Inspiration for every reader- FREE!

Another post on finding old sites for sale 🙂 but a short one, this one is gold dust so for those of you who like the idea of looking for an old site that may have some traffic & rankings already that can be bought then improved upon but you don’t know where to look or how to find the inspiration…this post is for you.

On a side note if this isn’t what you want to read about then please comment here. We want to hear your thoughts.

A very simple but effective method for finding old dated sites.

Method 1
Look for sites that run old scripts, there are often the same ‘tells’ in these scripts that there are when hackers look for the same sites that may have a vulnerability so using the likes of Google as always you can find thousands of sites running older software versions of scripts that may indicate age/neglect etc

So if you do a Google for “powered by e-classifieds” I get just over a quarter of a million pages, there has to be some real gold in there!

E-classifieds

So use sites like hotscripts.com and find old scripts and get to work.

Method 2
Look for outdated practices like “webrings”, webrings used to be a popular way of linking to similar sites and were very popular however they are rarely used nowadays, there are thousands of sites still showing them, many of them will be old, we like old 🙂 many will have traffic/rankings and will be neglected. Many of those sites will have no advertising or monetisation.

There are a few different types of webrings but they mostly all have similar or standard text underneath them, so for example if you search for “Visit a complete list of WebRing memberships here” in Google even in speech marks for exact results I get over 12,000 pages.

Web Rings

Right near the top of page 1 check out  femalehealthmadesimple//.com thats a nice information site, no ads, contact page shows they have been around for a while, problems with spam and the site is around 5 years old.

Many free hit counters & guestbooks and web polls also had standard text displayed on users sites with a backlink and that can easily be searched for. Now if you use any of those methods and strike gold you’ll be due me a pint 😉

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. This type of information is gold that you are sharing. You asked if this is the type of stuff we like to read. I can answer for my self that I do enjoy this type of stuff.

    I have started searching a number of things such as old forums running old versions. Old CMS versions etc…

  2. Sweet this realy is gold next time I’m back in England I’l buy you a pint or ten “dont hold your breath though its been 14 years since I went home”

  3. Scott, would you say that you’ve had better luck with purchasing old sites “just hanging out there” as opposed to ones that are advertised as “for sale”? I would think that people actively trying to sell their sites often have unrealistic ideas of their value?

    • Much better luck, sites for sale more often than not have been monetised having adsense on them, they have also been found by other people looking for a bargain which means if its a good site you wont get a bargain. By finding decent sites ‘not for sale’ there is no competition.

  4. This is the type of information that I love, great ideas/tips. What is your procedure about inquiring about purchasing the site when you find one that has potential.

  5. Thanks for the info. If we all follow your advice, we’ll all “fight” 😉 for the same websites, but your point about how to find an old site is great.

    With some creativity we can find different ways of finding those hidden “gems”.

  6. why have webrings became unfashionable?

    I reckon if they come back they would prove useful and possibly popular.

  7. Nice post. Seems like you can find some good sites with traffic if you look. People trying to sell sites most make them to sell them and want to much money. this way seems like the best way to get site that is established and can make you money.

    matt@Best etf funds list’s last blog post..Gold double long etf.

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