Comments on: Mass developed minisites stand no chance

By: Acro

Acro — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:05:43 +0000

Lots of different opinions; I’m glad we don’t disagree on the fundamentals

Anyone remember templates from sites such as Template Monster etc? Even a template design is truer development than a minisite, IMO. That’s because it’s a bare shell which actually was designed with a specific market in mind, sans the particulars of a specific company or entity. Even the best minisites today are a far cry from a reasonably priced template design!

But here’s a tip: there are monetization solutions out there that jump up and away from the minisite/MFA scheme of things; solutions that manage content and even offer affiliate sales management. Tia Wood has developed one such scalable solution which is perfect for owners of domains that are related to tangible products. So check it out via her web site at http://tiawood.com

By: rjb

rjb — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:26:22 +0000

So what is a mini-site then?

If you refer to the MFA type sites, with RSS articles and all the content pulled in from different sources, those aren’t very pretty or useful to me.

But, you can put a lot of info on one webpage that is useful and also could be considered a mini-site. Like information on a town or city, information about an animal, information on how to do something, etc. A webpage done from scratch with individual attention and unique content. These can make good one-page ‘mini-sites’ that are useful, get indexed by search engines, and get traffic.

Sometimes I go to ‘fully developed’ websites, click around lots of pages and can’t even find what I want!

Though I do agree, a fully developed website done right is the best way to go if you can do it.

From a user perspective, if I want information, I don’t care if it comes from a one page site or 1000 page site, as long as I get what I want.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:17:06 +0000

Acro – I’m not disputing that most ‘mini sites’ are appalling. I’m just thinking back to my time earlier this decade developing so-called mini sites. They weren’t there to drive traffic to another ‘main’ site. They were there to place ads on, which is similar to what these minisites are now. The likes of Joel Comm peddled all sort of minisite solutions years ago.

I don’t think we disagree on any of the fundamentals here, I just want to point out that I don’t think minisites are anything new.

By: james

james — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:40:32 +0000

minisites are bullshit, a scam a way to put up crap and try to pose as a legit site. at least with parking people can see that it is not a site. I almost fell prey to the minisite fad, but i stopped and thought about it… i developed one of my names and am continuing to develop it. I am now profiting 500+ off of it a month without doing much maintenence. This is hardly the American dream but is a hell of a lot better than paying someone to develop a bunch of crap and getting no result, worse getting banned by G. if you are trying to make money off of Adsense there is no short cut just produce a quality site.

By: M. Menius

M. Menius — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:27:55 +0000

I’ve never been dependent on Google income so their gyrations don’t affect me much.

That being said, it is tragic when people’s accounts get closed with no notice, and I have seen site owners lose significant ranking that was acquired through much hard work. This is terrible.

All of this leads to added emphasis on using logical, descriptive domains that have natural type-in value and/or high user recognition. In other words, side-step Google like the Castellos did with their pure geo sites.

Incidentally, I am using Yahoo and Bing more than I used to. And remember well the pre-Google world.

By: Acro

Acro — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:36:47 +0000

Ben – I strive to be accurate to a high degree; perhaps I am too technical for the average domainer. A portal is not a mini site is not a one-pager. They are different things serving different purposes. Portals & one-pagers & jump-sites are intros to REAL content at some other location. Minisites are self-contained entities that came to life to serve nothing but ads, all while pretending to contain useful content. As a web developer I build web sites, including portals. I don’t do minisites because that’s like asking Mozart to compose rap.

By: Ben Wilks

Ben Wilks — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:18:06 +0000

Acro, sorry to jump in and say it but mini site is NOT a new term, Andrew is right! It might be to you, but I guarantee you there are others that have been doing web dev for same amount of time as you that have been referring to them as mini sites for well over 5 years. Mini sites existed before Google and AdSense – THEY ARE NOT MFA. I can’t see how you could think it evolved any other way? One pager, mini site, portal, et al, been around for ages.

By: Acro

Acro — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:09:00 +0000

Andrew – Before domainers adopted minisites as quick monetization solutions that feature dubious content in order to plug in AdSense, minisites were gateways to full-fledged sites, not stand-alone solutions. They were portals to the “grand hall” So, in the era of domaining in the 2000′s, why do people debate this? Minisites can’t match the quality of full development. Despite having seen some bearable examples of work, I’d disseminate most minisites as appalling. That was the starting point of my post; paying thousands of dollars for sub-par development. It’s just wrong.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:24:26 +0000

I hate to see budding domainers fall prey to the old MFA style sites, ‘mini-sites’ is just a marketing euphemism. Worse than that are the $200 a shot domainer/dev services out there that setup a splog for you with markov running. These sites HAVE been working for spammers for years, but only when you can automatically create 1000′s of blogs a day and other black-hat stuff…

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:20:43 +0000

Acro, perhaps we’re just having a difference of terminology. I’d say most of the mini sites being developed for domainers are made for Adsense. A lot of people have been creating five page article sites for many years.