Domain name speculating combined with affiliate marketing or even contextual marketing can be an interesting venture for those of you who like to keep up with the news and current events. As an example of this process let’s take a look at the loss of Pope John Paul II.

Pope John Paul II passed away early in 2005 and thus began the process of electing a new Pope. The question then became who was going to get the position of Pope? What would he choose as his papal name? Although I don’t know much about how the Pope chooses his name; somebody did the research and grabbed the right names. There was even an article at NetCraft.com discussing the topic of the purchasing of the Pope Benedict XVI domain names in all the variations and tlds.

It was reported that the owners of the Pope sites were receiving tens of thousands of hits an hour when the new Pope was a hot topic in the news. If you know anything at all about buying hits then you know that’s a lot of traffic for just under a $10 investment. Even though most of the sites didn’t sell for the six figures they were asking, I can assure you that the PPC income the domain owners saw for that time when it was hot more than covered their investment.

Getting your hands on the Pope’s domain could be kind of a political football. To a great extent though, controversy is what drove a lot of the traffic. It has been said that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The real problem is that there isn’t a new Pope elected every year which makes it tough to work this whole Pope angle on a regular basis.

The most interesting of the half dozen or so current speculating techniques that I use lies in the fact that the the mainstream media news is made up mostly of the bad things that happen. For example, you no doubt know the story of Natalee Holloway; the young American girl who went missing while on her senior class trip to Aruba. I cannot imagine you not knowing this story as the press ran it every night for all it was worth.

Now, if you thought buying one of the Pope domain names was too much of a political football then buying the domain names of murdered or missing persons is beyond the pale. This doesn’t change the fact that these types of things can be very high traffic keywords which in turn means very profitable.

When you consider that you can purchase a domain name with privacy so that nobody knows who you are. Then combine it with an innocuous paid parking page. You may be able to get over the fact that you are making money off the demented interest of people being consumed by the latest media frenzy.

You may be able to get over it when you consider that well respected news programs on Fox, CNN and MSNBC as well as magazines like People, US and the like, regularly hock these stories of murder, death and twisted morality night after night and week after week. How many books have been written and sold for profit by the “loved ones” or the "legal professionals" involved in the lives of Laci Peterson, OJ Simpson, and Michael Jackson just to name a few?


Let's look at the numbers and search terms for "Natalee Holloway" according to Overture for the month of November 2005.

231950 searches for holloway natalee
13157 searches for aruba holloway natalee
6541 searches for dr holloway natalee phil --> (Dr. Phil is making money off her disappearance)
5760 searches for halloway natalee ---> (this is a misspelling of her name)
2990 searches for natalee
2395 searches for holloway natalee update


Another way to still make money from the bad news without getting into the fray is to look for the stories that come out of the stories. Here are the numbers for the searches of "Aruba" according to Overture for the month of November 2005.

137682 searches for aruba
13157 searches for aruba boycott
5840 searches for missing aruba girl
3188 searches for aruba missing teen
2752 searches for aruba teen

This is the search engine traffic for Natalee Holloway. Imagine for a moment the kind of traffic nataleeholloway.com is getting from Type-In traffic. What about all the people typing in the various misspellings of Natalee Holloway?

The bad news always gets the best search engine traffic in the same way the bad news gets the best ratings for the nightly news shows. The more twisted and sordid, the better the ratings and rankings. Remember we don't make the laws of business but we are ruled by them.

There are plenty of things in the news that are worthy of cashing in on that don’t require you to make what may be considered morally repugnant choices. Using the keywords from the latest national murder mystery is just one of the remaining ways you can make money through domain speculation and type-in traffic.

I myself most often use four other techniques I've learned that aren't nearly as morally questionable.

However, your morals, karma, and bank account are your business.
Frank Feather has been working and making money on the Internet for over a decade now. He has been employed or done consulting for most of the world's largest technology companies.

Frank Feather maintains a weekly newsletter called "Clubbing Seals".

http://clubbingseals.com