SEO Case Study: How our customer made $5286 from expired domains worth $467?

Hey, thanks for landing here. It’s been a long time since we have updated our blog. So it’s time to revamp Domain Coasters Blog with some interesting content on SEO. To start with, we are now sharing an SEO case study based on the expired domain from our own network.

So here we will be sharing a unique SEO case study from one of our customer who did $$$$/mo with three of our expired domains in a short span of time.

 

Considering the value of your time, I would like to first make it clear of “What to expect from this Case Study?” and “What NOT to expect from this Case Study?”

What to expect?

• Choosing an Expired Domain
• Building the main site with Expired Domain
• Content Strategies
• Link Building for Expired Domain
• Monetization, Earnings, Stats and ROI

What Not to expect?

• Domain URL
• Keywords or Niche
• Info about the Customer
• Other Confidential Data

I hope, by now you would have decided whether to continue reading this Case Study or Not 😛

So with that being said, let me take you through a quick recap of the evolution of this Case Study!

A Quick Recap

Domain Coasters was started in the month of January 2019. It’s been 11 months so far and we have managed to sell over 550+ Expired domains to 100+ customers from 20+ countries.

And recently we have sent a follow-up message to our Buyers asking how the expired domains are performing for them. We had received positive responses from several customers. And surprisingly we found someone who managed to crack $$$$/mo with three of the expired domains purchased from us.

So we have requested a case study from him. Without any secondary thoughts, he agreed to do it! 🙂

Disclaimer: The customer requested us not to reveal his name/site/keywords/other sensitive information.

SEO Case Study with Expired Domains

This would sound like a Q & A case study as it’s written based on the questions I spotted to the customer and his replies for it! Let’s get started! 🙂

1. What factors did you consider before purchasing the expired domain from us?

Well, I’m not a big fan of any specific SEO metric. I just check if the domain contains contextual links from Big sites and has minimum 50 Ahrefs Live RD.

I didn’t give much preference for niche relevancy. I don’t really care if the domain is dropped or non dropped. All the domains I picked were dropped domains.

I was not even worried if the domain is brandable or not. I just picked the domains with random names which weren’t relevant to the niche 😛

However, I will make sure the expired domain is spam free before purchasing it.

2. When did you purchase the domains and how much it costed you?

When I checked Domain Coasters for the first time, I found some 50+ domains listed from 29$ to 399$. I don’t want to risk myself purchasing a premium domain! So I thought of testing it with a domain under 100$.

So I picked the first domain for 69$ in March, 2019. Then later looking at the performance of the first domain, I have purchased the second domain for 99$ in June, 2019. And again I have decided to test with a premium domain which costed me 299$.

3. How did you build the expired domain as the main site?

I just hosted the site in Digital Ocean and installed WordPress. I have added a basic theme from Mythemeshop. Then published the necessary pages like About, Contact, Privacy Policy and Disclaimer.

I didn’t restore any pages from wayback as most of the links were pointing to the homepage. Also I didn’t block any bots as I am using it as a main site.

I would say, there is nothing special done with the setup. I just built it as a normal looking blog.

4. What content strategies did you implement on these sites?

I have built two adsense blogs with the first and second domain. And I have built an affiliate blog with the premium domain.

Regarding the content strategies, for the first site I have picked few general informative keywords from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and published over 50 posts in the month of April and May. And by the end of June, many keywords started to show up in the SERP. I have got adsense approval in July and it started fetching 20$ to 30$ per day.

On the second site I have published 15 articles and left it untouched for 4 months. Surprisingly I have found few main keywords ranking in page 3 and 4. So again I started working on that site and got the adsense approval in November. And it started earning me 80$ to 100$ per day on an average with adsense.

On the third site, I have started working in September and published 10 posts on tech based affiliate keywords. Slowly the keywords started to show up in SERP. The site didn’t get much traffic. But as the product I promoted got a high CPA, I managed to make 800$+ in the month of November.

5. What were the on-page SEO tactics you followed on these sites?

Well there is nothing special with on-page SEO.

