Pay-for-Minisites Providers

[dbtbandit67]

The idea is simple. You own a domain and you want it to turn into a profitable mini-site but you don't have the time and/or interest to do this yourself. So what do you do? Pay someone!

There are plenty of people out there offering, for a fee, to design and market your site turning it into a profitable minisite, many of them even willing to host it for you!

A scam? Maybe.

Question: If they were so great at designing minisites then why don't just they go on designing their own minisites forever and turn into the next Warren Buffett? What would they need other people to pay them for?

Problem: I am so lazy and hopelessly hopeful I'm willing to consider a few of them anyways. After all, nobody got into minisites to spend hours writing "unique" content you don't really care for where the money isn't even guaranteed. I sure as hell didn't. So let's all be honest about that.

If you are a minisite provider or if you know of any good ones, then come out of the woodworks. Advertise your service, give your plug, but back it up! Let's see some examples of these profitable mini-sites you put together. Tell us how you made it work.

The DbTBaNDiT67 Namepro Challenges: Provide screenshots of your Google Adsense/Ad-Provider earnings and really entice us! Don't doctor them now wo-wo-wo-wo-wo! What did you say Moe? Wo-wo-wo-wo-wo!

 

[firefly]

It's against Googles TOS to to display your earnings I think you'll find, so I doubt anyone will take your challenge, at least publicly in that regard.

Tell us how you made it work.

I would imagine that's why they make you pay in the first place. They think they know what works better than you. Why would they provide that info for free...lol.

As for whether they actually work or not, I don't know. I read a lot from the creators of different systems promoting themselves here, there and everywhere, about how great their systems are but I'll doubt you'll find any off them posting screen shots to back their claims up. Just shell out $500 or so and find out...lol.

I know I won't be.

 

[enlytend]

You'll find that successful niche marketers are reluctant to discuss their sites because they don't want to deal with a bunch of wannabes in their "space". Not to mention opening themselves up to various forms of abuse - click fraud, malicious seo tactics ...

 

[Bannen]

The thought of 'just make any name into a minisite and it'll pay off eventually' of course is wrong. I have almost 250 minisites now (built myself) and had to go through a lot of experiments before I found what works. Now I can pretty accurately tell, based on a handful of stats, how a name will perform as a minisite. There's an art to choosing a good name for one, and I'd recommend learning whatever you can about what name/s will make an ideal minisite - as opposed to being parked or to having large development - and after you know that, almost any minisite will will do for that name as long as it has original content.
As for time/profit, etc., yes I find it worth it to spend 90 mins writing a thousand words for a minisite, and a couple more hours to build it well and make it attractive. If I've chosen a decent name, then that name will make anywhere from $15 per month on up, some of them make many times that amount. And for a half day's work, it eventually becomes very worth it.
But like I say, it's all about finding a 'right' name for a minisite.
You want it to have at least pretty good exact search amounts monthly; you want it to have advertiser competition; you want it to look attractive as a name (this is more important for selling to end users down the road rather than for garnering traffic); you want there to be a max advertiser bid of at least $1, though if you're getting good traffic to a name this isn't a solid rule - some of my best earners are terms that show a '0' advertiser bid amount, but they get enough traffic that they have a good ctr and make good earnings even with low $ per click; you want to use a term that has a very good chance of making it to page 1, spot 1, on google, so it's much better to use a term that has a few hundred or a few thousand exact search results for a minisite, rather than a term that has tens or hundreds of thousands of searches - terms with large searches like that will also have a ton of competition from much larger sites that can afford the kind of marketing to keep their site on page 1 of google, and your little minisite will remain relegated to many pages down the list. Niche terms with between 500 and 15,000 exact monthly search amounts are what I find to be perfect minisite fodder, my sites almost always make it to page 1. If you have a different extension like a dot.net or dot.info, you can still make it to page 1 or close, especially if the 'better' extensions like the dot.com are simply parked pages and not giving you any developed-website competition.
Finally, I do want to stress quality. Most minisite builders slam them together quickly and they don't provide much interesting content or attractive graphics; since I'm both a writer and designer by trade I make mine nice-looking and try to write them to be interesting and informative, and have noticed quite a difference in traffic to mine compared to some other, quicker minisite builders (I've created minisites for various clients who have also used other minisite services, and they've said mine performed the best).
Just meant this to be informative, not advertising my services, since I don't farm my services out anymore for minisites (my own projects keep me too busy now). If you want to read a lot about what makes a good minisite, check out my site (built when I was advertising my services):
Minisite Writer - Minisite Writer

good luck!

