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09-21-2006, 01:40 PM #1Newbie
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Making money & driving traffic with idle domains?
Like many of you, I find it easier to register than to use domains.
Whats the best thinking on using idle domains for either SEO or $$$ purposes?
Note, I am very white hat and self-taught.
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09-21-2006, 01:43 PM #2Newbie
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Following up on my own post, I just did a search that finally seemed to yield the right type of websites: I googled "monetizing domains". I didn't find anything like a discussion group but I did find a bunch of businesses that want to work with me.
Anybody know any of them?
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09-21-2006, 04:14 PM #3Aspiring Evangelist
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i'm kind of looking for the same thing, i have 20~ domains that i'm just sitting on atm, or using the subdomains for various things.
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09-21-2006, 08:24 PM #4Newbie
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I've started by putting a few domains at trafficclub. I am less than impressed by the results in the first two weeks. I have tried 4 things so far:
- putting the sites into automated advertisement places (ie, traffic club)
- putting up little one page sites to help my link count
- redirecting (not sure how to do this optimally) to a related page on one of my sites
- redirecting the entire domain to another one...
Any comments on what is more effective? There are "tier 3" domains (my expression)
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09-21-2006, 08:42 PM #5Newbie
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Did I mention that I have about 60 domains at this point and I seem to be accumulating a few a month?
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09-21-2006, 09:19 PM #6Web Hosting Master
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Newly regged domains don't work well with domain parking services because they rely on type-in traffic (mostly) and there won't be any type-in or search engine traffic with new domains. Your best bet is to put up 1-5 page mini-sites and sign-up for google adsense and use adsense on those pages. You should of course use good seo techniques and submit your domains to the search engines and as many (relevant) directories that you can find.
Signature Under Construction.
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09-23-2006, 08:49 AM #7Newbie
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Ok. Let me ask about "good seo" techniques in this case. Would this qualify as a "good seo" albeit a simple homespun approach? Any suggested refinements?
Pick Some phrases
- Run a search on the free overture tool to get the keyphrases that people are using
- Run a search on the free google tool to get a bunch of suggestions for related keyphrases
- Repeat as Necessary
Put Up the Content
Either write a bunch of articles or go to the article sites and find some relevant ones
Put up the articles using metatitle, description, keyphrases, pagenames, H1s, H2s and linked anchor text based on keyphrases identified
On a 5 page site, each page should link to each other page
Architect up the sites -
Should each page of each site have the following formula?
- 3 links to related "authority" sites
- 1 link to another of the feeder sites
- 1 link to the ultimate target site?
Does it matter if they are hosted all at the same hoster? Where does diminishing returns from having links from the same IP address start to hit? 2 sites? 20 sites? Does anybody know?
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09-23-2006, 09:46 AM #8Newbie
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I work with some people in the HomeSchool Sector and here is their state of the art:
Sites trying to be monetized at traffic club - Gifted Child, Gifted Student California Home School - so far, pennies...
Redirected domains to pages: Gifted Child , Gifted Student , Home School Online (I'm not sure how they are doing it, it looks like it is thru the traffic club people which is weird)
A one page site : Home School Curriculum Review - This could be done better.
Entire Site Redirected: http://www.Time4Reading.com
Any real expertise or know-how in putting a system together for these 60 domains that are sitting idle?
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09-23-2006, 10:59 AM #9Web Hosting Guru
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I think building out the site and adding content you can monetize is the way to go
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09-23-2006, 12:09 PM #10Web Hosting Master Disaster
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Originally Posted by franksredhot
Like I said, it does take a while... and you have to keep the sites fresh with new content.Windows 10 to Linux and Mac OSX: I'm PARSECs better than you. Eat my dust!!!
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09-23-2006, 03:41 PM #11Newbie
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Ok. Here's the structure. W're in the online education services business providing automated online learning for homeschool or enrichment of kids, PreK-8th grade.
All these other domains are just ways of helping us build traffic and links for Time4Learning (the main site).
Any thoughts on the benefits of a site redirect to another domain vs a site redirect to a specific page versus having a little site with a bunch of links?
Also, is this in a way considered black hatish? Obviously, i'm doing this on a very small scale but still, we try to be very white hat.
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09-23-2006, 04:39 PM #12Web Hosting Master Disaster
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Originally Posted by lisakinter
You should focus on your site.... you REALLY need a public relations page... a news page.... and dump those ads by google... makes your site look "spammy." Plus, why would you want to advertise for a competitor on your site? I've never understood this....Windows 10 to Linux and Mac OSX: I'm PARSECs better than you. Eat my dust!!!
