March 26, 2008
By Khalid
Posted In
Business, Domain Names, Monetization, My Life, Projects, SEO Advice, SEO Tests, Transactions
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Building a Site and Making $2000
The Rise and Rise of Kortaz.com
When I first began building sites for profit and dabbling in ppc revenue methods like Google Adsense, trickles of income began coming my way. My problem is that I become wrestless, I don’t like to wait. That trickle could become a stream, then a river and so on and so forth.
I wasn’t prepared to wait, and my first network of sites were sold for $50 each.
A lot of learning has occured since then and I now follow strict personal rules when considering selling a site. I plan for the future, I think about the short and long term gains and I don’t sell until I am sure I either need the cash or want to exit the market.
Proxy traffic is considered “trash”. Proxy users are generally people who want to bypass school filters, view adult content or get away with playing their favourite arcade game at work. The only company willing that offers good revenue and is willing to allow placement of their ads on proxy sites is Google Adsense, a network which I was banned from about a year ago.
Aside from Google, there’s Adversal and Adbrite, but both offer low payouts. Adversal did provide a few extra dollars per month for their non-intrusive pop-under ads so it is a network I’d recommend.
Getting a little off track, I bought Kortaz.com for $15 simply because I liked the name. Kortaz was originally a big site divided into smaller sections, including an arcade, funny videos feed, proxy and image host. The idea originally came about when I saw arcades making, say $10 per day, a video site $20, a proxy $5 and so on. I thought about combining them to create one large site that would generate revenue through each section.
Unfortunately it was difficult to market without a big budget, I hadn’t really thought it through properly, but being a businessman involves learning, so I’m glad I made the mistakes.
Knowing I could profit from proxy traffic, as I did by building and selling SneakOnline.com for $750, I turned my sites back to the trash nobody wanted (apart from us profiting proxy webmasters). I was bored with a proxy site as you couldn’t do much in the way of earning money, so I thought about a proxy listing site.
I didn’t want one of these topsites nobody visited, so I managed to find a free script that offered something more unique – a links lister with sections and a hit counter for each link. The only change I made was to randomize link orders. Kortaz, the web proxy list was born.
Originally I offered free placements to all and a few lucky people were “Featured” (premium placement) for free. A link back to Kortaz with the anchor text “web proxy” was always required on the homepage if you requested a free link.
As the number of submissions and backlinks grew, so did traffic. The hit counter beside each link, along with a few testimonials, was proof to webmasters Kortaz provided great traffic, all for $6-$10 per month (I changed the price to attract people during difficult times).
I managed to profit here from two things. The first was that links rotated randomly so each featured and non-featured link got time at the top of the pile in their own sections. Secondly, there was some negative press about the biggest proxy listing site, proxy.org, using bots to imitate traffic and click on Adsense units of sites listed on the site.
However, as the site grew, so did the problems. The script was designed for heavy use and would max out after 2,000 outbound hits, I couldn’t integrate automatic Paypal payments and so on. I managed to hire a great coder for $50 who developed the site as you see it today using a free web template (why waste money if you don’t need too!).
The new design was rolled out and I put some contextual advertising and Adversal popunders on it, afterall it was “trash traffic”! I managed to get the stage where the site was earning around $150-$170 per month. It was doing well and I had a small money-maker on my hands.
Traffic was excellent, with the site ranking first in the SERPs for “Web Proxy” and on the first page for a number of other terms. This was simply due to the high number of relevant backlinks accumulated over time (slow but steady link building).
My reason for selling – I needed cash, I have student debt and bills to pay. I was sad to see it go. I decided to list the site on Sitepoint.com with a price tag of $2k. I didn’t think it would reach this because nobody likes proxy sites but I was surprised it was sold within 48 hours. I think I could have gotten more but you learn. I think the strongest selling points were the SERPs positioning and the private link sales, i.e. no reliance on an ad network.
Building, establishing and maintaining Kortaz.com was one of the best experiences I’ve had online. I turned a domain name into a profitable website, I learned about SEO and link building and I tasted success.
One man’s dirt is another man’s foundations and Kortaz.com was exactly that. The owner didn’t want the domain and a lot of webmasters don’t like proxy traffic. I took two negatives and turned them into a positive – all in under one year.
I hope you learned a little from this story, good luck with your persuits,
Khalid.
