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Domain summit 2024

Do not use mini site development services! Especially Rick Latona / AEIOU... They lie

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mike031

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using Rick Latona's aeiou?? thinking of???

must read...

BUYER BEWARE


I've wrote on multiple occasions over the past few month's about all those mini site developers out there offering their specialized services geared towards large domain portfolio holders in particular. I didn't really get into any details or reviews about any one given service or offering, I just covered the basics and exposed the flaws in their strategies and whatever else with what they are trying to accomplish and just in a general why what they do will never work. It doesn't work. It doesn't stand a chance.

I am sure you already know this first hand if you tried out their services. They don't work. Aeiou, WhyPark, DevHuv (EvoLanding) they all promise the world to you... But come on, it is all BS. Not going to happen. There is at least a dozen or so services out there and there is always new ones popping up it seems. I wrote an article titled: Transition from domain parking to full blown development really possible... Millions of new sites to pop up on the web real soon!?!!? back in November of 2008 which you should check out if you are considering giving any of the mini site development a go. You will be glad you read the article. Trust me... It is an eye opener.

So anyways, lets take Aeiou.com for example. It is from yours truly, Rick Latona... The domain superstar of all superstars who is making a run for it to get into the domainer hall of fame. Look, I like Rick Latona... He is a pretty good businessmen, very successful guy and he is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word and I've even sent some clients to his DigiPawn and Offshoring businesses over the years, but come on.. Aeiou.com developed domain websites suck, from A to Z. You have to read this whole article to truly understand why. If you skip some of the parts... You just won't get it.

First of all, charging $250 per mini site is way too expensive to begin with and the finished product is nothing to get excited over or brag about either. I know I know.. Who am I to lecture anybody on how much to charge or how to run their biz, but hey, this is my review. I can say whatever I want! So... They give you a discount if you order 25 or more websites, the price gets dropped to $175.. Great deal right for their "rapid mini site development" package?!

Not exactly... All they basically do is create a custom graphic header, re-write some content they take from another website/source, sometimes straight out copy it word for word... And from there on to put the final touch on this beauty, plaster the five unique pages they created with three AdSense units in order to monetize them. Amazing!! They also promise a "search marketing campaign" but I never seen one... Well, if they do indeed run one, it fails miserably as their results are quiet poor.

Rick Latona "developed the system to run at a conservative 1 year ROI." which will only work for domains that already have type in traffic. On domains that do not generate any organic type in traffic, you will never recoup your up front investment. Why? Because the Search Engine Optimization that Aeiou.com does during the development is in one word a disaster. They do not even know the basics. They plug in the domain name in the title and one keyword afterward. This is what they consider good SEO? This is newbie mistake 101!

Take unemployed.com for example which is owned by Rick Schwartz. It was setup with an Aeiou.com mini site for about 6 month's now...The title reads "Unemployed.com | Unemployed" which is a big time SEO no nooo. Tell me, is this is how they make use of the most valuable real estate space available on a website??! The title of the main page of a website holds so much power. But Aeiou.com doesn't seem to care... Maybe they just don't know? Probably the latter. Is the domain unemployed.com even indexed at Google? Nope.

The domain is banned. No SEO traffic whatsoever. Where is that marketing campaign that is included with the development of each domain?? Funny. Anyways, that domain receives barely 30 unique visitors per day... Mostly all type ins. You can visit most of the domain names setup by Aeiou, by going to <domainname.com>/stats and see for yourself just how great they are doing. Example would be unemployed.com/stats and look at the "distinct hosts served" this is all public information. Have fun with it.

I guess Rick Latona wants to share it all and brag about it somehow? Not so smart. How about those case studies that they post up on Aeiou.com --- what good are they? Well, lets see.. Their latest one was for Marketcritic.com which they brag about ranking #1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the keyword "market critic" which sounds real good!! But lets see.. The keyword "market critic" with quotes has less than 1000 results on Google.com and not even 100 monthly searches per month across all search engines for "market critic" if you look it up in the Google AdWords Keyword suggestion tool.

Aeiou did mention that the domain marketcritic.com was previously setup as a website in it's previous lifetime before it expired and got re-registered... Well, this is where all of the traffic is coming from. I highly doubt there is anybody searching for "market critic" on Google, Yahoo or MSN so their #1 ranking is worthless... I also highly doubt they rank for any other long tail keywords with this type of crappy and spammy web sites. So what is it exactly that they are bragging about or is there to take away from the case study?!? I can register and develop made up keyword phrases that sound good or cool and rank for them the next week... Big deal !

