Ch. 1: The $0 Niche Nobody Wanted

Ch. 1: The $0 Niche Nobody Wanted

I bought a dropped domain for $11 because it had 4 referring domains pointing at a dead dehumidifier blog. Everyone said appliance reviews were saturated. I rebuilt 19 of the old URLs with 301s intact, then published 6 comparison pages targeting "X vs Y" model queries — the kind too boring for big sites to bother with.

Month 3: 2,400 sessions. Month 6: 14,000. Amazon Associates at a 3% rate on $90 units meant roughly $1.30 per order. RPM was garbage but the intent was pure — these people were buying that week.

Month 9 it cleared $1,850/mo. I sold it month 11 for $44,000 (24x). The buyer wanted the aged backlinks more than the traffic.

Lesson banked: a dead site's link equity plus boring comparison intent beats a fresh "trending" niche every time.