People will come back to these sites – unbelievable, you can do pretty sites and still do good SEO work – who would have thunk ….

Someone must be a rocket scientist lol

Let’s face it most domainers are not artists, it’s not in their skill set, you’ll get ugly website, and a boring generic copy that won’t convert well..

For the same money or less you can get:

. superior design,
. superior written copy
. eBook with custom cover
. affiliate offers
. + a team of players with low EGO emissions that will actually listen to your needs and you will like working with. So I ask why settle for less?

This is not an endorsement of NOD by any means, no one paid me, i just like what they are doing and thought it might be something you and other domain developers might be interested in as well. YES mass development services (or whatever you want to call them) are already available, although they might not have the label of domain development on them.

I have no interest in mini-sites other than providing comments on how ALL of you guys can do better to help the domain INDUSTY attract new people.

The industry is my interest – not single service providers.

I do not have an interest in AEIOU, share children with Estibot, was college roommates with WannaDevelop or have a secret crush on MiniSites.com

My comments are 100% geared towards the faster evolution of this space.

If you all close tomorrow it doesn’t matter to me – but if you’re going to stick around then why not try to be the best you can be.

People who sell wordpress templates showcase multiple examples across their boards to show the power of what they can do.

Link building is one of the secrets of success to SEO but visually attractive sites (along with the SEO and link building) is the 3rd key to (a) bringing users back and (b) getting more people to want your service.

Obviously, you don’t seem to understand that point and, as you said, doesn’t really matter to me so my final words are here.

Minisites.com and a few others are getting it. You may have been one of the first to promote this service but you did not invent it: mini-sites and the development of min-sites have been around for a decade. Were you the first to promote it to the domain community? Quite possible, but we are a small group of people so I’ll give credit where credit is due but AEIOU was not the inventor of this space.

I agree it takes time and money but as a service provider … any service provider … selling still involves showcasing enough work to make people go WOW.

If you think my entire point is wanting pretty sites its wrong.

The entire point is to try and get the providers like yourself to check the assumptions at the door and understand that MOST of the world has no idea who Rick, Frank and Kevin so if you are going to be service providers then why not showcase some of the best work you have done.

5 a week? You said that, not me.

Hell, 20 different examples from each of the providers in total is enough and comparable to any wordpress developers site to showcase the work.

(If you want to argue that I am comparing SEO and the point of mini-sites to wordpress templates than you are not getting my point – this is all about marketing your service)

5 designs of the same template does you more harm than good believe it or not. The steak of your product may be in the SEO and link building (and you may be very good in doing this) but believe me – the sizzle is in your ability to showcase your work.

Rick who? – yes, people actually ask this question who own domains.

My point is that many of the mini-site providers assume everyone knows what they do, they assume people will sign up based on the success of what they can’t see or read. As marketers you all need to improve (now again, I am not referring to you as a marketer in general – I am referring to the marketing of mini-site solutions as a service provider and you are not alone in this).

Minisites.com stepped up last week. Some will follow, some will lead, some will stay where they are – but I do know of a few who have already started doing something to showcase more work and if you don’t seem to get that then hey, that’s your deal.

In 12 months from now when Joe the domainer is comparing mini-site providers to use and it’s a choice between

Provider #1 (showcasing 5 of the same designs)
Provider #2 (showcasing a couple decent sites and a couple spammy sites) or
Provider # 3 (who has 20 different visually attractive sites)

Come on, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.

The more visually attractive options available for owners – guess what …

The more people want to be domain owners, more buyers for domains.

We can argue all day but if you don’t get the point here there is nothing I can do.

We, like the other minisite companies also have to keep our costs down and do things in as much of an assembly line process as possible.

Over time we have made many improvements. Fortunately, we have had the time. We’ve been around since the beginning of what is now a
minisite craze.

All of this is moot. The service we sell, which I tell time and again, is link building. We write original text for both our sites and other people’s sites in the articles we submit as part of the link building process. I promise you it costs us more per site than it does for most companies because we try are damndest to do it right.

Whatever though. I’m not going to get in a pissing match. I could care less what you or Mike think about my service. We pretty much invented this whole space and I have a new round of products coming out soon which will reinvent it. Minisites.com seems like a decent company and I know it is run by good people but its just a wholesale copy of the product that aeiou was the first to provide in mass as a service.

As for Mike, I’ll let the lawyers fight that battle. I’m not going to lower myself to this bullshit.

Honestly, selling minisites is a service business. It is labor intensive, time consuming and doesn’t make nearly enough of a profit to justify this drama at this point in my life.

ttyl