DevName helps domainers develop their domain names.
Winged Media, the company behind domain auction and expired domain tool ProTrada, has released a new domain development system called DevName.com.
Like many auto-web site developers, DevName takes the theme of your domain name and pulls in related content to create a web site. The company claims to have a superior semantic engine to better target this content. [Update: DevName tells me that, while automatic technology is used for parts of the process, ultimately the sites are put together by a development team.]
An example site is AccidentsLawyers.org.
The service costs $20 per domain per year for a basic site. A site with two unique articles is $50 per year. Publishers can keep the ad revenue their site generates from Adsense and Amazon affiliate accounts.
Winged Media has another domain development service called Parklings.
DevName has also been integrated into the ProTrada interface.
Bob Fontaine says
*Need to make AccidentLawyers.org plural – AccidentSlawyers.org
Andrew Allemann says
@ Bob Fontaine – fixed, thanks
Cool says
DevName? Doesn’t make sense. NameDev is would be the correct domain name.
Bartholemy says
Proceed with (enormous) caution! This has all the trappings of the infamous so-called “Devhub” development platform …circa 2009-2010 (and thereafter, subsequently reincarnated in the present “Epik” platform).
By all appearances, the business model appears to be virtually identical (this service gets its money upfront by charging for “development” on a per-site basis; whereas DevHub did it for free in exchange for a share of the site’s ensuing earning-stream); and the websites themselves likewise “look and feel” virtually identical.
For those who don’t remember (or were not catastrophically affected), literally thousands of DevHub websites were de-indexed and banned by Google. Subsequently, Epik sites likewise suffered a similar fate.
rk says
@ Bartholemy
100% remeber what happened with DevHub and Epic.
Still have not recovered from those disasters when google just deindexed/banned 1000s of those sites.
No mass development solution using same script and/orhosting will ever survive google punishment.
John says
Are there any examples other than the one above? Paying for a site that looks nice isn’t bad especially if one has many names in a particular vertical. At the end of the day if one is going to put up a site they more than likely will have to pay or spend a great deal of time developing, so it is a nice alternative to Parked sites as well. Is there any historical data on what an average site may earn? Realize that some may earn Zero.
Paul Rivere says
DevHub –> DevName –> D.O.A. These ideas are total bogus and prey on the prayers of the desperate who hope for a miracle and waste plenty of time trying to squeeze something out of nothing while the DevWhatever builds wealth on the blood, sweat and tears of newbies. Buyer beware.
John says
Also, if they are affiliate sites some states don’t allow for it. I looked into doing a bunch a few weeks ago that required an Amazon Affiliate account. When I emailed Amazon to see if it was ok they said Illinois residents could not open up an Amazon Affiliate account. I believe there are other states that fall into that category as well.
Prosper says
Is the entire site computer created? I just reviewed their “HowToLoseWeight.net website and the title that is shown is “How To Loose Weight” Same issue with their Foods to Lose Weight site…
If the system can’t spell correctly, what other issues does it have…
DevHub 2.0
Prosper says
…their CheapHouseForSale example shows articles related to “Cheap White Bread” and “Cheap Nosh in Nottingham.” lol
I think my $20 can be used more wisely from an ROI prospective.
Tim Davids says
It’s not the States that say you can’t have affiliates, Amazon ended offering to residents of those states due to the States wanting to collect sales taxes in each.
DR.DOMAIN says
Yeah…I was having Devhub / Epik flashbacks just reading this post.Another one of my “rookie mistakes”. Then I went to a coupla’ of their sample sites to confirm the obvious. Waste of time.
rs says
The part about “pulls in related content” may be a problem. that is a big no-no if you want to get good spot on google.
SF says
During the gold rush, many people got rich selling shovels to the miners. Seems like a lot shovel selling popping up in the domain industry these days.
As someone said earlier, Google is Never going to let semi-developed or mini-sites rank and get organic serp traffic.
IF someone ever comes up with a Scalable system that can produce “Full Blown, Robust, MultiMedia Websites” …they Might have a chance.
But, even then, Google is the controller. If they don’t like it, they won’t allow it.
Steve Jones says
It isn’t even necessarily “full blown, robust, multimedia” websites needed – if the sites created would actually be useful/helpful to visitors, that’s all Google really wants. The problem is the scraped/republished content on these sites is usually poor quality or completely irrelevant, which no one wants to see. You can’t expect to rank well anymore with crappy sites that you would never go to yourself if you were interested in the subject matter.
MiniSites.Pro says
Steve makes a very valid point, even a five page website that is both unique and useful to visitors would be ok w/ adsense TOS.
Scraped content was pretty much done to death with the Google Panda update and a sure way of getting your domain in trouble.
Though for top ranking for a term with competition it would take a LOT more than a minisite.
Jason says
I agree with Prosper they look pretty cheap and why would anyone pay $20 a year for a site that will never rank unless you put in a ton of work yourself and which will not make you any money?