3 ms·
When my life was falling apart and I was trying to fix my relationship with my ex she dictated that we spend 'quality' time together which meant watching horrib
by _DeadFred_ 2y ago
When my life was falling apart and I was trying to fix my relationship with my ex she dictated that we spend 'quality' time together which meant watching horrible reality TV while she was on insta on her phone.
Out of mind numbing boredom I made a system for SEO spam websites during this time. I would take expiring domain names (so names someone had gone to the trouble to research but been unable to make work) parse out keywords and lookup popularity for them, lookup ad rates for them, and spit out names to buy and make a SEO spam site for (goal was 300 websites making $1 a day or $100k a year), or good names to domain squat. If a domain turned out bunk I threw my link-spam-network software on it to provide linkbacks to my money/new sites. I made around 30k profit a year plus another $5k selling domain names doing this before life fell further apart and it rotted on the vine. I was really tempted to sell it as a package but could never bring myself that low even deep in addiction. Plus Google started cracking down on that trash.
I still think the concept of 300 somethings (though please not SEO spam) that make a dollar a day is viable for us here though because we're in the unique position where the creation/maintenance is just a matter of our spare time since we can do the specs/design/coding/administration/maintenance/etc ourselves. It seems like there are still people doing this. Look at new car model forums. Everytime a new car models is released there's a rush to create discussion forums for that model with people hoping Google blesses theirs so they can add it to their portfolio of money maker car model forums. Maybe the secret sauce is forcing yourself to watch reality TV until your mind rebels and says 'fine, grab me the laptop and we'll make mind numbingly boring software products as that is at least better than watching this'.
Edit: To clarify this wasn't my income source this was just what I did while being forced to watch 'The Kardashians' for bonding time.
- dmitrygr 2y agoThe world does not need more spam. I do not think watching the Kardashians was punishment enough for you. I wish it was Barney theme in a loop at 100dB
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoYeah I was ashamed to share this anecdote. But decided maybe it can do a little good motivating someone to counter the bad. And I'm pretty sure SEO spam doesn't work anymore so it shouldn't encourage more evil.
- robertlagrant 2y agoI'm glad you shared it. Compared to 2025's crypto scams and influencer nonsense what you did was pretty tame.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoI will add we also watched Tori Spelling's reality show so maybe I paid my dues.
- Always42 2y agoAppreciate the honesty
- p3rls 2y agoThis post might just be the saddest indictment I've seen against the modern internet that Google's rules have created
- brokenmachine 2y agoI forgive you.