Mini (Niche) Affiliate Site using a Forum - Part 1
Posted on December 11, 2007 by
Adie 
Affiliate Marketing, Minisites 
19 Comments
I do not like the idea of Minisites because they are only a few pages long, take quite some time to get ranked in Google and they will never ever have any brand recognition because they are a spammy. A Minisite is so called because it is just that (Mini) no following, no brand, no loyalty. I’m going to build a “Mini Affiliate Site” It will still be mini at first but I want to try and build a brand and loyal following all the things MiniSites do not have.
The last time I did this I got lazy, I built it, through it up and left it. I did pay for some crappy traffic service from a well known (spammy forum).
My last one detailed here- Find Keyword Rich Domains Fast then Build a Niche Mini Site
To make some sort of half decent living out of Minisites I feel you will need at least 10 sites. (in my opinion) this idea if you stick at it long enough should bring you a decent living (more than 10 sites would) but also a brand and community (worth more and more rewarding). In actual fact you should end up with a business not a spammy throw away website.
Step One:
Domain name - I’m going to use one I’ve had for quite some time building dust. I have a nice domain OapInsure other search terms searched for in this niche are:
“oap insurance”
“oap holidays”
“oap travel”
Note:
I’m targeting the over 50s whom I have read have problems getting insured so I hope to alliviate their problems by creating a forum for them to help each other and offer them Affiliated deals.
To build my community I’m using this Forum software Phorum makes a nice change to use this instead of PHPBB or Vbulletin (paid option). Open source, very basic with lots of scope for development and they seem to have good Support.
Make sure to have a goal in mind and mine is to build a community as I thought it suited this Niche. When I get into the SERPS (Google, MSN, Yahoo) I can then start to build up the users hoping to reach 500-600 visitors per day before I start to Monetize.
Forums are notorious to get going and like blogs can be a time and energy Zapper until you start to earn. Got the forum software uploaded and database all done, I have added General forum rules and Forum Topics. Now all I need is visitors to fill my Forum and help build content.
Related Posts
I just launched my own forum site that I would like to make part of a larger collection of revenue generating sites. I’ll be following this series of articles closely for tips.
http://www.fbappdevelopers.com
Thanks,
Justin
Not to rain on your parade but I believe FB already have an official forum for developers here:
http://forum.developers.facebook.com/
However that’s not to say yours won’t be a success either.
You’re right, there is an official forum, in fact that is where I am trying to poach some traffic from. However, I believe that the market is big enough to support multiple developer oriented sites. Also I intend to bring OpenSocial developers into the mix too as there will be alot of overlapping issues between the communities. I hope to make this a differetiator that imparts a unique value on my site. In fact I have a similiar domain opensocialappdevelopers.com too that I intend to point to this forum as well and eventually making the header graphics vary depending on the url you arrived via.
Thanks for your comments!
Adie, now I can say that I know much about building forums but a statement like:
“Now all I need is visitors to fill my Forum and help build content.”
…makes me wonder. Is it possible to have anyone post in an empty forum? Or do you plan to fill it with relevant posts… kinda like a adding post to a blog but instead just doing it to a forum?
The easies and most effective way to start a forum is when you already have a blog/website. You can just write a post announcing your new forum or mention it in your newsletter.
If however, you do not have a website, you have several options:
1. Start posting on the forum yourself but don’t just write news, tutorials etc. These are boring and won’t create much interaction between your users. What you should do is start posting questions. Chances are that if someone reads your questions and knows the answers, she/he will reply. So you might even create several accounts and start replying to your own questions, just to get things started.
2. Hire a company to do the posting for you. I don’t really recommend this method because it’s pretty expensive and you won’t get much of a quality.
3. Use a scrapping software, that will take questions and answers from yahoo answers, google answers etc and put them on your forum. As I mentioned before, posting questions is one of the best method to make users interact. If you do use such a software, I strongly recommend you modify each post, otherwise your forum may get penalized by the search engines for duplicate content.
What a great idea Vumpost. I had never thought of posting questions but you are absolutely right. Whenever I come across a post that I know the answer to I feel like I HAVE to answer the question.
Now this is what I’m talking about, Aide please please oh please have more posts like this about really making money with solid ideas, not about “capturing attention” or whatever.
Good luck with your latest venture. I hate to say it, but I can only see this ending in failure. Everything about the site and the forum is poor, and you will never build a community with the site as it currently stands.
You need to generate content and work hard at building a community. In its current condition, you are only building a forum that is destined to fail.
I only hope you can prove me wrong.
- Martin Reed
Hello Martin,
This comment is rather empty with no substance -
I have only just started it…as of yesterday. It takes time to make it aesthetically pleasing, build content and to start marketing etc, etc…
That comment would have mean’t something if this project was over a month or two old…
You must remember, I’m also doing this for the benefit of my readers not just for me.
Agreed - my comment wasn’t particularly constructive and I apologise for that. I look forward to seeing how this develops; it just doesn’t look particularly promising at this stage.
- Martin Reed
My first site is a mini site, however I find it difficult to build anything around it if it’s just affiliate based with a few pages.
It seems one needed forums and blogs to tie up with minisites nowadays
I do pretty well with my mini-sites. If i put some time into them i could earn a bunch. Maybe this break ill have some time.
Adie,
FYI, the link to your forum in your blog post is misspelled. The link tries to take you to oapinsire instead of oapinsure.
Regards,
J
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