I’ve been wandering the seedy underbelly of *flipping* sites. This is where someone builds a site, with affiliate marketing and ads and stuff, builds traffic to the site then sells it. Typically used for spamming – for example, create a tonne of domains called MySpaceFriends, FriendsMySpace, MyFriendsSpace and they are all basically the same, linking to each other, sharing the Google Juice and all sorts of clever reasons why. But at first glance this TagsPage site looked sorta genuine. Problem is, I can’t see the purpose. Why would someone come to a tagspage for a spam-tag search. Whats spam tagging called anyway? spag? sptag? For sale on SitePoint:

• URL: tagblast.com
• Established: 16 Apr 2007
• Uniques/Month: 500
• Page views/month: 2,500
• Monthly Revenue: $280
• Listed: 19 Jun 2007

Description:

This site is a highly customized version of the tagspage script, which
sells for $500. I ran a promo on sitepoint offering a deep discount and
made about $40 from that. With active advertising/promotion and link exchanges
with bloggers, the site should continue to grow in terms of traffic
and revenue.

so here is the explanation from the site (tho I’m still in the dark as to why I would do it):

About TagBlast

TagBlast is a new way to promote your site or blog and cost-effectively improve your SEO. You can add your tag for free or gain additional exposure by purchasing exclusive or shared tags starting at just $1 per character!

Advantages of being listed on TagBlast:

• the tag (for the exclusive type) or the title (for the shared type) links directly to your website. This is great for your Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and will improve your ranking with the search engines
• great tags are still available and very affordable
• high front-page exposure (exclusive and shared tags)
• new targeted traffic
• you control how much (or how little) to spend on your tag.
• a creative and inexpensive way to promote your site

There are three ways to get your tag on this site:

• exclusive (starting at $3/character) – if you want to get the highest exposure this is the option for you. The font size, the color and the background color for these tags can be customized. Your tag will be added for one year on the homepage and on top of the free tags page
• shared ($1/character) – your site will be listed along with other sites that use the same tag. This will bring you targeted traffic and will give you the edge over your competitors. You’ll be able to edit the title and the description for your site
• free – your site will appear on the free tags page. You won’t be able to customize your tag.

A tag can be registered only once so be the first to get your tag!

For any questions or problems don’t hesitate to contact us.

Clearly I’m not devious enough to figure out why anyone would pay. But I know you lot are. So, in the immortal words of Pauline Hanson – “please explain?” I think it has something to do with either rankings or social search Perhaps getting on the front page of a spam site with a gazillion other spammers submitting links too… but where’s the incoming links… *confused*. Clearly I suck at SEO (web 1.0) AND social search strategies (web 2.0). 🙁

Anyway, bids are at $250, buy outright for $600. I think any of you with a real job (i.e. income?) should buy it and then we figure out how to make a motza. After all, it is a Web 2.0 site so it must be good! Riiiiiight.