A rebutal to mike031's comments on aeiou.com

[domainscot]

with regards to google everysite that i use has its own google adsence channel that way it it allows google to see what we are really doing.

all the sites are being built in stages with real content and the right metatags and keywords for each site.

if you take the time to do it right and sort all the loose ends google sees that your building out and this can only be a plus factor.

a 1 page parked page is not a website and therefore you loose customers from it.
Like i say what do you want your site to do what function do you want your domain to do as every domain covers diffrent subjects and diffrent functions.

do you want it to be a job site with a job function script. do you want it to be a directory site. you need to tell the developers like rick what you would like to see and improved. only then people like rick can build you what you want.

[Acro]

I do web & graphics development full-time, building web sites from concept to completion - including corporate branding and everything inbetween, from print ads to billboard design. My web experience goes back to 1995, so I've seen it all through the years.

Rick's AEIOU service offers a comprehensive design, closely tied to the subject of the domain, an easy way for the domain owner to make further edits to the content and a proven method to monetize it via Adsense. For the price, the benefits are many and as a boutique service it works wonders. Rick tapped a niche market at the right time and he is to be applauded; that's entrepreneurial spirit in action.

Incidentally, I purchased a couple of domains that were developed by Rick's AEIOU service for the domain seller, that still maintain their Google results and visibility even after I moved them to pure parking.

It is very sad that Mike031 decided in that other thread to outright bash Rick's AEIOU minisite service in a biased and untruthful manner.

[domainscot]

Kmal dont take this the wrong way but im going to be blunt

Its crap with a capital C
thats a sad excuse for a website where is the passion comming from the page where is the page jumping out and saying he look at me. its like sitting in a room watching the paint dry.

would you click on that page Nope

[kamil]

When purchasing a minisite (ballpark $225) for the purpose of monetizing it you better be damn well sure it's going to make AT LEAST your initial investment back + you will surely expect a nice flow of income from the minisite you have time and money invested in? Sure the parking companies stick it to you when the clicks come in but at least when you park a domain and receive clicks you are earning positive revenue already without being $225 in the hole before your first click.

Well said, as most people who have no idea about web development seem to believe that minisites would make a real big difference lol Yeah developing websites is the way to go but don't do that unless You are commited to make regular updates and a lot of efforts in quality link building. Dead & static sites don't do any better than parked pages imo.

[domainscot]

I agree with what Acro said

[cleverlyslick]

seraphim,have you tried one way linking like digg,yahoo buzz,reddit etc. i find it works pretty well for me.I got my domain (link below) listed in google in less than 24hrs just by using these social bookmarking sites and facebook and myspace.it takes a lot of time though i gotta admit.

[Ryan Steel]

Lets take one of my minisites as an example

Xioi dot com

Before : $3-$5 from sedo parking
After development : a few cents from google adsense

Yeah, it has some backlinks too, apart from type in traffic.

So, I would like to ask minisite experts that whats wrong in this case, as I have unique contents on site and everything hand coded for better results

Domain name doesn't relate to the contents, but I avoided that in order to not mess with microsoft

Cheers

Hey Kamil, please do not take this the wrong way - however we would not accept this domain for development. Let me explain why.

No matter how many point of views there are out there on whether the domain has a significant impact on search engine placement, I stick with my guns and believe it means alot. This is why we are a bit picky about what we accept. While your domain has a brand ability behind it, we would rather do a generic keyword combination that has available search volume behind it. Our development process leverages the strength of the domain with the unique development to really forge ahead in the search engines. Google can be a bit more picky about this, however MSN loves a good keyword domain + matching site.

We feel it is our responsiblity to safe guard our clients investments.

What you have going on at xioi.com is good though. Granted you are not earning as much - it has the potential to. There is a thriving community of related sites to yours, and if you wanted to get involved you could increase that traffic stream via link trades, commenting on other sites, etc.

seraphim,have you tried one way linking like digg,yahoo buzz,reddit etc. i find it works pretty well for me.I got my domain (link below) listed in google in less than 24hrs just by using these social bookmarking sites and facebook and myspace.it takes a lot of time though i gotta admit.

