Interesting idea, that's actually what I was toying with could I get banned from adsense from this? I doubt it, because the articles are allowed to be copied...
Google would lose half of its AdSense network if it banned these types of sites... The key (from the AdSense viewpoing) is whether or not the site is useful without the ads. If you turn off the JavaScript (disabling the ads), is the site still navigable? Is the content there? Obviously, don't go and promote it as an MFA site... And remember that getting dropped from the Google index is separate from being banned as an AdSense publisher.
You stick all those derivative ads on an established site, and watch your established site's ranking plummet when Google sticks you with duplicate content penalty. Likewise if you stick them all in a fresh domain. You'd never get high enough in the SERPs to make back your $3.95/month (assuming you go with a cheapie like Godaddy). Oh sure, you can then go register at different forums and plug your site in your signature, but that's a lot of work.
Are talking one thing, I say another. You are all worried about google rankings, serps, etc. Me, I look at promotion and getting traffic. Which is completely different than google rankings and getting traffic from google. As I have said, would rather get 1000 good uniques from promotion than 100 or more hits from google alone. Face it, MFA's are not going to get tons of traffic from google...but who cares if you promote them?
I'm not saying they're not viable. I'm just saying you have to work to make money with them. Work at tuning the content. Work at getting traffic. A lot of these sites get traffic by using low-ball PPC ads.
Make a textbased html, a good css and you have N* website without buying anything..it's 2minutes to change the background,font,whole layout.. much wiser stuff then to buy..anyways, from now on you may sell them)) sell all the sites for 5$, good promotion, and maybe u'll make some money, of course with adsense on it... you may make money with it, but people sure will hate you.. imo
iowadawg is right. Since there are millions of netsurfers, there is no harm in getting a few clicks = few cents.
The content is not the problem, its wether the site is identical to another in loook and outlay, that's why when you buy these web sites youre encouraged to create your own style and theme. Just add your own header image, a few other coloured tables with links and there should never be a problem with the articles. Believe me, I had a friend of mine apply for an adsense account 2 weeks ago and I put one of these web sites up for him.....I changed NOTHING, I even used the same graphic image on the header that comes with these sites. Guess what? he got an account the next day.
Buying those sites should not be the concern, but what you really do with it. I'd recommend to customize each site and promote it properly. Then let them age like a good wine and continue link building. In the end 1 out of 20 might take off and you earn some money. Key is to customize and to create a unique touch of some sort. Christoph
But how the heck do you promote a site that's really just a bunch of articles, and is identical in content to many other sites????
if those "sites" came with the same images and header images. Then change them find some free ones, there's plenty around just surf. If you purchased the sites as "ready made adsense" sites then you should have an index.htm etc page and then the article pages. Each site will be categorized something like " gardening" holidays etc. Your best option now is to use a seperate domain name for every one of those categories, sub domains are good but new domains are better. create each category site and upload it and promote each one as seperate web sites, all the while making sure that eacj web site looke a little different to the other.
whether it's shameful or not, if it makes money, it makes money... so who cares... get a cheap hosting account, get a single domain, create 147 sub-domains, and you're in business. i'm fairly sure you'll make some money out of this...
Well, 147 sites all togather can earn you good money. I have bought few turnkey sites. I found them very hard to get in to the SERP since they are not at all optimized. Then I decided to change few features (A little bit of coding..) I have made, Dynamic Titles, dynamic description, changes in the Designe so they dont look like turnkey at all. Amazingly I got good response from Search engines, and trafiic to those sites encreased by 300%. So IMO it doesnt matter if those sites are turnkey or something. All matters, how do you optimize those for SERP.
OK, here's a thought: what if I used the content from the site, and dumped it into a massive blog? That way, much of it changes...
You want to modify the sites to make them different from all the other ones that were sold exactly the same way. A good rule of thumb is to put a 30% modification on top of it. At least that worked for me on a couple of turnkey sites I bought over the years. I mainly modified the sites to have se-friendly URLs with mod_rewrite, added some unique content and some other minor stuff. Spent maybe a total of 2-3 hours on each site. A recipe site of mine - a former Prozilla template - earns about $20 - $30 every month without me doing much. Christoph
Exactly the same thing I have done for my sites.. and the work paid of.. A bit of modification in the coding+mod_rewrite+unique design works..
You've inspired me! I'm going to run a little experiment along these lines, see my blog to follow my progress: http://www.monetising.co.uk/experiment/
yes, I got banned for promoting my own forum, I was naive... anyhow, the MFA sites have officially paid for themselves, the $2.50 that it cost for the sites, and the $3 for the domain...