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Epik fiasco draws record crowds.. Who knew?

On any given month I get quite a bit of search engine traffic, but November saw a record number via Google and all these people apparently were looking for info about Epik.com and/or Rob Monster. About 80 different keywords brought in boatloads of people.. Here they are in alphabetical order. Some were searched by the dozens, while some were only one timers.

anyone use epik.com
bad experience epik networks
buy epik bucks
buying a site from epik
buying a website from epik
cant sign into epik.com
does epik develop .me domains
domainstryker epik fail
duplicate content epik.com
epik adsense wishpot revenue blog
epik banned from google
epik blacklisted
epik bucks
epik de index
epik deindexed
epik deindexing
epik delisted
epik delisting
epik development experience
epik development platform
epik development platform forum
epik development sucks
epik domain
epik domain development
epik domains
epik duplicate content ip
epik earnings
epik earnings page
epik fail
epik failed interview
epik funding
epik google
epik is shit
epik minisites
epik networks bankruptcy
epik news
epik platform
epik platforms
epik portal sites banned by google
epik portals
epik product portal
epik quick sites
epik revenue sharing
epik rob monster
epik rob monster premium domain development
epik site banned google
epik sites banned
epik sites deindexed
epik sites deindexed google
epik sites deindexed news
epik sites or site rob monster
epik stats
epik the same ip
epik white label
epik.com alternatives
epik.com ban
epik.com banned
epik.com blacklisted
epik.com costs
epik.com delisting
epik.com domain
epik.com earnings
epik.com ecommerce
epik.com or datafeedscripts.net
epik.com reply
epik.com stats
epik.com sucks
epik.com testimonials
epiks business model
failed application epik
failed epik renewal
google bans epik
google epik
how does epik make money
how long until epik accepts you
portal epik product
rob monster epik deindexed
see stats epik.com
serps.com epik.com
turn around time for epik
where does epik get its information
wishpot and epik

Now just to set the record straight, I have nothing against Rob Monster. All of my “rants” last month or whatever you wanna call them had to be put out there.. Somebody’s gotta keep it real. It’s never personal… Just business. I think Rob Monster is a good guy overall, and he is definitely no dumbass because he is messing around with keyword domains after all. Gotta give him a ton of credit just for that. Domains are like gold… As for the previous “Epik” mass development strategies, that is a whole different story.

DNW losing street cred.. Big time

All the non-sense Andrew at DomainNameWire.com has been posting about Epik as of late is really suspect… Now I’ve long enjoyed his blog’s coverage of the industry and supported it by advertising on there a couple of times even but statements such as “Regardless of where Epik is one, two, and five years down the road, the domain name industry should support the companyâ€™s efforts…” got me scrtaching my head.

I mean seriously, WTF… ? Are you guys for real??! LOL. Can somebody please tell me one thing that Epik or this “platform” (which BTW I can put together on a 4 figure budget in under one month if I needed to) has succeeded in or positives brought to the domain industry other than hype, undelivered promises and making failure a part of day-to-day life and reality for everybody who is involved one way or another for the past year or year and a half?

Things aren’t making much sense to me, and I know it’s not just me from all the dozens of e-mails and comments I’ve received lately from frustrated and puzzled individuals… Gotta wonder what is really going on??! It’s like no matter how many times things screw up, it’s all good and excuse after excuse after excuse… ALL IS WELL? LOL!

I know Rob Monster had some success in his previous lifetime with a start-up but the past few years he has nothing to show for whatsoever from burning over $7M of his personal money with Monster Venture Partners which was funding big development projects on “premium domains” to most recently with the whole Epik mass development dream…

Come on now?! Do your research people and it’s time to get off his dick. Getting old. It’s always nice to have somebody to look up-to, especially in our business which has very few leaders, but he brings no experience in mass development / domaining other than the “celeb” status and cash. That is probably the only thing he is good for unfortunately if you think about it.

