I’ve been buying expired domains with back links for quite a while, a little over a year if my memory serves me right. In that time my approach has been to buy the domain and then 301 redirect it to one of my existing domains. The results have been OK if not spectacular. Sure those links can give an improvement in search rankings but it’s not the magic bullet I was hoping it may be. There had to be a better way of profiting from these expired domains, well last week I discovered it.
I say I discovered it, the truth is that I read about it in some top secret members only area. The idea was simple, somebody was buying up expired domains with links and then instead of forwarding them he was simply using the way back machine (or internet archive) to recreate some of what was on the website originally. Failing this any relevant content to the domain would do. The thing was once Google spidered those links with the content in place the page rank came piling back. Those domains could then be flipped – easy money.
So last week I thought I’d give it a shot. Pick a niche any niche – I decided on tattoos. I managed to find an expired tattoo related domain that had 47 backlinks and bought it. Unfortunately for me the old content was rubbish so I ended up sticking up WordPress and populated it with some free tattoo articles. Within 3 days I had a Page Rank 2 blog! I’ve just sold the domain name for $50. That domain cost me $8 to buy.
$42 doesn’t sound like a lot of profit but considering the amount of effort and risk involved I’m happy with that return. I’m happier still knowing that it’s something I can do over and over whenever I’m in the mood. In fact I have another waiting for the PR to be delivered right now. The other thing to think about is the niche you go into. There are plenty of websites on the internet that really struggle with getting backlinks (gambling, porn) and if you can find a couple of good even remotely related domains for these you could be on to some serious pay dirt.
If you’re wondering how I sold my domain then I didn’t bother with Sedo. I’ve given up using brokerages for this, all I did was e-mail some Tattoo website webmasters seeing if they’d like to buy it. Was very easy.
10 Responses to “Quickest Page Rank Ever! (And How You Can Make Money From It)”
Stefan
July 30, 2009
Wouldn’t it be better to use the linkpower? Buy domains within your niche and then put some old information on the site (wayback). Then link specific words to your mainsite. Add some advertising to make even.
|.-= Stefan´s last blog ..Review: Fight Club =-.
Paul B
July 30, 2009
That’s just a less direct way of 301′ing them and involves a lot more work. (There’s also the small matter of c class IPs linking together and how that difuses the link value). Also a lot of the most valuable domains are not in niches that you may operate in. I’m not big on Tattoos and don’t operate any high quality tattoo websites. Even if I did 301′ing the domain would have much more value then having to create high quality to content to link from.
The idea with the method above is to go from Expired Domain = Cold Hard Cash in as few steps as possible.
|Jesse
July 30, 2009
shhhhh don’t tell everyone.. lol, just kidding.. good post Paul and for anyone who is interested in trying this just make sure you verify the pagerank if you are buying the domain from someone instead of registering an expired/dropped one. There are some out there that will try to pass off garbage as a PR “whatever” that really isn’t so just be cautious
|Stefan
July 30, 2009
@Paul: I’m not sure if it involves that much more work. Your method involves all the same steps with the difference that you sell your domain when you have added information instead of adding advertising (Google Ads), as me.
On the other hand I agree with you that it’s more difficult to find valuable domains within a specific niche.
|.-= Stefan´s last blog ..Review: Fight Club =-.
Paul B
July 30, 2009
Not related to any of the other comments so far but I just had to gloat. I’ve just bought myself a domain for $8 that has 70 back links. Not that interesting except:-
6 links come from various high PR pages on the BBC website
3 links are from high quality .gov sources with very high page rank
Amongst the other links are links from just about every major national newspaper in the UK.
Most of those links are very nicely keyword enriched as well. Very happy.
@Stefan – The difference for me would be in the quality of the content. If I’m just flipping then a couple of articles from e-zine articles will do. If it’s a site I was interesting in doing stuff with then I’d definitely want to spend some time and money on quality content. But sure you can forward the link juice on to your own quality sites (with Adsense or affiliate offers) if you like, I’ve just found that it didn’t giving the same financial reward as a quick “chuck it up and flip it” approach
@Jesse – Very good point. Buying domains from other webmasters can be a tricky business. You need to verify the page rank and I’d also suggest using link: in yahoo to go and manually check out some of the links.
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