I see it every day – Every site developer I know is absolutely fixated in trying to find the latest and greatest new way to acquire targeted site traffic. In fact, cottage industries for Google optimizing alone have sprung up over the obsession for traffic building. Yet what is the value of traffic? Shouldn't we be more concerned with ROI?
If sites which promise so believably that they'll send you "1 million hits (which are often just row upon row of 1X1 pixel images) for the low cost of $50" can dupe nearly 5% of visitors into purchasing their utter garbage, it is a testament to just how desperate site owners are for visitors. I have this theory that there's an element of self-consolation people have at looking at their stats soar over a 24 hour period with these types of guaranteed hits programs. Sure you don't convert any new visitors, but you can tell all your buds that your site got in the vicinity of 50,000 hits yesterday! Impressive, yet totally useless. If money is to be made, you must think outside the box--do something which few others are aware of.
The online adult entertainment market is far and away untouchable in terms of profit generation, but it too can at times get stagnant. With such an over-saturation in the industry, it gets harder and harder to compete. Sites die down, the big names get bigger, and the small names have an even tougher time competing. It is no wonder, therefore, that adult Websites have such a high turnover rate. Webmasters like to move on to new things, try out different niches and the ilk. In the process, they abandon thriving websites, or simply forget to renew the domain names for some of their existing sites. It happens daily, and more often than you would think. And the really scary thing is, it's a gargantuan market – one which has been vastly untapped. The market is that of secondary expired traffic – possibly the most latent industry online for monetizing traffic.
The Concept
The concept is simple: Find previously developed websites (read: domains) which have since expired due to Webmaster neglect or abandonment, and make use of the link and search engine traffic that they are already receiving. Expired domains are nothing new, and have been the rage on the net for the past few years. The function of the expired domain market as it exists today for most individuals is to:
A) find a suitable name for developing a new site
B) try and grab up a hot sounding expired name in the face of cutthroat competition.
The fact remains that 99% of expired domain speculators are still fixated on the notion that they can snap up the next Business.com – assuming that the previous owner fails to renew it (here's hoping). Very rarely do you find an individual who ignores the undeveloped, great sounding, generic names and understands the value of those domains which have expired, but were previously developed. In the past, if an expired domain hunter had registered an expired domain with existing traffic, it was often by dumb luck. That traffic attached to the domain was just thought to be an added bonus to the domain purchased. Now individuals are beginning to realize that there are fairly simple means to locate and estimate with accuracy those domains which have existing link and search engine traffic attached to them, and those that do not. However, few still have access to the right tools and information necessary to identify the gold in all the expiring, undeveloped rubble.
Once you've found an expired domain with a sizeable stream of adult traffic, the best thing to do with it is to squeeze every last drop of profit out of it by utilizing any one of a number of appropriate sponsors. Alternatively, you could redevelop the expired and previously active domain, in the hopes that the pre-established traffic it is already receiving may be revitalized through fresh, new content. If you go the way of redirecting to sponsors, the best sponsors for expired adult traffic have been Clickcash and Nastydollars for general adult traffic, and the Mr. Skin program, using Flashcash for any celebrity orientated material. These programs are highly established, have been paying on time for several years, and will provide you with free content and tools to promote them. Below we outline a real-life example of how this entire process works.
A Real Life Example
Make your way over to http://www.searchpattern.com – As you can see, this is just one of hundreds of sites utilizing Clickcash and the Ifriends network as a means of converting the traffic it is receiving. Yet what searchpattern.com does is redirect the traffic (either through domain-based redirection, or javascript redirection) of 15 or so other adult names to that one page – those 15 names were each previously developed adult sites, but had since expired. They were each snagged for the mere cost of registration, about $9 a pop. If you take a look at the stats page, you'll notice that this individual is slowly building up his collection of expired sites and pointing them to searchpattern.com. Uniques are soaring, and he is continuing to receive new streams of real traffic both originating from the search engines and from other sites these expired domains are still linked to. In fact, last I checked, he received in the vicinity of 2,700 uniques a day – the equivalent of approximately 1,000,000 uniques a year.
Net cost: about $150 for the domains (and hosting fees, which vary. However, you can usually set up a basic affiliate redirect for free). Since I personally know this individual, I know he's converting somewhere in the vicinity of 0.25% (1 in 400) of visitors – the usual Clickcash conversion rate.
Doing the math: Off the traffic of 15 expired adult websites, this individual’s net take in 1 year is estimated to be 0.25% conversion * 1,000,000 uniques/year * $60/lead = $150,000 gross - $150 domains = $149,850. Sound unbelievable? It isn't. Although there is one small caveat – the sites must continue to bring in the same amount of traffic they are each currently sending. Over the course of the year, the traffic quality and quantity will surely degrade, but since sites expire on a daily basis, we can always replace older expired traffic with newer leads and newer sites.
Conclusion
So how do you get a piece of this market – a market where a select few individuals in the know have quietly gone on to make untold millions? Through information, and the right tools. Understanding this nascent game, which I estimate fewer than 2-3 thousand or so individuals are actively participating in, is the key to prospering in it. Very few legitimate opportunities exist on the net which offer entrepreneurs startup costs of less than $10, minimal, passive involvement, and a growing recurring revenue stream – expired traffic just happens to be one of them.
While everyone continues to march to the drum of optimizing and developing existing sites to eek out small gains, I'll continue to find other people's abandoned property, and use it without fail to make a quick buck. But hey, you do what suits you best.
