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'R.D.D.'
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irates - 'Give me yer Domain Name, arrgghh ..'
A business associate of mine recently was robbed. By a pirate
who hi-jacked his website domain name. This particular pirate resides in Hong
Kong under the name of ultsearch.com .. but may also be known by hundreds of
aliases, including my friends former website name.
 OK,
so my friend forgot to renew his domain name right away. Meanwhile, that newly
expired domain name was snatched up and registered [technically legal] by the
pirate. Now, my friend's former customers are being redirected to a site that
looks like the one at the right. And he is not the only one. Check out skifan.com,
tax-returns.com, virtualbritain.com
to name just three of some 50,000+ victims that are hi-jacked and now point to
this pirates cookie-cutter website.
Click
here to view updated lists of other recent victims.
So how does this pirate make any money at this when he had to
pay some $20US just to steal your website domain name for the year? The answer
in this case is pay-per-click (PPC). Other companies on the net want your
unsuspecting customers and are willing to pay the pirate for directing said
customers into their web. Ken Johar of expiredtraffic.com
puts it this way, "His [the pirates] concept is simple: Pillage and plunder
the net, one site at a time. And so far, it’s working…to the tune of
six-figures….per day." Of course, Ken wants to sell you on the idea of
joining the pirates yourself .. Ken summarizes the pirate strategy as:
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1. Locate expiring websites which
are/were once developed and still receiving traffic from search engines and
other sites that still link to it.
2. Grab them up when the domain name
expires at the mercy of:
- Absentminded website owners who neglected to renew
their domain names
- Webmasters who got tied up in other ventures or
interests
- Webmasters who discontinued operation due to time
constraints
- Webmasters who ran out of money to continue to operate.
3. Make money off the continual
stream of traffic still being sent to the site by setting up a PPC search
engine or any other targeted affiliate program and earning revenue off each
successful click.
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Ken then points out other ways to 'monetize' the expired
(hi-jacked) traffic:
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- Redirect the expired traffic to an existing website
- Domain Speculation/Resell Expired Websites on Ebay: Many
people have already paid hundreds, if not thousand for a domain with high
link popularity, or one that is still listed in Yahoo or DMOZ.
- Affiliate Programs: Placing a quick, highly targeted affiliate
program on a site still receiving traffic can generate anywhere from
$0.03-$200/visitor, depending on the quality of the expired traffic.
- Pay-per-Click Search Engines: Do what the Internet's most
successful entrepreneur is doing. The more expired traffic you
acquire, the more you will generate.
- Develop Expired Websites and sell them for thousands or use them
as a means to launch your own site.
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Conclusion. From my friends perspective, this shady
practice is unfair and should be outlawed. He was robbed of his good name and
his customers are getting lost on the web, some phoning in asking why his
website suddenly is pointing to a web page billboard advertising online casino
gambling and the rest just unable to find him anymore. So .. He has now had to
register a new domain name and must pay to re-do all his stationary, business
cards, advertising, and update his website to [eventually] get the doors back
open to his customers. It should be illegal and stopped some how. The least we
can do is boycott the pirate site, eh. Don't let them make money off of you. Oh,
and don't forget to renew your own website domain name.
What do you think?
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