There are many reasons why people buy expired domains. One reason
is to resell them for a higher price to individuals who may have
inadvertently let their domain expire. That’s not very nice, but
it happens. Another reason is to get a domain that you really
want for your business because the name is complementary to your
business. One good, lesser known reason for buying expired
domains is to use the traffic from the domains as a web site
promotion technique.

Traffic brokering sites that sell traffic in bulk to website
owners often buy expired domains and redirect traffic from the
domain that expired to their clients as a web site promotion
technique. Buying traffic from a traffic brokering service that
actually sends you targeted traffic, traffic that is relevant to
what your site is all about, can be a good web site promotion
technique. However, you really must be careful in dealing with
traffic brokers because you may get lots of traffic, but it may
not actually be targeted traffic.

For instance, if your company sells word processing services,
traffic sent to you from an expired domain for a company that
sells boats isn’t going to be good for you. If you intend to use
expired domains to direct traffic to your site as web site
promotion technique, it would make more sense financially for you
to buy the expired domains of businesses that are in your field,
offering the same thing you offer who have shut down, and
redirect the traffic yourself.

There are legitimate reasons why internet businesses shut down,
but their traffic doesn’t usually cease when the domain expires.
If the websites are indexed in the search engines, they will
remain indexed for a while. If the website owner has promoted the
site through web site promotion techniques like advertising in
ezines, exchanging links, and so forth, you may benefit from the
efforts they put forth before they shut their site down if you
buy their expired domain and direct the traffic to your website.

Other than redirecting traffic from an expired domain as a web
site promotion technique, you can also buy expired domains and
develop them into a new website. The new website will receive the
traffic that the expired domain would have normally received so a
lot of the initial web site promotion techniques will already be
done for you. This may be beneficial to you as a start-up company
as it can give you a jump start on your promotions.

There are also opportunities in website brokering. A developed
website with traffic can be sold, either outright or through
auctions. These are sometimes called turn-key sites because they
are actually developed businesses with clientele that someone can
get into to without the time consuming startup and initial web
site promotion techniques.

Buying expired domains that have traffic can be a good web site promotion technique to be used in connection with affiliate programs. For instance, if you are an affiliate for several pet
related companies and you buy expired domains for pet supplies,
you can use the domain as a directory to direct existing traffic
to the various affiliate programs that you promote.

It is easy to find companies that sell expired domains by simply
doing a browser search for “expired domains” or “buy expired
domains”. If you are buying expired domains for the purpose of
taking advantage of their existing traffic as a website promotion
technique, you do need to review the website’s statistics to be
sure that the domain gets traffic and that the traffic is
targeted. Alexa (www.alexa.com) has website traffic ranking
reports that will provide such statistics.