It's Nothing new. Nothing profitable about doing it either. I don't know too many people that do this and the only ones that do it are newbies obviously who do not know any better or ones that just like to waste money and have a portfolio of cool looking active websites that do not generate any real SEO traffic or organic growth! I doubt the owner of marketcritic.com will be able to recoup his $250 investment into this worthless domain and website anytime soon. But what do I know? LOL.

A lot of Rick Latona's sites are either a hit or miss as far as generating any decent organic search engine traffic or decent revenue. I've seen way too many misses though. But don't get it twisted... The type of website setup they deploy via Aeiou.com is nothing really special. It doesn't help or somehow contribute to the fact that a domain name ranks at the top of Google. You see, any developed website will rank. Even a page with one paragraph of text. Most of Rick's success stories / case studies are sites that were previously already setup as active sites for many years which have a lot of history behind them.

The previous case study posted on aeiou.com before the latest marketcritic.com website was a perfect example. A domain which Rick Latona acquired just a few month's ago from the previous owner it seems. The domain name is repossessions.com which was an active site for many years. Over at aeiou.com they claim the following "This domain has been live for just over six months. It is currently ranked #4 on Google for the term repossessions and #1 on Yahoo. This domain is a daily earner for us and should continue to climb."

Ok, lets see... If you visit DomainTools and do a whois search for that domain and look on the right at the "historical thumbnails" of that site.. It shows a Sedo parked page dated 11-04-2008... A little over three month's ago. The site was not developed. It was parked obviously. What gives??! Well... It was a straight out lie then. False information... Caught! They continue and finish their case study with the following conclusion "Repossessions.com is another example of developing a domain with keyword rich Seo optimized content to capitalize on searches and advertiser competition. Add our marketing process to speed up the rankings and you have a daily earner."

They didn't do any marketing. All of the seo and marketing was done by the previous owners. All Rick Latona and AEIOU did was slap together a worthless and spammy mini site and launch it. They try to make it sound like they did it a whole lot and make it so cool... When in fact, they didn't do zilch I bet you. It isn't the first time I've caught AEIOU hyping things up and straight out lying. But we won't get to it all... Just isn't enough time. It's all good. You see, everybody lies. Everybody has agendas. You will get taken for a ride if you don't do the research. You will get owned if you aren't cautious! Be smart...

But of course, everybody believes in Rick Latona.. He is like totally a Rockstar of the domain industry because he runs so many auctions and hot domain sales newsletters, blah blah... BS! He is no saint. Everybody lies... Rick posted over at his blog in November about selling the domain name "daytraders.com" to Jay Westerdal of NameTools.com --- a deal that never happened and one that will never happen. Rick still owns that domain name. Check the whois info.

Rick wrote on his blog "We decided to flip a coin over whether he got a screaming good deal or just a good deal. The value of the coin toss was $34,200. Of course, all of this was happening about four hours into a night on the town in Cairo. Neither of us had any business making that bet. I had suggested that we just flip once but Jay wanted to flip two-out-of-three. I lost the first toss then won the next two. Jay is now the proud owner of DayTraders.com for the still very reasonable price and low multiple of $84,200." Yea right... Good one. I am sure that got lots of peoples attention though and some added business for both and credibility for Rick. Sneaky...

Everybody lies... Everybody cheats. Even the industry's finest. There is no exception. If you look hard enough, you will find it. Do your own research guys, because there is always somebody out there looking to take you for a ride. Somebody who will game you in ways you didn't even imagine. Don't trust the hype. Trust facts. Trust what you see with your own two eyes. Rick Latona is a cool guy who runs pawnshops, offshore businesses, auctions and whatever else... But it just goes to show you that he is no different than anybody else.

Also neither Rick Latona or AEIOU know anything about proper domain mass development... They screw up the SEO. They leave traces. They don't even have a privacy policy setup, which is a requirement of Google AdSense. They setup websites which get your websites penalized by Google and also risk your AdSense account at getting terminated because of breaking the rules. Come on... Are people blind? I see newbies on forums swearing that Aeiou.com is the ultimate mini site domain development services... It's really not. Those same newbies claim to have been around on the internet since the 90's and they act, walk, talk like they know everything about domains, seo and development.

