Three Ways To Start Turning Your MiniSites Into Brands

As you all know I’ve spent the last three years building-out MiniSites like a madman. I can tell you with 100% certainty that these sites absolutely do generate income, however only if you’re building in the right niche, with the right content, and of course – good SEO. I see so many new Domainers jumping-into the industry and throwing-up a rough MiniSite on a mediocre domain name and then exclaiming, “I’m not making any money, MiniSites don’t work!”

However let’s say that you actually did build a great MiniSite with good content, strong SEO, on a domain with nice keywords and a high CPC. Now let’s go a step further and say that your making $30-$40/month. Sure – it’s not a fortune, but build ten, twenty, thirty – you get the idea, it adds up.

Okay, but there is a catch. If you don’t touch your MiniSites over time competitors will outrank you, take your traffic, and leave your once profitable cashflow machine into a Google Page 2 nobody. This leads me to the topic of my post – turning your MiniSites into brands.

You see I like MiniSites, but I also know that some MiniSites that are making $30-$40/month have the potential to make ten times that. Scalability is an issue – you can’t expect to turn 100 MiniSites into brands, but you can pick your top ten sites and start to give them the TLC they need to become a brand and make it to the next level. How do you know when you have built a successful brand? That’s easy – advertisers will come to you and you can move from PPC or affiliate marketing to direct advertising and lead generation.

I could go-on for hours about this but for now I’d like to provide what I’ve found to be three powerful ways to take your MiniSites to the next level and begin turning them into brands.

  1. Twitter – this is #1 for a reason. Twitter is one of the best ways to grow a brand because it allows you to easily reach-out to people talking about things related to your site and help them discover your brand. Start by picking your top performing site, create a Twitter account and just start with 1-2 Tweets a day to people who are talking about something related to your site or brand. Suppose you own a site about Home Loans, search on Twitter for “home loans” and start networking with people looking for more information about home loans.
  2. More Content – your MiniSite doesn’t have to stay mini forever, write an article a week, an article a month, whatever you can do, over time you’ll have 30-40 pages and before you know it you’ll actually have a very useful resource…but remember only well-written content will help you. Buy your content for $2 and you’ll get what you pay for an work against your brand. I spend more money on content than anything else and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
  3. Professional Logo – so many MiniSites have no logo and instead just have the site name in some plain boring font at the top of the page. Hop-onto a service like oDesk and shell-out $20-$30 and you’ll have a nice-looking logo that will add instant credibility to your site.

As always I want to hear from you! Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton