AEIOU.com Calls it Quits
Monday, October 19th, 2009
AEIOU getting out of the minisite business.
Mini site production company AEIOU, owned by Rick Latona, is throwing in the towel.
In a blog post at RickLatona.com, Latona says there’s no money in web design. “It’s hard. The customers are hard to please. The margins are slim and frankly, there are bigger fish to fry”, wrote Latona.
What Latona doesn’t directly say but hints at: it’s hard to scale this type of business.
Customers with open orders will still have their projects completed. People who host their web sites on AEIOU need to move their sites within 90 days unless they have a hosting agreement with the company. (This is one more reason to insist that web designers and mini site developers let you host the web site, rather than hosting it on their servers.)
Latona deserves full credit for giving a go at this one. And even more credit for knowing when it was time to pull the plug.
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Tags: aeiou, rick latona
Hate to hear this. I’ve got a solid week of time invested in DevHub sites.
M. Menius – I was speaking more of static HTML sites. There’s no way you can have something like DevHub w/o being on the server side.
Just got an email from WhyPark, which should help out AEIOU customers:
1. For any AEIOU customer who doesn’t have a hosting agreement, they’ll be looking for a new home. AEIOU clients can send us their site files and we’ll setup the site for free hosting on WhyPark with our top-tier pay per click feed. All custom pages will be added and we’ll implement the design as closely as possible. We can support AEIOU info/minisites, geo sites and squeeze pages.
2. For those customers who would like to continue using third-party ads instead, they could subscribe to our $10 or $25 per month offerings, which also includes upgraded options.
Customers interested in this easy migration offering should contact support -at- whypark.com with a list of their domains and optionally files for their AEIOU sites.
AEIOU.com Calls it Quits – http://tinyurl.com/yl7xl6x
This is a pity.
I got a web site designed by them, it brought us onto page one of google for the keyphrase in the domain. I had to switch the script to keep the seo they got, after reading something on the script forum. But kudos to them, they did a brilliant job.
The aeiou.com was a very good deal for the customer. Hosting included? Even better. I used to be a freelance web designer myself (www.autoweb-ireland.com) and web design is a very very tough business.
OK Andrew, I see what you mean. Great that AEIOU sites can be moved.
Nobody is going to talk about the elephant in the room? The inherent problem with the ‘minisite’ business model in general?
@ Kevin
The problem isn’t with minisites. The problem, I’m guessing, is that RLA is swamped with lots of moneymaking opps with domain auctions, which they are doing very well. It’s a decision of productivity results, or “ROI”.
I give Rick L. and his team tons of credit for giving domainers and internet investors the chance to at least delve into other development options.
It’s not, as you think, a “problem” with building out your sites using services such as WhyPark or Devhub or others. And we still haven’t defined what a “minisite” is… have we?
Stephen,
I’ve been addressing these issues in a bunch of places, you can read why I disagree with you here(its LONG): http://ohashi.info/article/failure-minisites-and-math-behind-them
@ Kevin,
Thanks Kevin – I will read your article thoroughly and try to reach you by email if I have any questions for debate.
Well I give credit to Rick for knowing when to call it quits, I can tell you AEIOU was easily the worst minisite service I have used for the money you pay. I along with many others received 0 visitors and $0 in revenue after months. They talked way too highly of themselves and didn’t deliver ANY results. It’s no wonder Rick finally decided to call it quits.