You can either believe the hype and sit on your lazy ass without lifting a finger, and pay Rick Latona and his crew hundreds of dollars for each site that in fact costs 1/5th or you can shop around... Look, for example if you want to develop 10 of your domains with AEIOU it will cost about $2,000 which already includes the discount... Or you can go and find yourself a real offshoring full web development company based in Romania, Russia or India who will do it for much less and do it right. They will create more relevant and unique content and do the proper search engine optimization and a much better job overall.

But no... People will rather sit on their ass and instead hope for something good to be handed to them on a silver platter. Yea right, it doesn't work like that my friends. So as you see.. You waited... Years... For exactly this kind of domain development mini site service to get launched by a hot shot who you can trust. In 2008, you got Rick Latona's service who launched at last and created lots of hype and saved the day. The eagerly awaited mini site development... You paid him hundreds, some paid thousands... You got a whole lot of nothing at the end. Burned through lots of money...And you know what? You deserve it. You need to learn that there will always be somewhere out there that will try to game you.

It can be a small timer... It can be an industry vet. It can be one of the top guys. It's business as usual. What you gonna do about it? What can you do? Nothing... All you can do is learn from your mistakes. There is a dozen more such services such as AEIOU that are ready to take you for a ride... Will you fall for them?! They promise you the world... They only want a little bit of your money and a few month's of your domains to be setup with their name servers... Ahh!! What to do? LOL. It's your decision... You should know what to do :) In every sales pitch there is a lot of good shit and bad shit. Solely your job to spot it.

I get dozens of requests and e-mails each and every week by all kinds of random people and companies, including newbies as well as some pretty well established domainers with excellent domain portfolios, some of them are faithful followers of the website, who contact me and the e-mails go something like "mike... i love your website...whats your paypal, i want you to develop 50 of my sites" or some just go like "mike, what is your paypal.. i been waiting for a service such as you talk about, lets get going" and so on. People ready to send over thousands of dollars. It's unbelievable. Who would ever thought?!

It's really something. I tell you. People who never seen any of my work. People who just read my website and are ready to go forward. Well, a lot of those people unfortunately are newbies who do not know any better. About 80% to 90% of all development requests that come in I turn down. I do not waste peoples time or money. If the domain name has no potential, I won't take on the project. I don't want to waste my own time on this stuff either. I care about peoples money. I want to see people succeed. I have morals.

A lot of other developers, of especially these "mini sites" don't give a crap about you. Even if you have the worst type of domains, whether they are trademarks or whether they are typos or just made up ones... They won't even say a word. They will gladly take your money, develop a crappy website, and tell you that "yes, it has potential... oh yes, its gonna rock" and so on. It's BS!! As service providers, sometimes you have to protect the clients from themselves because they do not know any better.

I've spent countless hours and offered many tips and advice to people who e-mail me and want to go the development route. If I turn them down, I still feel bad deep down inside for some reason and I would like to help them. I link them up to various other places and I educate them. I point things out. You think I care about making a few hundred bucks off of each order of development? A few thousand?! Do I really need it? I only work with a select few. Good and solid, straight up people. No BS. Serious businessmen.

I started this website in order to help people make sense of things and offer free advice. I provide a service because there is a need for it and I've been mass developing since before there ever was a market for mini sites. I was monetizing this type of setup way before it was even called MFA and before AdSense even existed. Sure, I run a business too, as everybody else... But I am not as ruthless as some of the people that will take your money and when you come to them when things don't work out all they have to say is "too bad" or "we tried." Me personally, I am not like that. I have some morals.

So Mr. Rick Latona, if you read this.. Why don't you keep your BS service to yourself, or if you want to keep peddling those crappy rapid minisites that are very risky and overcharge people for them that are against Google.com and Yahoo.com website standards as well as clear MFA sites, and bad attempts at that --- at least make a few improvements on the SEO end, get rid of all the traces at the footers, spread the websites across multiple web hosts and please tell it like it is mister bizzy biz. You are selling ticking time bombs. You just don't know it obviously because you are not a developer at heart... Or maybe you just don't care? If Google decides to do a clean sweep of all the thousands of crap sites you have setup... The AEIOU works are history!

Oh, and of course as a shameless plug... Anybody who still is a believer and supporter of those types of crappy mini sites that look like from 2002 (I call it like I see it) I will offer anybody who wants the famous Rick Latona style aeiou.com "rapid minisites" at a quantity of 10 or more at only $999/10 sites. Yup.. You get the same exact layout. The same exact content. The same exact non existent marketing and seo campaigns. For less than half the price!! Take the more than $1000 in savings thanks to my generosity and buy your self a membership at SEOmoz.org and SEObook.com and learn about search engine optimization and search marketing instead of always relying on others... You are welcome. PS --- Limited time offer! :)

I was going to review at least a few more of the "hottest" and most popular / top mini-site services when I sat down to write this but this write up has become quiet lengthy... It is time to wrap it up. Everybody else will be covered and reviewed on another day. I got my eye on you. Till' next time.... Ohh.. The top five reasons, How could I forget... But of course!! They are 1) BS 2) BS 3) Crap 4) Even more crap 5) BS + Crap = bad.

