I log into Estibot today to find that because I canceled the PayPal subscription, my account membership was canceled as well even though my payment type is clearly by CC and not by paypal. I have emailed Esa about this issue and asked for my account to be reactivated but don’t expect a reply from recent experience.

For me to reactivate manually, I would have to get charged at a new rate of $29.99/mo for the novice level membership. I think this is all ridiculous as I’m getting double and triple billed for the same service which I can’t even access any longer…

Any suggestions or help is appreciated.

Regards,
Tony

There is another benefit to minisites: Most domains that I’ve sold due to buyer approaching me are the ones that have minisites and are ranked in the search engines. It really helps domain sales to have some SE visibility, especially on the lower end of the scale of domain names.

As you point out Google is indeed dropping sites out of the SERP’s that are not updated with new content and links, it’s the cost of doing so 100 x that’s making it an undesirable path to develop from.

Your probably better of developing one or two major sites and redirecting similar niche domains in your portfolio to it for traffic links and revenue.

Definitely agree on the point you bring up – minisites can be incredibly profitable, but you have to put some time and effort into them.

Too many are doing the mass-produced, minimal-if-any original content, plastered with ads mini-sites. Five minutes and they’re done. An hour later they’ve got 15 or 20 of them up and running. I see the point of how THEY are doing things, quantity over quality… But I can vouch for the fact that ONE well-chosen mini-site with a bit of effort will far outshine the mass-produced portfolio – in every way. Especially when it comes to making money.

I like to have a personal garden of about 20. But I develop and maintain and work on these mini-sites, and love it. Choose well, and your mini-site can be the next Big Thing. They can easily pay the bills. I’ve built great, large communities around mini-sites – there is no ceiling. The current Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine noticed one of my mini-sites and gave it a shout out. Guess how well that site started doing after that!

You never know who will look at your site – spend some time, make it visually appealing and write some content! Update it!

Okay I’ll get off the soapbox.

Thomas @Ne1up?

My background is SEO. Doing a quick analysis, I see – for whatever reason: scraping, or a dishonest writer – your content is duplicate: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22Class+B+RV+is+usually+recognizable+by+having+a+bus-like+front+end%2C+attached+to+the+familiar+large%22&btnK=Google+Search&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=

Either go after those sites based on DMCA by writing to the host and complaining, or use textbroker for fresh articles, which are guaranteed to not be duplicate, and start over. Nice-looking site!

Maybe the stealers scraped the content and did something bad to your domain that you got penalized, because your content-rich websites are favored by Google, instead of sandboxed.

I think I had read your minisite piece before, but today I went through it again, and it’s well worth the time, thanks!

-Dave

P.S. I checked out datafeedr – the process looks a little intimidating. (For one of their demo sites, they write, “This building of this site is completely documented in 55 videos.” 55 videos! Sounds like building a site is a huge project.)

Excellent post! Thanks for the mention and the kind words!

Best,

Morgan