Mini Site Alternative

If like me you have many domains and not enough time, especially for the smaller domains then you may be interested in a service I have been testing out recently. aeiou.com offer a complete mini site package for $250. As always you can do most things cheaper yourself but if your time is better served elsewhere then it’s certainly something to consider rather than let a good domain sit with nothing on it.

Insurance

Just to be clear I am not affiliated with aeiou or have anything to do with them, I tested out their service for 3 of my domains, mobile phone tariffs, credit insurance and comprehensive insurance. All good domains and too good to leave until I got round to doing somthing with them.

aeiou take the domain, a note of your adsense ID and work on their own initiative which is appealing, you can see they stick to the same basic layout which is to be expected but it’s pretty clean and not bad looking, they create a few articles of information and put the site together in a zip file and send it to you usually withing a couple of days, they can also host the site for you if you wish.

One other thing which adds a lot of value is that they get it indexed with a few links

The marketing portion of our development process is really the driving force behind why Rapid Site Development works. Not only do we build a custom site focused on your target keywords, but we also go out and set the foundation for a lifetime of additional traffic for your site.

They could do with a few tips on seo and I know it can be done cheaper but I feel it’s pretty good value for money and certainly better than leaving some good domains on the development list for a later date so a thumbs up from me, I expect to see more services like this being offered in the coming months as it’s an area in the market that has huge potential but is relatively untapped at present.

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. This sounds like an excellent service for me, Al. I have a couple of domain names which are completely unused and lying there doing nothing - literally nothing.

    Following your advice, I suppose this may be a good way to monetise the mini-site into something that turns into income. Definitely very useful indeed.

    Before I really jump into the wagon, Al is there any other advices that you could possibly give me, as what is the turnover, considering the amount you paid for the service, hosting and domain name?

  2. I’d probably say
    1/ Stop calling me Al :) ;)

    2/ These are brand new so I will post after a while to see how quickly I can get a R.O.I. they do say they are designed to get your money back within 12 months.

  3. I like the idea of a service like this but as you mention I find that $250 is a bit to much to pay for a website template with (a gestimate would be) 800 words in total.

    If they have a just small system in place this should not take them much more than 2 hours at the most… which would be a fair hourly rate.

    But I agree that if you simply do not have the time then it might be worth it.

    Mikael’s last blog post..What is the Best Free Onpage SEO Checker Tool?

  4. If the linkbuilding is any good then I agree.

    However “linkbuilding” as in “get the site indexed” doesn’t require more than a simple link on a indexed scraper blog (not that I’m saying that it is what they do).

    I’ll look forward to your update on this. ;)

    Mikael’s last blog post..What is the Best Free Onpage SEO Checker Tool?

  5. The service definitely sounds interesting. What kind of linkbuilding do they do for the site?

  6. I don’t think they do any special link building at this price.

  7. I also have numurous domains laying around collecting dust. But $250 for this is imho too steep.

    I’d rather pay for 6 articles at $5-$10 each. Use a free template and pimp it with a $1 - $2 headerphoto from istockphoto. Insert 5 articles and use 1 article that I spin manualy in ArticleMarketingAutomation to get the backlinks. Use a few social bookmarking sites to get even more linking and indexing done. Maybe even throw in some Linkvana links.

    Total outsourcing cost $75 max. Time spent myself about 1 hour

    An other backholder for me is the fact that even they take such a high price they also want to leave their footprint on your site.

    Using that footprint I did a google search for “Domain Development by AEIOU.COM” and found a lot of sites done by them and all look the same. The backlinks according to yahoo site explorer are a few social bookmarking sites (a lot of mister wong’s, mixx and folkd) and directories with an occasional ezinearticle. Checked about 30 of them and none have more then 50 links while most even have no more then 20 incomming external links.

    If you are willing to pay $250 for this kind of work…. Can I do all your domains and charge you $225 :)

    Edwin’s last blog post..ArticleMarketingAutomation - The New Way of Article Marketing?

    • The footer link is pretty easy to change, I agree and stated it’s not cheap, I know of cheaper options and some in development, I can see more of these offerings on a larger scale coming through at the start of next year with better pricing.

  8. For those with a lack of time then this is a great service - but in my opinion a little steep in terms of price.

    I understand the importance of keeping a website live but have those sites generated any income for you whatsoever?

    I’d recommend doing things this way - build the site content yourself (save £125) then put up some banners that pay you for displaying them on your site. Typically you’ll earn £20 per website / per month from banner ad networks such as the ad network and/or matched.

    Add it up - Over the year you’ll have saved £125 for doing the 800 words of content AND earnt £240 for displaying the banner ads. Repeat times 10 and that’s over £3500 a year!

  9. I agree, $250 is steep for these cookie cutter pages. I think that they should be able to build some decent links if they could leverage together all the sites that they are doing and create a link web.

    Ghillie Suit Guy’s last blog post..What does one (1) lb of jute look like?

  10. That’s kind of expensive. I’m sure you can find people doing this for around 100 bucks. On DP or stuff like that…

    • You can also find 100 people on DP that will take $100 and do nothing or try pass off dup content.

      • I’ve done good deals with people on DP, so I’ll have to argue with you there. If you’re careful and research their previous work, you can find great people :)

        Anyway, as someone else said, i too am thinking of starting a similar offer for a better price. This might even be a good money making solution :P

        Andrei’s last blog post..25 styles of blogging

  11. Just to add on to some of the comments above, I believe the main cost comes from the banner design and theme design. Getting people from DP might be cheaper, however, there could be cases of unreliable people soliciting on the net. How much are you willing to trust the person? Even trader rep can have you fooled.

    Keith’s last blog post..Mollom - Spam Comments Exterminator

  12. So how are those domains, which you gave to aeiou, doing?

  13. Thanks for the pointer, Scott

    I contacted them about a domain I just registered but don’t have time at the moment to develop. Will see what they come back with - though I’d hope to make my money back sooner than 12 months!

    Cheers, Jon

    Jon’s last blog post..Salon Logos, Salon Websites - Free design inspiration

  14. I was looking at mobilephonetariffs.co.uk and I have to say it looks good for that price. Definitely worth the money in my opinion.

  15. I contacted them and didn’t hear anything back.

    However, I hate writing content for these mini sites, so I’d prefer to contract the writing separately and work on the template design myself (which I enjoy more). So my saving is on time doing something I don’t usually enjoy.

    Having RSI is a major limitation though, so I need to focus on more outsourcing where possible.

    Daniel Harrison’s last blog post..Useful Skills for Making Money Online

  16. I’ve used them too and think it’s a reasonable service for the price. If someone can reliably and professionally offer a better service for less then I’d give it a try too.

    It’s easy to say that you should do it all yourself but that doesn’t scale if you want to get a site on a whole bunch of domains.

  17. I too would be interest if someone can offer a similar service at a better price. Six months ago the rate would have been more acceptable but now the rate between the $ and £ has dropped it’s less appealing.

    I may just stick WordPress on some unused domains and try and outsource the content / link building parts elsewhere as an alternative for now.

    Darren’s last blog post..BetNOW Mobile Betting - Bet on your mobile - Upto £50 in free bets

  18. Can anyone recommend a good alternative for this service?

    Or just a cheap link building service that could help to start building the traffic. I can work with the designs and content myself.

    Javier’s last blog post..Cheap Scooter: Who Said Affordability and Functionality Do Not Get Along?

  19. I have used them for a couple of domains and they’re very good at it. They were created and delived within a short timespan. Definitely a keeper!

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