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DN
Journal: Give us some details about your
specific program – how you attack the problem of
developing a large number of sites at an affordable
cost.
Ryan Steel:
Our core product is our Rapid Mini Site.
This is a 5-page website, with unique content and design
that includes a search engine marketing campaign. They
cost $250 apiece and we offer bulk discounts.
This is no automated process, each page of content is
written by our in house team of writers and is geared
towards search engine optimization. The designs
are focused on producing high click thru rates and on
site optimization. The link building process gives your
site a jump start in the search engines. If you
were to take away any one of these pieces, the
performance as a whole will fall apart. This is
where I believe we stand apart – we are a full
service shop. We even take care of the
hosting!
|
Ryan
Steel
AEIOU.com
Co-Founder |
Building a scalable
development process is our key to success.
Our production levels are directly related to
our staff count. In order to increase
production, we just start hiring additional
staff. Having a system based on checks and
balances really allows us to add to our force
without having any mishaps.
In the end, automated sites
will have a hard time surviving. We
believe having a real development team is
the key to being able to successfully develop on
a large scale. Even if we cannot create 1,000
sites overnight, I trust that the 250 sites we
average per week will outperform the 7,000
automated sites.
Along with our Rapid Mini
Sites, we offer custom development,
writing and search engine marketing (link
building & consulting). Pretty much anything
you need for your website or online
business.
DN
Journal: While these sites are often
referred to as mini-sites, many of the current
services allow domain owners to add their |
| own content and
advertisers (or feeds) to further the
development process. To what degree does your
system allow this? For example, does your
service allow a domain owner to plug in third
party content from a source like Tinbu. |
Ryan Steel:
Our Rapid Mini Sites are designed for growth.
We start our clients off with the base 5 pages of
content, however we encourage more to be added and help
with these needs. Upon signing up, our customers
can even request that the site be developed in WordPress,
which provides a very user-friendly management
interface. Adding custom content, plugins, and
additional advertising can be as simple as a few clicks.
I actually advise my clients to be
careful when working with RSS feeds. A site
built on just RSS feeds provides nothing unique.
It is uniqueness that the search engine's look
for to make sure you stand out. If you are
displaying a bunch of content from TheStreet.com on
your site – why would Google ever rank you
higher than TheStreet.com?
DN Journal:
The #1 question on domain owner’s minds will be, will
this service make more money for me than parking
the same domains? Since this is a new category, with
many of the service providers having been open less than
a year, there is not yet a long track record for
comparing results, but based on what you currently know,
how do you answer this question from your customers?
Ryan Steel:
Granted we have only been open to the public for less
than a year, but we have been developing mini sites for
just about 3 years now, and full websites for almost
a decade. I can gladly say, to this day we
are still our biggest customers. We have seen
development not only benefit our daily bottom line, but
our resale values as well.
|
Whenever you add content to
ads, your CTR (click-thru-rate) will take
a hit. The whole idea behind developing is
that you are able to overcome that drop
with additional traffic. I figure for any
given keyword out there, there is 3x as much
traffic coming from the search engines than
type-ins. In a lot of cases, this number
is extremely low and we experience 10-20x
the traffic.
We have a manual review
process for every domain that is submitted
for development. We analyze the keywords
in the domain for search engine volume. If
there is no search engine volume behind a
domain, there is no reason to develop it unless
you have a business model that you are trying to
strive for.
|
Screenshot
of an AEIOU.com site built
for the owner of NonfictionBooks.com |
| The truth is, the
domain name is very important to what we are
doing on a rapid level. Any domain with
enough investment can rankwell for a term,
however that investment is not something we are
striving for. We want to be able to apply
as little effort, for as big of a return as
possible. By screening, we are protecting
our client's investments with the knowledge we
have learned by doing this over the years.
We turn down around 60% of the domain
submissions that come across our table.
Many of these customers return with a caliber of
names we strive for and we have great
relationships with!
|
DN Journal:
Many developers say there are additional benefits,
beyond immediate monetization, to moving beyond the
parking page. For example, more “curb appeal” for
potential buyers, less likelihood of inadvertent
trademark infringement (from ads served by the PPC
company), etc. What do you see as the added benefits of
following at least a minimal development strategy?
Ryan Steel:
I feel there are a tremendous amount of benefits to even
the smallest development. Let me outline my
favorite:
◦ A site that is parked is
at the best it can be, today. It will not grow in
traffic or revenues – it is basically saying that this
is all I can be. Even the smallest
development can put you up on the search engines.
Increase your traffic and revenue, therefore increasing
the value of the domain itself. If offered non
developed domain.com for $100,000 that gets 100 visitors
a day – or a developed domain.com that gets 300
visitors a day for $100,000 which would you choose?
◦ There are so many
different options to monetize your website out there
besides the traditional CPC model. As part of our
service, we help pair you with additional
advertising networks out there that may offer a direct
product related to your website. These can be Cost Per
Lead offers that require a simple form submission or
even CPA offers where you earn a commission on a sale.
Getting
out of the box can prove to be very profitable – it
all boils down to providing your customers/surfers with
what they are looking for.
◦ Once your site is showing
up in the search engines, not only do you find yourself
having a larger traffic base, but your sales reach
increases as well. If someone is in the “Yellow
Widget” business and they are searching for
competitors and see that a top 5 site is listed for
sale, that person is going to be interested. We
generate a nice stream of sales leads through a simple
“YellowWidgets.com is For Sale” page. As a
bonus, these are not domainers – they are the all
sought after “End Users”! We all know
what that means – higher resale value.
DN Journal: Parking
is a well established industry with many major players.
Your service category is the new kid on the block.
How do you see the equilibrium between these two sectors
(parking and mini-site development) changing over the
next couple of years – do they both hold their own,
does the balance of power shift, etc?
Ryan Steel:
I personally love being the new kid on the block.
To me it just translates that you are pushing the
limits, and it is there that you will find success.
|
You will never here me say
a bad word about parking. I feel that
there is definitely room for both of
these domain monetization services to co-exist.
A domain with traffic does not always mean it
will make a good development. However there are
so many domains out there with little or no type
in traffic that have a search engine volume that
would firmly support the idea of development.
My recommendation is to pick the right poison.
A typo name, gets parked. A generic 3
keyword .com needs to be developed.
The only trend that I
really see happening over the next few years is
that the premium generics that were parked will
turn into developments. Parking will only
get you so far on these names, and companies
will soon be realizing that. Parking
itself though, will be with us for a good time
to come. |
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As for what the future holds for
AEIOU.com, we are changing everyday. Our motto is
to never have a motto. Development is a game of
adaptation, and we plan to continue to position
ourselves with the changing of the market. You
will definitely see a lot more ccTLD development
coming out of our camp, we have proven ourselves in this
market and have found quite a bit of success in it.
We are also working on additional monetization methods
for developed traffic.
DN Journal:
Thank you for your time Ryan. Anything else you would
like to add before we say goodbye?
Ryan Steel:
Development costs money. We feel that the success
in development comes from the ability to scale your
developments in an economical fashion. If a client
was to come to me today and wanted to develop this
$50,000 website and expect it to be cash flow positive
out of the gate, I will simply bow out of the bid.
As a new kid on the block, our clients need to be able
to trust us. We encourage this trust by using our
experience to provide the best educated proposal for any
development, including our Rapid Mini Sites.
If our clients do not succeed, we
do not succeed. It is as simple as that!
Thank you for the time Ron, we are
happy to be part of your round up!
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Click
any of the links in this table to
learn about the mass website development
services provided by other companies
featured in this DN Journal Cover
Story. |
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