MiniSites.com

[BizBot]

Anybody tried this one?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

MiniSites.com is the ideal alternative to parking. Our experienced team of writers and developers will hand pick the best submitted domain names, and put together mini sites with custom header designs, text logos, specific content, and search engine optimization. A mini site is the best way to significantly increase traffic, value and ad revenue of your domain name. Whether you are on your way to building your passive income generating portfolio, or just looking to add to the value of an already premium domain name, a mini site is the way to go.

 

[texasgamer]

They build some some nice quality sites. I may give them a go

 

[SKG]

Brooks, I think one is always better off creating their own content. At most a minisite might be 5 pages, and that is not hard to do. There are many content management systems at your disposal.

 

[Michael]

Hi Brooks. My company co-founded MiniSites.com. If you have any questions please feel free to PM me on the forums or use the contact form on our site.

@SKG - If you have the skills and knowledge, it is obviously better to do it yourself. If you know how to fix a car, it would be silly to go to a mechanic.

However, most people don't know how to use Photoshop to design an attractive site, and don't have time to research a topic and write extensively on it. Some may even not be native English speakers, so it can be difficult to write engaging content for a target audience that only speaks English. Also, staying on top of SEO trends and best practices can be a daunting task for a person who is not tech savvy. For a lot of people, it just makes more sense to have someone do it for you, because your time is better spent doing what you do best.

 

[MJ]

BizBot I'm just giving my honest opinion because you asked.. as I would do for any company that just started up whether their founders happen to be on namepros or not.

If you are unfamiliar with development, MiniSites.com might be a great way to go! Their sites do look very professional, and they do have native english speakers.

Some people believe that minisites add a substantial ammount of value to a domain name. The theory is quite simple... put up a minisite, gain some search engine traffic, maybe have a handful of constant visitors, but more importantly make lots of money with ads. I personally would never set up a mini site in hopes if raising the value of the domain, but only to gain personal profit from the ads. The reason IMO that minisites don't add value to a domain name (in hopes of selling it), is if someone is going to pay you $500 or $5000 for a name, they 99% of the time will have a development plan for it. If they pay you 500$ and you paid 200$ for the minisite to be developed that starts to cut into your profits. But if you do have a nice name and good keywords, a minisites are great ways to make money rather than park them!

However if you have ~200 to spend on development, I would get a complete site made that allows users to sign up, etc. Maybe even a forum setup, photo gallery, or whatever you want. I just don't want to see you taken advantage of BizBot.

I just read on their website they stay up to date on SEO etc... I didn't know having literally 3,000+ outbound links on a mini site was the latest trend in SEO (Rockford.com).

Also for the price tag of these mini sites, in my opinion they shouldn't insert a link back to their website at the bottom of each page. Say you get 500 hits a month, 1% of them click the link, thats 5 potential new customers for this MiniSite company for the lifetime of your site. Its great marketing, and they will hit #1 in search engines soon, but they are using your site to do it with. I guess that "free hosting" isn't really free now is it. Always a catch.

But yeah, on the good side, you could make a substantial ammount of money from ads depending on your keywords and traffic. If you have 500 visits a month, and 1% of people click the ads, at 20 cents a click that is 1$ a month. In 200 months (16 years) you will have paid off your initial investment (assuming the cost was 200$). These are very low estimates, a better scinario might be 3-6% click through rate.

BizBot just weigh all the factors and then decide. Do let us know if you decide to use them, as I'd love to hear real feedback from real users and not "case studies" on the site. I may order their services just to try them out, as they look like a great startup company.

 

[Michael]

MJ, great post. You hit on a lot of important points.

First I would like to comment about Rockford.com. That is a premium domain that gets a lot of natural type-in traffic. The goal with this, as mentioned on our site, was to provide continuously updated content to engage visitors more so than to rank for every term. That is why we decided to have news fed to the home page, even if that meant giving away a lot of link juice. As an aside, the domain is a PR4... so it can't be all bad.

Secondly, I have no problem making it clear that not every domain is suited for a mini site. If the keywords don't have commercial potential, if search volume is nonexistent or extremely low, if advertiser competition is mediocre, you probably wouldn't get back your investment in a reasonable amount of time.

The thing is, we don't take on projects like that, so people don't throw their money away. If the owner's goal is curb appeal, we'll still take the project, but only after warning them that the return will be poor. The last thing we want is clients who aren't happy with the results, because they not only won't be repeat clients, they will tell others of their experience. We only succeed in the long term when our clients succeed.

You painted a pretty grim picture with your hypothetical though. It is not unheard of for developed mini sites to make $5+ per day that made pennies parked. There is obviously no substitute for traffic, so if your domain has good keywords but doesn't get type-ins, it makes sense to shift it out of parking and get some organic search traffic. Again, mini sites aren't right for every domain, but they are very profitable for a lot of them. We help you know which is which.