AEIOU update

Small update on sites I had done by aeiou.com

There seems to have been a little bit of controversy with a huge rant here & reply by Rick here on his minisite service. I posted my thoughts before and promised an update. 

Firstly, it’s not meant to be development, it’s a quick and lazy way to get a domain indexed and possibly ranking for non competitive terms, from the few I have had done some do rank - for me this gives them more credibility when looking to lease the domain out, if it’s ranking for it’s name it just makes it easier. It’s not something you can do with 1000 domains with no type in traffic and expect a return, for me it’s a start to leasing domains or building on them later.

One of the domains I used aeiou.com for ranked top 5 within 2 months, it wasn’t a competitive term so no major feat but exactly what I wanted. I then leased the domain to an end user for £100 per month who took over the site and put their own website on it, this wasn’t a waste of time, it helped me get the domain to where I wanted it- to an end user. The domain cost £1500, minisite about £170 and now I get £100 per month back so a safe return on my investment for little work and the domain is put to proper use.

One major point I want to make, it seems like loads of people like to comment on how you can get the same for less, that it’s overpriced, I decided to let others try it then and I offered to let 2 people do them cheaper if they felt $250 was overpriced, neither of them delivered anything. It’s always easier to comment than to take action. So as an option to not doing anything I think it’s a good option, if you have time and inclination your better of doing the work yourself, it’s not a one size fits all.

Should also point out Kieron offers a service for content & linkbuilding at ContentNow which I have yet to try out but hope to at some point so would welcome any feedback if you have used that.

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. I read both those threads right through. I must admit I thought $250 was expensive for a couple of pages and a template I could get for free.

    Short term if you’ve got the cash and not the time fair enough though.

  2. I know that you don’t get a lot for your money but I’ve been very tempted to use them simply because I don’t have the time to develop much myself.

    The website states “We developed the system to run at a conservative 1 year ROI.”

    Scott, I would be really interested to know if that seems realistic given the ones that you tried?

    Cheers

    • On domains with no real type in traffic I would say not Rich, it could be used to start a site to get it going for when you can build on it at a later date, but for many/most with no traffic domains you would not get a full return in 12 months.

  3. I think that aeiou.com is an interesting service, and they definitely have value. Probably a great way to get started on a site, where you develop later.

    Dan @ PowerDosh.com’s last blog post..Feedburner Unverified Email Subscriber Tool

  4. I think gocompare.com use contentnow.co.uk since one of my domains received an email from them asking to put some content on my site with a link back to theirs.

    Not used them from the client side though.

  5. Thanks for the mention Scott, much appreciated. If you or anyone else wants to see some examples of our content then please just drop me a line to info at contentnow.co.uk.

    Cheers!

  6. Put it this way you will never make a lot parking unless you get lots of type in traffic or rank for a term which gets a decent amount of traffic. BUt I must admit I like your idea of putting your domain on AEIOU to gain credibility and a little bit of traffic - that’s a good move.

    Brandon Walker’s last blog post..Daily Planet - Best WordPress Themes

  7. This is indeed the right decision, it will help to achieve good results in a short time and with minimal costs.

  8. Flawless logic in this I feel, having a functioning domain of some sort is much more sellable. It’s the same principle as when people prepare or stage their home for a viewing to help sell it 🙂 Or a car dealer gets you to sit in the car, you have to lead the mind of the buyer.

  9. I can certainly see the appeal of this type of service, saves time, gets things up and running quickly and in this case has worked flawlessly resulting in a passive income stream.

    So far as linkbuilding - I have a site I will start putting some money into and am looking into paying for a linkbuilding campaign.

    Content i will take care of myself but does anyone have any strong recommendations on where to find best value for money?

  10. $250 for aeiou.com is surely expensive for a free template, 5 page content and some links.

    I can try your challenge to get this done for less than $250. Its very easy.

    If you want to try, pls drop me an E-mail.

  11. For me the creation of the site and some content is relatively simple. I can just throw up a wordpress install with a nice theme in minutes, then pay a writer for a few articles.

    The harder part is finding the relevant links to start getting some ranking for the domain.

    Justin Cook’s last blog post..When digital theft is a good thing!

  12. I read both the ‘rant’ and ‘counter rant’, which made for quite a good read! Really at the end of the day if the client is happy with the service provided and the price then I cant see what the problem is.

    John Essex’s last blog post..Preparing for a Loft Conversion

  13. I feel that this is a great way to get customers to rank immediately, rather than building from scratch, so I’m all for it. It will not be to everybodies liking though, that much is obvious…

  14. I had a think about this myself, then decided to at least generate a simple template for my own use.

    I’ve got WordPress MU installed with a simple theme, meaning I just have to create a little content and some backlinks and I’ve got something going. The theme is just like the aeiou one, but without a header image and I can adjust the colours in the wordpress admin panel for each site.

    Example: Decking Materials

    Dave Marshall’s last blog post..Url Shortener in CodeIgniter

  15. It honestly seems like a good service. I don’t know if I would personally use it, but I can definitely see it’s benefit. Yeah, you could do it yourself for free, but this will save you time and let you do something with a domain that is doing nothing. It’s a temporary solution, but still cool. If I had money, I’d try it.

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