I have just let several sites sit for the last few years and I am thinking of trying to make money again. Should I start fresh with a new domain and website, or take some of my older sites that have been sitting and redesign, add new content, etc. Will i have an easier time using an already established site? Any advice? I have been out of the game for a few years now.
if your old website have some backlinks, domain authority and ranking then you should use them instead of starting from scretch.
Whatever is easier for you. But you may find yourself changing your old site and spending as much time doing that as you would spend starting from scratch.
Of course I have not seen the sites but I would definitely go with the old domains. Have you been keeping up payments on the domains? Run a check to see if there has been any "bad" backlinks added... Yes like a good Whisky give me an aged domain any day unless there is something fundamentally wrong with it...like being sandboxed or some other Google punishment!
I'd say it depends on how good/bad your domain names are. Let's say you have a howtomakemoneyonlineforfree.com site. Chances of it seeing the light of day are slim. Getting a shorter and more prominent domain name will do more good in this instance. Care to share the sites with us?
For the best choice it will be the established website because it will take years to achieve this kind of reputation. But take time to analyze the website for further studies before using it to ensure the performance in the web.
As mentioned above it depends on the reputation, quality of the backlinks, etc. But old sites are better if you are planning on selling them later.
If I was in your corner then I would have started with fresh domain. But it also depends on what is the reputation of that website in eyes of Google. Like If your previous website has good DA, PA, has backlinks then you can certainly go for it. Thank you
If the old websites failed, I am not sure what point it would have to spend anymore time with them. Cut your losses, learn from the mistakes and start new websites, but do things different this time so you don't end up with the same results. As for others saying you to use the old domains because of reputation, it's quite wrong. Think about: the search engines saw that nothing changed for several years, so it's not like they value too much anyway.