Target Market

Before you tell me how many uniques, visitors, and page views you get, tell me a little about your site and your visitors.  What do you typically write about?  What type of visitor do your articles attract?  If you get 50k uniques a month, but they aren’t my target market, I couldn’t care less.  Get a little bit more creative than “My site is a blog about the domain industry, and it is read by domainers.”  In our case, we are looking for intermediate to advanced domainers with quality portfolios.

For example, if I were trying to sell ad space to Bido on PushToAuction.com, I would tell Sahar or Jarred how my visitors are very targeted to active domain sellers looking to start an auction on Sedo, and advertising on my site would present an opportunity to take business away from them.  Also, my site attracts a lot of domain buyers looking for low-cost domains starting at $60.  Since his starting price is $28, PushToAuction.com could send him a lot of active bidders as well.  This would probably get their attention.

Look at my site, see what I’m selling, what my prices are, etc.  If you have a site that teaches newbies on a shoestring budget how to hand register domains, are your visitors going to buy our mini sites?  Probably not, it is most likely too expensive of an investment.  If you write a lot of articles about WordPress and how to build your own mini sites, are your visitors going to buy our product?  Probably not, the DIY crowd that has some level of technical knowledge would rarely pay someone to do it for them.  If you write about how mini sites do not work… well that should be a no-brainer.  If your visitors won’t convert for me, they are worth $0.

If you start your email by broaching this subject, you’ve got my attention.  You added a personal touch, and took the time to show me that you understand what my needs are, and that you can deliver.  If I feel like I’m one of 20 people that was BCC’ed on your email, I’m less likely to continue reading.

Site Analytics

Ok, I’m still reading your email, so the next important question is how much traffic you are getting.  Be prepared to show me screen shots of your analytics, and not just from the current month.  Unless you are a big name domainer, don’t expect me to trust stats that you type into the email… I want screen shots or a PDF.  Don’t make me ask for it, or I’ll just assume it isn’t good news and move on.

I want to see that you not only have traffic this month, but that you have had traffic consistently over a reasonable period of time.  I don’t care if you had 10k uniques this month when you had 1k uniques last month, and 2k uniques the month before that.  I want to know that while I am advertising on your blog, you are going to continue making new posts and driving consistent traffic so my ad gets the expected number of impressions.  If you don’t get consistent traffic, don’t base your price on your highest month.

If you just launched your site a month ago, either price yourself very low, or don’t ask me for a long commitment.  I’m not going to pay for 4 months in advance when you only have one month of traffic to back it up.  How do I know you’re going to keep posting next month, unless I’ve seen you posting month, after month, after month?  I don’t, so I’m not going to make a long-term commitment, and I’m probably not going to buy at all unless you’re not asking for much.

Also, I want to know your bounce rate and the average time on site.  Why?  Because if you’re getting 10k uniques a month, and 80% click away in less than 5 seconds, is my ad getting seen?  Not by as many as it sounds like.  Page views don’t tell you much if half of them are coming from 5% of your readers, and almost everyone else is bouncing.  I would also like to know how many new visitors you are getting each month.  This isn’t important for getting me to advertise, but it is very important for getting me to sign a long commitment.  If you are attracting a lot of new visitors every month, I’m going to keep advertising with you month after month.

If your analytics or ad serving software does not give you data about outbound clicks, get a new one.  Use Google Ad Manager, it will tell you this data for each ad spot you have available.  If you can tell me not only how many impressions I can expect, but also how many clicks, you have my undivided attention.

Pricing

This is without a doubt the most important part of the whole pitch, because all the information you provide above is what justifies the price.  If I’m still on the hook at this point, you’ll lose me quickly by asking for an absurd price.  But how do you determine what I might be willing to pay?

