Mini Sites are Thriving
By Michael Sumner • Jun 18th, 2009 • Category: Web DevelopmentI have to hand it to Rick, he is great a putting a spin on something and making it seem new. In the case of AEIOU v2 though, it was something that had to be done. Every time he called his product a mini site, he was just helping to strengthen our brand. One of the few mistakes I’ve ever seen Rick make is not buying MiniSites.com when he had the chance. When he first announced the launch of AEIOU on his blog, he even had a comment suggesting that he buy MiniSites.com from BuyDomains, but he didn’t pull the trigger. Now it is time for damage control, because we saw the opportunity and seized it.
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.
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Michael Sumner
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Well should I or should I not agree with you? Well you are right as far as what you get for your money but on the other hand saying that the reason he changed his ” mini site ” model was because he helped market your business could be a stretch, assumption or whatever but in any event I too was a little surprised by the new offerings. Maybe he just did a survey of the most requests and the services he now offers is a result of that. On the other hand as a leader in the industry I would expect much more from him and quite frankly for a little less.
I don’t think it is a stretch, note the emphatic “Death to minisites” in the title of his re-lauch release. Its clear he is trying to distance himself from the term “mini sites”, yet at the same time what he is offering is still, at its core, a mini site. It may be packaged with a few scripts or plugins and then marked up dramatically, but it isn’t full-scale development by any stretch of the imagination. Four of the six “new” packages are either exactly the same as, or very easy to accomplish on, his old model without any additional plugins or scripts. I don’t see any reason to distance the company from the “mini sites” term when it is such a hot topic that he himself helped move forward in this industry, other than that his competition owns the generic .com. I could be wrong, but that’s my take on it.
All I know is Rick’s prices are out of hand. He lowered his prices after some comments about the high prices, but really it feels like the options are WAY, WAY overpriced.
His eBay pages should be $59 if he wants to really compete. Those kind of prices would have put pressure on MiniSites.com, but either it was not financially feasible, or Rick is being a little greedy. I tend to think the latter…..but I may be wrong.
I still applaud Rick for at least bringing more competition to the market. It’s needed.
Honestly I think it is a little of both. You’d be surprised how much it costs to develop these things, especially if you’re not just a freelance designer/developer. However, their prices still are pretty outrageous on most products, especially the three packages they didn’t offer previously (ecom, geo and directory).
It’s funny, now Ryan is claiming in a blog post on AEIOU that they changed the name because “mini site” has a “diminutive connotation”. Funny, they have been working on renaming their product for a few months according to Rick. That means they were happy with calling them mini sites for 8 months, then almost immediately after we launch MiniSites.com they start working on changing it. Definitely has nothing to do with us.
The rest of the industry still calls them mini sites. Don’t kid yourselves AEIOU, you’re not doing full scale development by a long shot, you just added a few plugins/scripts and marked up the price a few hundred dollars.