There are many reasons why people buy expired domains. One reason is to resell them for a higher price to individuals who may have inadvertently let their domain expire. That's not very nice, but it happens. Another reason is to get a domain that you really want for your business because the name is complementary to your business. One good, lesser known reason for buying expired domains is to use the traffic from the domains as a web site promotion technique. Traffic brokering sites that sell traffic in bulk to website owners often buy expired domains and redirect traffic from the domain that expired to their clients as a web site promotion technique. Buying traffic from a traffic brokering service that actually sends you targeted traffic, traffic that is relevant to what your site is all about, can be a good web site promotion technique. However, you really must be careful in dealing with traffic brokers because you may get lots of traffic, but it may not actually be targeted traffic. For instance, if your company sells word processing services, traffic sent to you from an expired domain for a company that sells boats isn't going to be good for you. If you intend to use expired domains to direct traffic to your site as web site promotion technique, it would make more sense financially for you to buy the expired domains of businesses that are in your field, offering the same thing you offer who have shut down, and redirect the traffic yourself. There are legitimate reasons why internet businesses shut down, but their traffic doesn't usually cease when the domain expires. If the websites are indexed in the search engines, they will remain indexed for a while. If the website owner has promoted the site through web site promotion techniques like advertising in ezines, exchanging links, and so forth, you may benefit from the efforts they put forth before they shut their site down if you buy their expired domain and direct the traffic to your website. Other than redirecting traffic from an expired domain as a web site promotion technique, you can also buy expired domains and develop them into a new website. The new website will receive the traffic that the expired domain would have normally received so a lot of the initial web site promotion techniques will already be done for you. This may be beneficial to you as a start-up company as it can give you a jump start on your promotions. There are also opportunities in website brokering. A developed website with traffic can be sold, either outright or through auctions. These are sometimes called turn-key sites because they are actually developed businesses with clientele that someone can get into to without the time consuming startup and initial web site promotion techniques. Buying expired domains that have traffic can be a good web site promotion technique to be used in connection with affiliate programs. For instance, if you are an affiliate for several pet related companies and you buy expired domains for pet supplies, you can use the domain as a directory to direct existing traffic to the various affiliate programs that you promote. It is easy to find companies that sell expired domains by simply doing a browser search for "expired domains" or "buy expired domains". If you are buying expired domains for the purpose of taking advantage of their existing traffic as a website promotion technique, you do need to review the website's statistics to be sure that the domain gets traffic and that the traffic is targeted. Alexa (www.alexa.com) has website traffic ranking reports that will provide such statistics. |