First, find out where I already advertise on domain industry sites.  Email those site owners insinuating that you might want to advertise on their blog, ask for their rates, traffic stats, and try to determine their audience on your own.  Some have an advertising page with prices and analytics, use that when available.  If they say they don’t have any slots, still ask for the info saying you might be willing to get on a waiting list if the numbers make sense.  Let’s say I advertise on XYZ.com which gets comparable traffic to your site, and has a similar audience.  It is a fair assumption that for the same price, I would be willing to advertise on your site.  I would not be willing to pay double that, so don’t ask.  If you have higher traffic, or a more targeted audience, or a better reputation, I’d probably be willing to pay more.

Second, find out what my alternatives are.  Especially if I contacted you, I am probably contacting other blog owners.  Do the same thing as above on sites I am not advertising on.  If a competing site has more traffic than you, a better audience, and is asking $150/month, do you think I’m going to pay you $300/month when I could just go to the other site?  If you already know what the other sites are asking, you can price yourself accordingly and earn my business.  Although you may not realize it, other domain bloggers are your competitors when it comes to selling ad space.  Find out what it takes to beat them.

Finally, see if I am advertising in Adwords.  In this case, I am not, because we already rank #1 in organic results for our important terms.  Let’s pretend for a second that I am advertising in Adwords though.  Why does this matter?  Because you can find out, with pretty good accuracy, what a visitor is worth to me.  Get started by going to Google and searching for a keyword phrase that I would be likely to bid on… let’s say “mini sites” without quotes.  Note what position I show up in for the sponsored search results (since I’m not there, let’s pretend I’m #1).

Most people get CPC (cost per click) data from GAKT (Google Adwords Keyword Tool), but this isn’t precise enough for what you are about to do.  Behold, the little-known, but extremely useful GATES (Google Adwords Traffic Estimator Sandbox).  In part 1. you enter in a keyword phrase with quotes around it (i.e. – “mini sites”) to get the exact-match data.  In part 4c. you select “All Countries and Territories” because it is a term that isn’t really specific to one country, and click Add.  Click continue.

On the next screen, you will see some very useful data.  To be in spots 1-3 in Google’s sponsored search results, I would need to be bidding between $0.54 and $0.75 per click.  Because I’m in the #1 position (in our pretend scenario), I’m likely paying in the upper part of that range, somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.68 to $0.75 per visitor.  What does that mean for you?  Let’s say you’re a very savvy developer that used Google Ad Manager, and you know how many clicks each of your ads get… for the sake of argument the slot you’re trying to sell me gets 200 clicks a month on average.  That slot would likely be worth between $136 and $150 per month to me (0.68 * 200 and 0.75 * 200).  If you don’t know how many clicks your ads get, try asking someone that already advertises with you how many clicks they got… they’ll be happy to tell you (either because they were disappointed, or elated).

Let’s say for a minute that I am in the Google sponsored results, but in the #5 position.  What do you do now?  On the GATES tool that you were just looking at, play around with the Max CPC until the “Estimated Ad Positions” has 5 in the range.  In the “mini sites” example, you would have to decrease the Max CPC all the way down to $0.26 to get the Estimated Ad Positions to be 4-6, and the Estimated Avg. CPC at that point is between $0.12 and $0.26.  Because 5 is in the middle of the range of positions, I’m probably paying somewhere in the middle of the CPC range, maybe $0.19 per click.  Multiply that by the 200 clicks your ad slot generates per month, and I might be willing to pay about $38/month for your ad spot.  That may not actually be true though, which is why it’s important to also see what blogs I’m advertising on, and how much that costs me.

Conclusion

When approaching someone to sell them ad space, or when you get approached, do your homework.  Try to determine who they would likely be targeting, and if your site can deliver those visitors.  Present thorough statistics for several months, maybe 6 to 12.  Finally, do some leg work to try to figure out what they would likely be willing to pay for your ad space based on your competitors rates, and their Adwords spend.  All ad buyers might not be this demanding, but even if they aren’t, it will be harder to reject your pitch when you have priced your ad slot fairly, and justified the price with analytics and information about your audience.  Do yourself a favor and use software to serve your ads, it will give you extremely valuable data on the number of impressions and clicks which will help you back up your price.

