Surprise — there is still value in static web sites
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Thanks to the long tail, people still make money online with static, unchanging sites.
Back in January, I picked up a few 99 cent .info domains at GoDaddy on a whim. One of them was tndivorce.info. Admittedly, it’s a terrible domain name, but that’s not the point.
I had some time to kill, so after three hours of work and writing, I crapped out a junky little Tennessee divorce information site with minimal effort. It was meant to convert traffic to AdWords and nothing more.
Mission: accomplished. In fact, this junky little site with a PageRank of 0 and no incoming links has good click-through rates that are well above average. Considering time and the domain cost, I have broken even on a site that I made to kill time and that I never plan to update again.
Even with my terrible keyword focus (really, how many people need divorce information in Tennessee?), I’m still getting traffic. Think about the possibilities with a static site with high-paying, popular keywords. Put in a few hours work, never touch the site again, and the money still comes in. You certainly won’t have a dedicated readership, but why should you care as long as the traffic is converting. It may not make you rich, but it might generate enough revenue each month to pay your utility bill or to make a car payment.
That’s the power of the long tail — someone is eventually going to search for a term that matches your site. Every bit of traffic on TNDivorce.info is organic search traffic from people looking for very specific phrases, all of which just happen to match the keywords in the site.
If you’ve gotten trapped in the equation that “making money online = blogging,” then consider building a few static sites. At least it will break you out of the rut, and could very well put some extra cash in your pocket with minimal investment.