Mini-site

Today I’d like to talk about time tested pattern called “Mini-Site”. While standalone efficiency of this pattern diminished last years, it’s still a critical element of many important integration patterns like Sales Bandwagon or even the good old Sales Funnel.

To your Internet profits!
--Ely

Summary:

Mini-site is a very small site with only 1-3 pages and normally no external links whatsoever, which makes the prospect to make the conversion (purchase, opting in) decision right there based only on the information provided on the mini-site.

Name of the pattern:

Mini-site

When to use this pattern:

When you already did pre-sell by mailing list, blog, blog RSS feed, teleseminar, video or in any other way, and it’s time to make the sale (or, whatever you want form the customer).

How to use this pattern:

1. Buy a domain name.
   If you buy hosting, they’ll often give one of your choice for free.
2. Get hosting.
   Consider GoDaddy, which I am using a lot, or WestHost, my personal choice, both will usually pay for your domain as part of the hosting package or offer it at a huge discount.
3. Write a sales letter.
   Yes, that’s a tough one for many people. If that’s a challenge, try free video course from Michael Rasmussen “Email Promos Exposed” View it several times and let it seep into your brain, it’s worth that time.
4. Put the sales letter into the template.
   I usually do that old school, manually, and even in FrontPage I spend most time in “Code” view, however, tons of HTML editors are available. Even better, just get ready template from Internet, there are many available for free.
5. Publish it.
   FTP is your friend. FireFTP plug-in for FireFox is my favorite lately, but again, tons of them are available around.
6. Hook up payment or subscription form.
   PayPal is normally choice of payment system for small Internet businesses. AWeber is a good (as far as I know #1) mailing list and autoresponder service. Or, you can go for a combo with 1ShoppingCart.
7. Check that it works.

You are done. Of course, you still have to build the business around mini-site.

Attribution:

That's a very old one. I remember having one myself in 1997, although I never thought about calling it a mini-site at that time. And I am definitely NOT the one who invented it.

Related patterns:

Long sales letter

Related anti-patterns:

None.

Comments:

Normally, once you get practiced, putting mini-site together will take 2-3 hours of your time max (short of writing sales copy, that you may want do separately).

Note that mini-site is NOT a business in itself. To start a mini-business based on a mini-site you have start with picking the niche, finding or creating the product to sell, researching keywords (some suggest you should start with that), optimizing your site for SEO and conversions, getting traffic, handling the sales, and more. That’s why mini-sites normally work better inside the systems including several mini-sites and relationship tools (blogs, mailing lists, etc.) But once you’ve got such a system, adding up another mini-site allows you to bump your monthly income with nearly zero costs.

If steps in “how to” look as too much for you, get some system like Jim Edwards' Mini-Site Creator.