Selling ad space isn’t like selling a domain name.  You’re not trying to extract as much as possible out of the buyer.  You’re trying to offer them a fair price and a good value, so they can justify buying from you month after month.  If you get greedy and charge 2x what your ad space is worth because you think you can get away with it, even if you sell it for one month, I guarantee they won’t be back the next month.  Would you rather have $300 once, or $150 a month for a year or more?  Eventually you’re going to run out of people willing to overpay, and your sponsors section will be empty.  Look to build long-term relationships.

Several people then chimed in with comments saying mini sites are nothing but glorified MFA sites, that full-scale development is the only way to go, and so on.  As most of you know, I co-founded MiniSites.com.  I replied to his post with examples of our own development projects since Rick keeps saying how much he loves stats and numbers, and that everything else is BS.  Neither of my comments made it through though.

I occasionally hear people say that a mini site won’t get love from the search engines because they are too thin, but it is clear that those bemoaning the poor performance of mini sites obviously don’t know how to pull them off, or they used a provider that cuts corners and doesn’t do a good job.  Here are some examples of sites we developed along with their ranking in Google, exact monthly search frequency, and number of competing pages.  As you will see these are high-competition terms:

• Motorsports.com (#3 – 27,100 – 15.2 million)
• Housekeeper.com (#4 – 22,200 – 6.47 million)
• Sitter.com (#5 – 8,100 – 20.8 million)
• Wrenches.com (#5 – 22,200 – 3.36 million)
• Bifocal.com (#6 – 6,600 – 1.1 million)
• RestlessLegSyndrome.com (#9 – 60,500 – 746,000)
• Bicycle.com (#11 – 550,000 – 42.5 million)
• Haberdashery.com (#6 – 33,100 – 892,000)
• PetSitter.com (#6 – 9,900 – 1.95 million)
• PaternityTest.com (#9 – 22,200 – 1.85 million)
• BabysitterJobs.com (#9 – 18,100 – 3.53 million)
• MagicShops.com (#7 – 6,600 – 63.4 million)
• DesignerEyewear.com (#5 – 5,400 – 2.95 million)

Do you REALLY think that Google would rank these high-competition terms on their first page if they thought they were too thin and useless?  Get a clue.  You think those rankings are impressive?  You should see what happens with long-tails that have low competition… the search engines love them so much it would blow your mind.

I hear people complaining that mini sites are too expensive… well you get what you pay for and then some.  I know people who have paid $10k+ for consulting from an SEO expert and usually don’t even get first page results… well the people above paid $350 for first page results and a solid web site to get them started.

The problem is that 95% of domainers have never done serious development and have no clue what it costs, and they all expect instant gratification.  I’ve seen people pay $5k for a good site design, $500 for a good logo, $10k+ for SEO services, mid $xx,xxx for a custom backend, etc.  $350 is dirt cheap for the results you get.  Many of our clients are getting thousands of uniques from search engines a month on domains that had never even been in the index before.  If you know how to turn those extra visitors into dollars through direct banner sales, affiliate programs, and lead gen, you’ll make that $350 back in a month with interest.  In fact, I’ll go into some traffic stats for you.

So far we’ve developed a little more than 200 sites, most of which are not in the same league as the category-killers listed above.  Across that network of sites in August, there were 100,046 uniques, 164,813 visitors, and 320,666 page views.  That’s not bad for a handful of “useless” mini sites.  Averaging 500 uniques per month, 65% return rate, and 1,600 page views per site is a sign of the quality we put out there.

Let’s compare that to DevHub who just recently boasted hitting 1.1 million total visitors in 6 months with more than 25,000 active members.  Even if we assume that each active member has just one domain in their account (most likely more), they got an average of 44 visitors (1.1M / 25k) per site over that six month period.  In five months, we got 470,656 visitors, which across 200 sites is 2,352 visitors per site on average.

