Getting traffic domains: strategies

[znegativo]

I started buying expired domains a few weeks ago and I also bought a few with traffic stats. I also get 1 or 2 uniques per day only.
My purpose is to build a good traffic figure from expired domains.

My question is: what's the strategy for this?
It's just like getting as much expired domains with traffic as I can, to get some visible traffic? Is there anything that I should also consider like choosing nice domain names?

Right now I'm only buying domains that are not catched by drop services like ClubDrop, Pool or Namewinner.
Is it worth to invest around $40 in a "big fish" domain?

Thanks.

 

[.edu]

I hate to break it to you but expired domains are something that require a lot more then $40 these days or being real lucky. Expiring domain lists are genrously available to the world weeks if not months in advance and the world gladly accepts the information. They use these magic lists and research and plot their strategy weeks before the suckers drop. Some even take loans out on their homes to play this game or sell their sports car, pawn their wedding ring. What I am getting at is $40 is not going to get you very far today. The drop catchers pretty much have the game locked and the only way the mojority of little ones like me and a few others around here can even obtain a domain of enormous traffic, monstrous revenue on return would be to get lucky on a hand registration and beat the hundreds of dropcatchers and their scripts that their 6 figure a year engineers are paid so much to make. But then we still have to beat out the thousands of others that wake up 5 minutes before drop with their own scripts they run from their own servers or desktop. But wait you can get lucky with a backorder from godaddy or some other single fee backorder service. I seen it happen but the chances are very slim. If you want to make money, start developing sites with rich content. Its easy, fun & if you know what you are doing. The money will go nowhere but up. Oh yea and 2 uniques a day is basically considered reg fee or less by many. The big fish would not even consider anything with less then numbers in the hundreds.

 

[suthra]

I hate to break it to you but expired domains are something that require a lot more then $40 these days or being real lucky. Expiring domain lists are genrously available to the world weeks if not months in advance and the world gladly accepts the information. They use these magic lists and research and plot their strategy weeks before the suckers drop. Some even take loans out on their homes to play this game or sell their sports car, pawn their wedding ring. What I am getting at is $40 is not going to get you very far today. The drop catchers pretty much have the game locked and the only way the mojority of little ones like me and a few others around here can even obtain a domain of enormous traffic, monstrous revenue on return would be to get lucky on a hand registration and beat the hundreds of dropcatchers and their scripts that their 6 figure a year engineers are paid so much to make. But then we still have to beat out the thousands of others that wake up 5 minutes before drop with their own scripts they run from their own servers or desktop. But wait you can get lucky with a backorder from godaddy or some other single fee backorder service. I seen it happen but the chances are very slim. If you want to make money, start developing sites with rich content. Its easy, fun & if you know what you are doing. The money will go nowhere but up. Oh yea and 2 uniques a day is basically considered reg fee or less by many. The big fish would not even consider anything with less then numbers in the hundreds.

Neatly written.

Registering typos may help you. But never use alexa for its stats. instead register typos of domains which gets advertised in famous portals like yahoo . I do like that now-a-days and have sold a few domains doing like this, or watch the daily news .

 

[evenflow]

Although I am also very new to the game, I think the domain market is oversaturated with expired traffic buyers. With that in mind, if you are looking at a DN from strictly the parked revenue it can generate it seems to me that you will have to pay a premium. Premiums that in most cases, cannot be justified purely by income created from traffic alone.

So from my perspective, that leads to two options for today's new domain investor: 1. Do like Edu mentioned, develop domains and earn traffic. or 2. Be a Speculator and buy names that are not necessarily based on traffic but rather on their future potential sale. I think this strategy can pay big dividends but it requires serious patience, holding cost $$$, and of course most importantly, faith in the DN market.

 

[1rrr1]

Although I am also very new to the game, I think the domain market is oversaturated with expired traffic buyers. With that in mind, if you are looking at a DN from strictly the parked revenue it can generate it seems to me that you will have to pay a premium. Premiums that in most cases, cannot be justified purely by income created from traffic alone.

