Dirty Ideas & Clean Link Sources

Ideas come up in the news over and over again, and when they do category leading sites gain self reinforcing links. In industries where many competing sites are viewed as sleazy it is easy to build an industry leading site by playing the industry from the other side. DMOZ loves to list Allegedly Unethical Firms, and so does the media. I just bought a domain name off SnapNames for the $60 minimum. Other bidders must have thought it was worthless because the name matched a scam. It does, but if I create an advocacy website then I have a self reinforcing authority that is a clean link source which can branch out in scope as it gains authority.

Every market and every idea is something you can build up or arbitrage against. Sometimes arbitraging against a scam helps reinforce the feeling of self worth in a group of powerful people. As long as you are comfortable with the position, don't be afraid to bet (and build) against scams.

Published: April 16, 2007 by Aaron Wall in marketing

Comments

Peter
April 17, 2007 - 12:23am

What an intriguing thought and a very good tip. I will follow what you do with interest.

x
April 17, 2007 - 12:43am

Very out of the box, I like.

Kieran
April 17, 2007 - 8:07am

Can someone explain this again to me?

Taylor
April 17, 2007 - 4:38pm

Aaron, I have been looking into similar ideas lately but the domain market can be very interesting at times. On the side of the age of domain, I have found that using SnapNames retains the original creation date but buying an old domain after it expires ends up in a new creation date. Do you know if the old creation date is purged and the "age of domain" factor is basically lost? SnapNames is about 5 times more expensive than a system such as GoDaddy for the base "backorder" but if it ensures the age of domain for the search engine ranking factors, then it is worth it in the longrun. Any other spinoff thoughts on that note?

DarkKnight
April 18, 2007 - 3:17am

I love this web site! ;)

Greg
April 18, 2007 - 3:03pm

Me too Dk. Any body have any thoughts on Taylor's question? I thought they were all the same but maybe not. If snapnames never lets it expire then I suppose the creation date thing would work out.

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