And for those wondering.. No, I never had any business dealings with Rick Latona, I don't have any grudges or bad experiences either... I think he is an OK guy --- never even an exchange of e-mails or a convo on a forum. I respect him... He's cool, but should be more careful. We all make mistakes. Everything can be fixed and improved. It is never too late.
 
Domain summit 2024

Theo

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Wow. How low can you go.

using Rick Latona's aeiou?? thinking of???

must read...

BUYER BEWARE


I've wrote on multiple occasions over the past few month's about all those mini site developers out there offering their specialized services geared towards large domain portfolio holders in particular. I didn't really get into any details or reviews about any one given service or offering, I just covered the basics and exposed the flaws in their strategies and whatever else with what they are trying to accomplish and just in a general why what they do will never work. It doesn't work. It doesn't stand a chance.

I am sure you already know this first hand if you tried out their services. They don't work. Aeiou, WhyPark, DevHuv (EvoLanding) they all promise the world to you... But come on, it is all BS. Not going to happen. There is at least a dozen or so services out there and there is always new ones popping up it seems. I wrote an article titled: Transition from domain parking to full blown development really possible... Millions of new sites to pop up on the web real soon!?!!? back in November of 2008 which you should check out if you are considering giving any of the mini site development a go. You will be glad you read the article. Trust me... It is an eye opener.

So anyways, lets take Aeiou.com for example. It is from yours truly, Rick Latona... The domain superstar of all superstars who is making a run for it to get into the domainer hall of fame. Look, I like Rick Latona... He is a pretty good businessmen, very successful guy and he is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word and I've even sent some clients to his DigiPawn and Offshoring businesses over the years, but come on.. Aeiou.com developed domain websites suck, from A to Z. You have to read this whole article to truly understand why. If you skip some of the parts... You just won't get it.

First of all, charging $250 per mini site is way too expensive to begin with and the finished product is nothing to get excited over or brag about either. I know I know.. Who am I to lecture anybody on how much to charge or how to run their biz, but hey, this is my review. I can say whatever I want! So... They give you a discount if you order 25 or more websites, the price gets dropped to $175.. Great deal right for their "rapid mini site development" package?!

Not exactly... All they basically do is create a custom graphic header, re-write some content they take from another website/source, sometimes straight out copy it word for word... And from there on to put the final touch on this beauty, plaster the five unique pages they created with three AdSense units in order to monetize them. Amazing!! They also promise a "search marketing campaign" but I never seen one... Well, if they do indeed run one, it fails miserably as their results are quiet poor.

Rick Latona "developed the system to run at a conservative 1 year ROI." which will only work for domains that already have type in traffic. On domains that do not generate any organic type in traffic, you will never recoup your up front investment. Why? Because the Search Engine Optimization that Aeiou.com does during the development is in one word a disaster. They do not even know the basics. They plug in the domain name in the title and one keyword afterward. This is what they consider good SEO? This is newbie mistake 101!

Take unemployed.com for example which is owned by Rick Schwartz. It was setup with an Aeiou.com mini site for about 6 month's now...The title reads "Unemployed.com | Unemployed" which is a big time SEO no nooo. Tell me, is this is how they make use of the most valuable real estate space available on a website??! The title of the main page of a website holds so much power. But Aeiou.com doesn't seem to care... Maybe they just don't know? Probably the latter. Is the domain unemployed.com even indexed at Google? Nope.

The domain is banned. No SEO traffic whatsoever. Where is that marketing campaign that is included with the development of each domain?? Funny. Anyways, that domain receives barely 30 unique visitors per day... Mostly all type ins. You can visit most of the domain names setup by Aeiou, by going to <domainname.com>/stats and see for yourself just how great they are doing. Example would be unemployed.com/stats and look at the "distinct hosts served" this is all public information. Have fun with it.

