Here's a quick step by step guide to creating a mini web site from scratch. You can do it today in just a couple of hours or less. Here's my diary from earlier today.

11.45am: Logged into Commission-Junction to find a replacement cell phone program for my mini site http://www.cell-phone-free.com ( the affiliate program I linked to has been de-activated because of charge backs).

I glanced at the new affiliate program listings and one jumped out as being a perfect subject for a quick new mini web site.

"Amazing Cure for Bad Breath."

Tons of people have bad breath. Great topic for a mini site. Or is it? Depends on what products there are to sell, and how many potential online buyers there are.

11.47am: Followed the CJ link to http://www.orasweet.com/ which sells a new product called a tongue scraper, and pays 30% commission. Dismayed to find the product only sells for $3.50, which means it only pays a little over $1 per sale.

But then I followed the sales links to find the site does an up sell on the order form, which makes it much more attractive for people to buy a $14 package or a $27 family package. This is more like it! It may well be worth building a mini web site around.

11.55am: But do many people look up bad breath in the search engines? Booted up Good Keywords http://www.goodkeywords.com and discovered that last month
3659 people looked up halitosis on GoTo and 5176 searched for bad breath. Quite a high figure. Should be able to do something with those numbers. A mini web site is looking good.

12noon: Visited Overture to see what people are willing to pay for high rankings on these search terms. If people are paying for ranking they must be making money from it. Discovered that 6 cents will get you 10th spot in Overture for halitosis, and 40 cents a click will take you to number 1.

I wouldn't recommend paying 40c a click for a possible $1 commission but 6 cents should be fine. It's hard to tell until the mini site site has been running a while and you can analyze the stats.

Bad breath will cost you 74 cents for top spot, so that's out, but bad breath cure will only cost 21 cents. So that's a possibility, though 3rd spot is yours for only 6 cents so that's much more attractive. A mini site in 3rd place in Overture should pull very well.

12.10pm: Spend the next 30 minutes checking out the opposition. Discover a site called tongue scrapers selling a similar but far more expensive product. It has no affiliate program that I could see. But more importantly found a number of other items to sell, or up sell from a mini site, including BreathAlert, an electronic palm-size monitor that "detects and measures the presence of annoying or embarrassing breath odors."

Now I'm sure that lots of people who think they might have bad breath would love to be able to find out for sure with this product.

About to kiss someone? Check your breath...though preferably not in view of the person you're about to kiss ;-) Walking into an important business meeting? Check that breath.

In 2 minutes I discovered 2 affiliate programs you can build mini web sites around to sell the affiliate product through. One at www.themall.com was terrible offering only 2 cents a click-though and no further commissions on sales. It also only pays you quarterly and then only if you've generated over $50 at 2 cents a time. The other at iGadget www.igadget.com didn't look great paying only 7% commission on a $37 sale.

But it has possibilities. Ran out of time to look further. But odds are there are some much better affiliate programs around for this product.

While looking for an affiliate program for the BreathAlert I also found an Australian mini web site selling both this and the tongue scraper. They're probably missing out on a lot of Internet sales because the products are priced in Australian dollars
http://www.freshkiss.com.au/index.html, includes 10% Australian GST tax, and there's no order form for people outside Australia.

12.40pm: Look up available domain names, and ideas for domain names by using Name Boy. http://www.nameboy.com which lets you enter both bad breath and halitosis.

Incidentally the 2nd magazine article I ever got commissioned to write, (way before I started building mini web sites) back when I was 16, was about why people kiss. Took a lot of hands on (mouths on?) research.

12.55pm: Quick search on Google reveals plenty of info about combating bad breath, and researching, then putting together enough content, would be easy enough. There's also lots of info and some good graphics on the Orasweet tongue scraper site.

1.10pm: Lack of time means I'm not going to build a mini web site on this subject. But YOU can, which is why I've written this mini site article for you.

If you'd like to read a lot more about building mini sites, including much more detailed step-by-step help, you need to visit Phil's website. http://www.minisiteprofits.com/