So from my perspective, that leads to two options for today's new domain investor: 1. Do like Edu mentioned, develop domains and earn traffic. or 2. Be a Speculator and buy names that are not necessarily based on traffic but rather on their future potential sale. I think this strategy can pay big dividends but it requires serious patience, holding cost $$$, and of course most importantly, faith in the DN market.

try number two, but lol i have no patients

 

[redhippo]

ahhh! they are still tons of expired fish dropping everyday and some will miss the nets of the "big guys''. i have paid nothing more than reg fees all my "traffic". names. have never used snap catchers! just lots of hard work!.

caught a few that have returned $$$ from parking

 

[shilmy]

Oh yea and 2 uniques a day is basically considered reg fee or less by many. The big fish would not even consider anything with less then numbers in the hundreds.

What I don't understand is, how the big fish can be very certain that the domain they're planning to catch will generate hundred visitors daily?

I see several of this lists but I'm not sure I will want to pay more than reg-fee this domain.

 

[.edu]

Oh yea and 2 uniques a day is basically considered reg fee or less by many. The big fish would not even consider anything with less then numbers in the hundreds.

What I don't understand is, how the big fish can be very certain that the domain they're planning to catch will generate hundred visitors daily?

I see several of this lists but I'm not sure I will want to pay more than reg-fee this domain.

Its not the big fish that can do this. Its the whole world. The only advantage they have over you and I is lots of money. Computers and software do everything and even can calculate formulas in determining what dollar amount a domain can generate in the next 10 years, what percent are male or female and what age groups. They can even tell what country of origin the visitors may come from and what cars they may drive if given certain variables. MIT did this before not too long ago and also print it out in a nice three demensional graph in 300 or more colors. The big fish probably have a very expensive system in place but I can do everything they do for about $20. Just go to Google and search Expired Domain Software


Now heres my reply before bed.