What is the biggest difference between Epik and DMD (DomainMassDevelopment.com) ??!

It’s really simple: Epik has no idea what they are doing when it comes to mass development. As for my own DMD service which was started and kicking ass way before Epik existed… This statement says it all: At DMD we provide “professional solutions at the most affordable prices… 100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back with no questions asked” PERIOD.

That has been the motto since day one if you visit DomainMassDevelopment.com as it jumps straight at you and it will always remain up there so the message is communicated clearly.It’s how I like to do things.Â Has to be win-win… No strings attached. No bullshit. What you see is what you get, and that is the #1 best selling mass development service around. Period.

Since starting to work with domainers over 2 years ago we’ve now done well over $2M in mass development projects across literally 10,000s of domains. How many refunds have we had to issue? I can only remember 1 or 2 cases and this is from well over 1,000 different clients that come from all walks of life.We keep it simple. Over any client’s active development cycle, they re-order at least 3 – 4 times on average and spend well over mid $x,xxx. Ask yourself why?

Once again, the tagline says it all. We proudly display it at the very top. No hype or anything else. We don’t lock you in either… Instead we empower our clients and give them control. Full control over everything 100%. Professional solutions at the most affordable prices… 100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back with no questions asked. Try us out! You got nothing to lose.

There will be many wanna-be’s… They will come and go naturally… Vulture type. I’ve seen many fail literally within month’s because they were clueless and they never even had the chance, but there will always only be just ONE true domain mass development service focused on getting you the results needed. You don’t have to look very far. You already know where it’s at… Only a click or search away.

Epik sucks… Period. Time to move on folks!

Not sure what more needs to be said anymore, we all know this already, but let me just highlight a quick comment by Scott from SERPs.com:

As an SEO I was interested in what EPIK was sellingâ€¦.so I went to their Epik Developer conference in Seattle. While the people were great, and I had a blast at the conference, after the first day I knew there was no way in heck I was going to buy an Epik domain.

The problem was that they blatantly were advertising how well these sites did in Googleâ€¦but the only reason they were doing well was because of the cross-linking. Nothing else.

My biggest issue came from the fact that they tried to position these websites like a stock. Websites are not securities. You donâ€™t â€œinvestâ€ in websites passively, which is what Epik was pitching.

Building a successful, usefully, Google-friendly website takes more than $249 and then expecting the dough to roll it. If it was just that easy, everyone would be doing it.

Iâ€™m sorry to be so critical, I really thought Rob was a great guy, and I loved their enthusiasm, but you just canâ€™t play with fire the way they did and not expected to get burned.

Scott’s comments along with many others who have already been there and done that tell the whole story.

So really folks, it’s time to move on… Epik has been around for a long time now and they have failed time and time over and over again. Domain mass development is not their thing. So YOU need to cut your losses sooner than later. I’d say now is a good time though before you really get knee deep into shit. Start from scratch on your own, or go with somebody who actually knows what he is doing. It’s that simple. Two options.. Ball is in your court

Uhh Oh.. Looks like Epik’s “featured stores” are now shitlisted

Google the almighty has laid the smackdown on Epik’s featured stores which you have heard so much about… IE: IceCreamMaker.com, HardDrives.com, Bikinis.net, etc. All of these sites which were linked up like crazy on the footer / bottom of all sites part of the “network” are now banned. Hate to do this, but I told you so here and once again here too. But WTF do I know? LOL

Copy/pasting for those too lazy to catch up… From my post on October 10, 2010:

Your sites are cross-linked with garbageâ€¦

What do I mean? Well, Epik catches many dropped domains and develops them. Many of these domains contain 1, 2 or more hyphensâ€¦ This stuff screams â€œspamâ€ immediately and red flags start flying all over the place in the eyes of Google. Also, the history for many of these domains I bet you is shady as hell. Marketers or in other words SEO spammers used all kinds of blackhat techniques to get them to rank one way or another. Once they were done with them, they let em dropâ€¦ But here comes Epik, scooping up the garbage and trying to make something of it because automated valuations say this stuff is gold. Stupid. Real stupid if you ask me.

