Yep... The world is a better place without it. Now, as I am sure you already knew, I have been one of the most vocal critics of Rick's services over the past year. I have also been one of the biggest fans because I admire anybody who is involved with development one way or another. So, I am going to be brutally honest here and just tell it like it is and then we can all just move on and get back to business. Transparency is good. It is something new in the domain business and people do seem to like it... What a big surprise!
It is no secret that the AEIOU development service it self wasn't that good. It was barely acceptable actually. The content and search engine optimization was poor and the costs for the "minisites" that became so popular over the past 12 month's were way too high for the quality of work and what the client was getting for his money as the end result was an overpriced "quick job". There was really no long term value to the sites being produced whatsoever unfortunately and nobody can argue otherwise. If you failed to recognize this fact, then take it from an expert, they were never worth more than $99 max.
After I wrote that pretty aggressive / hostile review of Rick's AEIOU service, he did contact me and we went back and forth behind the scenes with a couple of productive discussions about how to improve their offering and Rick did in fact make some changes right away to the domain development service which I was happy to see, but it wasn't enough. You gotta constantly improve your product / service offering, because if you are not making moves, rest assured somebody else definitely is and your days are numbered. This is old news!!
I really do not know for a fact why Rick decided to call it quits and proclaim that "there is no money in web design" and such.. Can only speculate here, but I have a pretty good idea of what probably contributed largely for him to make such a decision. So, since day one of launching this Wanna Develop site, I have been getting contacted by people daily who need help with domain mass development + SEO and they are ready, willing and able to pony up.
At the beginning, I was very picky with who I decided to work with as far as domain development projects go because I hate nothing more than to waste time... I turned down approximately 80% to 90% of all requests. I didn't want to work with the cheap newbies who were not serious about domain development. I was highly selective and from October of 2008 - May of 2009, I only picked 10 - 20 people total per month on average... I worked with serious businessman who clearly knew what they wanted out of their domains and what kind of results to expect from our exclusive development service.
Of course as I am sure you already know, in late May we launched DomainMassDevelopment.com and loosened up a bit the qualifications. We started dealing with most people who were ready to pony up $1000 minimum per project. The service became a lot more "accessible" and we have been growing week after week after week and continue to grow, til this very day. We do not deal with individuals that want to spend only a few hundred bucks. We have passed on hundreds of such opportunities and for a very good reason.
Once again, my target clientele was never the domainer hobbyist dreamy millionaire wanna-be's with the .biz .us .mobi and other crappy brandable speculative and mostly worthless domains. Our clients are seasoned and professional businessman who understand that investments have to be made in the *right* targeted keyword domains in order to take them to the next level as standalone internet businesses. Yea, so... You get what I am saying.
Many of the clients that I did turn down.. Guess where they went? Yup. Rick Latona's AEIOU.com and some of the other "minisite" development services out there that popped up recently such as MiniSites.com. This types of clients are the ones which Rick references to when he says "The customers are hard to please..." because the reality is, this people do not know what they want or need and it is indeed extremely hard to work with them because no matter what you do or how hard you try, they will always find something wrong.
I know that this happened for a fact, because all of the hundreds of people that I turned down this past year did provide me with an initial list of their domains that they had unrealistic and stupid development plans for... So when I was bored, I'd visit the domains a month or two later and they would be setup with one of those two companies mentioned above most of the time.... Funny :)
So basically they got most of the leftovers and "headache" type of clients which I refused to work with... I have a sixth sense for this stuff. As a service provider you really gotta know who to turn down and who to pursue. At the end of the day, you cannot make all the deals in the world because time is limited as are resources. That is why you gotta be sure that you are working with clients that see eye to eye with you. Ones who won't make your life difficult. The business arrangement here has to be win-win.
Rick Latona says that "...reality is there is no money in web design and the margins are slim" which is not really true. I can tell you that we've been doing six figures per month on average for domain development service sales coming from domainers alone since the beginning of the year. As for the margins, well... Our "base product" is the mass developed quick start-up sites that are deployed in an on-topic network setup by the dozens...
