I have an idea which could be a better alternative to starting a new site. Instead of looking for new, high-paying keywords and then going through the work of building a new site and getting traffic and links to that newly created site, what about finding a way to (1)locate and (2)get control of abandoned sites which likely still may get loads of traffic and good serps? On top of it, maybe there would be a lot of webmasters who would not mind selling sites (on the cheap) they no longer care about? The only thing here is developing the right method/tricks to do this...finding derelict sites... What do you think -- does this look like a good idea, or a dumb one? (the only bad thing off the top of my head, is that one would not know a site's history, so it could be in G's bad books...)
like realtor flippers? they buy something cheap renovate it and sell it for profit. except in this case you'd just keep it for profit.
Yeah , one good thing is too look through dmoz and contact the owner of what looks like non updated abandoned sites through whois and you have a good chance of getting them to sell.
your idea is not new and applied often. What some people do is buy expired domains, or purchase existing domains, site and all. This is also a great way to avoid the sandbox.
Hmm.. Looking through DMOZ.. So still pick a category you want to own a site about, then just start flipping through the sites. How does one determine the site is "abandoned" though?
Lots of dead outgoing links Old dates on things (Last Updated March 2001!) Compare different versions of the site in the wayback machine to see if it's changed at all. Broken images, etc. Just some thoughts that popped into my head.
Thats the thing, a lot of people are likely doing this by looking for expired domains, but then another way of going about it is just looking for abandoned sites. I wouldn't want to know how many exist on free hosts alone. Doing a query for "last updated 1999" shows loads of stuff. The only key would be in seeing how much traffic they still get. Some times you can see this if they have a free stat service on their site, like extreme or nedstat, etc..
These are all very good ideas that I did not think of initially. Thanks, Roze. Couldn't you use Alexa traffic stats as a judge as well? Sometimes Alexa's #s seem a bit inflated, but I guess it would help. So -- is anyone actually doing this, and if so, could you share your success stories, if any?
I have found heaps of sites that havent been updated in 4-5 years. Some of these sites get hundreds and thousands of visitors a day. When I think of this, I cant help but see $$$... But... here is the (big) problem: I tried to contact some of the webmasters, and no reply. Maybe some people just dropped off of the face of the earth and left their sites. I'll post any progress I make on this though..
If it's from that long ago and you can't contact them and the site is definately abandoned, call the domain registrar up. Say you've relocated, changed your name and you're now living at a new address under the witness protection program, and with not being able to work due to the circumstances, you'd like to carry on with your old web site about lung cancer to pass the days away. Of course, give them a good story, but not too over the top. By the way - I'm only kidding. Pete
I have also the same idea but I don't know where and how to find them, any idea how to do it, and is there a software or script you can use to do this?
It still sounds like a good plan to get sites on the cheap. The only thing is I would not be willing to PayPal some stranger much money and hope they sign over the domain and content to me. Then again this is about getting sites on the cheap so not much money would be involed.