So you want your very own price comparison/product ppc feed portal?

Firstly, forget Epik.com because it sucks… Simply follow the three steps below and you can be on your way to get your very own Shopping.com/Shopzilla.com powered PPC mega store that is 100% on auto-pilot.

1) Decide whether you want to use Shopping.com (an eBay company) or Shopzilla.com (aka Bizrate)

2) Signup for a publisher account… Wait a day or two to get approved

3) Visit http://datafeedscripts.net/ and order the correct script once you have your publisher credentials and API keys

That’s it! Very simple… For a few hundred bucks you get your very own mega store, installation and even some customization if you can’t do it on your own. Forget splitting revenues 50/50 and all the hype surrounding Epik product portals which rarely if ever perform. You want to make the most of your domains? You need to be in control.

Don’t expect to get rich with these because the PPC is really low compared to domain parking or even AdSense… But it is what it is. Just another option to explore

Epik failed… It’s all in the numbers folks. PS — I told you so!

Detailed stats are for a little over 6,000 Epik powered “product portal” sites for the week of Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2010.

Only 3 domains generated over $100:

bra.net $289.43
icecreammaker.com $192.02
womens-rain-boots.com $109.35

Only 13 domains generated over 1000 visitors…

porno.co.uk 26685 visitors
kindergartengames.net 16396 visitors
vinylroll.com 5304 visitors
bra.net 4092 visitors
hairy.com 2726 visitors
bl.com 2499 visitors
netbks.com 1943 visitors
icecreammaker.com 1933 visitors
novel.com 1782 visitors
ninjavideos.com 1340 visitors
computerhardware.net 1232 visitors
saws.com 1139 visitors
toilet.net 1025 visitors
ereaders.net 1021 visitors

The stats for all the rest of the domains are pretty shitty if you ask me… Wait, pretty shitty isn’t the correct term in this case… What’s a better word I am looking for?! Hmm….. The numbers are just plain horrific. Do keep in mind the numbers are for the previous 1 week (7 day period) but regardless, multiply the current data by 4.2/3 and it’s still shit. At this pace, 99% of the people should expect to get their ROI much much later than what they originally hoped or were promised.

You can view here the entire list containing stats for the top visited sites

You can view here the entire list containing stats for the top earning sites

I received the reports a few minutes ago from a good friend of mine who is a genius when it comes to data analysis and scrapping, but way way before I set out to get the inside scoop and really dig deep…I already knew that the results would be shitty because the entire setup is flawed from A to Z as I’ve written about previously already numerous times, but wow, even I was surprised to see just how bad things really are across the board and I feel bad for all parties involved but it is what it is. The numbers don’t lie… Do they?

So yea, there is the entire story pretty much, which can be summed up in two words: Epik failed and numbers to illustrate and present the facts. You can go ahead and visit any domain in the list and add /stats to the URL to get them directly from the source and do keep in mind the numbers displayed are then further split 50/50 between the domain owner and Epik, the product portal sites’ operator. Ouch!

In this weekly report a total of 6,031 Epik powered domains generated 173,727 visitors which clicked 49,871 times to bring in the whopping earnings of $7,481.95… Now if it was one or two guys splitting the profits from this little network, it would be ok I suppose, but there are hundreds of people involved if not more.

So what are your thoughts about all of this? Lets hear it.

100 reasons not to use Epik product portals…Your input is required

I received some very interesting comments from my previous post about Epik, which was the inspiration for this follow-up post… So yea, lets see… I could literally come up with like 100Â or more reasons not to use the Epik powered PPC portals, but let me just point out some of the most important ones for now. Hopefully they sink in. I won’t use any big words and hype things up. I’ll keep it nice and simple for you all… Gotta call it like I see it.