Heres my prospective on how things are. Domains don't usually sell themselves.
Every domain has a value, just depends who is looking at it. $6 here $20k there.
I don't care or pay much attention to the market anymore. Speculation is the
name of the game for reselling purposes, but then even if your sitting on a gold
mind you would have to market it some how or else you would not get the premium
sale you want. If you have a huge bankroll or own a large portfolio, you will
probably profit pretty well in the traffic game. This game involves large
companies these days and have huge investments behind them. They can afford to
take a loss every now and then. I use to study these drops day in and day out
and managed to do pretty decent but the time I put in was just not worth it. Its
not hard to put a backorder on a top dollar domain and the place you put the bo
on caught it. You actually have a chance!, but wait your not quite there yet.
There are about 100 others that have it backordered at the place you got it. Ok
so now it goes to auction and now its how much money are you willing to spend?
Theres alot of money involved in the industry and theres those that can afford
and don't mind investing a goldmind price. Some sales even have me wondering if
they are even real and how they hell they expect to recoop their investment.
There is also alot of stuff that happens behind the scenes that happen.
Registrars, dropcatchers etc.. There is alot of insider stuff that occurs and
everybody knows that. Domains sold for 6 figures and being used to park for ppc,
or not even exchanging hands at all. Probably not all in bad faith but makes you
wonder. Even the registry decided to change the rules and decide that they will
not let domains drop to the public anymore. So if now if only certain domains
drop then things get a little more complicated. So now people like me will never
have a chance to get a name dropping from NetSol. I can take out a loan I guess
but then again the loan is probably not gonna go very far. I gave up in whole. I
just like the internet and think its a whole different world. I make sites in my
spare time and make a few programs here and there. I taught myself how to
program this year and now I'm learning web design. At the same time I'm making
great money with little advertisements here and there. I have made alot of money
like this and the revenue generated is not going to make me rich but I have not
worked for awhile. I get a many checks, deposits &  instant transfers
weekly and even daily and To be honest I did not realize it until recently that
I must have been a total idiot for not trying this earlier. I still have domains
parked here and their but its because I have no use for them. You would think my
porfolio would go down but it has staid pretty constant. I want to be one of
those people that has 1000 sites all over the web and some have meaning
whatsoever or will never be updated again. I see these sites all over the web
and I can only imagine what kind of operation they are running today. A cookie
cutter site made as a child and has not moved since. PPC sites, one normally
visits it and if they try all the links, they have seen everything and it
becomes basically a ghost unless somebody developes it. I noticed a couple of my
sites, low quality but lots of content keep on climbing in traffic. I was
chasing 3 -6 cents a click when doing the traffic stuff. So when someone buys
some merchandise off the site that your traffic sent, you are more then likely
just paid for the click which very seldoms exceeds $1. Now Lets assume that you
have 5000 hits a day and your click through rate is 6% which I consider to be
very good. I am going to use the figure $0.08 because when I use to use sedo
most of my traffic was generating about 6 cents. Wait lets give it 10 cents a
click. So now you have 5,000 hits a day and your averaging 10 ($1 here, 50 cents
there 6>3 cents average) a click. If you think that is low, log into your DomainHop or your Sedo account
and compare, while your there you might want to check on your click through rate.
I made clothing site that nets over 10x that a day alone. I don't hold any mechandise
and have never shipped an item before, its all through affiliates which these
days will ship anything with your business name, address, give you a 1-800#,
your own support staff  etc...So what would happen if I use the same code x
30 and use a different product line for each one. It only takes one line of text
code to do this and  It could probably do a whole lot better with a google
ad on top or something. The banner alone would probably pay more then what I was
getting from Sedo, but wait! Doesn't Sedo use Google feeds? So that means the
whole time I was like the 2nd or  3rd affiliate down the initial
advertisement bid? The site I was talking about uses a pure amazon feed and has
little custimazation done by me. Traffic is less then 300 a day. All I do is
rotate the merchandise every 14 days. But you see, I'm doing the same thing
people parking their domains are. I am helping online businesses generate
income. We are all doing the same thing. I have dumb sites all over the web. My
web design skills are horrible yet I am proud of myself for every thing I upload
to my server. But arnt they are is just a bunch of text based files? Anybody
that knows me knows that I have been in the business not much longer then my
member registration date. I have never been one to brag about a sale or
publicize any end user sales I had. I just like to learn and share what I know
if anybody cares to listen. I may have leaked a couple but I did not set my
standards by what others have accomplished. Check my profile and you will see
that I use to trade domains very frequently. That reminds me I also have a blog
that generates revenue from ads.  I have been using free webhosting for a
very long time now and its about time now so I really had no expenses. But as of
next week I will finally have my own server (shared) Revenues would pay for that
expense. Children post my site on chat forums and I get traffic and sales. Same
thing when somebody posts a link on a forum like this. Its what I call magic
traffic. Submission to google take one second to do and backlinks just magically
appear because somebody like or disliked something about your site and posted it
somewhere whether it was in an email, chatroom or just telling their friends at
school. There have been times when we were getting paid $5+ a click for a domian
registration ad. Thats alot to me considering I have never sold a domian for
over $2 profit on any of my registration sites and theres companies paying that
much for just a simple visit? I did not do this for the money at all. This was
one big accident. I started using the computer because I couldn't afford to go
hand out with the other girls being 19 and and not having a job or car. So when
I got done with my homework I would post on message boards. All kinds of them.
There are only a few a visit now and those are ones that I learn from, run or
ones that I help out with. The moral of the story its money that you are looking
for, you need not look very hard or far. I turned 21 not too long ago and have
learned in this past year more then any book or school could have taught me.
Some of the greatest teachers I had were for an example a 16 year old whom I met
in a chatroom that taught me alot about the more technical side of the internet.
He is 16 years old and runs his own webhosting, design company and also programs
for for fun. His father who was a full time bus drive quit his job to work for
his 16 year old son. Look where your at and and look at the people around you.
When I get all these emails, it still overwhelms me. Recipes, dirt, mud, salt
water, chips of wood, bark etc.. Theres a market for everything. Its magic
really, I can't touch or hold anything that I'm doing, I have never met any of
my distibuters or sever seen a single face of any of my customers. Even phone
calls are very seldom. Everything you do can be turned into income here. Its not
hard. Posting on a message board, even surfing the web, reviewing a new product,
theres no need to look far if you only have a $40 investment. Something can be
made out of nothing here. Want proof? NamePros.com Look at those that will come
here and read this forum through the years to come. Members come and go and take
a chunk of knowledge with them. Posts become cached and time passes by. Sorry
this was part of a piece I was writing for a local paper here lol.  Just a
rough draft and bits and pieces were moved around. I'm hoping to chuck a few
links in there because I also run a local site about the night life here and
this would be a great plug. There is nothing but truth in what I wrote. I hope
some of the newer members realize whos who in the business.