The real money we make in this business is by up selling a ton of complimentary services, including search engine optimization, website customization, website updates / upgrades and the deployment and integration of advanced monetization... With our most popular base product we barely make any worthwhile profit, the margins are indeed slim, sure... Agree here 100% with Rick, but that is used as a promotional tool to draw in clients and it works like clockwork. I've already said this a million times too... Doh!
With some of our more expensive and real long term value based services that start at a few hundred bucks and go up as high as a few thousand... We make as much as 60% - 80% profits easily on each and every order! So, there is plenty of money to be made, if you know what to offer... First of course you gotta know what you are doing. I personally don't think Rick Latona and his crew had much of a clue what they were in store for with this whole "domain development" journey.
Reality is, anybody can create a "minisite" but can you continue to improve it and take that website from a mini-site to a mega-site and then to the next level.....and then the next level... and so on??! We definitely can. We have the formula and processes down to a science... For many years now been going at it. That is why we have a unconditional money back guarantee on all of our domain mass development services. No other company in this space is comparable to ours. We provide 2x the value for 2x less the prices. PERIOD!
So what more is there to be said? It's pretty clear who is the leader when it comes to domain development in the tiny domain industry. This race isn't even close anymore with all of the rest of the "competition" out there... I will actually miss Rick Latona's AEIOU because by having them around, I was able to close a lot of sales easily by showing potential clients what they get for $200 - $250 from another service and what they can get from us for $99 or less. The client had an easy decision to make. I made sales in 1 - 2 e-mails on average.
We'll continue to innovate and bring to market newer service offerings.. Right now we are at the final stages of rolling out a very exciting new service to our line up. It is going to be huge. A real game changer. We are going to be offering full blown e-commerce shop website's packed with up to 100,000 affiliate products. Everything is going to be on auto-pilot and the revenue potential with this types of website's is massive.
We will also offer to work with serious clients who want to take their existing product based category killer domains / website's even further, to the next level, by setting up a full blown e-commerce business. We will find the best drop shippers / wholesalers to partner up with. We will integrate their entire product catalog... Automate the checkout and order fulfillment processes... Offer marketing.. Support.. Management... And so on and so on.
Of course the above is going to be costly and not or everyone, but what'd you expect? Come on now... That is what it takes to build a real business that will be around for years. There is no way to get rich overnight in this biz.. You gotta bust your ass and invest your cash wisely!
You know, my service here was never about tying up clients and having too much leverage by actually hosting all their sites, and taking advantage of the non-technical domainers by charging for this and that. We never sub-licensed any scripts / software either. If something goes wrong, the service provider can pull a number on you and then you are screwed. You think somebody is doing you a favor, but the reality is... They are really not.
All I gotta say is that you really gotta do your research and know what you're getting yourself into. There is many things that have to come together for a website to be able to breakthrough in this crazy and competitive world wide web and become a success by being able to consistently turn in a profit at the end of the day.... When you are ready to make a splash, come see the domain development pros. We are here for you, and we aren't going anywhere anytime soon to all you competitors out there. We're just getting warmed up.
No disrespect whatsoever to Rick Latona and his team... They did their thing.. I am sure they tried to make it work for them (profits $$$) but it just wasn't meant to be. The system was broken and something had to give. Best of luck in future projects and hopefully this was another good lesson where everyone can take some bits and pieces from, apply to their own business and succeed.
Reviews at WannaDevelop.com
01/07/2010: The most basic keyword research / analysis tools had profound impact on most successful domain investors, competitive webmasters, etc. 12/18/2009: Why spend thousands upfront??! Start small... Our affiliate based e-shops are only $249!!! :) 11/21/2009: Powerful WordPress based e-commerce shops 10/23/2009: Truth be told: nobody is going to miss Rick Latona's AEIOU domain development 10/15/2009: Getting 2x the value for 2x less..?! How is that possible today... What the........???!??
