Glad to have you stop by. You said; “That gets us back (to) the original question, why would the original owner sell it at all - as you mentioned, so cheap at $3 or $5?”.

It isn’t the owner selling the domain, but the domain Provider, a bit like a re-possessed car. Mostly what happens is the site goes expired by default, like people make the classic mistake of using their site for the contact e-mail, and of course they don’t get the “expired” notices, and don’t realize it has expired until it is too late; or they didn’t update their contact e-mail when they changed IPs.

The PR springs mostly from external links, which survive for some time after the site has expired, and the trick is to get the site up and running quickly, so that those existing links can still function and bring traffic.

Rhys’s last blog post..Grow Your Links Like an A-Lister

Interesting article. Gives some points to think over.

While the word of caution - that the PR may be faked, is well taken, I wonder what could be the point of buying an expired/ expiring domain with high traffic. The first thing first part is - if the domain has such a high traffic and high PR, why did the owner let it expire instead of building upon it further and even utilizing the benefits of it.

And secondly, once the domain changes hand, the traffic would continue for a few days in its previous momentum but as the previous owner’s involvement and adding of content blanks out, the visitors would notice it and the traffic would start falling sharply.

Of course, a domain could have spread so much beyond its initial shape that it was driven not by the owner adding content but by the contents added by visitors, and such domains would surely survive the changing hands. That gets us back the original question, why would the original owner sell it at all - as you mentioned, so cheap at $3 or $5?

I am a user of Dave Kelly’s Linkvana that is a tool that gives unlimited, PR2-5, one-way links for an unlimited number of sites. The useful information given in your article would help me in my work.

Thanks.
Adam