I know I keep harping on about how useful established domains are that have been lying dormant for any length of time. Instead of ramming theory down your throat, let's look at a concrete example.

There's a domain I bought in December that had an illustrious life, before it... died. When I found it, there was no site there so after some preliminary investigations I approached the owner, bought it and developed it.

The development is not yet complete. I'm using Google Webmaster Tools to direct my content creation endeavours. Every time GWT reports a "Not Found" page, I recreate an equivalent page with the same URL that performs the same function. Traffic increases. Obviously.

Let's track the progress of this site.

17/09/2009

I found the domain and contacted the owner. Discussion was longer than it could have been but then...

22/12/2009

We completed the transaction and I took control of the domain. I put up a homepage, put Google Analytics on it and registered it in Google Webmaster Tools. Using GWT I created pages that were found in the "Not Found" report, creating those with the most inbound links first. To date, I've been creating maybe one new page a day. Some days it's 3, some days it's none. In total, there are now 90 pages. I've just counted them and that number surprises me because I didn't think there'd be so many. Most of them don't have copious amounts of information on them though, and they were very easy to craete.

Let's look at the traffic stats since that glorious first page was created:

Month 1

Unblelievable! It is so hard to get traffic to a new site, yet this site has reached a high point of 175 unique visitors in one day. That's because it's not really a new site. It's just born again.

Month 2

You probably can't see the unique visitors properly for yesterday, but it's 367. That's staggering! "All" I've done is create content for the site. Creating content is a time consuming process. But if you were creating a site from scratch, you would have to invest the time to do that anyway, and you'd be receiving a smattering of visitors; here I've put a similar amount of work in and the site is receiving traffic levels that I'd be proud to show my fiancee's father.

Why Does Traffic Increase When You Add More Pages

Looking at the traffic stats, and bearing in mind that I've been creating new pages every day (or most days at least), you might assume that more pages = more search engine love. That's not exactly true. Yes, more pages - and especially more page with existing inbound links - that you create, the better your site will do in the search engines. However, let's not forget that the more pages I created here, the more pages got tracked by Google Analytics. The pages that were missing (I like to call them 404s) were getting traffic right from the start; they just weren't registering visitors on GA. With every new page added with my GA code on it, traffic recorded by GA increases.

Adsense Revenue

If you're driven by nothing but money, everything up to now will have been a preamble. Let's talk Adsense revenue!

First month Dec 22 2009 - Jan 21 2010: $53

Second partial month Jan 22 - Feb 16: $110

On target monthly earnings are around $130. Nice.

Now bear in mind that I didn't buy this domain to make Adsense revenue. I bought it to direct traffic to another site I own that will market a product. All that luvverly Adsense income it generates is an unexpected bonus.

Behold the wonder of dead domains. I hate "promoting" sites. I like to just build 'em. Buying established, albeit dead and dying, domains allows you to focus on what you're good at and get traffic quick. And money too.