So are mini sites dead?  Well, I guess that would depend on what provider you’re using… Google seems to like our work by rewarding it with great rankings.  Other people who mass develop sites and cut costs and corners might be a dying breed, but doing things right will never go out of style.  We provide unique, relevant content which Google loves, solid designs, and we give you the ability to expand on our creation, adding pages, forums, etc. to make the site even more sticky.

We have clients with 60-75 mini sites on the same Adsense account and have never had a problem.  I’m guessing Rick was using AEIOU which didn’t used to put a Privacy Policy (against TOS), and is very spammy with their Adsense placement, and that’s why he got the boot.  Only Adsense knows for sure though.

However, if you want to quickly get a glimpse of the traffic across your entire network of sites (maybe to give to prospective advertisers or investors), your only option is to click on each domain individually and create a spreadsheet.  There is one script I found called AWStats Totals, but it seems to assume your AWStats directory is in a public_html (or www) folder that can be viewed directly.  In most cases, AWStats is installed in a directory below that, and you can only access the logs from cPanel.  Also, it seems insanely hard to configure.

So after searching for the better part of an hour to find a script that would work for my hosting configuration, I decided it would be quicker to just write one myself.  You start out by selecting a month and a year.  It then logs into your cPanel to get a list of all “addon domains”, then logs in to the stats pages one at a time, collects the information, and then displays it on the screen with totals at the bottom.  I’m not sure how many setups this will work on, but you should be fine if you have cPanel on the x3 theme, and a current version of AWStats.

Configuration is very simple, just enter your cPanel username and password, and your primary domain name, and you’re good to go.

Hope this helps someone…

PHP script to view stats for all domains combined in AWStats.

So let’s take a look at the “new” product lineup at AEIOU v2:

The Squeeze Page

This is just a new name for the old “1 Pager”.  Nothing has really changed, still a 1 page mini site with a simple contact form.  Squeeze pages have been used in affiliate marketing and lead gen for many years.  This is the same as our Micro site.

The Info Site

This is just a new name for their “Rapid Mini Site”.  It is still just a 5 page mini site with too much Adsense plastered on.  No new monetization methods here.  This is similar to our Mini site, and we even let you use affiliate programs, lead gen, direct banner sales through Google Ad Manager or OpenX, and more at no extra charge.

The eBay eCommerce

This is just a 1 page mini site.  Then everything under the Browse category are just subpages in WordPress with eBay affiliate code pasted in.  This is eerily reminiscent of the BANS product that, ironically enough, got banned from Google on a massive scale for being too thin and having too many ads.  Nothing ground-breaking here, you can save yourself a few hundred bucks by buying a one page site and then setting up the rest yourself, you don’t even need to know any code.  I wouldn’t recommend doing this on a site with only one page of content as they are selling it though, it is too thin and won’t get love from the search engines.

The Amazon eCommerce

Same deal as the eBay one, except this one has five pages of content with Amazon affiliate code pasted in.  Then several subcategories that also just have affiliate code pasted in.  Again, save yourself a hundred bucks by ordering a five page site, then just sign up for the Amazon aStore and paste the code in yourself.  You don’t need any programming skills whatsoever, just a few minutes to cut and paste code for each of the categories and subcategories.  Amazon handles the shopping cart for you and checkout is handled through their site.

The Geo Site is just a mini site with scripts and WordPress plugins installed.  They are fairly well integrated, but again, nothing new or extraordinary.  You can sign up for the HotelsCombined.com travel affiliate program to get that nifty search box.  You would be better off using Orbitz or Expedia affiliate programs so you can capture airfare, hotels, and car rentals instead of just the hotel though.  The small details can make a huge impact on your revenue.

For the Directory Site, prepare to have your wallet emptied.  You can buy the phpMyDirectory script for about $100 ($50 for each extra license), and then just have someone skin it for you.  So of the $549 you pay for an empty directory, $500 of that is going towards design.  Want some content filled in for you?  The minimum is 10 categories with 10 listings each, that as a package will set you back $850.  Ouch… that is going to take a long time to get a return on that investment.