 

[Parking Revolution]

Parking Revolution is not a minisite provider, or a minisite builder. Our business model is very different from the others, and honestly, the only competition we have (a service similar to ours) is Whypark. However, i'm interested in this discussion.

If they were so great at designing minisites then why don't just they go on designing their own minisites forever and turn into the next Warren Buffett? What would they need other people to pay them for?

Some people simply prefer to work with the B2B model. They don't want to create thousands of minisites for themselves, they want to offer this as a service, a business to business, and there many reasons for this. Not enough manpower, not enough marketing experience, not enough time, etc.. Just because you're offering a product, it does not mean that you can use it properly.

For example: I'm not a domainer. I had terrible experiences with the domaining market, and never made any money with domains. In fact, i lost money with crappy domains that i still can't believe i got. It's really not for me. I'm a web developer, not a domainer. However, i have many friends and contacts in the domaining market, and i always freelanced for them.

During one of those freelances, the idea of developing a more friendly, interesting and effective parking service came to my mind, something that would save time and money for domainers, and make them stop hiring freelancers to develop websites and content for their domains. And that's how Parking Revolution started in my mind. I'm not only interested in earning money with my service, but also providing a reliable and honest service. Something that i believe in.

If i was a good domainer, i would definitely be using my product. However, i'm not a good domainer, and therefore, the product has no use for me. This rule applies for everyone, i believe. If you register a crappy domain, you won't get too much, even using Parking Revolution.

Unlike some other services out there, that advertise that you can get rich in a few days with "secret techniques", Parking Revolution does not promise anything. I like to be straight and that's how i advertise my product. It gives you a different solution, that if used correctly, can give you amazing results. It's a sum of facts: you can use your own banners, you are creating actually good looking and interesting websites, you can customize them, you're saving time and money, and others.

 

[SpareDomains]

I take strong keyword .com domains and build simple ebay, amazon, adsense, cj, linkshare etc... sites on them. If your domains are strong enough and have type in traffic then you don't really care about unique articles etc... as the traffic converts just by having matching product for sale listings and you don't need google to survive. I have (30) so far and plan to have about (90+) over the next 2 months or so. I am not a fan of mini-sites and feel a few fully developed sites are better than 100's of crappy sites but I will say on my keyword product domains I am doing quite well just from the ebay/amazon product listings that match the domain. I agree with this....

You'll find that successful niche marketers are reluctant to discuss their sites because they don't want to deal with a bunch of wannabes in their "space". Not to mention opening themselves up to various forms of abuse - click fraud, malicious seo tactics ...

if it works and pays more than parking why display it and have copycats, just shut your mouth and collect paypal & wires from ebay, amazon, adsense, cj.com etc... once things get blown up into mass usage then you are leaving a traceable footprint which search engines can knock out.

 

[dbtbandit67]

if it works and pays more than parking why display it and have copycats, just shut your mouth and collect paypal & wires from ebay, amazon, adsense, cj.com etc... once things get blown up into mass usage then you are leaving a traceable footprint which search engines can knock out.

We have to be careful not to take that idea too far. You've been a great help so far, I'd like to be in that position for someone else some day

 

[greenlake]

There are many people on this forum offering their services of building ministes ( "developers for hire").
I am tempted to try this venue, but am still missing info on two important issue:

1. although "development" and "minisites" seem to be trendy - I have yet to hear from members who actually used those services if they actually are making more money compare to parking. So far, every time I have tried whypark.com or noomle.com which are actually type of ministes, my adsense revenue did not come close to my parking revenue.

2. Main problem is TRAFFIC - if a domain has good type in traffic and nice parking revenue, then why turn it into a minisite?
If it does not get traffic and you build nice site for it , that by itself would not send any visitor there.... so how do you create the traffic?
ministes builders does not do SEO or any traffic building . |I understand thats a whole different story, and much more expensive one.

people do not need to post adsense stats here - would just be nice if they say whether they make more money than just parking and how they create traffic?

 

[SpareDomains]

There are many people on this forum offering their services of building ministes ( "developers for hire").
I am tempted to try this venue, but am still missing info on two important issue:

1. although "development" and "minisites" seem to be trendy - I have yet to hear from members who actually used those services if they actually are making more money compare to parking. So far, every time I have tried whypark.com or noomle.com which are actually type of ministes, my adsense revenue did not come close to my parking revenue.

