As domainers and SEOmainers, we all want traffic. Traditional domainers speak to type-in traffic. SEOmainers speak to Serp traffic, bookmark traffic, and inbound link traffic.
I spend a majority of my time as an SEOmainer, cause I’ve found traffic in this niche drastically trumps type-ins.
I do acquire a majority of new domains at auction houses, but - honestly - some of my most successful acquisitions have occurred outside that arena, by going direct. In other words, simply finding sites I like, cold calling the owners, and offering ‘em cash money. Going direct has several advantages, a few being:
- lower acquisition cost
- access to actual traffic logs (upon request)
- fully built websites sold in conjunction
Now, identifying domains to acquire direct can be a challenge, so I thought I’d share one of my favorite routes..
Good ole DMOZ/ODP shopping. DMOZ Mart you could say.
If we want to build traffic (or simply manage the existing traffic) from a nice old indexed domain, DMOZ is a great place to shop. ODP domains are typically old, indexed, and trusted.
How to find target domains in DMOZ? Well, I’ve found a several by simply drilling into a niche I liked, and searched for domains with a dead, or inoperable, homepage. Then I run a quick link and traffic check, and if those are satisfactory, I pull up the domain owner info on Whois and give ‘em a buzz. Sometimes I’ll email them, but the response rate is a bit better if you get them on the horn.
Give it a shot, you’ll be surprised what you uncover..
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
How do you find the price expectations of owners of these dead sites? Top dollar or glad to have achance of getting any money back?
You’re full of incredibly useful advice. Watch out now, you’re giving away some real trade secrets here.
Mark - I determine a price based on expected revenue per click, ctr, and expected traffic levels..
DomainerPro - you’re too kind.
[…] gives away some great advice in Domain Name Shopping at DMOZ & ODP — so good that I hesitate to draw any more attention to it. Seeing as how it’s already […]
So you’re just going into a category in DMOZ and checking if all domains have sites or just dumping them all into DRT or similar to find whois for all?
Cheers from Dublin, Alan