There are only two kinds of sites on
Internet:1. Informational 2. Sales
Of course, that is a gross exaggeration and over generalizes landscape of Internet, but it will be useful for this article. We want to talk about how you can take any site you have and create a sister site of other type in order to improve your traffic, sales and mission. First, let's define these types of sites a little more and give some examples.
1. Informational
This is classic content or free information site. It includes hobby sites, huge communities like Yahoo, search engines, discussion forums, news sites, how-to sites and a vast majority of Internet in general.
2. Sales
This can be a classic e-commerce site sells something directly. It can describe a product/service and provide a way to provide payment directly on site. The famous sites in this category include Amazon, Orbitz, and Ebay. The less famous sites sell a vast variety of kind of merchandise that used to be sold via direct postal mail campaigns, catalogs, etc.
It can also include a more subtle type of sales site. Everyone was warned in last decade that you had better be "on net" or you would be out of business. Most organizations have taken that advice. Almost every corporation, non-profit organization, government agency, church and school now have a website. When many of these organizations created their website, they realized they had nothing to sell directly, nor did their true mission include providing a lot of free information content about their topic. Most of these sites provide information about their organization, press releases, methods to contact various departments, information about upcoming events, and product/service information (albeit, not for purpose of direct sales). The end result is that these sites are there to promote organization's mission. They are really sales sites in that way.
Now that we've over generalized these two categories of websites, let's admit that almost every website has some element of each. I've owned sites that have completely morphed from one type to another with lots of hybrid during morphing process. I've come to discover though that it is often not a good idea to mix these up. Let's talk about why.
Let's say you have a pure information site. You are really into widgets as a hobby and you create a massive site with a popular discussion forum, lots of articles, pictures, how-to information, a massive resource directory of other widget sites, product reviews, etc. Your site is #1 place people go to find out about anything to do with widgets. In fact, your site is so popular that your hosting bill is now way over your hobby budget, but this is a labor of love; right? Many of us have been here. The obvious answer is to mix in a bit of e-commerce to offset bills. Maybe you add some widget banners or text links. Maybe you put an affiliate link to Amazon after your review of a book about Widgets. Maybe you even install a shopping cart and start buying widgets wholesale and selling them directly on your site. You even dream of someday making a living doing what you love: maintaining your site about widgets.
What happens? First of all, your traffic starts to decrease. Inevitably you turn some people off by your new emphasis on e-commerce. Second, your focus on what made your site great starts to suffer. You now have two competing forces pulling you in separate directions. One side of you wants to create great free content; other wants to maximize profits. Some people find a good balance and press forward. Many others start a downward spiral. How many great search engines have we seen come and go because they lost their focus in exactly this way?
