Hey guys,
I wanted to update you on a few things I’ve observed over the last few months.
This is neither good news nor bad news - it just simply “is”, and you can consider it, draw your own conclusions and then act on it accordingly, based on my findings mixed with your own research…
Mini-Sites & Software Submissions Are a Short-Term Traffic Strategy
This may not be the case in micro-niches with no competition, but in the big-demand, buyer-filled niche markets where the real money is - my traffic stats are showing this pattern consistently, with the majority of my submissions and even my mini-sites eventually “losing steam” once they reach their peak.
The software/viral traffic strategy is much more skittish and sporadic. Some submissions literally haven’t changed in half a year. They still bring in x amount of visitors daily. Others have gone from being downloaded 800 times a day to a mere 6 or 7 times daily within a matter of 2 weeks. And it seems that the downloader & visitor profiles fluctuate as well, even if the actual “traffic” remains seemingly unchanged, as sales have often dropped in the midst of steady traffic.
Conversion with downloads can be skittish; all over the map (SEO is quite consistent, in contrast).
With the mini-sites, depending on the keywords being targeted (obviously), what I’ve seen happen is that even though it’s far more leveraged than “bum marketing” - and even though they’re DEFINITELY an easy way to experience an inital surge of true passive income for several months - they simply don’t have the “staying power” that the larger authority sites do, because once you stop your linking efforts, your rankings will (in time), begin to drop in markets with active competition.
Now, they won’t drop off the radar completely. You’ll always remain in the general “ballpark” for your keyword targets (unless your site gets banned or something), on the first few pages of the results, but what I’m saying is that it takes continual, ongoing linking efforts to ensure that your domain will actually HOLD its rank, otherwise you’ll end up in “left field” eventually, instead of the batting plate - where the majority of the action is.
And remember that the difference between “spot 1″ and “spot 4″ on Google’s first page of results for the main, high-traffic “buyer profile” keywords in your niche can literally be 3 times the traffic or more. Perhaps this is encouraging to some, while a looming threat to others…
And maybe that sounds natural - like that’s the way it should be. Of course, it only makes sense that the top-ranking sites in competitive niches have a variety of incoming links building in the background on a continual basis. But the problem presents itself when you have several dozen mini-sites out there, and you’re trying to somehow keep them all “pumping” like they were in their prime. This means that as time goes on, your workload and outsourcing costs would actually have to increase.
It may be possible - but it’s not feasible, and it’s not SMART.
What IS smart is making it natural and practically involuntary for your visitors and others in the market to LINK TO YOU CONTINUALLY FOR YEARS, without solicitation, without upkeep and really without doing a damn thing once the most important component to this intended result is intact…
And this ‘component’ is one of the foremost rules of success - a universal law that has always dictated the effectiveness and long-term results in ANY business for thousands of years: Delivering Considerable Value For Less Than You Ask in Return
This is why mini-sites, viral tools and otherwise “skimming the easy pickings” are always destined to either decline, or at the very best, hang by a thread. Whether this takes days, weeks, months or perhaps even a year or more - this is the reality; the inevitable end result.
Now, before you start wondering if I’m off my rocker, on crack, or otherwise “temporarily mind-altered” in some way to post such a contradictory article - seemingly contradictory, at least, to what I’ve preached in Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate - I want to draw your attention to a very crucial course of action that I continually stressed in the later chapters of the book, and one that I’m stressing NOW:
Mini-Sites & Other “Easy Traffic” Strategies Are A Very Powerful Form of KINDLING
The results come relatively fast and there’s not much work involved - and the flames (results) can be big. They can really flare up, almost deceptively…
BUT -
At some point, your little campfire needs some REAL wood. Regardless of how much kindling you add to the fire, the effect will simply become more and more diluted - resulting in smaller and smaller “flare-ups”, until, eventually, that fire becomes a smolding pit of ASH.
Your web business needs to be fueled by REAL content. REAL value. REAL products. And REAL customers.
You need to reinvest your initial profits into building the framework of your authority sites, the goal of which is going to be to provide HUGE value to your niche, and truly building a barrier-to-entry around a certain section of the niche itself. These sites don’t necessarily need to be “large” but they do need to have a purpose, and something worthy of generating REAL “buzz” in your niche.
Either through:
1) A Function or Tool For Your Niche to Use For Free
2) Truly Great, Thought-Provoking, Inspiring or Controversial Content
3) Providing RARE Value in Some Other Way
4) A Combination of the Above…
After or perhaps simultaneously, you need to also reinvest profits into developing products that deliver real value to the client-base in the market. These can be feeder products, but eventually, the more you own - the larger your “fire”. So eventually, in time - your products will feed to other products that you own, and vice versa.
Products also give you more leverage, and once you have your own network of affiliates - alongside your mini-sites, viral traffic and of course your actual search engine rankings with the authority site - your “ownership” of the niche becomes more diverse - securely founded and self-perpetual.
Your traffic will no longer depend just on backlinks, meta-tags and algorithms. Instead, it will be a combination of SEO, word of mouth on forums/sites/blogs, affiliate traffic (which can be massive), viral strategies, press and eventually - even branding; recognition - and reputation.
Not just hanging by a thread…
Alright, alright - enough doom and gloom. Let’s focus on the positive. Let’s focus on the ADVANTAGE that we get by using mini-sites and similar tactics as “kindling”.
Why It’s Still SMARTER to Start Out With a Network of Mini-Sites Before Going “BIG”
The reason why I’m still stoked on mini-sites, viral marketing and easy “buyer-traffic” skimming tactics as an initial start to my niche “takeovers” - even after some of my most profitable mini-sites drop like flies down Google’s precious traffic ranks (results pages) - is because they’re the kindling.
They can be deployed quickly, they generate ultra-targeted TRAFFIC rapidly, and if they fail - then I move on to the next niche. If the fire flares up - then I know I can add some logs, stoke the fire, add more logs, repeating the process until I’ve got a fricken FOREST FIRE (of traffic) on my hands that I couldn’t stop if I tried.
Or that Google couldn’t stop if it tried - think about that one for a moment…
But if the “kindling” proves to be a dud - hey, save the matches for something else. Don’t waste your time on low conversions or traffic that just doesn’t arrive. To qualify that - your mini-sites need to be “SEO’d” quite aggressively at first, but considering the pay-off of the successes - AND the fact that effective product reviews that target product-related keywords will almost certainly equate to sales, it’s more a matter of how well the kindling burns…
But once that flame starts burning - and if it’s a profitable “flame” in a niche that you want to get a real piece of - then you need to fan the flames and start adding LOGS as fast as possible. Use the mini-sites to direct the “flame” to your authority sites and products until the wheels of momentum slowly begin to turn themselves.
Again - this will only work if what you’ve got is more than worth getting. This applies both to your “free” products (your authority value sites), and your actual products.
Combine this with all of your traffic efforts for your authority sites and products, your network of value, and eventually what you’ll begin to see is that your users, your customers and your affiliates will be outperforming you in terms of link-building and traffic generation.
(I haven’t even mentioned list-building here yet, but obviously, that’s a major factor in this as well.)
This is the beginning of your very own marketing “wildfire”.
But it all starts with the kindling.
It’s just that the kindling has a purpose.
To be the start of something infinitely BIGGER.
All the best in 2008, folks. Make sure that you consider what’s being said here, so that you’re not just drifting from one “flare-up” to the next, trying to somehow hold on to a sinking ship.
Sincerely,
- Chris Rempel
P.S. I’ve made the first comment on this thread, which briefly shows you just how “painful” it can be to watch your kindling take its inevitable path if you don’t start properly leveraging that flare-up traffic…
