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Mini-Site Development Guide

soj

Founder
I decided to share all details from the beginning a mini-site project I have just finished working on. I had recently bought the domain from a Domain8 auction for $1 (Plus fees) and thought I would share all the details, from any SEO being done, to traffic and money made.

The domain in question is Track Day, this is the first link to go up regarding it, so now the Google spiders can find it and hopefully index it.

It is a basic page with a short introduction and a nice table of different driving packages that can be bought, commissions are 6% and 7% through the two companies and thats the direction im going in rather than AdSense or other advertising (at the moment).

It took about 5 hours to customise the template and code the php and mysql for all the affiliate information (makes life a lot easier to edit/add/delete entries).

So counting the cost so far to bring this to life
Domain - $26
Development - 5 Hours x $50 = $250
Total Cost - $276

I will keep this thread updated with traffic information, earnings, and any SEO I have done.
 

DomainMarketPlace

Top Contributor
Nice idea for a mini site soj. I'd probably go a step further and have a page for each of the packages as well to bring in more search traffic.

$50 p/h for dev? That's cheap!
 

Data Glasses

Top Contributor
i was not sure if it would be horses or cars , a nice easy on the eye and easy to use site , what commission company offers race car drives ?

Also you will advertisie on your car sites i guess

I know someone who did it at calder and got a photo and video , the photo is proudly displayed on the hallway wall

Good stuff
 

soj

Founder
DMP - I have all the descriptions and extra information on all the packages in the database ready to go for page expansion. Yeah, $50 is very cheap for web development work, If only clients would understand that even at $50 an hour, your undercutting 95% of the people out there.

I too did the drive out at calder late last year, although it was good fun, it didn't compare to the 235km/h in our hire car 2 weeks ago. Brand new E-Class Mercedes hurling down the Autobahns in Germany, too much fun if you ask me.

Spacey - Commissions are through ClixGalore for the two companies FreemanX and TotalExperience, I applied for the RedBalloonDays affiliate thruogh ClixGalore too, but had no luck in getting approved.
 

loho27

Regular Member
Idea

This is a very good mini-site, but if you want the traffic, here is how to make it great.

1) Contact Us Page - a simple form with address and phone number. (don't worry you will not get any calls) Phone and Addy on the front Page

2) About Us - Simple tell us about your passion for going fast and the reason for the site.

3) The Tracks - a brief overview of each of the tracks and links to each track. At the moment the SE's are only seeing Affiliate links, you have to get a better balance.

4) Take your Buy Now off the front page and put on another page. Keep your content above the waist (This is debateable)

The key is traffic not PR

This shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, but you will get some genuine quality traffic.
 

paz

Member
1) Contact Us Page - a simple form with address and phone number. (don't worry you will not get any calls) Phone and Addy on the front Page

This will do absolutely nothing for traffic to the site. But it is good for user experience/trust.

2) About Us - Simple tell us about your passion for going fast and the reason for the site.

I don't believe this site is suppose to be a personal blog/fan page of track days.

3) The Tracks - a brief overview of each of the tracks and links to each track. At the moment the SE's are only seeing Affiliate links, you have to get a better balance.

Soj said that he has the info and it's ready to go in ;)

4) Take your Buy Now off the front page and put on another page. Keep your content above the waist (This is debateable)

Personally when I went to the site I was surprised at the price of these track days (would have thought more) and am now more inclined to look into it further.

If your prices are good then that is a key selling point and deserves a place on the main page.
 

DomainMarketPlace

Top Contributor
At the moment the SE's are only seeing Affiliate links, you have to get a better balance.

Sounds like a valid point.

Anyone experimented with this? for example leave the affiliate links off whilst the new site is in the sandbox or perhaps a custom link cloaking script to handle redirects?

Or do you think it doesn't matter too much?
 

paz

Member
I just create a .php file with a 301 redirect to the affiliate link to cloak the links. I'm not sure how clever google is and if they can see this or not but it looks better to the users too :)
 

loho27

Regular Member
This is a good example of a mini-site.

webtrafficaustralia (dot) com

The site has been up since Jan

I get about 2 phone calls a week which always results in a sale. (hence the contact us, australians luv to talk on the phone before they spend.

I net about $800 a month and growing, I'm working on a greater return rate of customers.

The traffic is all legit and I do run out.

Check the SE rankings. Its got nothing to do with PR.

Your contact us is the key.

If you can make your own commision structure with suppliers, go for it, you will make far more that 5% to 6%. Everyone wants someone to sell for them.

I use Joomla exclusively with the SEf urls turned on.

This makes it very easy to create multi page sites and you do not even need to be a developer.

Each site takes a good 3 to 4 hours, subject to how many beers and how creative I want to be.

Kind Regards
 
Last edited:

FirstPageResults

Top Contributor
I just create a .php file with a 301 redirect to the affiliate link to cloak the links. I'm not sure how clever google is and if they can see this or not but it looks better to the users too :)

God (AKA GOOG) can spot a 301. I dont see why you would use a 301 as it means a page has moved permanently? Unless you rel=nofollow the links?

Cloaking although risky would be better.. show regular links to users and affliate links to GoogleBot. No idea what GoogleBot thinks of affliate links thou.
 

soj

Founder
Alright so I found some time to do some work on the site today and followed some of loho's advice. I have implemented the seperate pages for each package, so clicking on that page now opens up to a new page, with some package information, and the buy now button. I am yet to do an about us page, but have started doing the tracks pages, all coded in, just gotta add the content. I think once I get these track pages done i'll start to get a few links around the web and maybe add some new articles on v8 supercars, and possibly other types of track days, such as bring your own car open days, etc.

Other than that I have also added the google analytics code, so will keep you updated on traffic too.
 

loho27

Regular Member
It looks great.

That will really start to work, It will not belong before some of the tracks will make contact and want to be at the top of the list.

I doesn't take much to make a real site, that pays.

Well done

Kind Regards
 

soj

Founder
Unfortunately no sales yet spacey, even after doing some facebook advertising targetted at people who would want to drive a v8 supercar.
 

soj

Founder
Haven't updated this in a while, have been doing a little bit of work to it, some url rewrites, adding new pages of content, etc. The site has been slow with traffic, only 100 visits a month, but made its first sale just this week, $299 package, leaving me with a $20 commission, also made its second commission a few days later at the same amount. Hence the work being put into it now. Hopefully google picks up the url change soon and we start to see some more traffic moving into it.

A couple of other small changes are the buy now buttons, made to be noticed a lot more than before. Call to action, Smashing Magazine had a good article about this issue.
 

davids

Top Contributor
I did a few updates to the site, added sorting on the main page so packages are sortable by price, location, length, etc. Also added a page for each individual track/area and a page for each state. Fixed it all so all the pages are 100% valid XHTML.

So far traffic this month has already topped what it was for the whole of last month. Now to get it ranking for some more broad keywords!
 

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