Adsense: Finding good ideas for a tool based Mini Site

By Scott Jones

2 Months ago I revisited the subject of mini sites breaking them down into the 3 main types being, product based, information based & tool/calculator based.

I think it is pretty safe to say one of the most successful method is a tool or calculator based mini site. A tool or calculator does a simple job cleanly and quickly that is of use or service to the visitor thus making it extremely bookmark worthy and link worthy through social sites such as Digg/Stumble etc etc

The obvious examples I have shared before are Tattoo Fonts & Tattoo Tracer, both of these mini sites cater for visitors by providing a useful service quickly and efficiently.

The reason I am covering this topic again today is that I had a few requests by people asking for ideas or inspiration for mini site topics.

The main & obvious types of tools are;

• Calculators ~ mortgages/savings/investments
• Dates ~ Birthday day (Mon-Sun)/how many minutes old you are
• Dates ~ Due dates for pregnancy/menstruation
• Conversion cal ~ weights, currency, measures & distances
• Conversion of file types ~ list of good programs for various conversions

All of the above have been done in some form or another but that is not to say they are ruled out, you can still create your own tool based on one of the ideas above however there are a couple of important points to remember.

You want the experience of using your tool mini site to be a good one so:

• Don’t use adverts for the first 6 months at least, preferably longer to allow natural backlinks, people tend not to link to ad heavy websites.
• Keep the page layout simple and clean
• Make a prominent ‘add to favourites’ bookmark button or link
• Add in tags to remind users to use their social bookmarks

To step away from some of the obvious tools and look further then you can useOverture and do searches, creative thinking here can turn up gems that few others would think of, it is always a good idea to see what people are actually looking for.

A simple search for “Tool” brings up many results, most of which may not be helpful but some offer an insight into potentially useful tool ideas.

Norton removal tool – 5328,
Check the domain availability: .com is reg’d however nortonremovaltool.net isavailable!

So it’s searched for and there is a good domain available, sounds like a great start for a new mini site that can offer info or a program – that domain is still available now as I type this  ;)

Other searches that may throw up interesting mini site ideas could be

• converter
• convert
• solve
• finder
• “how to”

Everything is at your fingertips if you wish to build mini sites, tools have the potential to build traffic levels way above the norm and can earn $$$ + per month each if done well, I’ll leave it there for today.

READ MORE: selfmademinds.com