Website Investing
Blinds and shutters was purchased for $45 from a trusted seller on Digitalpoint.com. It was an article site with a decent layout. The seller did it all with php and I was curious to see how he did that. I also thought I could learn a few search engine optimization tricks by looking at the code. I also thought it was cheaper to buy the site than use my time to create it.
I had another related site which was getting significant traffic. For a variety of reasons I didn't want to disturb the established page, so I placed a link from it to blinds and shades. To a visitor it would look like the usual like to another site. There was nothing in the look and feel to indicate I owned both sites.
That part of the test worked. Some of the visitors to the estalished page clicked through to the new site and clicked the ads there. There were not a lot, but clearly the concept works.
Unfortunately, about two months into the experiment I got an email from another webmaster informing me the articles on the site had been copied from him. Not a good feeling. I contacted the guy I bought it from. He in turn challanged his article writer who admitted he had copied the content as alledged. My seller agreed to refund the purchase price and told me to keep the domain for my trouble.
So I got a proof of concept for my idea, made about $15 in the few weeks the site was up, got my money back, and still have a domain on which I can add unique content whenever I have time.