Promoting a website, blog or business can be very tough if you do not know some of the secret tricks of the marketing trade. There is so much competition. If you are going to succeed as an entrepreneur, you must think outside of the box if you are going to succeed and hopefully advance.

One trick that I have picked up on is the production of mini-site give-aways. Just what are mini-site give-aways?

Simply put, a mini-site is a small website consisting of a handful of pages specifically designed to sell a product. Generally, this product is a digital product such as a piece of software, an e-book, of some specialized report. When a webmaster produces a mini-site as a give-away, the item being sold or given away as a promotional item is always added to the package.

So what exactly is included in a mini-site?

1) The first item included in a mini-site is an index.html page. The index page is the first page that is accessed by a web browser whenever it is directed to visit a folder somewhere on the web, be it the root folder or a sub-folder of a TLD (Top Level Domain). On the index page, which could also be referred to as a landing page, you will usually find a fair amount of information about the product being sold or promoted. This is where the sales copy will be located. In the sales copy you will find a brief discussion of some problem or issue that the product being sold or given away addresses. Beneath that, you will find a list of benefits contained in the product that effectively address the problem or issue at hand. The index page can be a sales letter with a sales pitch or a squeeze page for harvesting opt-ins. Either format works.

2) The second item will be a thank-you or download page. Generally, this page will have a layout similar to the landing or squeeze page. It will not, however, contain the same information. On this page you will only find a few words of appreciation from the vendor and a link to the purchased or opted-in-for product. Generally, if the product is an information product in the form of a PDF file, there will also be a link to any tools necessary for accessing the information such as Adobe Acrobat.

3) The third item that will be included is the actual product itself, be it a PDF file, piece of software, instructional video or any other type of digital product.

This is the most important item in this package. Why? Because this item or product will contain information about and, most importantly, links to your own business website and landing pages as well as squeeze pages. This will help you in your branding efforts.

If you are having trouble creating your own product, try checking out some free PLR articles or purchasing some from a PLR article retailer. PLR material can make creating informational products a very easy thing to do.

4) The fourth item you will find in the mini-site bundle will be an images folder. This folder, of course, will contain all of the graphics used for your mini-site. There are several free templates that you can use for your mini-site bundle. These days, you do not need to know how to write HTML code or be an expert in graphic design to create a minisite.

Once you have your index page, your thank-you or download page, your product, and your images folder all in place, you are ready to zip it up and distribute it.

To distribute it, you could offer it as a free download on your own site, upload it to a free master resale rights site, offer it in your forum signature, write articles about it and link to the article using social bookmarks, tweet it, post it on Facebook or any of other of a large variety of promotional techniques.

The nice thing about having a ready made package such as a mini-site is the fact that individuals who have no design experience or simply lack the time to create their own product but want an online business gain access to a turn-key site that they can use to make money. All they have to do is upload it to their server and promote it using any of the aforementioned marketing techniques. You benefit because your links are included in the content of the product itself which purchasers or those who opt-in to obtain it will see. At that point, a mutually beneficial joint venture has been formed.