Your sites are cross-linked with garbage…

What do I mean? Well, Epik catches many dropped domains and develops them. Many of these domains contain 1, 2 or more hyphens… This stuff screams “spam” immediately and red flags start flying all over the place in the eyes of Google. Also, the history for many of these domains I bet you is shady as hell. Marketers or in other words SEO spammers used all kinds of blackhat techniques to get them to rank one way or another. Once they were done with them, they let em drop… But here comes Epik, scooping up the garbage and trying to make something of it because automated valuations say this stuff is gold. Stupid. Real stupid if you ask me.

You are getting rob’d…

E-Commerce traffic is extremely valuable if put to use with the right setup, but with the ways things are right now, the only monetization options available are the 3rd tier bizrate.com product PPC feed and Google AdSense PPC ads on the sidebars…. You make pennies with these. Also don’t forget you have to split the revenues 50/50.

You are overpaying by about $248 for what you are getting

Not sure what makes people fall in love with the sites built by Epik… Is it the outstanding shitty logo that is quite noticeable? Does that work cost $100 or $200?? Because if you ask me, it could be produced in 5 minutes by a 12 year old in exchange for a pack ofÂ gum. Maybe it’s the great SEO and copywriting… ? Oh wait, but it doesn’t even exist. LOL So what are you essentially paying for??! Do you know? I guess to be able to use a platform, but why are you using a platform that does not deliver anything but poor results? Beats me.

So that is just 3 reasons that I could pull right off top of my head. Now, it’s your turn. Go ahead and let your voice be heard. Your input is welcome. 3 down, 97 more to go.

Don’t mean to be a party pooper but WTF… ?

I can’t believe that the hype is still alive and going strong when it comes to Epik product portals which are powered by a 3rd tier PPC shopping feed. The results are less than impressive in the SEO and PPC department if you ask me… By now, I would have thought the whole thing would go away and people would be doing something else, but no. So anyways, lets look at the numbers straight from some of Epik’s network of featured stores.

Earnings: $65.59

Clicks: 575

What are they up-to now… ?

Exactly a year ago Ron Jackson over at DNJournal profiled a bunch of new “domain mass development” companies… So what’s new? Not much really. Most of them quietly disappeared. Aeiou.com is now parked, SiteGraduate.com is forwarding to WhyPark.com… Was also funny to see WhyPark.com get acquired by Parked.com — that is just hilarious if you ask me.

DevHub was re-launched / spun off as Epik.com by one of it’s main funding partners, Rob Monster. Then there was also TinBu, which is just a syndicated content / widgets provider. Not sure what it had to do if anything with domain development, but it was featured as a “bonus profile”Â as well.

For me personally, business was booming since day one of launching WannaDevelop.com in October of 2008 — then I launched DomainMassDevelopment.com about 6 month’s later to specifically provide an in-demand lineup of solutions for domainers looking to mass develop, and we’ve been introducing new services for close to a year now and rocking it hard

Why so successful when almost everybody else failed with this mass development thing? Simply put… We provide the most bang for your buck, meaning affordable services and ones that actually convert visitors into $ and grow traffic organically as well. It also helps when you know what you are doing, unlike others who half-assed it and really had no idea about proper development and SEO.

“Since first launching in late 2008, our exclusive domain mass development / search engine optimization service has been selling itself like crazy thanks mainly to word of mouth. After one full year of servicing hundreds of clients, we completed over $1,000,000 in development projects / marketing campaigns and the demand is still increasing month-to-month.

Individuals and leading domain holding companies in over 20 countries around the globe choose us to help them with various web development, content creation, search engine optimization, creative marketing and monetization solutions for their domains simply because we offer the most affordable and complete all-in-one services available on the market.”

Check us out over at http://www.domainmassdevelopment.com/ and I also recommend you read my entire interview at DNJournal. You will definitely learn some new things: http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2009/march-wannadevelop.htm