Mini-Sites Compared
After all the interest recently in the domainer community on development vs. parking and then seeing several (dozens...) of companies popping up offering up rapid development services I decided to try a few out and make some comparisions. It should be noted that I have put together sites of my own , such as iPhone App Reviews which receives 1000's of pageviews a day but I really did not consider myself a real developer but thought I could probably be able to evaluate some of the techniques used for SEO and site development.
For comparison purposes I evaluated AEIOU.com which provides a 5 page mini-site using either Wordpress or a PHP based template for $250 (discounts available for volume purchases). I also tested the services provided by the Estibot.com team which provided a 5 page site (using Wordpress) for $99 and then a very low cost provider off the namepros.com forum which provided a 5 page site (HTML) for $39 dollars. Oh yeah, and I thought I would compare results to a few pages I built using the very easy to use Prosense theme for Wordpress with articles outsourced, total cost of each lsite ess than 50 dollars but requires a bit more work on my part.
By reviewing the product that should be received from each of the companies it sounded like the AEIOU.com and Estibot.com services should be very much alike but the random forum developer would be less so, so I thought this would be a good test of "get what you pay for".
We will start with the low cost provider, I must first say the individual did a very good job communicating and was very open to making changes, asking what topics I wanted, etc but one difference is that no link-building was included in the package. That was ok since I was really comparing low cost vs. high cost. The sites I had built by the low cost mini-site provider were:
Moms.org.uk Pregancy Tips
WomensBikeShorts.com Womens Bike Shorts
OnlineGraduateClasses.com Online Graduate Degrees
Although the sites looked reasonably good for the cost I was rather disappointed in the content, specifically on WomensBikeShorts.com. I had to re-write quite a bit just to make it readable but stopped after a bit since the whole purpose was to test the site as is from the developer. If you have to rewrite most of the site its not really worth your time to purchase it, defeats the purpose.
Also, there was quite a bit of SEO work that had to be completed although that was said to be included, tags had to be moved around, words were not spaced, etc. That had to be fixed as well. All in all I found you do get what you pay for. I would not use the service again although I want to be clear that the actual customer service provided was actually superb.
The estibot.com service was basically the same as AEIOU.com for a much lower cost, I had 2 minisites done:
MexicanVacationSpot.com Mexico Vacation Spots
HDTVTelevision.net HDTV Reviews
Both these sites looked reasonably good for the cost, the content was good compared to the $39 dollar sites but the frontpage content of HDTVTelevision.net was weak. I had originally planned on using the included hosting but determined quickly that I would not have the ability to truly use Wordpress as I would be able to on my own server or be able to get the stats I like to use from Cpanel. This is not their fault really but just something to be noted.
After installing the sites it was found pretty quickly that they had the the wrong keywords in most of the pages of the site, people that are not savvy with code at all would not of found these errors since they would not know where to look for various tags and other items. There were a few other items that had to be corrected. But once again, the support was superb.
Now for AEIOU.com, they are the higher cost provider but in comparison have, in my mind, had the best looking sites of the rapid mini-site services, so I thought it would be worth a try. The first sites I had developed were:
BransonMo.net Branson Mo
PortIsabelTexas.com Port Isabel Tx
Out of all the services the sites were the closest to being spot on out of the box. Although some of the content is a little generic you could tell the keywords had been researched and used accordingly. I do think the way the titles had been setup originally was probably not optimal for SEO and I have since corrected this after allowing for time to test. That was the least amount of work required between the (3) paid services.
I have deployed plenty of my own mini-sites using Wordpress, a few examples are:
BiometricFlashDrives.com Biometric Flash Drives
PensacolaBeach.me Pensacola Beach Fl
ifones.com iPhone Apps
Obviously these require more work on my part, but at the end of the day this is all based on ROI, so the question becomes is my time worth it or is it worth it to outsource?
So, after letting these sites sit for a bit of time the results are pretty straightforward. The 2 sites I have listed above from AEIOU.com have received better results in Google, and inturn have received much better returns in ad revenue. PortIsabelTexas.com actually ranks first page in Google for many terms that would be considered prime for this name.
The close 2nd is actually the sites that I developed on my own, ifones.com is more than a minisite so probably should not be used as a comparison but PensacolaBeach.me and BiometricFlashDrives.com could be considered a direct comparison. They both receive comparable results to the AEIOU.com sites and better results than the other services.