2. Main problem is TRAFFIC - if a domain has good type in traffic and nice parking revenue, then why turn it into a minisite?
If it does not get traffic and you build nice site for it , that by itself would not send any visitor there.... so how do you create the traffic?
ministes builders does not do SEO or any traffic building . |I understand thats a whole different story, and much more expensive one.

people do not need to post adsense stats here - would just be nice if they say whether they make more money than just parking and how they create traffic?

I think the trade is that you might not earn as much as parking initially but that long term the mini site will get indexed by search engines and then your traffic will increase or build each month, I have no idea which if any mini sites work as I simply take keyword generic domains and put ebay, amazon, etc... product feeds on them and it does work as I'm using keyword domains that match the products shown and type in traffic is gold so it converts, someone else will have to tell their mini site success or failure story as what I am doing taking a strong domain and displaying matching products is pretty easy to succeed with if you have the right domains with a natural type in traffic source.

 

[dbtbandit67]

the challenge is being able to monetize a hand-regged hyphenated keyword.com/net/org/us

because stocks.com is not hard to monetize and the question of mini-site or parked is pretty redundant b/c either way it's going to make a lot of money

 

[Bannen]

1. although "development" and "minisites" seem to be trendy - I have yet to hear from members who actually used those services if they actually are making more money compare to parking. So far, every time I have tried whypark.com or noomle.com which are actually type of ministes, my adsense revenue did not come close to my parking revenue.

Parked, my names made almost nothing. As minisites, they're doing well. I build all my own sites, have never tried whypark or noomle.

2. Main problem is TRAFFIC - if a domain has good type in traffic and nice parking revenue, then why turn it into a minisite?
If it does not get traffic and you build nice site for it , that by itself would not send any visitor there.... so how do you create the traffic?
ministes builders does not do SEO or any traffic building . |I understand thats a whole different story, and much more expensive one.

If a domain gets good traffic and parking revenue from natural type-ins, I wouldn't rock the boat and make it into a minsite, I'd leave it just as it is. Parked.
When you create a minisite, you need to really research what kind of domain name makes for a potential minisite. You can create minisites like crazy and have none of them get much traffic or clicks, until you know what kind of domain name to use. See my comments in previous post. If you get the right kind of domain for a minisite, the traffic builds without you having to do much SEO or any marketing, though you can do a little of these too if you want to help out. An example I've used in another thread is my PomodoroSauce.com. I knew it would be perfect for a minisite. It's been live only 4 months, haven't done any marketing/link building at all, and september it had over 4600 unique visitors, it grows by about 1k visitors or more each month. Most of my sites don't rise that quickly, but when I saw that name I knew it was 'just right' for a minisite after I saw its particular stats. The traffic's occurred naturally, I don't touch it.

people do not need to post adsense stats here - would just be nice if they say whether they make more money than just parking and how they create traffic?

More money - yes, because I choose good 'minisite domain names' and build them well.
Traffic - once I've done the above step properly, the traffic builds itself, I don't do any work to get traffic to my sites. With most minisites, you have to allow anywhere from 2 - 6 months for the site's keywords and key phrases to get indexed well with search engines, so you can see almost no visitors or earnings for a few months... and then it's nice to watch things 'kick in' when your site finally makes it to page 1, spot 1 on Google and Yahoo. If you choose your domain names smartly, this should happen eventually. Most of my sites make it to page 1. If you search for Neon Sunglasses, or Fake Tattoo Sleeves, or Breakfast Island, (or Pomodoro Sauce, of course) or many others on Google, you'll see my sites in first spot

 

[dbtbandit67]

An example I've used in another thread is my PomodoroSauce.com. I knew it would be perfect for a minisite. It's been live only 4 months, haven't done any marketing/link building at all, and september it had over 4600 unique visitors, it grows by about 1k visitors or more each month.

3,600 exact global searches monthly, nice

did you hand-reg that domain or scan lists for hours to get it?

mini-site developers aren't necessarily domainers. i for one got into mini-sites to begin with because i dont want to fall into the trap of scanning domain lists for hours.

Traffic - once I've done the above step properly, the traffic builds itself, I don't do any work to get traffic to my sites. With most minisites, you have to allow anywhere from 2 - 6 months for the site's keywords and key phrases to get indexed well with search engines, so you can see almost no visitors or earnings for a few months... and then it's nice to watch things 'kick in' when your site finally makes it to page 1, spot 1 on Google and Yahoo. If you choose your domain names smartly, this should happen eventually. Most of my sites make it to page 1. If you search for Neon Sunglasses, or Fake Tattoo Sleeves, or Breakfast Island or many others on Google, you'll see my sites in first spot

well, you still need to have analytics or adsense installed so google has some sort of bot on it