I applaud Rick for finally noticing that he was helping us by continuing to call his products mini sites, but to say mini sites are dead just because he needed to change the name is laughable.  Domainers are finally recognizing the need to develop sites on their domains to break free of the dying parking industry, and that ideal isn’t going anywhere, it is only getting stronger.  AEIOU v2 still makes mini sites, anyone who has taken on a full-scale development project will tell you the same… the name has just been changed.

A mini site is and always will be the middle ground between a free parked page and full-scale development which costs thousands of dollars.

MiniSites.com is proud to announce several exciting new offerings to help you grow your business.  The first addition is subscription-based services.  Our mini sites often rank very well in search engines within a few weeks of being launched.  However, improving and solidifying your site’s position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) is an ongoing process that requires updates to your content and securing additional, quality backlinks.  In recognition of this fact, we now offer content writing and linkbuilding services that can be purchased on a monthly basis at affordable prices.  If you purchase several months in advance, or order the service as a combo deal, you enjoy deep discounts.  This makes it easy to ensure that your site performs at its maximum earning potential.

The second addition to our offering is up to five free email forwarding accounts.  At MiniSites.com we truly believe a good mini site should be cultivated into an online business, not just thrown up and forgotten about.  We help our clients position themselves as an authority in their niche, allowing them to expand their business by offering direct banner sales, selling products on their mini sites, and more.  However, unlike other mini site developers, we help you take your professionalism to the next level by offering branded email addresses for each domain name.  Instead of doing business on Example.com from a Gmail account, you can now do it from yourname@example.com, sales@example.com, admin@example.com, or whatever email address you like.  This gives our customers an unparalleled level of credibility.

The final improvement to MiniSites.com is the addition of an affiliate program.  In the few months since we launched, we have enjoyed a tremendous amount of success.  We positioned ourselves to be the leader in mini site development both through the acquisition of the category-defining domain name, but also through our superior product offering.  We want to share our success with those in the industry who will help us promote our services.  If you have a website or blog that attracts visitors interested in domaining, developing, affiliate marketing, or making money online, you should seriously consider joining the affiliate program.  We offer 10% on each sale, paid twice a month, and our average sale price is more than $2,600.

We are very excited about these changes, and hope the domaining community is as well!

The idea behind the site is simple: list domains that you are willing to push to auction at Sedo for the minimum bid, and let the market decide the price.  For sellers, this means increased visibility for your listing.  At the time of this post there are less than 4,000 domains listed on PushToAuction.com compared to 11.5 million on Sedo.  With more eyes on your domain instead of someone else’s, and with the buyers understanding that you will start an auction if a $60 bid is received, your chances of getting that initial offer allowing you to push to auction are increased dramatically.  The real goal in all this is to get in Sedo’s auction list which has huge visibility, and your domain will most likely sell at or above fair market value.

The draw for buyers isn’t quite as obvious, but is equally enticing.  For the eternal optimist, there is the hope that the auction will go relatively (or completely) unnoticed, and you will win the domain for $60 or slightly more.  However, the site also saves buyers time.  A major caveat to using Sedo as a buyer is that you could make reasonable offers all day long and not end up purchasing a single domain name because unrealistic sellers keep countering you with $100,000 offers.  Lets say you have $300 to invest this week and you are determined to buy a three-character .com (CCC.com).  You could perform a search on Sedo, spend hours making 50+ offers, and you will probably end up with nothing to show for it.  Or you could do what the shrewd buyers do and pay a visit to PushToAuction.com, click on the “Acronyms” category, choose your favorite CCC.com and make a single $60 offer.  Seven days later the auction will end and you’ll most likely own your new domain at fair market value.

