Of course they all argued that behind the scenes they were fundamentally different and gave an incredible value to the price points they charged. Yada, Yada, Yada I said – it may be true but if you don’t showcase your work and only have 10 examples of the same design how do you expect people to believe you?

Low and behold a few months pass and its time to give credit where credit is due. We are not quite there yet but today I can say we are on our way to building a nice set of providers for domain owners.

Services such as MiniSites.com and AEIOU.com have constantly (a) expanded their offerings (b) showcased more of their work and (c) communicated a little more about what they actually provide.

Mini-sites are not full scale solutions but they provide the foundation to build on so I believe every domain owner needs to understand and see more of what these people do so this is where you come in.

Tell us about your Mini-site !!

I’m not one to out anybody for doing anything since its your work and if you want to showcase it fine and if you don’t then so be it however here’s an opportunity for site owners, clients of mini-site providers and even mini-site providers themselves to showcase a little more work.

Doesn’t have to be by AEIOU or Minisites.com – use another service?  Post about it and let other domain owners know your thoughts.

Your turn – tell us your story and we will provide a link here to your website for free.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

More importantly you want to look different. Just because Tom’s site works doesn’t mean you want to look like Tom – no offense, Tom but with all the mini-sites being built around the same dozen designs today there are MANY Tom’s around.

I am done with ranting about mini-sites since we all always have developers who simply want to attract business from newbies week after week however tonight (the eve after I questioned people about avoiding being a post whore) here I am, sitting down for an unproductive 20 minutes of work only to recycle news already published.

Why? It is well deserved.

Instead of announcing a new case study that was completed with .. you guessed it .. the same old template with a different picture MiniSites.com has launched not one but three (3) great examples of their work.

But wait, it gets better.

They also include examples of the SEO placement resulting from their optimization of the site.

For example, in the beachwear.com example Minisites.com explains

“We decided to focus on the following keywords for this project: Beachwear (#4 in Google, #6 in Yahoo), Beachwear Trends (#5 in Yahoo), Fashion Beachwear (#5 in Yahoo), Kids Beachwear (#6 in Google, #1 in Yahoo), and Sports Beachwear (#1 in Google, #1 in Yahoo).  Of course those rankings may go up or down, but that’s where they stand after just a few weeks.”

I’m starting to get the feeling some people secretly listen to some of my words (still don’t care if you do) and the showcasing of these designs and the results of the SEO efforts is what buyers need – again, these three (3) unique designs and the additional info – was great news and great work.

Just goes to show how one company is advancing a hell of a lot of faster then many and they only opened a month ago.

MiniSites.com showcases the mini-sites for three (3) premier domain names including

MotorSports.com
Celeb.com
Beachwear.com

To the crew at MiniSites.com – Three Words.

Damn Good Job.

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

First, I want to say I commend all those who are providing mini-sites to people.

Basically, kudos for doing something while others do nothing however is the product actually worth the money?  Some people agree with me, others don’t and some never say a word. Let’s get this straight – for the record I do not really care what anybody thinks personally about my opinions but I do care about the industry and how we look to end users, new investors and main street.

In 1999 I purchased some html software (hotdog) and started learning FrontPage and basically learned within a couple weeks all the code one would ever need to make what people are calling mini-sites today.  It’s not hard and no one is reinventing the wheel with these products. Granted, my knowledge of programming, online marketing and development is probably far greater then many however it doesn’t mean we will not take advantage of new offerings in this industry even in the most basic formats such as mini-sites, if they are worthwhile.

There are many sides to the Mini-Site product.

Some say there are useless, others say they generate millions from having 1,000’s of these sites while others claim it’s a worthy investment for newbies.

Where am I?

First and foremost I believe they are sort of useless in their current formats but instead of ranting about why lets use facts

Most mini-sites look the same – AEIOU’s designs (are they not all the same … why not just copy the source code and insert your own images)

Original content – if produced in mass volumes how original can all the content be coming from the same writers?  Believe me when I say Google penalizes for duplicate content across sites and although I’m certainly not claiming that anyone is not providing original content I do know the same 5 or 10 people who write content will eventually have things overlap. Domain owners need to write their own content – by doing so, you learn more about the industry and in turn, empower yourself as a domain owner even more.

Gateway to Laziness – I’ve said this a few times about mini-sites.  Domain owners many times look at now what’s become a semi-pretty site and move on to the next since why would Google not want to rank your site high – After all, it looks so good.  Have 500 domains … time to get moving and that mini-site that was put up yesterday will more often than not stay that way.

Enough points about what’s wrong.  Just as people continue to pay $35 at network solutions for a domain people will still buy these mini-sites day after day so again, kudos to those who have the patience and dedication to provide such a product (and deal with customer service for margins so low – percentage wise they may be high but believe me how many designers will tell you working with clients that want to pay $200 is far worse than dealing with someone who pays you $5,000)

Now, For the challenge to mini-site providers

Do not take these words as offensive as the point is far greater than a simple criticism of your efforts to provide a product to domain owners but a challenge, an opportunity and an experienced opnion on how you can become better than all the rest overnight.

Why not step up to the plate and provide template(s) that empower the domain owners to build out networks for their industry targeted domains, provide widget power to help owners add functionality as they go or even forgo the html templates so commonly associated with mini-sites for custom wordpress themes where the owner has the power.

You see – a business plan for all the mini-site providers is the same across the board from what I see.  Sell as many as you can for the one time fee and maybe hook a few clients for SEO marketing upon completion.

Hold up …. SEO tools are 10 times better with templates that offer plug-in compatibility and are poised to grow with the web so isn’t your business model failing even the simple fact of giving your clients a better product to prove your own SEO skills with.

It’s almost like the gold was seen by calculating the number of sites one could do in a week multiplied by how many clients and that’s it – that’s the plan.

SO much opportunity exists in the mini-site arena but the products need to exist.  In a world of widgets, plug-ins and templates there should be an incredible product for domain owners born within a week of someone taking this article seriously and not focus on defending the mini-site industry in its current form.

Again, I’m for people doing well but also want product offerings to become representative of today’s tools – not new ones that are simply duplicates of work provided by others.  In fact, why would you as a company owner want that?  You can do more and you know it.

The best wordpress themes cost $300 max.

Custom designs range from $1,500 to $5,000 or more but these are end-user costs.  Providers can build this for free and shit, built the greatest templates for SEO and mini-site building and charge the same mini-site fee ($2 or $300) – your money will still be tenfold of that one time customer who buys a custom theme.

Staying power is for those companies that build for the future not build for a few dollars today.

So, its not criticism here but a challenge – a challenge to providers to build products of value which use the tools of today and represent the power to expand tomorrow.

It would be great to hear from domain owners and mini-site providers about this since I truly want our generation of domainers to look less like spam and empower domain owners everywhere to have the tools to build businesses, not just a website.

Thoughts, criticism and even the odd curse is always welcome

©2010 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.