Business – Vitals

1. Description

A content site is one filled with useful information, resources and tips and which is not overtly a sales site.

2. The advantages

• A site with good content will rank well with the free search engines.
• You can submit to the main paid submission engines such as Yahoo and Looksmart, also to the Open Directory which is free, and be confident it will be approved. (In contrast a one page site is unlikely to get approval).
• You gain recognition as an authority in your niche, and others may recommend your site or will link to your site in order to provide useful material for their own visitors.
• You can refer to it in forum postings without sounding like an ad e.g. see my review in ‘The Complete Guide to Widgets’ as opposed to ‘my affiliate program for Widget-123′
• Similarly if you use the pay per click search engines, there is the advantage that other listings will show individual products whereby a title such as “The Complete Guide to Widgets” has more chance of capturing the reader’s attention.

3. The disadvantages

• It takes time to develop and keep current a content site.
• The sales conversion rate may not be as high as for a sales oriented mini site, although there can be gains made from acquiring subscribers with a mailing list.

4. How to promote a content site

• Free search engines
• Pay per click search engines
• Paid submission engines
• Using a signature in forum postings