The site immediately received a lot of interest as this is a genuine need of domain investors that had gone un-served.  Before PushToAuction.com, if a domain owner wanted to get their domain pushed to auction, they would have to rely on unethical tactics like asking friends or family, people who were not interested in following through with the purchase, to make an offer on their domain.  The only other choice was to wait… and wait… and wait some more.  Now they had a way to quickly find a qualified buyer, and they loved it.  Just two months after we launched the site, the popular domain industry news source DomainNameWire.com did a story on the site (and recently did a follow-up story) that was syndicated on thousands of industry blogs.  Several months later, Domaining.com gave the site its “recommended” award under the “Tools” category.

Soon after PushToAuction.com went live we worked closely with Sedo’s North American risk management coordinator, Tom Fell, to monitor auctions started by the site’s users. He was unable to find any correlation between auctions started from our site and an increase in canceled sales, thus confirming our site was generating solid leads.

At the time of this post, PushToAuction.com has helped start 447 auctions of which 435 have completed (12 are still running), resulting in $129,114 in gross sales for users of the site.  The current record holder for the highest sale price using our site is Bid.info which pulled in an impressive $2,350 at the no-reserve auction.  These stats are updated live on the right-hand column of every page.

Update: For the past few weeks there has been grumblings around the forums from Sedo reps that using the site was against Sedo’s TOS and users risked having their accounts closed.  I took this issue all the way to the top, and got clearence from Sedo’s Cheif Operating Officer and General Counsel Jeremiah Johnston to keep running the site.  He acknowledged that it was not against Sedo’s TOS, and that PushToAuction.com was in fact generating solid sales leads (as I had already confirmed with Tom Fell).  The only stipulation was that it remain clear that PushToAuction.com is not owned, operated, or endorsed by Sedo, and that buyers should only make offers if they intend to follow through with the sale.

The only downside is that it doesn’t have the seamless integration with an Adwords campagin like you can with GA, but what I opted to do is install tracking code for both.  Also, Woopra tracking is done through a desktop application; they are still developing their web-based, live-tracking interface.

Here is an overview of some of my favorite features:

Live Tracking and Web Statistics

Woopra’s revolutionary server architecture, combined with its intuitively designed client software, enables seamless tracking of visitors. Webmasters can track over 40 different statistical events and analytics. Never before has so much information been instantaneously available to Webmasters.

Most analytical and site statistics are updated once a day at the least, or several times during the day. With Woopra, you get live tracking of visitors coming and going and moving through your site. You get the stats now.

Real-time Analytics

Woopra redefines Web Analytics by enabling instantaneous information transfer combined with the ability to immediately act on each action. Woopra changes website management discussions from “how should we change things in the future” to “what should we do right now?

Webmasters can respond faster to sudden influxes in traffic and help monitor trends in search and traffic patterns. Woopra helps web owners generate content based upon customer needs and trends now, not after the fact.

Deep Analytic and Search Capabilities

Woopra breaks the Web statistics mold by allowing lightning quick search functionality along any data point in the system. What information do you need to help you manage and develop your site? Specific user names, IP addresses, geographic locations, user browsing data, visitor history, visitor paths, arrival and departure points – what do you want to know?

The data is searchable. Using the Search panel, you can reach into the data to find specific information about your site’s visitors, learning more about your site’s demographics and loyal readers. Woopra simply digs deeper.

Click-to-Chat

Woopra enables websites with both “proactive” and “reactive” chat functionality. Webmasters can remotely initiate sessions with visitors, or embed “Click-to-Chat” buttons within a site to accept inbound requests. This breaks the virtual wall between visitor and webmaster. Customer service sites could offer personal service directly through the Woopra interface, with no installation of software by the visitor. Woopra breaks down the barriers of the static web.

Real Time Notifications

Streaming real-time Web statistics are useless without the ability to filter and act on specific variables. For this reason Woopra offers “on-demand” Custom Notifications with visual and auditory cues when pre-defined actions take place.

Notifications can alert webmasters to specific users, IP addresses, search terms, languages, countries, browsers, specific pages, and more. Specific client visits, special events (sales or ad clicks), and other important actions become instantly actionable.