I guess Rick Latona wants to share it all and brag about it somehow? Not so smart. How about those case studies that they post up on Aeiou.com --- what good are they? Well, lets see.. Their latest one was for Marketcritic.com which they brag about ranking #1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the keyword "market critic" which sounds real good!! But lets see.. The keyword "market critic" with quotes has less than 1000 results on Google.com and not even 100 monthly searches per month across all search engines for "market critic" if you look it up in the Google AdWords Keyword suggestion tool.

Aeiou did mention that the domain marketcritic.com was previously setup as a website in it's previous lifetime before it expired and got re-registered... Well, this is where all of the traffic is coming from. I highly doubt there is anybody searching for "market critic" on Google, Yahoo or MSN so their #1 ranking is worthless... I also highly doubt they rank for any other long tail keywords with this type of crappy and spammy web sites. So what is it exactly that they are bragging about or is there to take away from the case study?!? I can register and develop made up keyword phrases that sound good or cool and rank for them the next week... Big deal !

It's Nothing new. Nothing profitable about doing it either. I don't know too many people that do this and the only ones that do it are newbies obviously who do not know any better or ones that just like to waste money and have a portfolio of cool looking active websites that do not generate any real SEO traffic or organic growth! I doubt the owner of marketcritic.com will be able to recoup his $250 investment into this worthless domain and website anytime soon. But what do I know? LOL.

A lot of Rick Latona's sites are either a hit or miss as far as generating any decent organic search engine traffic or decent revenue. I've seen way too many misses though. But don't get it twisted... The type of website setup they deploy via Aeiou.com is nothing really special. It doesn't help or somehow contribute to the fact that a domain name ranks at the top of Google. You see, any developed website will rank. Even a page with one paragraph of text. Most of Rick's success stories / case studies are sites that were previously already setup as active sites for many years which have a lot of history behind them.

The previous case study posted on aeiou.com before the latest marketcritic.com website was a perfect example. A domain which Rick Latona acquired just a few month's ago from the previous owner it seems. The domain name is repossessions.com which was an active site for many years. Over at aeiou.com they claim the following "This domain has been live for just over six months. It is currently ranked #4 on Google for the term repossessions and #1 on Yahoo. This domain is a daily earner for us and should continue to climb."

Ok, lets see... If you visit DomainTools and do a whois search for that domain and look on the right at the "historical thumbnails" of that site.. It shows a Sedo parked page dated 11-04-2008... A little over three month's ago. The site was not developed. It was parked obviously. What gives??! Well... It was a straight out lie then. False information... Caught! They continue and finish their case study with the following conclusion "Repossessions.com is another example of developing a domain with keyword rich Seo optimized content to capitalize on searches and advertiser competition. Add our marketing process to speed up the rankings and you have a daily earner."

They didn't do any marketing. All of the seo and marketing was done by the previous owners. All Rick Latona and AEIOU did was slap together a worthless and spammy mini site and launch it. They try to make it sound like they did it a whole lot and make it so cool... When in fact, they didn't do zilch I bet you. It isn't the first time I've caught AEIOU hyping things up and straight out lying. But we won't get to it all... Just isn't enough time. It's all good. You see, everybody lies. Everybody has agendas. You will get taken for a ride if you don't do the research. You will get owned if you aren't cautious! Be smart...

But of course, everybody believes in Rick Latona.. He is like totally a Rockstar of the domain industry because he runs so many auctions and hot domain sales newsletters, blah blah... BS! He is no saint. Everybody lies... Rick posted over at his blog in November about selling the domain name "daytraders.com" to Jay Westerdal of NameTools.com --- a deal that never happened and one that will never happen. Rick still owns that domain name. Check the whois info.

Rick wrote on his blog "We decided to flip a coin over whether he got a screaming good deal or just a good deal. The value of the coin toss was $34,200. Of course, all of this was happening about four hours into a night on the town in Cairo. Neither of us had any business making that bet. I had suggested that we just flip once but Jay wanted to flip two-out-of-three. I lost the first toss then won the next two. Jay is now the proud owner of DayTraders.com for the still very reasonable price and low multiple of $84,200." Yea right... Good one. I am sure that got lots of peoples attention though and some added business for both and credibility for Rick. Sneaky...

Everybody lies... Everybody cheats. Even the industry's finest. There is no exception. If you look hard enough, you will find it. Do your own research guys, because there is always somebody out there looking to take you for a ride. Somebody who will game you in ways you didn't even imagine. Don't trust the hype. Trust facts. Trust what you see with your own two eyes. Rick Latona is a cool guy who runs pawnshops, offshore businesses, auctions and whatever else... But it just goes to show you that he is no different than anybody else.

