4 ms·

It's funny I had this exact conversation with a coworker just this morning. The company we work for has a portfolio of nearly 1 million domain names, and most

by byoung2 16y ago

It's funny I had this exact conversation with a coworker just this morning. The company we work for has a portfolio of nearly 1 million domain names, and most of them point to simple placeholder pages with ads. I personally own about 50 domain names...most that I bought with the intention of using for a specific project that never materialized. With a handful of them I paid a writer in the Philippines to write a dozen articles for each, and I threw together simple wordpress sites with RSS autoposting and they make about $10/mo each, which pays for the renewal fees for all of the other domains. I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think.

rgrieselhuber 16y ago
Interesting - do you mind if I ask you some questions about this? I'm considering a similar project for slightly different purposes and would love to get some feedback on some things. My email is in my profile if you're willing to chat. Thanks!
bond 16y ago
> I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think. That's what this kid is doing with 500 domains. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_college_with_adsense_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_colleg...
- jlmendezbonini 16y ago
  Not exactly. He was a bit smarter. He is mainly using free blog services (blogger, etc) so he avoids the annual domain and hosting costs. He also notes that by using blogger he automatically gets more weight from Google searches (I'm not that sure of that though).
  - byoung2 16y ago
    There is a risk with free blog services like Blogger and Wordpress.com...if someone complains that you are stealing their content, your account can get shut down instantly. It is also harder to sell your site later (e.g. on Flippa) because you don't own the domain. There is also a better opportunity to pass pagerank around to your own sites using a real domain. You can get a domain for $8/year and considering the small amount of traffic from even a few hundred sites, you could host them all on a small hosting plan of $10/month. So the cost per site for domain and hosting would be pennies.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
duck 16y ago
Do you mind sharing a link to one of these sites so we can "see" how it works?
- byoung2 16y ago
  Here is the first one I made (I sold it back in May on Flippa.com for $350): http://www.techspyer.com/ http://www.techspyer.com/ I learned on this one that I needed to focus on content more than spammy affiliate links. Here is an example of the content I paid someone in the Philippines to write: http://www.techspyer.com/tag/digital-camera/ http://www.techspyer.com/tag/digital-camera/ (most of the tags have a "buying guide" at the top) All of the "posts" are just coupon feeds from Linkshare's RSS feed. This site made $10-15 per month for a solid year. The total cost is as follows: Domain: $7.49 (GoDaddy) Hosting: Free (Unlimited accounts on Rackspace) Content: $24 - $2/article x 12 articles SEO: $10 in backlinks from SubmitEdge The total income over 12 months was about $150. I assume the site would have continued to produce $10-15 per month indefinitely with no more effort on my part. I sold it for about 2x yearly earnings (I have no idea why the new owner hasn't activated his own Linkshare RSS feed). For the other sites, I prefer to keep those private because they are in untapped niches and I don't want to invite competition, but for those I focused on content RSS feeds and AdSense instead of affiliate links and they make about the same amount of money per month. I'm going to try to do some more of these sites...I keep telling myself that if I registered 1000 domains and put simple sites like these on them at $41 each, I could turn $41,000 into $10,000 - $15,000 per month. Of course the hard part is getting started.
  - vinhboy 16y ago
    damnit, this is never going to work if we all have the same ideas.. hahaha where are you buying content for $2 a piece?
    - byoung2 16y ago
      This particular writer came from an ad on www.sulit.com.ph
    - 16y ago
jessejmc 16y ago
How did you find your article writer?
- byoung2 16y ago
  Answer is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1831269 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1831269
albahk 16y ago
Serious question: If you are registering and presumably renewing 1 million domains did the company consider becoming a registrar to save money and make it easier to own/manage that many domains?

by byoung2 16y ago

rgrieselhuber 16y ago

Interesting - do you mind if I ask you some questions about this? I'm considering a similar project for slightly different purposes and would love to get some feedback on some things. My email is in my profile if you're willing to chat. Thanks!

bond 16y ago

> I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think. That's what this kid is doing with 500 domains. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_college_with_adsense_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_colleg...

jlmendezbonini 16y ago
Not exactly. He was a bit smarter. He is mainly using free blog services (blogger, etc) so he avoids the annual domain and hosting costs. He also notes that by using blogger he automatically gets more weight from Google searches (I'm not that sure of that though).
- byoung2 16y ago
  There is a risk with free blog services like Blogger and Wordpress.com...if someone complains that you are stealing their content, your account can get shut down instantly. It is also harder to sell your site later (e.g. on Flippa) because you don't own the domain. There is also a better opportunity to pass pagerank around to your own sites using a real domain. You can get a domain for $8/year and considering the small amount of traffic from even a few hundred sites, you could host them all on a small hosting plan of $10/month. So the cost per site for domain and hosting would be pennies.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

duck 16y ago

Do you mind sharing a link to one of these sites so we can "see" how it works?

byoung2 16y ago
Here is the first one I made (I sold it back in May on Flippa.com for $350): http://www.techspyer.com/ http://www.techspyer.com/ I learned on this one that I needed to focus on content more than spammy affiliate links. Here is an example of the content I paid someone in the Philippines to write: http://www.techspyer.com/tag/digital-camera/ http://www.techspyer.com/tag/digital-camera/ (most of the tags have a "buying guide" at the top) All of the "posts" are just coupon feeds from Linkshare's RSS feed. This site made $10-15 per month for a solid year. The total cost is as follows: Domain: $7.49 (GoDaddy) Hosting: Free (Unlimited accounts on Rackspace) Content: $24 - $2/article x 12 articles SEO: $10 in backlinks from SubmitEdge The total income over 12 months was about $150. I assume the site would have continued to produce $10-15 per month indefinitely with no more effort on my part. I sold it for about 2x yearly earnings (I have no idea why the new owner hasn't activated his own Linkshare RSS feed). For the other sites, I prefer to keep those private because they are in untapped niches and I don't want to invite competition, but for those I focused on content RSS feeds and AdSense instead of affiliate links and they make about the same amount of money per month. I'm going to try to do some more of these sites...I keep telling myself that if I registered 1000 domains and put simple sites like these on them at $41 each, I could turn $41,000 into $10,000 - $15,000 per month. Of course the hard part is getting started.
- vinhboy 16y ago
  damnit, this is never going to work if we all have the same ideas.. hahaha where are you buying content for $2 a piece?
  - byoung2 16y ago
    This particular writer came from an ad on www.sulit.com.ph
  - 16y ago

jessejmc 16y ago

How did you find your article writer?

byoung2 16y ago
Answer is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1831269 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1831269

albahk 16y ago

Serious question: If you are registering and presumably renewing 1 million domains did the company consider becoming a registrar to save money and make it easier to own/manage that many domains?