I just picked low and medium competitive keywords from Ahrefs Keyword explorer. Also, I have found some 10+ sites with RD less than 200 and Organic traffic higher than 10k on my desired niche. Then I reversed their keywords and started publishing articles on it.

For on-page, we just made sure the main keywords were placed on Title, permalink, meta, heading and image alt texts. All the posts on adsense sites had some 700 to 1000 words of content per post. On affiliate posts, the average word count per post was 1200+. Apart from this, we didn’t do anything special with on-page.

Due to the expired domain’s authority, the keywords started ranking automatically in 3rd or 4th pages within 30 to 60 days.

6. Did you make any additional backlinks for the expired domain?

Of course, yes! We can’t really expect an expired domain to rank for the main keywords, just by adding articles on it. Expired domains can help us to rank on 3rd or 4th page quickly. But after that, the real competition begins.

In my case, I just waited till the keywords ranked naturally on 3rd or 4th pages. Then later, I have pushed the rankings with few contextual links from my own PBNs and few Guest Posts. I just built less than 10 contextual links per site and I was able to observe a boost in ranking within 3 weeks. It took an average of 30 to 40 days to reach page 1.

Apart from these contextual links, I have added some 30 to 40 pillow links like comments, forums and profiles. These were made just for diversification. These links, didn’t influence much in the rankings.

Also on one of the site, I did 301 redirection of another expired domain purchased from you guys. It took some 10 to 15 days for the redirection to take effect and the results were fruitful! 🙂

7. Can you share a few words on the anchors text pattern for the links you have built?

Sure! I have used 30% direct keyword anchors, 40% long tail keyword anchors and the remaining 30% were generic keyword anchors. I have followed the same pattern for all the 3 sites and for all the type of links.

8. What was the total revenue generated till date?

It’s not about the revenue, but about the profit. So rather sharing the income screenshots, I will also add the total expenses involved on these three sites.

Site #1

Particulars	Expense ($)	Income ($)
Expired Domain	69	—
Hosting (Digital Ocean)	40	—
Content (50 Articles)	220	—
Pillow Links	65	—
Adsense Income (till 18/12/19)	—	2000
TOTAL	394	2000

ROI in 8 months = 507.61%

NOTE: The site now makes 30$+ every day and the ROI keeps increasing overtime!

Few Snaps for Screenshot Fans!!!

Day Wise Adsense Report for Site 1

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Adsense revenue for site 1&2

Site #2

Particulars	Expense ($)	​Income ($)
Expired Domain	99	—
Hosting (Digital Ocean)	30	—
Content (50 Articles)	320	—
Pillow Links	75	—
Adsense Income (till 18/12/19)	—	2000
TOTAL	524	2000

ROI in 6 months = 381.67%

NOTE: The site now makes 150$+ every day and the ROI keeps increasing overtime!

Few more screenshots of Site 2!

Jetpack traffic stats of Site 2

Search Console Clicks stats of Site 2

Ahrefs Organic Traffic Graph of Site 2

Site #3

Particulars	Expense ($)	Income ($)
Expired Domain	299	—
Hosting (Digital Ocean)	15	—
Content (10 Articles)	100	—
Pillow Links	20	—
Affiliate Income (till 18/12/19)	—	1286
TOTAL	434	1286

ROI in 3 months = 296.31%

Site 3 Revenue Screenshots

Site 3 Affiliate Earnings Report

 

Disclaimer: The PBN expenses weren’t taken into ROI Calculation as the customer used his PBN for many other sites.

Considering the Privacy of the customer, we aren’t able to add all the screenshots! 🙁

Key Takeaways from this Case Study

• Expired Domains can be built as Main Site to rank much quicker than new sites
• DA/DR/PA Metrics of the Expired Domains doesn’t matters much. You should be looking at the quality of links.
• Niche Relevancy isn’t a big Deal
• Dropped Domains can also perform well in SERP
• Expired domains might need few additional backlinks to push the ranking to page 1
• Sites with more posts performs better than static page sites
• 301 Redirection and PBNs works well if done right
• Last but not least, Patience is the key when it comes to SEO!

Wrapping Up

I hope, by now you would have got a clear idea of how to build an expired domain as the main site and make money out of it!!!