Aeiou.com: A Personal And Unbaised Review
I have been trying to write this review for the longest time now but with the birth of my daughter and other personal happenings, I could not undertake a review which is usually more challenging than a regular post.
With all the talk about development, how do you develop a domain when you are reluctant, have procrastinated enough, or just too pre-occupied with so many other engagements? Lets not forget ”brain freeze”
Hire a pro, that’s how.
I have used other professional services in the past such as Rent-A-coder, eLance and so forth but this time, a popular saying of my ancestors kept nagging on me; ”when a kid washes his hands, he can eat with kings.” So without much ado, here enters aeiou.com
Now from the unset, I totally dislike the domain name aeiou.com and I let them know. It is not my place to judge whether it is a good domain for the job or not but I am a bad speller and domain names that cannot be referenced are just not my favorite. Ryan Hogrefe of Aeiou explained why they choose the name, something about being all vowels and that they feel it sounds good. As I write this post, I still have problems spelling it right. When I first tried to get to the site, I tried several times and gave up then decided to go to RickLatona.com and click on the link from there. Hopefully I will be the only one with this “unable to spell the name” problem. I think I am may just be giving them a really tough time on t his name because I know aeiou founders or founder has a formidable portfolio. They could have come up with a killer name if they wished.
Well now that’s out of the way, what do I think about there services ?. I choose a domain from my portfolio Hearing Dogs Dot Com
Here is some stats of Hearing dogs from January 1st to October 15th 2008
Impressions 2030
Uniques 566
Clicks 85
Earnings $39.11
Here is my verdict after the job was delivered October 22nd 2008
Design: I am pretty happy with what they did. I love the overall flow of the design. 5 stars
Included Articles: Well researched and pretty good as well. 5 stars
Customer Service: The actual customer service when you get it is very good but will receive 4 stars because of the undermentioned.
Timeliness :Some emails were not very promptly replied. Usually within 3 days though. The only one that gave me serious concern was that it took them a while to get back to me after I paid. Apparently I had mistakenly used an echeck insted of instant pay so they just waited it out instead of informing me of whats going on. The whole project took about 3 weeks which is rather great since I am not the only one they are working for. Overall I will give them a 3 stars for timeliness.
Satisfaction quotient: Very satisfied. 5 Stars.
Summary: Since the completion of the site, there has not been any influx of traffic. This could be attributed to so many things including the current economic climate. The only addition I have done so far is add a donation page because someone asked for it after a couple of days of the new site being up. I am still waiting for the donation.
One other thing is that I tend to get contact questions like this ” I am this and that and I don’t have money but I want a hearing dog” Most people mistake the site especially where it says hearing dogs .com is for sale as meaning we sell hearing dogs. By the way hearing dogs are specially trained dogs for the hearing impaired.
Lets face it, I can make mini sites but sometimes you just don’t want to for a million of reasons including writers and designers block. I think my 250 was very well spent and will do it again for a couple of domains if the opportunity and funds arise. I am especially impressed with the articles.
aeiou.com has a sale going on now for 200 bucks and I think between the Armani Jeans and an aeiou mini-site, I will spring for aeiou.
I will like to add that as of press time, I do not have any affiliate deals with Rick Latonna or aeiou.com. I have not been compensated in anyway to write this review.
25 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
I just bought collapsiblecanes.com from Rick Latona that came with an aeiou mini-site. According to Google keyword tool, the keyword gets decent search and the CPC is about $2. The cost for domain and site was $250 so I thought it was a good deal. I would’ve paid up to $150 for just the name. Rick hand reg’ed it a couple of weeks ago so it was a good find by him. Anyway, back to what I am posting about…
It is not clear from your post but how were your visits/rev before the service and after? It’s been 6 weeks since the site was done so maybe you don’t have enough data to answer but please do.
Nice article.
How does the cost analysis work out compared to revenue by just parking at say Parked.com?
Say $30 in parked revenue in the same period then you have gained $10. But if the mini site cost $250 it will take 10 x 10 months(9 years) to break even. Not a criticism, but let’s be real when evaluating services like this.
I know in our schools (Scotland) we were taught the vowels in that format parrot fashion, AEIOU is very memorable for me and anyone I reference it to so I can see why they feel it appeals.
Tony,
I am sorry my post did not make it clear enough.
The starts I posted was before the site was contracted to aeiou. Since After the site completion, traffic has not been that great which I attributed to a number of things in my post. I will post the stats for November 2008 as soon as I can get to a real computer
Frankie,
aeiou is one of the first things taught in first grade.
It’s the 5 vowels in alphabetical order and that’s how they are taught.
Whether aeiou .com is a good name for their minisite service is another matter.
Aeiou.com is pronounced A-E-I-O-U, pronounce the letters, not the letters in word form=)…
Because of this I think it is very memorable.
Troy,
Thanks that should help.
Frankly I am happy this is isolated to me alone
Patrick,
What you said above is what the rep at Aeiou said. Hence, I must have a very bad memory or I must have slept through my first grade class because aeiou does not ring any bell in my head.
Tex,
The site had allready made 38 bucks from parking at Fab.
My thinking is that I will be able to make much more from a minisite while at the same time improving the value of the domain. The stats on the post was prior to aeiou development. I will be posting the stats for last month November since the site was completed on October 22nd and approved on October 28th.
Frankie, you are not the only one, i was baffled by the choice of a domain name for this service as well, especially since its done by domainers. it is bad on so many levels im not even going to waste time on that as you’ve already provided several good examples already
Good news that you’re moving away from parking – But if you’re going to make this minisite pay you’ve got your work cut out. There are backlinks, new content and a myriad of other things to think about. It would be great if a new site suddenly meant an influx of visitors. Sadly it doesn’t and plenty of grafting is needed – (quite a lot of it.)