Social bookmarking is a great way to gain backlinks. It is part of our link building campaign bundled with the mini sites. I consider these to be short term though. They are fantastic for getting a site indexed and giving it the initial boost, however I like to follow up with a bit stronger, targeted links to really drive it home.

[Seraphim]

seraphim,have you tried one way linking like digg,yahoo buzz,reddit etc. i find it works pretty well for me.I got my domain (link below) listed in google in less than 24hrs just by using these social bookmarking sites and facebook and myspace.it takes a lot of time though i gotta admit.

I always avoided those type of links because I thought they were only temporary, are they permanent? For quick page indexing, a DNF signature with a couple of thousand posts will get the job done for Google within a few hours.

[domainscot]

ok guys

I will post some trafic stats from google just to give you some idea of mini sites
now Jan is always a bad month so earings are way down but im prepared to show you anyway

hotelsglasgow. co. uk 1,521 76 5.00% $17.71 $26.94
skiholidaysscotland. com 496 27 5.44% $26.81 $13.30

now the way i work it is very simple if its a .co.uk life span is 24 months so if costs me 5 months for development hosting and domain renewal then rest of the 19 months is profit
and same with .com

[rentdn]

Sure they may be in the good graces of G, however the case lays - as long as you behave, you won't get picked on.

I think many will agree that Minisites = MFA sites. I have no experience with traditional MFA's however I remember them being mass produced pages of scrapped content with really hardcore blatant ad placement. We are in the business of making money - and aggressive ad placement is a must to keep CTR high, however it can be done in a more unobtrusive way. To me, any site that is built to make money could fall into the MFA category - it is a shame that it has a tarnished name, the game is the same though just on a cleaner level.

Well if the game is same , it will gonna end in same way just matter of time.

[kamil]

So Ryan, in Your opinion this minisite is an epic fail just because of no relevant keyword in domain name? ok what would You say about this one lol ( webmasterl dot com) it has enough content related to domain name ( webmaster stuff ) but still it doesn't do any better. This one is built on wordpress but I won't update it as I don't have time for updating it just like many other dead minisites I have.

I am unable to make money off minisites, so would like to warn those who aren't into web development that don't believe everything You hear about minisites

[Ryan Steel]

Hey Folks,

I am about to head out for the day - I will try to jump on later this evening and catch up on the thread. The discussions have been great and we appreciate everyone's input! If anyone needs anything in the meantime feel free to contact me at ryan@aeiou.com

[meganerd]

Lets take one of my minisites as an example

Xioi dot com

Before : $3-$5 from sedo parking
After development : a few cents from google adsense

Yeah, it has some backlinks too, apart from type in traffic.

So, I would like to ask minisite experts that whats wrong in this case, as I have unique contents on site and everything hand coded for better results ....

Although I'm no "mini site expert", my guess from not being able to look at the previous parked page is the parked page was more targeted than your current development. Try fooling around with placement and ad styles. In addition to instructing adsense more on what content you have. Sometimes, it's just the wrong set of keywords, targeting or placement.

[kamil]

Although I'm no "mini site expert", my guess from not being able to look at the previous parked page is the parked page was more targeted than your current development. Try fooling around with placement and ad styles. In addition to instructing adsense more on what content you have. Sometimes, it's just the wrong set of keywords, targeting or placement.

Yeah, I did try diff ad placements too, but finally gave up and now only into sites with regular updates. its better to put all efforts into one succesful website than wasting time in tons of dead & static minisites

[Rick Latona]

MFA means made for AdSense. A few of you brought this up. That's a page covered in AdSense links that people drive traffic to. That's a big no no to Google.

