<b>Ch. 1: The $340 Domain That Cost Me Six Months</b>

<b>Ch. 1: The $340 Domain That Cost Me Six Months</b>

I bought an expired domain for my coffee-gear site — DR 31, clean anchor profile, $340 on an auction. The pitch I sold myself: skip the sandbox, rank in week three.

It indexed fast. Month 1 hit 1,200 sessions on borrowed authority. Then month 4 the borrowed part came due — the old links were 80% Japanese hobby blogs pointing at a topic I'd never cover. Google figured out the entity mismatch and the lift evaporated. Sessions: 1,200 to 280.

I'd have ranked a fresh domain to the same place by month 5 anyway, minus the $340 and minus the false confidence that made me over-invest in content too early.

<b>Lesson banked:</b> an expired domain only helps if its old topic is <i>your</i> topic. Otherwise you're renting authority Google will repossess.