Poker” despite the fact that it’s an extremely competative keyword. But more people are likely to link to Wikipedia’s Poker page than to link to “en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_shoes”. For general keywords Wikipedia may rank higher, but for more specific niche keywords (or keyword phrases) Wikipedia doesn’t perform as well.
Hey Matt. I really enjoyed these two articles, and now plan to follow your blog.
I just wanted to second the request to keep us updated with how this niche minisite works out, and what kind of revenue you see from it.
“that’s kinda wrong to take content from wikipedia and not give any credit.
In college that’s an auto FAIL.
In business it’s a legal suit. Not wise :/”
Wikipedia content is open source, nothing illegal about it, especially if you’re rewriting it.
Paul’s right, it’s not illegal. The reference to writing a college paper was a joke, you can giggle if you like :) As far as the moral issue - morals are subjective. I personally don’t see anything wrong with setting up a niche minisite in the way I described; however, you may think it’s immoral.
@Bryant -
I’ll do a followup post on Red Steel, but the results may be a bit inflated due to the publicity the site’s receiving from this tutorial.
Matt,
What do you use to build your mini-sites? Do you feel an inexperienced site builder could use a Blogger or Wordpress blog to do get the same results?
Thanks,
Corey
Sure ckay, one could setup a blog to have fairly decent results with this kind of niche minisite.
one thing that wasn’t touched on in the article was community building. How will you keep people coming back for the content that might be dead in only a few months esp. since this game isn’t super popular. What ways will you build in discussions, ugc, video, forums, and other aspects to the site sticky?
These kinds of niche minisites aren’t community-based. They rely almost entirely on SEM and PPC traffic.
although i was aware of all the individual elements you reference in this article, it never occured to me to use them in combination as effectively as you have here. nice job!
Your posts here were excellent. These are the kind of posts I learn from to deliver better content on my blog.
Great work!
Brilliant Post, Thanks
Nice post. What are your monetizing expecations about this one ministe?
Awesome write-up!
I’m off to start figgering out what my first minisite will be about..
Great job (worth a Digg)
Excellent post!
Can you provide us with any stats updates on your RS minisite?
Fantastic article, I´ll most certailny use some of your tactics in my future projects.
Keep up the good work!
A very good break down of what is required to be done.. A must read for beginners who just started, a good reminder for people who has started but has not make it yet. And still a good read for gurus, who needs some new tricks.
Good luck with your blog.
Allan
I can see why this site has been so popular. You provide detailed information about starting sites and making them successful. Very useful information!
Great article.
I realize that it has only been about three weeks since you posted this article but I was wondering how the niche site you built for this article was doing in terms of making money?
Planning any updates in the future?
[…] read more… […]
Awesome piece! I’ve read it multiple times. Thanks Matt.
Fantastic write-up, both parts of it, very helpful.
Thanks again Matt!
Soultrance
http://www.dingorue.com
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Wow!
I am in the process of creating a new web based program on a definite niche field, and have been trying to formulate a program to achieve my expressed goals. Then I stumbled upon your parts 1 and 2, and low and behold you have provided me the information and guidance I was grappling with. Your tip on Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Suggestion Tool (http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/) was priceless. I had been relegated to using the extinct Overture model which I believe one writer called WIMPY. It is WIMPY. As a matter of fact I talked to Yahoo, and they are phasing their keyword suggestion tool out of their program.
I agree about the plan to obtain other income that Adsense. That was my target anyway. Adsense, is just gravy.
Thanks
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If you’re hosting multiple domains, I suggest DreamHost, for $7.95/mo you can add unlimited domains to it (well, you need to pay for the registration of the domain names), and the storage/bandwidth offered is awesome too. (mt) is great too, higher quality, but costs a lil bit more :P
So I did it, I created a Crackdown Fansite. Crackdown360.com I feel dirty, but I followed your advice and I look forward to your next article.
Couldn’t agree more, even better if you find a topic/Site that you’re genuinely interested in!
http://www.SimcoeBoater.com
Building a Niche Minisite (Part 2) » Net Business Blog…
Building a Niche Minisite (Part 2) » Net Business Blog…
it is a sort of a bestseller for webmasters, it should be. people always search for step by step solution to their problems and this guide is of great help. thanks.
[…] (continues) […]
any content ideas for setting up movies or tv show content sites? Also, when reviewing the search volume for new shows whether its movies or tv shows, its very low. Any rules of thumb to overlook that… maybe number of keyword variations rather than traffic counts?
That’s one of the problems when setting up niche sites for *upcoming* shows or movies - there’s little to no search data. You pretty much have to speculate. I’d suggest just diving in and doing your best and then hone your system as you go.
IeriWinner_38…
HI! I’ve have similar topic at my blog! Please check it..
Thanks.
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Great read, Thank You!
I followed everything up to the part about php… Perhaps beyond the scope of your blog, but can you give us a snapshot of how your minisite development would differ to those of us using html only?
And I’d be very curious if you have compared niche miniSITE vs. miniBLOG performance?
Best,
JohnH
Excellent article and your minisite on red steel is really cool! I’m into making minisites and this red steel example really shows how to make one, thanks for the article!
Thanks Matt!
I’ve just recently started my net business.
I’m constantly looking for another piece of knowledge.
Your article is very clear and extremely helpful.
interesting thank you…
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Great article. I’ve just developed a PHP based product, using mod_rewrite and the Smarty template engine which allows me to create the shell of a minisite in under a minute. Let me know if you’re interested.
John Dawson
http://www.dawsoninteractive.com
Web development and online marketing since 1996
Hey,
if you get a chance, check out my Mario Party 8 site. Let me know what you think.
>check out my Mario Party 8 site.
nice example, exactly following this article :)
but why doesn’t it have backlinks at all?
look at link:www.marioparty8.co in google
and it doesn’t look like a small niche in google SERP :(
what type-ins/search traffic do you get?
Great site and info. Pretty impressive for a domain not even a year old.
Best of luck to you in all your future ventures.
how legal is to use wikipedia content?
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