Mini-Sites are small websites. It's a real site with real information. We use Google's "recommended" number of ad links and don't do anything to trick the customer into clicking something. See http://www.clocks.co.uk/ which came out of production a couple of days ago. That's a real site with original content!

We are very careful. Heck, even when we do link building, we post more original content (more expense for me) on other people's site where we have the link. We don't just post links and take the short cut. We put a lot into these. It's the culmination of years of practice.

This is what we mean when we say we are operating under Google's guidlines so we feel very safe.

[rentdn]

Rick I know you've much more experience then me , I was playing with toys under the table when you were involved in internet biz . However I might say that I completely disagree with you .

Copy pasted from WIKI

"" Some scraper sites are created for monetizing the site using advertising programs such as Google AdSense.In such case, they are called Made for AdSense sites or MFA. This is also a derogatory term used to refer to websites that have no redeeming value except to get web visitors to the website for the sole purpose of clicking on advertisements.
""

full article here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scraper_site

The idea behind Minisites is to get more visitors only and only for Adsense , I do not believe that minisites providing any useful content and if they do not provide any useful content I'll classify them as " search engine spam ".

[tonyfloyd]

See http://www.clocks.co.uk/ which came out of production a couple of days ago. That's a real site with original content!

yeah...a real "ugly" site.....this is what i don't get.....this person owns clocks.co.uk....a PREMIUM generic.....and they build a BS mini-site on it???....that's like owning beachfront property in Malibu...and building a DUMP on it!!....what's the point???.....what does someone expect to sell beachfront property with a DUMP on it for??....a lot less that if they have a REAL house on it.....

would love to hear the replies...

[EJS]

I had a geodomain mini site created by Rick's AEIOU team and I was very happy with the result (I have since sold the name). Sure, $250 is expensive for a start, but if you have a good domain name that you plan to sell down the road using a conservative 7 year revenue multiple, it needs to generate pennies per day extra to pay off the mini site.

Using the mini site as a starting point, I added several pages of additional content which didn't take much time to gather, and I built a more comprehensive site. I am pretty fair with Dreamweaver, but I need someone to start the design for me before I can do some work. The design and layout was perfect for what I needed. IMO, the foundation got the website off to a good start.

Rick and his team built a basic site, which is all I needed, and it was a very good starting point. The name had a big increase in traffic (from search engines) and consequently, revenue increased.

Overall, I was happy with the site and results.

[rentdn]

I had a geodomain mini site created by Rick's AEIOU team and I was very happy with the result (I have since sold the name). Sure, $250 is expensive for a start, but if you have a good domain name that you plan to sell down the road using a conservative 7 year revenue multiple, it needs to generate pennies per day extra to pay off the mini site.

Using the mini site as a starting point, I added several pages of additional content which didn't take much time to gather, and I built a more comprehensive site. I am pretty fair with Dreamweaver, but I need someone to start the design for me before I can do some work. The design and layout was perfect for what I needed. IMO, the foundation got the website off to a good start.

Rick and his team built a basic site, which is all I needed, and it was a very good starting point. The name had a big increase in traffic (from search engines) and consequently, revenue increased.

Overall, I was happy with the site and results.

I can't understant 1 thing

If you guys have good domain , why are you using a minisite as an option ? Good Domain deserve good development

You got good results probably because you got a good name and not because that Minisite was cool

P.S. If mediocre domain will have success with Minisites - I'll say I'm 1000% percent wrong

For ex. I own kostanyan.com ( empty website regged my last name ) , but I still rank on top 15 in google . And the reason is that search keyword match the domain's name and thats all

[tonyfloyd]

I can't understant 1 thing

If you guys have good domain , why are you using a minisite as an option ? Good Domain deserve good development

You got good results probably because you got a good name and not because that Minisite was cool

P.S. If mediocre domain will have success with Minisites - I'll say I'm 1000% percent wrong

Bingo....because most domainers are LAZY and CHEAP!!!...