Also neither Rick Latona or AEIOU know anything about proper domain mass development... They screw up the SEO. They leave traces. They don't even have a privacy policy setup, which is a requirement of Google AdSense. They setup websites which get your websites penalized by Google and also risk your AdSense account at getting terminated because of breaking the rules. Come on... Are people blind? I see newbies on forums swearing that Aeiou.com is the ultimate mini site domain development services... It's really not. Those same newbies claim to have been around on the internet since the 90's and they act, walk, talk like they know everything about domains, seo and development.

You can either believe the hype and sit on your lazy ass without lifting a finger, and pay Rick Latona and his crew hundreds of dollars for each site that in fact costs 1/5th or you can shop around... Look, for example if you want to develop 10 of your domains with AEIOU it will cost about $2,000 which already includes the discount... Or you can go and find yourself a real offshoring full web development company based in Romania, Russia or India who will do it for much less and do it right. They will create more relevant and unique content and do the proper search engine optimization and a much better job overall.

But no... People will rather sit on their ass and instead hope for something good to be handed to them on a silver platter. Yea right, it doesn't work like that my friends. So as you see.. You waited... Years... For exactly this kind of domain development mini site service to get launched by a hot shot who you can trust. In 2008, you got Rick Latona's service who launched at last and created lots of hype and saved the day. The eagerly awaited mini site development... You paid him hundreds, some paid thousands... You got a whole lot of nothing at the end. Burned through lots of money...And you know what? You deserve it. You need to learn that there will always be somewhere out there that will try to game you.

It can be a small timer... It can be an industry vet. It can be one of the top guys. It's business as usual. What you gonna do about it? What can you do? Nothing... All you can do is learn from your mistakes. There is a dozen more such services such as AEIOU that are ready to take you for a ride... Will you fall for them?! They promise you the world... They only want a little bit of your money and a few month's of your domains to be setup with their name servers... Ahh!! What to do? LOL. It's your decision... You should know what to do :) In every sales pitch there is a lot of good shit and bad shit. Solely your job to spot it.

I get dozens of requests and e-mails each and every week by all kinds of random people and companies, including newbies as well as some pretty well established domainers with excellent domain portfolios, some of them are faithful followers of the website, who contact me and the e-mails go something like "mike... i love your website...whats your paypal, i want you to develop 50 of my sites" or some just go like "mike, what is your paypal.. i been waiting for a service such as you talk about, lets get going" and so on. People ready to send over thousands of dollars. It's unbelievable. Who would ever thought?!

It's really something. I tell you. People who never seen any of my work. People who just read my website and are ready to go forward. Well, a lot of those people unfortunately are newbies who do not know any better. About 80% to 90% of all development requests that come in I turn down. I do not waste peoples time or money. If the domain name has no potential, I won't take on the project. I don't want to waste my own time on this stuff either. I care about peoples money. I want to see people succeed. I have morals.

A lot of other developers, of especially these "mini sites" don't give a crap about you. Even if you have the worst type of domains, whether they are trademarks or whether they are typos or just made up ones... They won't even say a word. They will gladly take your money, develop a crappy website, and tell you that "yes, it has potential... oh yes, its gonna rock" and so on. It's BS!! As service providers, sometimes you have to protect the clients from themselves because they do not know any better.

I've spent countless hours and offered many tips and advice to people who e-mail me and want to go the development route. If I turn them down, I still feel bad deep down inside for some reason and I would like to help them. I link them up to various other places and I educate them. I point things out. You think I care about making a few hundred bucks off of each order of development? A few thousand?! Do I really need it? I only work with a select few. Good and solid, straight up people. No BS. Serious businessmen.

I started this website in order to help people make sense of things and offer free advice. I provide a service because there is a need for it and I've been mass developing since before there ever was a market for mini sites. I was monetizing this type of setup way before it was even called MFA and before AdSense even existed. Sure, I run a business too, as everybody else... But I am not as ruthless as some of the people that will take your money and when you come to them when things don't work out all they have to say is "too bad" or "we tried." Me personally, I am not like that. I have some morals.

So Mr. Rick Latona, if you read this.. Why don't you keep your BS service to yourself, or if you want to keep peddling those crappy rapid minisites that are very risky and overcharge people for them that are against Google.com and Yahoo.com website standards as well as clear MFA sites, and bad attempts at that --- at least make a few improvements on the SEO end, get rid of all the traces at the footers, spread the websites across multiple web hosts and please tell it like it is mister bizzy biz. You are selling ticking time bombs. You just don't know it obviously because you are not a developer at heart... Or maybe you just don't care? If Google decides to do a clean sweep of all the thousands of crap sites you have setup... The AEIOU works are history!

