Thoughts On The AEIOU.com Minisite Business Closure

I usually shy away from any sort of reporting that has been hit by several others but in this case I wanted to at least say a bit since I have had some level of success with some of my AEIOU.com sites.

First off I think people are missing what happened, no one said Minsites do not work as a way to add some added value and traffic to a domain as compared to parking. What Rick Latona said was that there was no money in selling them for 200 dollars. Big difference, if you think about the cost of having someone manually create the site, do the link building, write all the content and then manage the customer there was not much margin left in it.

What Rick did say is that they are continuing to use the resources to create sites for their in-house needs. I am not sure what Rick is finding, but I personally have had some really nice deals done after someone made an offer through one of my sites.

For me minisites are the first step to real development and in many cases can be used to augment a larger development.That is how I use them today, they are not the prime business, they augment and enhance a larger project.

I personally would not put a lot of time into manually creating a site step by step, I always look for ways to automate the process which drives cost out. There are somethings in the minisite process that can be automated but there are still a couple steps that are not automated (quality link building, quality content). But if you have the content then finding an automated creation system is the key. That is the only way to make it cost effective.

I have recently did a couple just for fun, just to test a few things, but in reality the time involved will only be profitable if the domain would sell through the site. If you value your time then you have to factor that in and PPC revenue for most minisites will not make up for time spent. Although, if you are using the minisite as part of a larger plan then the PPC is not a factor and the value can be judged differently.

It is no secret that my main focus is full scale development but there is a need for a smaller scale development option, but as Rick Latona found, it is not worth it if he has to sell them at 200 and make slim margins. This is a niche industry so making it up on volume is not an option.

My biggest problem is finding the affiliate links and taking them out now.....

Kudos to Rick for standing up and telling people the truth. Smart move.