There is no right or wrong answer but I do have my own preference that I think uses the best of both worlds…

Each type of site has its own benefits; a mini-site has a clear goal and can make use of exact domain name matches for very fast results – 1 page in a week!

The problem is that they are often created with no scope in mind.  The exact match domain name often makes branding difficult and the pages, as informative as they may be, aren’t something that would make a user want to return or tell their friends about it.  They still require maintenance to keep them ranking on the first page of the SERPs and tracking the progress.

A large authority site on the other hand can make ranking new pages easy and these new pages can be added without upsetting the flow of the site.  The authority site can build up an online presence and become a true brand.   Different monetisation methods can be used depending on the page and keyword.  You can create powerful business opportunities with custom advertising and joint ventures that wouldn’t become available from a 5 page site about 4 slice toasters or yoga mates.

If you plan your large site right you can have a web site that is a great user experience that will have them returning for more after that initial Google search.  This opens up the opportunity of people in your niche talking about your site on their blogs, Twitter, Facebook accounts etc.  This free exposure is priceless…backlinks will flood in if your site is a resource of useful information!

A large site does take work and the results aren’t as fast as a mini-site (with exact match domain).  This puts a lot of people off.  With the right planning though a large authority site will produce faster results from new content over a mini-site as Google will begin to index content almost instantly.

Mini-sites do have a place.  I like to use mini-sites as a way to fund my larger online projects and experiment with my SEO techniques.  Rather than creating an army of 100+ sites that takes all day to track and manage, create a handful at a time and use the boost in income to fund the expansion of a few larger sites that have the potential to become something great online.

The income from the mini sites makes creating the larger sites easier as there is no panic to generate fast results.  You can plan properly and execute carefully without the fear of not having money coming through the door.

If you want to try a new backlinking method or site structure or some other secret SEO technique it is best to try it on mini-sites before risking a large site with history.  The results won’t be as skewed and if it backfires you won’t lose as much work.  It is easier to recreate a mini-site than a large authority site.

Once the large site is up and running and creating a nice income itself, you can cull back some of your mini-sites by flipping them for a lump sum bonus.  Your time can now focus purely on expanding the larger site or creating a new one.  Time won’t be wasted building hundreds of backlinks to hundreds of domains for small returns and trying to follow the ups and downs many keywords face – across many domains.

After 6 months of your large site being online you should start to get massive increases in results as Google learns to trust your domain.  It will be at a stage where you get quicker results be creating a new article on the large site rather than making a new exact match domain from scratch.  This is due to the authority, trust and internal link juice flowing through your site – things wasted on a mini-site.
If you are considering taking over the web with a swarm of mini-sites, take the time to consider if there is a more efficient way to spend your time.  Diversification is great and highly recommended but instead of spreading the work over 100 domains consider a handful of large authority sites instead.

Think of each of your sites as a small business rather than a way to get a few AdSense clicks or Amazon sales here or there.

The breach is to do with personal details of clients (credit card details) being stolen from Bottle Domains and published for sale on the web. Allegedly Bottle Domains did not do enough to advise their customers of the breach and the possible consequences. This happened several years ago but recent events involving the BrisConnections saga may have stirred up a hornets nest somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, Nicholas Bolton runs 4 different domain company and they all seem to share some sort of resources. These include Bottle, Bottle Domains, Domain Central, and Name.com.au – the company I tried to register through. They use variations for the actual domain registrar. Various attempts at contacting Domain Central and Name.com.au seemed to fall on deaf ears.

The suspension occurred during the same week and possibly even the same day that I tried to register the failed domain.

I applied for a domain transfer and fortunately it went through successfully and pretty quickly to Jumba and everything is now up an running.

The suspension has since been lifted and there is talk that Bolton is trying to get all transfers that occurred during the suspension returned to his company’s control but I haven’t heard anything more from this.

I’ll keep you posted on what happens to my domains.

You can read more about the whole saga here

I came across name.com.au and was immediately attracted to the $20 price tag.  I was still a little skeptical so read around on some popular forums and noticed mix reactions.  The common theme being that they are great when it works but an absolute pain when things go sour.

I took the plunge on purchasing this very domain.  The process was simple and the registration went through quickly without a hitch.  Setting up the nameservers was a little confusing but after some further reading I had it sorted in no time.  After 24hours the domain was up and I was wondering what all the fuss was about.

The next week I had to order a domain for a new client starting up his own business.  After my first experience I went to my name.com.au account fully confident and applied to register the new domain.  The application was as easy as the first time, but then everything seemed to go wrong.  The domain management said that registration failed.

I dug through the site and the help files to try and find out any clue as to what went wrong and how to fix it to no avail.  The only support offered was through an online ticketing system so I filled one out and was told that an confirmation email with a support ticket number had been sent through.  Nothing was received.  Luckily I stumbled across a support email address and sent one off hoping for a response the next day.  To my suprise the email bounced.

After waiting a day to see if the support ticket did make it through out of curiousity I pinged the failed domain and was amazed to see it respond and point to the name.com.au nameservers.  A whois was the next stop and all of the correct details were returned.  The domain was registered properly but the domain management software prevented access to change the configuration details such as nameservers.  The registrar from the whois was actaully Domaincentral.com.au so I tried to contact them both through email and phone.  The phone rings out to a call back service and the emails are never returned.  By this stage the money for the domain has been taken out of my account.

I am now stuck with a domain I can’t control with a provider who I can’t even get a response from to correct.   Does anyone have a Domain Registrar’s they would like to recommend for support and cost or maybe a contact for Name.com.au or Domaincentral.com.au?