Oh, and of course as a shameless plug... Anybody who still is a believer and supporter of those types of crappy mini sites that look like from 2002 (I call it like I see it) I will offer anybody who wants the famous Rick Latona style aeiou.com "rapid minisites" at a quantity of 10 or more at only $999/10 sites. Yup.. You get the same exact layout. The same exact content. The same exact non existent marketing and seo campaigns. For less than half the price!! Take the more than $1000 in savings thanks to my generosity and buy your self a membership at SEOmoz.org and SEObook.com and learn about search engine optimization and search marketing instead of always relying on others... You are welcome. PS --- Limited time offer! :)

I was going to review at least a few more of the "hottest" and most popular / top mini-site services when I sat down to write this but this write up has become quiet lengthy... It is time to wrap it up. Everybody else will be covered and reviewed on another day. I got my eye on you. Till' next time.... Ohh.. The top five reasons, How could I forget... But of course!! They are 1) BS 2) BS 3) Crap 4) Even more crap 5) BS + Crap = bad.

And for those wondering.. No, I never had any business dealings with Rick Latona, I don't have any grudges or bad experiences either... I think he is an OK guy --- never even an exchange of e-mails or a convo on a forum. I respect him... He's cool, but should be more careful. We all make mistakes. Everything can be fixed and improved. It is never too late.
 

robertsz

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What makes a good mini site in your opinion? Do they all come with original content? I have been thinking of opening up my own mini site portion of my design company. I don't really use templates, maybe for the tables" but my art work is always custom. What would be "worth" $250 for a mini site? Custom work? Content? # of pages? I have been meaning on asking these questions. I have been building my own "mini sites" for a few weeks applying the same techniques as I do for my custom job. I am working on one for a porn name now and have had 3 people ask me to design theirs. I offer some mini sites in the fitness industry like daniellerouleau.com. Maybe there is a need for a quality designer who can pump them out. My only concern is $ per hour. is $250 the max and is that a rare sale? Any info would be great. I am interested in this type of work. I am home extra hours now with a new baby and could easily crank them out.
 

mike031

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Wow. How low can you go.

stalker, stop stalking me and popping up with your one liners

if you have something constructive to add to the discussion --- say it

if you are only going to throw a fit and carry on with your BS

please do it elsewhere

nobody cares much to hear you ramble about the same BS

we have more important stuff to take care off

:yes::yes::yes::yes:
 

Theo

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So Mike you haven't used Rick Latona's services but you feel obliged to call him a liar and a scam artist.

I will tell you right now that when you say your penis is longer, be prepared to whip it out for measurement.

Post what you've developed.

And next time that you use my picture without permission I will be sending a C&D your way, so be prepared.
Unlike you, I don't make comments I can't back up.
 

mike031

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What makes a good mini site in your opinion? Do they all come with original content? I have been thinking of opening up my own mini site portion of my design company. I don't really use templates, maybe for the tables" but my art work is always custom. What would be "worth" $250 for a mini site? Custom work? Content? # of pages? I have been meaning on asking these questions. I have been building my own "mini sites" for a few weeks applying the same techniques as I do for my custom job. I am working on one for a porn name now and have had 3 people ask me to design theirs. I offer some mini sites in the fitness industry like daniellerouleau.com. Maybe there is a need for a quality designer who can pump them out. My only concern is $ per hour. is $250 the max and is that a rare sale? Any info would be great. I am interested in this type of work. I am home extra hours now with a new baby and could easily crank them out.

there is a market for everything and anything.

if you are serious about it, then sure -- you can make it work.

finding the right price points.... well, its not easy. do some research and ask around from people who may be interested

So Mike you haven't used Rick Latona's services but you feel obliged to call him a liar and a scam artist.

I will tell you right now that when you say your penis is longer, be prepared to whip it out for measurement.

Post what you've developed.

And next time that you use my picture without permission I will be sending a C&D your way, so be prepared.
Unlike you, I don't make comments I can't back up.

i have a set of eyes :)

i dont need to use rick's services in order to have a clear understanding of them

i've provided cold hard facts

what are you getting pissed off at anyways?

are you Rick Latona's personal assistant or aeiou forum representative or something?? how does this even concern you that you pop up here 5 mins after i post this ?!? jeez
 
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Theo

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Mike, I am not as concerned as you will be, after making all these colorful claims about Rick Latona.