 

[gottaSUMMER]

Its not the big fish that can do this. Its the whole world. The only advantage they have over you and I is lots of money. Computers and software do everything and even can calculate formulas in determining what dollar amount a domain can generate in the next 10 years, what percent are male or female and what age groups. They can even tell what country of origin the visitors may come from and what cars they may drive if given certain variables. MIT did this before not too long ago and also print it out in a nice three demensional graph in 300 or more colors. The big fish probably have a very expensive system in place but I can do everything they do for about $20. Just go to Google and search Expired Domain Software


Now heres my reply before bed.


Heres my prospective on how things are. Domains don't usually sell themselves.
Every domain has a value, just depends who is looking at it. $6 here $20k there.
I don't care or pay much attention to the market anymore. Speculation is the
name of the game for reselling purposes, but then even if your sitting on a gold
mind you would have to market it some how or else you would not get the premium
sale you want. If you have a huge bankroll or own a large portfolio, you will
probably profit pretty well in the traffic game. This game involves large
companies these days and have huge investments behind them. They can afford to
take a loss every now and then. I use to study these drops day in and day out
and managed to do pretty decent but the time I put in was just not worth it. Its
not hard to put a backorder on a top dollar domain and the place you put the bo
on caught it. You actually have a chance!, but wait your not quite there yet.
There are about 100 others that have it backordered at the place you got it. Ok
so now it goes to auction and now its how much money are you willing to spend?
Theres alot of money involved in the industry and theres those that can afford
and don't mind investing a goldmind price. Some sales even have me wondering if
they are even real and how they hell they expect to recoop their investment.
There is also alot of stuff that happens behind the scenes that happen.
Registrars, dropcatchers etc.. There is alot of insider stuff that occurs and
everybody knows that. Domains sold for 6 figures and being used to park for ppc,
or not even exchanging hands at all. Probably not all in bad faith but makes you
wonder. Even the registry decided to change the rules and decide that they will
not let domains drop to the public anymore. So if now if only certain domains
drop then things get a little more complicated. So now people like me will never
have a chance to get a name dropping from NetSol. I can take out a loan I guess
but then again the loan is probably not gonna go very far. I gave up in whole. I
just like the internet and think its a whole different world. I make sites in my
spare time and make a few programs here and there. I taught myself how to
program this year and now I'm learning web design. At the same time I'm making
great money with little advertisements here and there. I have made alot of money
like this and the revenue generated is not going to make me rich but I have not
worked for awhile. I get a many checks, deposits &  instant transfers
weekly and even daily and To be honest I did not realize it until recently that
I must have been a total idiot for not trying this earlier. I still have domains
parked here and their but its because I have no use for them. You would think my
porfolio would go down but it has staid pretty constant. I want to be one of
those people that has 1000 sites all over the web and some have meaning
whatsoever or will never be updated again. I see these sites all over the web
and I can only imagine what kind of operation they are running today. A cookie
cutter site made as a child and has not moved since. PPC sites, one normally
visits it and if they try all the links, they have seen everything and it
becomes basically a ghost unless somebody developes it. I noticed a couple of my
sites, low quality but lots of content keep on climbing in traffic. I was
chasing 3 -6 cents a click when doing the traffic stuff. So when someone buys
some merchandise off the site that your traffic sent, you are more then likely
just paid for the click which very seldoms exceeds $1. Now Lets assume that you
have 5000 hits a day and your click through rate is 6% which I consider to be
very good. I am going to use the figure $0.08 because when I use to use sedo
most of my traffic was generating about 6 cents. Wait lets give it 10 cents a
click. So now you have 5,000 hits a day and your averaging 10 ($1 here, 50 cents
there 6>3 cents average) a click. If you think that is low, log into your DomainHop or your Sedo account
