Do these web sites ever make money?

[Retired_member41]

Hi

I recently saw a domain for sale here on acorn, and its site looked lovely, turned out to be a whitelabel from hotels combined.

So I used a couple of my partners domains to point to it and bingo I had a site.

Set up a quick facebook and twitter, and created a few videos on fiverr, complete waste of £12, but a bargain none the less.

See the worst ever video here, man totally forgot his lines, and the trademark laugh that was infectious, was nowhere to be seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me4HLAuyB-w

The other ones were really for my kids, as they love transformers

So in the first 2 days it made £11 but then a week later that's all.

I'm now told that it won't ever appear on google as the site is no index, is this right?

So I'm guessing having lots of links around the web won't help it either?

Any advice for another hobby site that won't make money is appreciated, site is www.lotels.uk

 

[ChrisMM]

Scrap the white label. You're correct it is <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"/>, so it'll never rank in the search engines.

(It's doubtful it would rank for long if at all without those tags too...)

White label scripts can be useful, but in my opinion work best as a 'bolt on' option for an existing site - and even then I'd be inclined to keep it out of the Google index (for example some Tech news websites have white label mobile phone comparison scripts on subdomains etc).

If you want to pull in travel/hotel info then do so with an API, just make sure that the page you're pulling the info into has a ton of original content too.

If you're adamant about doing something with the domain, how about scrapping the white label, and sticking a good looking blog up instead. How about Luxury Hotels? Lotels.uk?

Loads of high quality photos of Luxury Hotels in the UK and reviews, guides blahblahblah. Just a thought

 

[Adam H]

It is indeed noindexed and nofollowed , but even if it wasnt there would be so many of the same script for example this two year old one :

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:http://hotels.travel4kids.com.au/

that you would struggle to make it unique enough to get indexed or more importantly ranked for anything decent ( depending on the kind of access you have ).

The idea of these types of sites is to have them as a landing page for a PPC campaign but most of the time they don't look the part so they don't even work for PPC either.

You would be much better off getting a nice looking wordpress setup or custom cms, then asking hotels combined for a data feed for certain data ( not mass import ) ( or if they have an API even better )

That way you can make the site your own, provide good quality content and promote it so it doesnt look like another banged together affiliate script.

EDIT, Chris beat me too it while i was writing and making a cuppa

 

[Murray]

I'm now told that it won't ever appear on google as the site is no index, is this right?

If it's no indexed you're specifically telling search engines not to include it

But it's got nothing google would want to include anyway, nothing unique.

 

[Retired_member41]

Thank you everyone, that was brilliant information.

And the last point, goodness, everything I have read these last two years has been about original content, and for some reason that had totally passed me by with this site lol, there must be hundreds of identical sites.

Yes a blog and maybe sub domain site.

Trying to run before I can walk.

Maybe I should put an ogre mask on and open a seller account on fiverr

 

[martin-s]

Nice brandable name for bargain hotels - I like it

 

[mally]

Video is fantastic, haha - easiest $5 he's ever earned, made me chuckle for at least the full 60 seconds!

 

[ild2014]

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[Aegean]

Hi


See the worst ever video here, man totally forgot his lines, and the trademark laugh that was infectious, was nowhere to be seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me4HLAuyB-w

As far as I'm concerned, that video is a masterpiece! Its a pity you cant read the text on the page, but marketing-wise, brilliant. I loved it.