"buyer beware", "...they lie", "BS service" etc.

You can post whatever you want, but when you make ludicrous claims that are unsubstantiated, get ready for some heavy rebuttal.
 

mike031

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Mike, I am not as concerned as you will be, after making all these colorful claims about Rick Latona.

"buyer beware", "...they lie", "BS service" etc.

You can post whatever you want, but when you make ludicrous claims that are unsubstantiated, get ready for some heavy rebuttal.

take 5 mins to read before you post your BS

but wait, you will rather live in LA LA land

you are hopeless

why do i even reply to you? :lol:

get a life loser and stop harassing me and stalking me because you are starting to get really annoying
 

Theo

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Have a good night Mike.
 

BLazeD

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You make interesting posts but they are too long
 

mike031

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You make interesting posts but they are too long

thanks??

btw, you know...

the best movies are kinda long

the best books are way wayyyy long

YOU need to read this stuff, its important, it concerns YOU

is 10 or 15 mins to read and understand something that long?? :asleep:
 

democrat

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thanks??

btw, you know...

the best movies are kinda long

the best books are way wayyyy long

YOU need to read this stuff, its important, it concerns YOU

is 10 or 15 mins to read and understand something that long?? :asleep:

I dont agree that we should call others out unless we have solid proof. Can you back up your claims?
 

mike031

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I dont agree that we should call others out unless we have solid proof. Can you back up your claims?

the claims are more than backed up if you read what i wrote :lol:
 

nicedomains

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Interesting post Mike. I enjoyed reading this view on aeiou, etc minisites. Not exactly sure if you are using this long controversial post to stimulate business to your mass dev service or really just informing the public on the negative aspects of aeiou, etc. I have had questions about the same quality of these types of sites. There had to be someone to capitalize on the minisite craze going on in this industry and Latona saw the opportunity and jumped on it. Of course as you pointed out his expertise probably is not in development. Considering this it is likely that he is unaware of all of the potential problems and quirks in his minisites. Does the blame fall on him for being ignorant? or on his dev team for being lazy? or both?

I am not a seo or dev expert myself so I won't be arguing whether all of the points raised in this article are valid, etc.. but I will be reading this thread closely.

Not sure what all the beef is btw Acro and OP but I have come to respect his domaining insight and I know lots of members around here do to so perhaps staying civil is a good idea. :thumb:
 

denny007

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I am not clicking his posts to read it (it is unreadable really) but for the discussion after that, which are fun.
 

MAllie

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Everybody lies... Everybody cheats. Even the industry's finest. There is no exception.

Well, I guess now you've warned us, lol.

But surely the application of a bit of commonsense will tell that someone offering seo content to the whole world can't make it unique for everyone. There are only so many ways of saying something. It would be the same for any of the professional writers with the New York Times or the New Yorker or any of the big papers anywhere. Very few things bear being said more than once, no matter how good the writer.

Unique content isn't to do with the content, but the way that it's put across. All you have to do is look up unique in the dictionary and you'll see why that is. But anyone who wants really unique content has to be prepared to pay for it. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And that's simple sucker101.
 

mike031

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Well, I guess now you've warned us, lol.

But surely the application of a bit of commonsense will tell that someone offering seo content to the whole world can't make it unique for everyone. There are only so many ways of saying something. It would be the same for any of the professional writers with the New York Times or the New Yorker or any of the big papers anywhere. Very few things bear being said more than once, no matter how good the writer.

Unique content isn't to do with the content, but the way that it's put across. All you have to do is look up unique in the dictionary and you'll see why that is. But anyone who wants really unique content has to be prepared to pay for it. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And that's simple sucker101.


effective SEO consists of;

1) good relevant and unique content (text, images, etc)

2) on-page seo (targeted keywords, proper page structure, urls, etc)

3) link building (confidence votes from other websites)

with mini-site development, it is all about SEO, as you are trying to tap into organic traffic

the content plays a small roll, really, and it isnt as important as #2 or #3 above as mentioned, it helps... sure... but you have a good point there... it doesnt make or break it tho

waht does, is the SEO

having the PROPER search engine optimization is what will determine whether your page is on the first page of google, within the top 5 or 10 results or whether it is buried somewhere at 50 - 100

you have to sell the website to google first, and once they like it, they will do all the upselling for u... google will sell the website to all its visitors.. so will yahoo and msn

makes sense? ;)
 
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