and compare, while your there you might want to check on your click through rate.
I made clothing site that nets over 10x that a day alone. I don't hold any mechandise
and have never shipped an item before, its all through affiliates which these
days will ship anything with your business name, address, give you a 1-800#,
your own support staff  etc...So what would happen if I use the same code x
30 and use a different product line for each one. It only takes one line of text
code to do this and  It could probably do a whole lot better with a google
ad on top or something. The banner alone would probably pay more then what I was
getting from Sedo, but wait! Doesn't Sedo use Google feeds? So that means the
whole time I was like the 2nd or  3rd affiliate down the initial
advertisement bid? The site I was talking about uses a pure amazon feed and has
little custimazation done by me. Traffic is less then 300 a day. All I do is
rotate the merchandise every 14 days. But you see, I'm doing the same thing
people parking their domains are. I am helping online businesses generate
income. We are all doing the same thing. I have dumb sites all over the web. My
web design skills are horrible yet I am proud of myself for every thing I upload
to my server. But arnt they are is just a bunch of text based files? Anybody
that knows me knows that I have been in the business not much longer then my
member registration date. I have never been one to brag about a sale or
publicize any end user sales I had. I just like to learn and share what I know
if anybody cares to listen. I may have leaked a couple but I did not set my
standards by what others have accomplished. Check my profile and you will see
that I use to trade domains very frequently. That reminds me I also have a blog
that generates revenue from ads.  I have been using free webhosting for a
very long time now and its about time now so I really had no expenses. But as of
next week I will finally have my own server (shared) Revenues would pay for that
expense. Children post my site on chat forums and I get traffic and sales. Same
thing when somebody posts a link on a forum like this. Its what I call magic
traffic. Submission to google take one second to do and backlinks just magically
appear because somebody like or disliked something about your site and posted it
somewhere whether it was in an email, chatroom or just telling their friends at
school. There have been times when we were getting paid $5+ a click for a domian
registration ad. Thats alot to me considering I have never sold a domian for
over $2 profit on any of my registration sites and theres companies paying that
much for just a simple visit? I did not do this for the money at all. This was
one big accident. I started using the computer because I couldn't afford to go
hand out with the other girls being 19 and and not having a job or car. So when
I got done with my homework I would post on message boards. All kinds of them.
There are only a few a visit now and those are ones that I learn from, run or
ones that I help out with. The moral of the story its money that you are looking
for, you need not look very hard or far. I turned 21 not too long ago and have
learned in this past year more then any book or school could have taught me.
Some of the greatest teachers I had were for an example a 16 year old whom I met
in a chatroom that taught me alot about the more technical side of the internet.
He is 16 years old and runs his own webhosting, design company and also programs
for for fun. His father who was a full time bus drive quit his job to work for
his 16 year old son. Look where your at and and look at the people around you.
When I get all these emails, it still overwhelms me. Recipes, dirt, mud, salt
water, chips of wood, bark etc.. Theres a market for everything. Its magic
really, I can't touch or hold anything that I'm doing, I have never met any of
my distibuters or sever seen a single face of any of my customers. Even phone
calls are very seldom. Everything you do can be turned into income here. Its not
hard. Posting on a message board, even surfing the web, reviewing a new product,
theres no need to look far if you only have a $40 investment. Something can be
made out of nothing here. Want proof? NamePros.com Look at those that will come
here and read this forum through the years to come. Members come and go and take
a chunk of knowledge with them. Posts become cached and time passes by. Sorry
this was part of a piece I was writing for a local paper here lol.  Just a
rough draft and bits and pieces were moved around. I'm hoping to chuck a few
links in there because I also run a local site about the night life here and
this would be a great plug. There is nothing but truth in what I wrote. I hope
some of the newer members realize whos who in the business.

