What a weekend!  After the “breather” day on Friday I took the weekend off.  Hey, being an Affiliate Marketer doesn’t mean you have no life!  But today..  Well, today is a big day.  We start deploying our network of minisites for real.  To recap what we’ve done so far (and why you need to go read parts 1-4 if you havn’t already).

Day One – Research – Did the Math and figured out how many sites (25) to make a living (theorhetically).

Day Two – Research – Niches and Keywords.  Learned how to find localities, keywords, and offers.

Day Three – Planning – CMS Tools, Domain Names, Plugins, Virtualmin, the mechanics of managing sites.

Day Four – Rollout – Built first site draft, tested CMS, wrote copy, did 1 site to get the hang of it.

Which brings us to today..  Day Five…

First things first today.  Rollout site one for real.  I took that dedicated server, used Virtualmin to “light up” a domain, loaded WebsiteBaker and the plugins I’m going to use.  Rewrote the content to match the locality, dropped in the important keywords in a NATURAL way (i.e. If your in the Dallas Ft.Worth Metroplex, etc.).  Brought the site live with my affiliate links in as creative a way as possible.  Oh, almost forgot (and this is important)..  I added rel=nofollow to all my affiliate links.  Check out the SEO section on the AffSpot Forum for details.  But it’s important.

I also brought site two online as well.  I wouldn’t have, but I needed two of the sites up right away.  Remember using OpenX Advertising Server to serve banners?  Well, when I built the site graphics (really, I outsourced that) I had banners made for every site.  So I’m going to server my own advertisements back and forth in my network of eyeglasses local minisites.  So I needed two sites up to get OpenX ready to go and two banners being served.  Enough said.

So, first site rolled out.  Now to promote the site.  Some people are going to say I’ve gone “blackhat”.  I don’t think so.  I think I’m being an intelligent marketer.  Here’s what I did and why I did it.  I built a Twitter account for the entire network of minisites and it’s named something similar to USAGlasses (no, that’s not the real name).  I plan on using the RSS function of WebsiteBaker to push all sitenews to that account automatically.  So when a promotion happens, I update the site and the site will “tweet”.

Second thing I did is to make sure I have glasses@DOMAINNAME.COM live for each site and tied the email list builder script (just a form page inside of WebsiteBaker) use that email address to communicate with prospects/customers.  All those email addresses go to my own central email box.

Third thing I did was I built several “feeder” webpages.  I used Hubspot, Squidoo, WetPaint, etc. with the general category of designer/discount/glasses/eyeglasses (whatever was reasonable and available) and posted ORIGINAL content at each.  Where the ability to read RSS was available (i.e. Squidoo and others) I made a piece of it read all the “tweets” that come in from any site updates.  I wrote a good article, and built a list pointing to my two sites that are live.  As each new site comes live I’ll add them to these link lists too. Not all of them on any single site.  Just a few so that there are no more than four links per site.  And then I have a link to two of the other “free” pages as well.

And I pointed all these pages at each other as well.  I wrote ORIGINAL content for each of them.  so there is new/different and useful information on each one.  THIS IS CRUCIAL!  We’re using minisites, so by creating these “free” pages we’re reaching out to potential customers.  You can’t copy/paste this material.  Every page must be original and helpful.

Then with my regular twitter, Facebook, delicious, Stumble, etc. accounts I bookmarked the two sites and the “free” pages I built.  In other words, I “primed the pump”.  Oh, I use pingomatic on every one of them too.

And MOST importantly…  I added the two sites to Google, Bing, and Yahoo local.  These are locality based minisites, So the Dallas site is noted as Dallas, LA as LA, etc.  We’re going local in a big way so we’ve got to do it right.  I have an 800# that I’m using on all the sites, and that’s the number I put on the local listing.  The reason is easy, I want to let people call.  I’m not going to get 25 phone numbers.  And in the “About Us/Contact Us page I always make a point to point out the 800# where you can Call Free even if your in XXXX (a city that ISN’T a local call but in the Metro Area).

Now it’s as simple as “Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat”…  I’m doing one additional site per day til they’re all up and running.  Updating each site at least once a week with useful information.  Only after every site is built and promoted do I even bother checking statistics.  Building traffic can take a little time and I don’t want to obsess on it..  Yet.

Want to talk more about the minisite network?  Just click the “Discussion” link below and we’ll chat about it at the AffSpot Forums.

Yesterday we did some math and figured out the economics of building a network of localized niche minisites:

25 minisites x $3.00/day avg net = $75/day x 30 = $2250.00/month

We assumed it would cost $500/month in expenses which means we either raise our sales expectations/site, raise the number of minisites, or take the cost out of our existing projection.

Now we need to figure out what we’re going to do with 25 minisites!  What kinds of niches to target, which localities, which offers, etc.  And although not difficult, it can get involved.  Let’s break it down…

The order in which you do your research will change the answers you receive!  If you pick 25 locales to focus on then research niches your going to get different answers than if you research niches first and then apply your list of niches to locales.  And in real life, it doesn’t make that much difference.  As long as you know this ahead of time you could even do both and see where the answers are the same and assume that those choices would be the best (and you wouldn’t be wrong).

So, we’re going to do this completely backwards.  Just to let you know that as long as your doing all three (niches, locales, offers) it will work out in the end for you.

I like to know what I’m doing  so I’m going to look at the offers first.  This way I can see who’s “pushing” their offers, what’s new (and potentially hot), and if there are good offers that trigger my creative juices.  Because, you can’t monitize without offers!

Go take a look at the AffSpot NewsRoom…  PAGE HERE

Now, What does this give us?  Information on programs and offers from a large number of networks all in one place.  If you start seeing a pattern for table linens, healthcare packages, exercise equipment, lighting fixtures, etc. then you can dig deeper into each of the offers, pick a few that look good, and do a little bit of keyword research to see if you have a niche that makes sense for a minisite.  One trend I’ve been noticing lately are eyeglasses and contact lens offers.  That may be a good niche you can localize on.

Now, we’re going to look at eyeglasses and contact lenses as a niche to attack with localized minisites.  Cool, one down two to go (research wise).  We’ve looked at a few offers, etc. and now it’s time to get local!  I’ll let you google this out..  But I’ve found that choosing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest cities in each US State for local targeting is much less competitive, and give you more opportunities when going local.  Let’s look at Kansas.

Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool And do a search for Kansas Glasses, Wichita Glasses, Topeka Glasses and see what you get.  Pay attention now.  Take a look at the keywords and the demand on them.  By now you’ve figured out that the keyword tool comes up with little to nothing for Wichita glasses.  And if you do a regular Google search you get very few results as well.  Same for Topeka, Overland Park is a little busier, etc.  This means there’s not going to be very much online competition!  PERFECT!

So, eyewear/glasses/contact lenses localized seems to be good.  We’ve looked at Kansas.  Take a look at a couple other States too..  Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon, etc.  I think you’ll see very similar results.  Not a lot of competition on a local level.

Now you need to do this all over again, with a copy/paste into a spreadsheet or even writing things down in a notebook.  But you need to go back now and pick cities and states with little competition for your niche but have high populations.  You can even do a little simple division of offers/hundred thousand population with the highest number being more potential for sales (and choose on your newly invented “power number”).

So now you know how many sites will be in your minisite network (25), You know a niche to go for (eyecare/eyeglasses/contact lenses), you’ve found some offers using the AffSpot NewsRoom and researched those.  And you have researched various local markets with simple Google tools.

Next we’re going to take a look at where we are, what tasks we need to accomplish, and lay out the building blocks we’ll need technically to start building out our minisite network.