{"id":12664,"date":"2022-11-11T14:42:36","date_gmt":"2022-11-11T04:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/?p=12664"},"modified":"2023-03-20T13:28:16","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T03:28:16","slug":"adsense-site-sold-on-flippa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/adsense-site-sold-on-flippa\/","title":{"rendered":"From Cab Driver To Multi-Millionaire: How a NZ Retiree Sold His Site for $5.2M on Flippa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When NZ-based seller, who wishes to remain anonymous, bid $9,000 for a domain AllAboutCookies.org in 2008, he never anticipated selling it for $5.2 million dollars 14 years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his incredible success, curveballs were thrown\u2014including the time Google put a complete ban on his Adsense account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat down with the seller to understand his journey with buying, building, and selling AllAboutCookies.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

About the Business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

AllAboutCookies.org<\/a> is\u2013you guessed it\u2013 a website all about cookies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we\u2019re not talking about the edible kind, we\u2019re referring to browser cookies or tracking cookies. They are small often encrypted text files located in browser directories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AllAboutCookies.org homepage<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are used by web developers to help users navigate their websites efficiently and perform certain functions. The site is focused on general data privacy regulation compliance (GDPR), privacy, and web security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how did a website all about cookies become a multi-million dollar success?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re about to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Beginning of the Cookie Revolution <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Domain names are big business where a lot of money is at stake\u2014but this wasn\u2019t always the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 2000s, the seller realised expired domains were selling cheap. \u201cYou could pick them up for their registration price at $8-$10,\u201d he explains, \u201cso I started buying a few of these.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the seller was driving taxis for a living. With his first child on the way, he wanted to find other lucrative ways to build up his nest egg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The seller said he didn\u2019t know much about computers before he got started, and his first was a Commodore 64.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until 2005 that the registries started waking up to fact that they were sitting on a gold mine with these expired domains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe owners were letting these sites expire and forgetting the fact that they still held a lot of value. Many had legitimate websites on them, and a healthy backlink profile to drive organic traffic,\u201d the seller explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So instead of letting them expire and scooped up by the next buyer for chump change, the registries began auctioning off expired domains to make some profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allaboutcookies.org was one such domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt had a website on it previously, owned by a media privacy company based in Europe. They let it expire, possibly because they thought cookies lost their relevance at the time,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The starting bid was $60. With cookies still being relevant in the seller\u2019s eyes, he made the bold (and winning) bid of $9,000 to secure this domain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, the same company that let it expire tried to buy it back once they clued onto the growing success and potential of AllAboutCookies.org once the seller took over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Early Signs of Success<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The seller leveraged the website\u2019s previous content and put it into a number of different European languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was before The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effective as a regulation in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before long, cookies started to be taken seriously by the European Parliament and European sites needed their own cookie policy. To explain what cookies were, these sites were linking to AllAboutCookies.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got a lot of links that way. When Google had page rank, it turned out AllAboutCookies.org was a page rank of 9 out of 10, nearly as important as Google itself!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even to this day, the domain analysis for AllAboutCookies.org looks strong. <\/em>Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the links kept growing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a small amount of Adsense on it at the time, but I wasn\u2019t trying to commercialise it. It never really made a lot of money in the beginning\u2014maybe around $100 a day,\u201d the seller explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t always smooth sailing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Two Google Bans & One Account Suspension Later<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After a while, the seller was notified of a high number of invalid traffic pointing to the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was coming from a US Fortune 500 company that created a bunch of spammy sites linking to AllAboutCookies.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Google issued a warning, the seller managed to block the invalid traffic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it kept happening. A month later, they suspended him again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the US began introducing cookie policies, more fake sites appeared and linked to AllAboutCookies.org. This resulted in more invalid traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the third and final time, Google completely banned the account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Refusing to give up without a fight, the seller got in contact with experts in analytics and security to help him devise a plan to protest Google\u2019s ban. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together, they worked out what they could do to control the invalid traffic. This plan was proposed to Google and about a week later, Google accepted the proposal and AllAboutCookies.org was back in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the seller didn\u2019t know at the time, was that the silver lining was just around the corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What was the silver lining? (Hint: money) Photo by<\/em> <\/em>Simone Viani<\/em><\/a> on<\/em> <\/em>Unsplash<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Unexpected Silver Lining<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although the seller experienced a large decline in traffic, he started to make more money than he was before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe funny thing is, although the traffic dropped, the price per click for the ads was increasing,\u201d the seller explains. \u201cIt turned out the advertisers could now see this was real human traffic so they were bidding more! The US were paying up to $12NZD per click.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His income went from $20,000NZD per month to $50,000NZD per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 6-8 months of continual growth, he began conversations with Flippa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Enter Flippa: <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a Moz Top 500 website and I\u2019m looking to sell it\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All About Cookies stats at the time of sale:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n