Running e-commerce sites can be a great source of revenue but have you ever been in the situation where only a couple of products are being sold at the expense of others after all you can only feature so many products on your home page.

Mini Sites

Mini or niche sites are a favoured tactic of the SEO community for years, they allow you to target specific terms without having to adjust an entire site instead you create smaller sites dedicated to one product or niche that then link back to the main page to make the sale. These sites work because they are bringing the searcher exactly what they want, no hassle or fuss.

Determining suitable products

Mini sites are all about balance finding products that people are searching for and are easy to compete in the SERPs the key therefore to our mini sites is research.

Keyword research is laborious and tiresome anyone who has done any serious niche blog development will tell you how many possible combination of subjects their are out there you would be amazed the number of extreme ironing websites there are. However we are at a significant advantage in that instead of the near infinite topics niche bloggers have we only have a finite number that of our product catalogue.

Using word tracker and Google trends

We will use a simpler version of a technique I use for finding niche sites but for the purposes we are using it for it will work perfectly. Instead of me explaining it I’m going to use a video from the Thirty Day Challenge which if you haven’t already discovered is a great little site.

Just a few points

• In the video they use a base line “male yeast infection” the reason is simply they know the approximate traffic for high ranking page for that term
• Wordtracker is US based so some keywords it will have problems with
• You can save yourself some time by using the Firefox or IE 7 search plugin for Wordtracker

So now go through all your products looking at both Wordtracker and Google trends and then for each one do a Google search jotting down the number of competing sites (as part of this you may want to also check your own sites current rank for individual products) You are looking for products with high number of searchers but small number of sites ranking for the term.

Hopefully you have been able to find 3 to 4 products so now its time to create your mini sites.

Developing mini sites

There are loads of resources out there for developing Mini sites and niche site’s some of the best are Quick Whois Mini site guide, and Net business blog Niche Case study. However before jumping in and setting up your site there are a few things to remember and watch out for.

• Domain names - The nice thing about a mini site is you can buy a nice highly targeted domain name however when thinking of domain names remember that you cannot use other companies brand names so for example even though you might be selling Heinz Backed beans you can’t use Heinz name therefore you will need to look for a name like backedbeans.com
• Make your sales direct - while we haven’t discussed your main site at all in this article you need to make sure that you can go from the mini site direct to the checkout in a single click, you don’t after all want to lose that customer
• Unique content - don’t just copy and paste your product description rewrite and expand it, also use pictures where appropriate.

Mini sites are a lot of hard work, however if you are running a large e-commerce store having 10 or 15 high ranking satellite mini sites will bring in a continuous stream of sales, allowing our to focus on the high traffic high number of retailer products on your main site front page.

I’m sitting typing this by a windmill in Tuxford a small village just of the A1, the small cafe here serves some of the best scones and coffee for miles. I have just been to a town called Newark again just off the A1, it has two train stations, Newark Northgate which is on the outskirts of the town and is where the Intercity trains stop the other Newark Castle right in the town centre opposite the ruins of Newark Castle.

Why am I telling you all this?

When you look for a niche to start a site you sit down and struggle to come up with a subject most people start with big ideas and narrow down but you will find it easier to develop a site based on what you know. For example I have a very good practical knowledge of British railways not because I’m a closet train spotter but simply that I was and still am a heavy train user, I know for example which Inter city trains have wireless internet connections on them, though I can’t tell you if its working. This is pretty mundane boring stuff, but it might be useful to some one indeed a simple use of this knowledge would be to create a mini site dedicated to giving users information on which services have wireless internet and the associated costs.

Some more examples…
I drive a smart car, I know a fair bit about smart cars, I know for example that you need to keep the tire pressure correct and recommend doing so once a month this is particularly important as most smart cars do not carry a spare wheel, so if your tire bursts or something similar you will have to call a break down cover. A good use of this knowledge would be a site dedicated to smart car breakdowns the location of jack points as well as best places to buy breakdown kits (most smart cars don’t come with them) it could also include some myth busting sections of common myths surrounding the car.

Book keeping, before Venture Skills I did a lot of consultancy work, and spent many years doing my own accounts I learnt the hard way how to correctly do VAT and tax returns. While many accountants have sites they focus on larger business so perhaps a blog that focuses on sole traders who are discovering the joy of the Inland revenue for the first time and providing the been there got the t-shirt tips.

So do you still think you can’t find a niche, just sit down and think about all those small things you know, be it the location of the best burgers in your town, to how to build a model boat we all have niches what’s yours?

Update: Talk about a cock up, I initially named this post Multi layer marketing, this while a quite accurate description is not what MLM stands for! I’m now suitably embarrassed Thanks to Linda Buquet for spotting it (shame she didn’t post a comment to tell me! - I do hate embarrassing trackbacks!)

Have you ever been in a forum and met a poster who wrote a really inane comment such as “sure that’s great” or just blatent spam. Normally these darlings have a link in their signature to an E-Book but what are they doing and why are they polluting forums, news lists and anywhere else they can find? Welcome to MLM or multi level marketing

Introduction

I’m sure the modern day MLM pushers would say it came from the late 90’s but its far older, indeed while it may not have routes in ancient egypt they share a very similar symbolism!
MLM (when discussed in this context) are a modern version of the Pyramid scheme and while they take many forms the timeshare is the most famous real world example.

Pyramid scheme works on the principle that members recruit new members and earn money not only from bonuses for recruiting new members but that of the recruited member and who ever they recruit. For most members of such schemes there is a rather obvious problem that we will come back to in a minute. But let us just say only a few will profit from such a scheme.

