clocker24 said:
I have downloaded
XSitePro on the recommendation of a very experienced friend and I'll be using that to build minsites.
An excellent choice, it is a very powerful software and I have been using this for over 2 years. The only problem as you will find out eventually is that it only creates static pages and when you have sites that have a dozen or more pages it becomes difficult to update them, more so when you have even more sites built on that platform.
I had initially tried to overcome this problem of stale content by outsourcing the updates to be done on a monthly basis, but as the number of sites grew, the amount I had to pay for updates also went up.
Don't get me wrong, the software is as powerful as it as advertised, but the only way to really harness its full capability is to use it in conjunction with other software that will assist in injecting fresh content into your sites with the least bit of effort and Cost.
I'm not suggesting you get these software immediately but rather to objectively analyze how it will work for you over the course time, say in a year when you have many sites. How will you update all these sites at that time?
clocker24 said:
In the meantime, I've created about a dozen one-page minisites using a simple HTML table. I created the banner images myself, and - I think this is the key - I wrote the articles myself. Each site took me a couple of days to create because I did the research and wrote original content. I tried to create genuinely informative and useful articles, not just a string of keywords.
They actually look good and ideal fom visitor clicks, but I hope you don't intend to keep them as single page sites. At least keep you sites update once in awhile, every week preferably. If Google all of a sudden dumps your only page into the supplements, your whole site is gone from the SERPS! Just a caution.
clocker24 said:
Lower down on the pages I have Adsense referral links and the Adsense search bar, but I've earned very little from those. I've also tried adding affiliate links to Clickbank products, with little luck so far. I plan to experiment with some other advertising and affiliate strategies.
When trying to pimp CB products, you have to ensure that what you are promoting is at least in the same category of your site or of the same context. Visitors to your site likely went there because they a keyword(s) from the SE's interested them, so you should also promote CB products that are of the same niche. No point promoting high commission products that don't fit into the niche of your site, they won't be interested. If your site is about dating push the CB dating products only.
clocker24 said:
This strategy will only work for you if you have the time and ability to write original content, or if you can pay someone to do it for you.
Hmmm... main point is time, when you have hundreds of these sites, creating content yourself will pose a huge problem, been there already... Fortunately other than freelance copywriters there is PLR and public domain articles around (gutenberg.org for those who don't know where to get public domain articles.) Of course just dumping these into your content takes up a lot of time copy pasting and won't work that well in terms of time but then there is a software ware out there that can do this for you and it even has a free version available and actually has a direct plugin to Xsite Pro which you already have. It will automatically place the content into your XsitePro Project with 1 click (literally). (Edit: well I'm not sure the free version does but the paid version certainly does)
clocker24 said:
I strongly believe that using canned, duplicated content (like PPC sites does) is asking for trouble.
If left untouched in its original state, Yes, it will be pulled into the supplemental pages, however if you make the content unique by adding a few lines of commentaries per article, then it may be listed in the SE index. If you even target a slight variation of the keyword from the original article you can actually rank higher on the SERP's than the original site the articles came from. If you play your cards right, Google will even make your site the authority and actually push the original source into the supplements, hehe.. yes it can and does happen.
It goes back to my original statement of static content, if you are able to keep your sites dynamic, the SE's will love you and rank you higher. But manually doing so for each page is a time consuming task so actually an investment in a good software that can do this for you works better in the long run.