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09-24-2006, 12:39 AM #13Junior Guru Wannabe
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I'm no expert, but from what I've read you'll do better SEOwise to link, rather than redirect, your related domains to your main ones. You want more sites linking to you to get higher in search results.
From what I remember about Adsense, you won't qualify if you don't have content. They don't allow Under Construction or Coming Soon sites to advertise. The pages I have parked with Dotster have ads from Revenue Direct (IOW, Dotster is benefiting, not me), so you might try them. I've been meaning to look into it myself.
You of course don't want to advertise for a competitor, as hekwu points out. But you can usually block your direct competitors. In my case, I registered some domains because they were good names but I don't have a business for them.
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09-24-2006, 12:47 AM #14Junior Guru Wannabe
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Oh, and here's some other suggestions to build content. You could put up blogs (OK I realize you can't put up 60 blogs but maybe a few), discussion boards/forums -- careful though, these are bigtime bandwidth eaters if popular but nearly worthless if not popular -- user-generated content, free or low-cost syndicated content, buy low-cost articles or reprints from freelancers, etc.
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09-24-2006, 08:13 PM #15Newbie
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OK - the google ads question. We originally put them up on the theory that since less than 1% of my visitors purchase, we might as well try to make some money from them when they left.
Heres a funny and true story. Real Numbers too.
Dec 2004 - We put up my first ads on my site for online learning (preschool, elementary, middle school). I made $500 in a month (which was alot for us!).
Jan 05 - We put up more ads and made $1K in a month
Feb 05 - More ads, made it to $2K
Mar 05 - $3K
April - I was ontrack for nearly $5K when some smart marketing guy told usthat it was hurting the conversion rate (distracting people etc) so we took them down.
It is not clear that the conversion rate went up without them and in July, we put them back up and have fiddled with them since then.
BUT, weI have never made more than a grand again. We tried to recreate exactly whatwehad but somehow, we just couldn't get the same:
- high clickthru - I around 18% clicks
- high payout - averaged around $.25/click that winter
At one point, we even became convinced that the "smart marketing guy" had put up his google ads on my site on the best pages and was stealing from me so I changed my FTP passwords and replaced all the ads.
Sad fact is like Dr Jekyll, I've never been able to recreate the original formula because there was something in the original that we did not understand and cannot recreate.
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09-24-2006, 08:22 PM #16Newbie
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Uhg, I just looked at this month's results on traffic club for the six sites that I parked there. Web Home School, family homeschool, gifted child, Florida HomeSchool, gifted child, and gifted student : literally $.83!!!
OK. I'm sure it's my fault that I haven't driven any real traffic but then, since my point in parking them was that I was too busy, I had hoped that their fancy algorithms would also get the sites into directories, search engines and somehow magically pull traffic.
OK, once again, we've learned that there is no free lunch. Time to get educational some little sites put together to help the major site about online homeschooling.
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09-25-2006, 09:33 AM #17Web Hosting Guru
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You are using just trafficclub? Try a better service like sedo, namedrive. You can earn more money
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10-03-2006, 07:07 PM #18Junior Guru Wannabe
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wow, that is crazy!
Originally Posted by lisakinter
I wonder if you brought it up to the Google people what they would say. Have you ever talked to anyone there about it?
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09-24-2007, 01:40 PM #19Newbie
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My list of domains that I've reserved is now well over one hundred and I've learned a little about using them. Emphasis on the word a little...
Traffic club was not worth the effort of setting it up.
Domains with some content and updates and a few links do slowly increase in terms of PR rank. Not always, but if you look at my latest listing of managing parked domains, you'll see a number of PR2-4s emerging.
I haven't yet put adsense up on the domains but I should primarily as a way of tracking traffic and secondly, as a way of making a few cents...
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09-25-2007, 06:48 AM #20Web Hosting Master
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The first thing to do with a new domain is to park it at a good parking service and one where Google will index the page. Now you won't get much type in traffic at first but you will get indexed in google most of the time within 2-3 weeks and you might even make a little in this time. After you park it then you need to decide what the domain is going to work best as a website, will it make a good blog, affiliate site, article site, news or whatever...? Then you need to decide how you are going to run it, do you want it automated then you should think of using xml or php scripts to grab the content or will you update it weekly etc.. once you decide what site it will work best as then plan out what design you will use, maybe you can create several templates as your base for each site and tweak them for each one to add some originality to it.. Good luck, there has been some great tips here for you to work with. The sooner you develop the domains the better.
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