All that said though, the question becomes could you spend the saved money from the Estibot.com service and use that for linkbuilding to get the same results as AEIOU.com gets? Maybe so.
AEIOU.com does a great job sending a report after the linkbuilding is done, I do not want to give up any of their internal details but will say they use several different long lasting link techniques that seem to work.
I have purchased more sites from AEIOU.com:
DrugAbuse.net Drug Abuse
MathBooks.net Math books
I have not had the sites up long enough to judge results. Based on their past results I felt strongly enough to be a repeat customer. Note that I do not have any sort of relationship with them other than being a customer and a purchaser of a name from Rick Latona.
Moving forward I will be doing a mix of personally developed sites and AEIOU.com. Feel free to comment with your own thoughts.
Thanks for the article, nice work on your part and that of AEIOU.com. Many domainers are in a position to park the many hundred/thousands of names in our portfolios,so it’s great to see the results that small web sites can provide. Besides, setting up a small informative site holds greater value in the long run.
Thanks Jason. Although the majority of my names are still parked I am pushing to get most of them developed in some form. The goal for the year is to get to 50 percent developed to parked ratio. I think many domainers are headed that direction in some way or another.
Great reviews, thanks for sharing.
I’m wondering if there are any other companies out there. Personally I wouldn’t want to pay over $149 ish for a quality mini-site.
If I outsource all the components I can get a mini-site done for about $80-$90 which includes content, header and simple design. Only downside to me outsourcing I usually have to rewrite the content and it doesn’t come with SEO.
Here is an example of one that I wrote about, http://chefpatrick.com/project-pokerturtle/
Thanks Patrick. There are other options and I plan on at least testing the waters a bit with a few but right now , for the most part, the plan is AEIOU.com and partial outsource depending on name and plans for the site.
I have several that are going through a much larger development process that would not be considered mini-sites. Will post on those towards the end of April.
I have not gone in this direction really yet, except for 1 name at AEIOU and some at Whypark.com However, after reading DNJournal.com cover story for March, I was curious what experience people have had at the following companies below and how would you rate them overall from best to worst:
AEIOU.com
WannaDevelop.com
DevHub.com
Why Park.com
SiteGraduate.com
Tinbu.com
Thanks, Jim
I noticed another mini site creator type site popped up. minisites.com
Anyone have any experience with them?
I am sure they are worth a test. Their top package is more than I pay with my current preferred provider but for comparision purposes it probably good to give them a shot.
Hey Bruce, big applause for the effort and putting together a review story of your experiences.
For anyone that is developing their domain and are not completely satisfied with their current providers of third-grade content and ugly site designs that are floating in the domaining world. I would recommend services i found on
NicheonDemand.com,
you will get a fully loaded mini-site
. a gorgeous site design giving you credibility
. eBook with PLR
. fresh content
. seamless integration
. SEO
. squidoo lenses + more……
all for the same price you are paying for amateur, imagination-lacking minisites
and for those who are bitching about mini-site development shortcomings, better services already exist
anyways, good luck with your developments
Joseph
@Joesph – Many thanks for the kind words, you know we love you at NOD!
@Bruce – This is a great little study you did here, I genuinely enjoyed the read! While there are tons of “mini site” companies that will help you develop old (and new) domains to diversify your online real estate portfolio, it is unfortunate that plenty of them do nothing more than produce web space which “lacks” across several important areas – design and layout being one of them!
After all, people usually make up their mind about a website within the first 20 seconds, and a site that looks “current” and clean will definitely hold traffic better than one which looks dated and spammy.
cheers!
Classifieds, not sure how i missed your comment, there are many different services out there, wish i had the time to test them all. Thanks for the heads up on niche on demand.
Elijah, Thanks for the comment on the read. I will take a look at nicheondemand.com, will shoot you a message if i decide to give it a try!
Thanks guys!
Bravo – These articles and resources just keep getting better and better…
What a great job that you did on testing a few of the big and no names for your development needs. I know that everyone that has a portfolio of significant size is looking into development.
Keep up the great reviews! The only regret is that these resources had been around 10+ years ago when I started to pick up domains at $79 a pop. I’m glad that I did- however, today but it would have been nice to have them all developed and ranked!