What's a MiniSite?

[cera]

Seems to be some confusion (on my part anyway) of what constitutes a minisite as opposed to a parking page or a full blown web site.

If you take a parking page and throw on some content - rss feed, affiliate links, an article - is it then a minisite? Does the retailmerchantaccounts.info page (see my sig) qualify as a minisite?

To qualify as a minisite does it need to be more than one page? How many?
And if the site has more than 3-4-5 pages is it then no longer a minisite?

 

[Don]

A minisite in my opinion is anything that is fully automated - set and forget, regardless of the number of pages, content source or purpose.

A parked page consists mainly of ads and exists soley to pass the viewer from point a to b whilst generating revenue.

 

[tetrapak]

Basically a minisite is a limited content site, which is (content wise) between a parked page and a full blown website. The aim is to get rid of the parking companies and get the most revenue possible without spending too much time on developement. Most minisites are made of premade layouts (designs) + free content (wikipedia, copyright free photos). Actually your site (Retail..) seems to lack a bit of content, i would advice you to fill it with more (rss and ads doesnt count, plus if there are only these thats against google adsense TOS) content, to be on the safe side.

 

[harkster]

That is an interesting question. Things like this tend to be very subjective with no definitive answer.
I don't think it is a matter of size or number of pages but more about the reason for producing the site. If the primary reason is to generate some income with a minimum of effort while waiting for a sale or becoming profitable enough to be worth keeping then IMHO that is a mini-site.

I say that www.holdemplay.com is a mini-site. I did spend a bit of time building (enjoyable project) but is basically 1 article, news feeds, the rules info comes from a public domain document and the Amazon store comes from another site. If the site produces at least 5 times reg fee within a year I keep it else it gets dropped. ///a mini-site///

I have a site www.rozane.info (in bad need of a redesign) which is nothing more than a reprint of an early catalog. There are a few ads on it but providing information is the primary purpose. If it gets an occasional click that is good but either way it will remain active. ///not a mini-site///

If I have confused things that is just a sign I am doing my job. I have a bad case of fried brain syndrome from writing/debugging PHP stuff all day.

 

[whitebark]

I look at it this way - you have four basic websites:
1)parked page or utterly basic one page website
2)MFA/Adsense/Affiliate - scrapped content, rss feeds in place of content, little to nothing original in regards to text. 1 to whatever amount of pages but uses former mentioned methods of content generation.
3)minisite - small 3-10 page website made with adsense/yahoo publisher etc in mind but uses original content, usually expanded upon, more user friendly, interactive etc etc. Can have rss feeds etc but doesn't use it as sole generator of text copy.
4) full website - commercial, personal etc etc.

If you want the most profit from your domain now and in the future I recommend 3 and 4. If you don't place much value on the domain and want quick and easy profit than 1 and 2 are fine. But if google/yahoo publisher ever adhere to their written requirements everyone doing 1 and 2 can suddenly find themselves up the creek without the proverbial paddle.