EDU, you just answered the question... alot of information that was not needed though :great:

 

[redhippo]

great post .edu. hope to learn more from you. would love to move up from just mere parking!!

 

[suthra]

Excellant post again , edu

 

[ExpireGuy]

Good lord .edu! War and Peace domainer style! Good show!

 

[primacomputer]

I'd recommend investing a bit more time before investing your hard earned cash.

As others have pointed out, there are hoards of people in this game. If you want to play the same game it's going to cost you way more than $40. To say it's saturated is an understatement.

The easiest way to win is to play a different game. Use a little creativity and register the names the expire software misses. Settle for less traffic and collect more names.

I have plenty of former expires, registered by hand, which are making a buck or two or three a day off PPC/affiliate programmers. I don't think I'd come anywhere close to the revenue I make off these with $40 drop club names.

Don't work hard, work smart.

 

[znegativo]

If you want to play the same game it's going to cost you way more than $40.

Really nice thread...
First of all I'd like to thanks .edu for sharing his experience. That's what I was looking for.

Regarding the $40, don't get me wrong guys. I'm not talking about making a one-time investment of $40 and get plenty of traffic, I was just comparing 2 strategies: 1 - buying fresh expired domains that were not snapped and have some traffic or 2 - getting some big fish domains that were snapped - and those cost at least $40 on pool, namewinner, etc.

While expired domains are a good challange for me, I have this project in my head for some time that's pretty much like a business directory.
I think that's where I'm going to spend my spare time from now on.

 

[evenflow]

correct me if I am wrong, but we should thank "her" (Edu) for the thoughts.

 

[harpo]

yes, we still think men are the smart ones but really the women are,
yes hats off to Edu the internetangel of namepros , edu you have always inspired us newbees to learn more and more and always so generous with our information , which the old dogs keep as a guarded secret,
Its becuase of members like you that keep me interested in this, Thanks sooooo much
Paul

 

[Domainut]

What I don't understand is, how the big fish can be very certain that the domain they're planning to catch will generate hundred visitors daily?

No guarantee. But research and stats can paint a pretty picture that is 95% accurate.

I see several of this lists but I'm not sure I will want to pay more than reg-fee this domain.

Some lists provide great generic domains, some provide raw names with no stats, and some provide all the information needed for chasing traffic names.

99% of the domains I chase are traffic names to be used for PPC. Initially starting in the domain game, I spent 16-18 hours a day researching domains manually or with the help of a few lists. After gaining a perception of what stats were pertinent to best predicting quality targetted traffic that would convert to clicks on parking pages, I came up with a few scripts that saved me much time. Over the past year, I have added many more scripts and tools, and continue to do so.

Basically what I am saying is DropWatch was made to fit my needs (the needs of a traffic chaser).

The keys to making a decision when chasing traffic names:

Overture with extension
Overture without extension (people searching for the term that makes up the domain)
Linkpop
wayback archive (see what the targetted audience is, and judge how well the keywords will pay compared to the traffic is should recieve)
Alexa rank (only in respect to webmaster related sites)
yahoo listed
dmoz listed
Google PR

Good Luck Guys :sold:

 

[shilmy]

The keys to making a decision when chasing traffic names:

Overture with extension
Overture without extension (people searching for the term that makes up the domain)
Linkpop
wayback archive (see what the targetted audience is, and judge how well the keywords will pay compared to the traffic is should recieve)
Alexa rank (only in respect to webmaster related sites)
yahoo listed
dmoz listed
Google PR

Woul you care to share the number of each parameter so you can feel secure investing in any particular domain?

 

[Domainut]

Woul you care to share the number of each parameter so you can feel secure investing in any particular domain?

there is no set parameter that can be used in general.

Each domain will differ based upon the targetted audience, and how well the keywords will pay compared to the traffic it should recieve.

Example:

klsex.net has a 485 overture with extension and recieves about 6000 uniques a month, but only pays about 5-10 cents per click. (1000 clicks a month earning $50)

travelvalueplus.com has a 97 overture with extension and recieves about 1500 uniques a month and pays about $1.50-$2.00 per click. (250 clicks a month earning about $400)