Creating a Minisite

The word “minisite” can refer to a number of different things. Some people call small niche article sites minisites, but that isn’t the general use of the word. In Internet marketing, the word “minisite” is generally used to refer to very small websites that are set up to sell a product - usually an eBook or other digital download.

How Many Pages in a Minisite

Most minisites are only 1-5 pages. Some of them are only a single sales pitch page, plus perhaps a thank you page for after the customer orders. Others have a contact page, a terms of service page, a frequently asked questions page, or other general pages.

Design of a Minisite

For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll just work on creating a single page minisite, and we’ll cover only the design - not the sales copy. Most minisites have several key parts. They usually have a header and footer, although some have only a header, or may have neither.

They also have a sales letter of some sort, which is used to sell the product. Finally, they have an order button that is clicked when a customer wants to purchase the product. Some minisites also have an eCover, which is a computer-generated image that mimics what the product might look like if it was a physical product.

What Can be Sold from a Minisite

For example, if the product is an eBook, the eCover might look like a hardcover or paperback book cover (sometimes a spiral notebook, too). If the product is a membership site, the eCover might be a membership card. Software products usually have a 3D software box as their eCover.

Step by Step Minisite Creation

The first step in creating a minisite should be creating your eCover, if you intend to use one. Most people create their eCovers with Photoshop, because most eCover action scripts only work with Photoshop. If you don’t have Photoshop, you may need to create it from scratch, or have it made for you by a professional graphic designer.

After you have your cover design, you’ll need to create a header. Although some marketers don’t use headers, most do. A well-designed header can draw attention to your headline, and it can make your site look more professional.

The header should contain your product’s name and a tag line – like a one-sentence blurb that tells what your site’s about. It should also contain a photo that’s related to your niche, and it might also contain a small version of your ecover – all tied into a theme for your demographic.

Let’s say you’re creating a minisite to sell your dog-training eBook. Your header would potentially contain a picture of a woman pointing at a dog, and the dog sitting down. Then the text on the header might say something like the following: Dog Training 101: The Ultimate Guide to Training Your Puppy or Adult Dog!

Don’t make your header too large. If the header is so large visitors won’t see the headline without scrolling, it’s too big! It should attract attention to the headline, not hide it. Headers are generally between 700 and 800 pixels wide and 100-200 pixels in height.

The footer is usually the same width, but about half the height of the header. It may only contain the product name or logo, but may also contain an image or copyright notice. Finally, you need an order button that draws a lot of attention. Your button might contain your eCover, plus a brightly colored button and a call-to-action, such as “Click Here for Instant Access!”

If you have the money to invest, you might consider ordering a minisite package from a professional designer. For about $300, you’ll get the header, footer, eCovers, and sometimes extra banners that you can use for off-site promotions.

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Cloaking Your Links to Protect Your Commission

Link cloaking is a very important part of affiliate marketing. In a nutshell, link cloaking is a way to protect your affiliate commissions from being stolen. It’s not totally foolproof. Smart individuals who are well-educated about the matter can still figure out how to keep you from getting your commission.

Most people won’t go that far, so cloaking your links will prevent most commission loss. How do people steal affiliate commissions? Have you ever hovered over a link and noticed that the link was an obvious affiliate link?

Why Do People Try to Make You Lose Your Affiliate Commisssion

Some people type in the parent domain instead of clicking the link as a way of making sure the owner of the site gets paid 100% for the sale. Some people falsely believe that if they buy from an affiliate link, they’ll have to pay more for a commission mark-up.

Some people actually do it for a different reason. If you’re promoting a ClickBank product, especially to other marketers, many of them know they can insert their own ClickBank ID and get what’s usually a 50% or more discount on the product.

This is a different type of affiliate commission theft, because the person doing it gets the affiliate commission themselves, rather than just making sure you don’t get it. Most people don’t do that, of course.

Most people are pretty honest, and don’t mind giving you a little affiliate commission in exchange for recommending a good product to them. But it’s enough of a concern that you should take steps to prevent it.

How to Prevent Affiliate Commission Theft

You can easily set up your own link cloaking system. What you would do is set up a directory on one of your domains. Most marketers use the domain of their own name, as in bobsmith.com. They typically have a subdirectory called /recommends/.

PHP Redirects

Then in that directory, they create a new subdirectory for each product. It would look something like this: http://www.bobsmith.com/recommends/awesomeproductname. In that directory, they place a very simple PHP redirect called index.php.

Whenever they send someone to the above link, the script will redirect to your affiliate link. All you have to do is create a file in Notepad or your favorite HTML editor and name is index.php. Then paste the following information into the file and upload it to your directory:

< ?php
header("location:http://affiliates.programhere.com/5555");
?>

Commercial Link Cloaking Scripts

There are a number of link cloaking scripts available. Most of them are relatively easy to install and use. There’s a big benefit to using a script rather than doing it yourself. Using your simple redirect, there isn’t an easy way to check how much traffic you’ve sent to your link.

Most link cloaking scripts allow you to add new links very easily within an administrative area, and then each link is tracked so that you can see how much traffic is going through the link. If you use your own file, the only way to tell how much traffic you’ve sent is through your affiliate stats, which may be inaccurate, or through your web server’s stats, which may be clunky to use or hard to understand.

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Cash-Generating Keyword Research

Your keyword choices are critical to your success in nearly any online business model. Whether you’re pursuing PPC, blogging, VRE and AdSense, or any number of Internet marketing opportunities, the keywords you choose can make or break your success.

Keywords are important for several reasons. First of all, there’s traffic. If you choose the wrong keywords to target, you’re probably not going to get nearly as much traffic as you’d like. Whether you’re using PPC or search engines to get your traffic, your keywords are going to affect your ranking and link performance.

Another reason why keywords are so vital is the fact that you need targeted traffic. Ten thousand visitors coming to your domain via the keyword “books” is probably going to be worthless compared to 500 visitors who come via the keyword phrase, “Harry Potter books,” if that’s what you’re selling.

How People Search the Internet Using Keywords

Someone who is searching for “books” is probably just browsing. They may not even be interested in buying anything – they could be interested in selling books, book bans, book publishers, and more.

But someone who is searching for “Harry Potter books” is probably ready to buy something right then and there. So it’s not enough to just get a lot of traffic - you need a lot of traffic that’s willing to take the action you want them to take.

Whether you’re looking to sell eBooks, promote affiliate products, get leads for a CPA offer, or just get sign-ups to your list, you want targeted visitors who are likely to be buyers now or in the future.

Which Keywords to Choose

Once you’ve chosen a niche you’d like to pursue, you need to research the keywords you’ll use. If you’re writing articles, you’ll need to choose keywords to use in the titles and text. If you’re building niche websites, you’ll need to use keywords in the domain name. If you’re buying PPC traffic, the keywords you choose will likely be one of the biggest factors determining whether or not your campaign is profitable.

Keyword Tools

WordTracker is a very good tool for researching keywords. If you can’t afford to get a paid membership there (even for a day), they have a very good free keyword tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com.

Google has their own keyword tool, but they don’t show you numbers. They only give you a general idea of the searches a keyword gets, as indicated by a colored bar: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

How to Use Keyword Tools

First you’ll want to enter a base keyword for your niche. Let’s say you’re targeting the golf niche. You might enter “golf” into the keyword tool of your choice. Then the keyword tool will show you a number of related keywords.

You might come up with “golf clubs,” “golf tips,” “golf swing,” “golf bags,” “golf carts,” and “golf courses.” This is a short list of more broad terms. But you’ll want to generate a warehouse of keywords that you can use over the coming months and years, so grab them all!

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