After thinking about it for a long time, I decided to write down this experience of failed website acquisition and operation. I hope this painful lesson can serve as a warning to all new webmaster friends.
In May 2008, after several days of bargaining, I purchased the "Friendly Link Alliance" website from a webmaster: www.pagehome.cn (it has been K-ed anyway, so I am not afraid of everyone's jokes, so I will use it as a negative example for everyone) , this site is a platform for webmaster friends to log in to the website and exchange links. At the time of purchase, Baidu included nearly 110,000 pages, and snapshots were updated daily; Google PR value was 4; multiple keywords ranked on the first page of major search engines , the website has a daily IP traffic of 20,000 and a PV of 40,000. Nearly 200 websites join it every day. It should be said that buying such a website is worth the money.
Next, I paid through Alipay and handled the domain name transfer. The website was officially launched on my newly rented server and started running normally. Everything went smoothly. Seeing the steady growth of website traffic, I thought about spending several years of savings to buy the website, so I began to think about how to make money from the traffic, recover the investment as soon as possible and start making profits. The main way for personal websites to make money is through advertising alliances. Through multiple comparisons, I chose to place Google ads and First Video ads. The credibility of these two alliances has a good reputation among webmasters. On the first day, Google’s revenue was US$5, and First Video’s revenue was RMB 30, totaling about RMB 60. In the following days, traffic and advertising revenue were relatively stable and increased slightly. This situation makes me quite satisfied. At this rate, the investment can be recovered in 12 months.
On May 12, China suffered the 5.12 earthquake that shocked the world. The demand among netizens to check recent earthquake updates on the Internet increased explosively. I also seized the opportunity and created several earthquake-related keywords and topics, and the website traffic increased rapidly. However, during this period, due to the scheduled public service advertisements played by First Video and Google, my income did not increase with the increase in traffic. Instead, it fell sharply, even reaching a low of 15 yuan a day. In order to increase profits and speed up the recovery of funds, I decided to take a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, I continued to rank for popular keywords to keep traffic growing, and on the other hand, I explored new online earning channels. To this end, I did the following:
1. Selling a large number of link advertisements: At that time, the website PR value was 4, the traffic was good, and there was an endless stream of people buying links. During the peak period, nearly 50 ads were made on the homepage, with an average of 25 yuan each, which could increase the income by 1,500 yuan per month;
2. Add pop-up ads to the entire site: Although the deduction is huge, there are more than 8,000 pop-ups per day, and the income is nearly 40 yuan; (Although the income is good, the user experience is ignored)
3. Remove the first video ad that continuously plays public service announcements and replace it with Mao
4. Posted through the forum and received a picture link advertisement, which cost 300 yuan per month; (later it was discovered that the link code had a virus, which resulted in a virus warning from Google, a reduction in rights, and even the PR was cleared later)
5. Search popular keywords through Baidu rankings and various lists every day, create special topics, and even some link pages without substantive content; (later I realized that this is a cheating behavior that is abhorred by all searches)
Through this series of major actions, website traffic and advertising revenue have achieved a gratifying double harvest. PV traffic has climbed from around 45,000 to 50,000, 55,000, and 60,000. On May 20, the traffic has reached nearly 62,000, and advertising revenue has also increased. When I reached 300 yuan a day, I was completely intoxicated with the short-term prosperity and joy of harvest, and completely failed to notice that the crisis was approaching step by step.
Good times don't last long, and great joy brings sorrow. On May 21, I suddenly found that the website traffic had dropped by nearly half, especially from Baidu. After checking, I found that several keywords that were originally ranked high were missing, the domain name of the site website, and the homepage were no longer the first, and the number of included pages was reduced from more than 100,000 to more than 50,000. The website was demoted by Baidu. In the next few days, although some remedial measures were taken, Baidu still showed no mercy. After 2 weeks, only the home page was included (it was completely deleted a month later). The traffic also plummeted, and after a month and a half, it dropped to less than 8,000 daily PV. At the same time, Google began to punish the website. Three months later, Google also completely deleted the website, and the PR dropped from 4 to 0. Pagehome was finally completely abandoned by the two major searches. Since then, website traffic has basically dropped to more than 1,000, and advertising revenue has been less than 10 yuan per day.
Afterwards, I consulted many SEO experts and paid some tuition fees, but I still could not get the recognition and inclusion of the two major search engines again, which also meant that the website I purchased for 30,000 yuan completely failed.
Through this painful experience, I concluded that building a website cannot be successful overnight, and making money from a website should not be a rush for quick success or quick success. Website management relies on persistence and accumulation. It also requires continuous learning, mastering some necessary optimization knowledge, perseverance, and concentrated operation. When the time comes, the website will naturally receive traffic, and making money will come naturally.
This article is submitted by the webmaster of www.pageon.cn. If you reprint it, please leave a link. It can be regarded as a strong support for my new website.