Anyway good luck with your development plans. Have you thought of just focusing on one or possibly two sites and turning them into a major destination?
@Tex
Here is November Revenue from adsense.
HearingDogs160x600 708 10 1.41% $4.16 $2.95
HearingDogs468x60 311 6 1.93% $5.09 $1.58
Pretty shabby but if truth be told, the last thing on peoples mind now is a hearing dog, really.
The revenue from parking which I posted in the original post where like 99% type-ins
NameCake,
Thanks for the advice. Ironically the minisite craze is in order to establish which site or sites will benefit the most from full fledged development.
A E I O U is the fundamental order of teaching children about vowels and word structure in the US. Therefore, it is quite common. The name would be excellent to teach or share the “basics” of any industry.
Ancestral quote(Delta?).
Thanks for sharing this info and congratulations on the new baby.
I looked at that site, not worth $250 imho. If it is for the hearing impaired I sure as heck hope they have great eyesight. Light brown font on dark brown background? The writer has clearly never read a book on basic web design (“Don’t make me think” takes about 2 hours total to read). The “first impression” is all adsense – “Oh, another one of *those* sites”. Don’t convince yourself this is a “developed” site and you have evolved more than only the tiniest step away from parking.
There is an old saying of ‘you get what you pay for’ – and while it might be a good place to start, to truly monetize your domains, you need a full-fledged site. Google can sniff these sites out much like they do for MFA (Made for Adsense) sites.
Also, think of your end-user. Everyday you are getting people to your domain – are you capturing their email addresses for future promotions? Are you monitoring their navigational path through the site?
I think it’s a nice service they offer to get started, but you’ll NEVER get the full gain out of your site unless it’s a ‘real’ sites – not something built with templates.
RP
I am sort of with you on the background and text color issue. If you look at any site I banged together myself including this one, You will notice that I am not a fan of dark backgrounds, expecially when the text of the site is important. This is a website basic that I know like you pointed out.
However I still rated the design flow a five star because it does look good. I also told myself, “if you wanted it exactly your own way then you should have done it yourself”
Sometimes expecailly in this field, it does not hurt to try new things. This guys are pros. Maybe they are up to something here. I also wanted to experiment whether the text color and dark background will result to more clicks since the ads are now more prominent.
On the lighter side of things, when one sense dullens, usually it does sharpen another.
Well said Paul,
But I will rather do something than know everything and do nothing.
Minisites is just a step up from parking. While I cannot develop all my domains, I will continue to upgrade them from parking to minisite then full if the circumstance supports it. I do not intend to create an empire from hearing dogs. If the minisite improves it earning significantly, bingo- it has done its job an if it doesn’t , then lesson learnt.
I second RP. The site definately doesn’t look worth $250. WordPress and some free templates and I’ve seen better.
I am an amateur developer so I may not be onto what advantages this may have over what I have said, just my opinion. Good Luck!
Vinay,
It is easier said than done.
How many minisites have you built in the past 3 weeks?
If you read my post, you would have seen that I said I could do it myself but sometimes you just need someone elses percepective.
Congratulations on your daughter’s birth, it’s indeed a great gift.
RP, I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one. Those sites are NOT minisites, they are MICRO sites and for the price they are charging you it’s definitely not worth the five micro pages.
http://ExplainLifeInsurance.com
My own site, correctly developed with 30 unique, well researched articles, a good simple design, and great SEO. This is my 15th site this week (for my own domains) and it has been up for about three days. The site has earned $6 from two clicks… enough said.
One of my biggest clients has defaulted from Rick’s “minisite” service and was very unhappy with the $250 charge for so little. I’m sorry guys, it’s just not worth it.
Another site that is still not finished is this one:
http://FoldingCoffeeTables.com
Ebay integration, unlimited expansion, and perfect SEO. This site gets over 10 type ins a day
Anyway, cheers!
Hi,
I am surprised you can spell “procrastinated” alright but have difficulty with “aeiou” and “there” instead of “their”. No hard feelings please! I consider AEIOU to be a gem – anyone who has any bit of the English language in them will never forget this domain name. It doesn’t even require any niche – you could sell anything from this domain.
Anyway, HearingDogs.com looks much better like it is now, than it would have if just parked. You could consider a little modification in the sponsors panel though. But $250 is way too much.
There are 2 new developments you should look at. Esa at Estibot has just launched a similar service at $99 (presently by invitation to some members of his site) and Google is rolling out the domain parking by 18 Dec’2008 (presently for North Americans).
If you are willing to consider, I too have started such a service for $48 (or $60 to include researching and hand-regging a niche domain in com/net/org/info/biz/mobi).
Best regards,
Sri.
@NamwIssue
Thanks for the offer but I am satisfied with the service I got from AEIOU.
As per the spelling issue, Worpress has an inbuilt spell checker which will recognize “procrastinated” but not aeiou nor tell you where to use ‘their’ correctly (a common grammar error) expecially when you have a sreaming baby in one hand and typing with one
How is the Hearing Dogs website traffic now that 6 months have passed? Ive been thinking about using AEIOU and am still not sure. After reading several of the case studies they have up, it seems several have dropped alot in rankings.
@Todd
Month Unique visitors Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
Jan 2009 210 333 659 2690 40.90 MB
Feb 2009 256 387 1051 2997 40.42 MB
Mar 2009 242 379 925 3175 43.71 MB
Apr 2009 224 349 677 2725 38.48 MB
May 2009 145 300 616 1558 20.22 MB
PS/ HD is one of my least updated website. One of this days I will get around to it.