At this point I should point out that the term MLM has been polluted and the original concepts of Multi level marketing were not pyramid schemes as their was (is a physical product) involved, keep in mind most MLM today and on the web have no physical product at all (except perhaps a virus)

A second point to bear in mind is that in the UK, US and many other countries pyramid schemes are illegal people have in the past gone to prison for running such schemes.

How does it all work

Let’s presume we are talking about the legal MLM schemes and take a traditional (if grey example)

An Ebook seller wishes to distribute his pride and joy, he therefore offers a great scheme where he asks people to sell his ebook on his behalf, he offers commission per sale but it is much lower then normal affiliate schemes however anybody who refers another member not only earns commission on their own sale but that of the new member and all members they recruit and so one.

Sound familiar?
It could be worse people actually pay to join such schemes!
Lets look at what’s happening here…

The guy at the top in this scenario is our ebook seller he as you can see is laughing all the way to the bank, the next layer, spend their time recruiting others rather then selling books, soon they have recruited another level, who start selling, but realise they are not making money as fast as they thought, they ask the “guru’s” what to do, and so they start recruiting and selling as well, layer after layer with those at the top getting richer and those entering finding it harder.

But what’s the con?

So far this hasn’t sounded to bad but you got to start thinking about it logically for a moment, in the above scenario we actually do have a product an e-book to sell, their is a finite number of people who wish to buy such a thing (and remember most MLM schemes the product is complete crap) we also have a second more pressing problem both MLM and pyramids schemes only work if each new layer recruits more people on their own a single member will not make any (or very limited money) this is common sense as 3 people will in theory earn more money then each other but lets say the scheme has 6 original members, they suggest that each member recruits 6 members, that’s pretty easy now isn’t!

Now if your at the top or one the first its looking good, but more then 2 layers down and your chances of making money has dropped now remember this version is legal as their is a product so you can still make money selling that ebook right?

Difference with Affiliate marketing

So what is the difference simply affiliate marketing offers commission on a per sale basis and in some cases offer referral bonuses for new affiliates but do not allow you to gain either money from their commissions (not quite true some offer a small percentage) nor any bonuses from subsequent members they recruit. However the commissions are normally much better then MLM schemes.

How do I know what I’m joining

Some obvious things to avoid,

• Join up fee, with bonuses for recruiting members - this is a traditional pyramid scheme and on the whole utterly illegal
• Low commission but promise that bonuses and return of commissions from recruited members - Traditional MLM not always a scam but your chances of earning money is limited by which level you are joining
• Any one who says using forums to sell ebooks works

The official difference between MLM and pyramid is an MLM scheme has a product which doesn’t require membership and therefore provides two methods of income and in theory is more sustainable. In reality most of these schemes have dodgy products worth almost nothing with no physical value such as ebook is it a pyramid scheme or an MLM you decide.

Just to be clear we are not recommending you use the worm to patch your sites, rather providing information on how the Worm works, as always you should get patches from a known authority such as wordpress.org, that said this vulnerability is out there and the official patch is not.

Just a quick post about mybeni latest idea, its as far as I know the first dedicated XSS worm for wordpress, basically it means that his proof of concept can edit PHP files on your server as well as a range of other nefarious things. But don’t panic to much as his current worm does nothing more then fix the security hole in Wordpress 2.2.1 the irony being it fixes the hole its using.

Might I suggest its probably time to get patching

Now if you want to use his worm then follow the following steps (Payment Blogger is not responsible for what happens next )

How can I start the Worm?

• Go to your blog and login to your Wordpress Adminstration Panel
• Post a Comment to your own Blog containing a link to this blog, that means http://mybeni.rootzilla.de/mybeNi/
• Go into your admin Panel -> Moderate Comments and click the freaking link :o)
• The friendly worm will guide you through everything and your blog is secure again.

Source:http://mybeni.rootzilla.de/mybeNi/2007/this_is_the_first_weblog_xss_worm/

It won’t be long be for new worms start appearing so patch quickly and early to save yourself from bother.
For more details on the 7 known problems see the full list.

Recently I was searching for a new CPM company to use with sites that I don’t have good results with adsense. Then I read a thread in a webmaster forum about CodeAds. Their program looks very promising so I thought to give it a try.

Here are some things that made me choose to start over with CodeAds :

• Fast payments. They pay 48 hours after you reach the minimum payout ($10)
• They pay through paypal
• 5% referer bonus

Starting with CodeAds

One bad thing about them is that they pay only for US traffic, but I guess that would be fair. Before using them on every site I have, I thought to give them a try from one site and monitor what happens.

In the meanwhile I got two referral signups which somehow later vanished from my control panel I know this looks fishy but it happens if the company ban someone you refer (or maybe not?)

CodeAds review

To be honest CodeAds is one of the worst networks I ever tried. My overal experience was really poor, and in many cases they caused problems that were visible to my sites.

For instance I was frequently get a “500 error - bad request” instead of an advertisement which exposed me to my visitors. Another thing that made me feel bad about them is that their ads are 99% from third party networks (adengage, CJ, friendfinder, etc.) and they even displayed a “Buy ads from this site” banner which was actually an ad of them from adbrite!

After a few thousand pageviews I finally got my first payment which was $10, but for some reason that I don’t understand they’ve sent me $9.5 Anyway I would suggest to stay away from CodeAds as there are countless programs that are better than that.