How to Create Piggyback Websites for Traffic, Links and Revenue
Starting a new website within a competitive niche can be difficult because you often do not have the ability to compete with other sites for traffic, particularly if they are well established sites which fulfill informational or product needs in an excellent way.
To compete against these type of sites on search engines, you’ll need to get some quality incoming links from other trusted websites, which will build some authority for your domain.
This can be difficult to achieve unless you offer some outstanding products, innovative ideas or attractive and unique content.
One of the easiest ways to kick-start a new business venture on a new domain is to feed off the popularity of existing websites. For instance, your entire website can be created as a reaction, protest or response against another website that is well established and popular among a niche audience you are targeting.
I call these piggyback websites or websites built on the popularity of other websites for the aim of obtaining attention, revenue, traffic and links.
Why Piggyback Websites Are Successful
Popular websites or niche topics usually trigger the creation of numerous fan sites supporting the original website or idea. Some take the idea a step further by building a community or philosophy around it.
While this might be a good way to leverage off the original website or idea, it may be better to take the contrarian approach and create a website that protests, disagrees or reacts against the original idea.
This doesn’t mean that one should negatively slam the popular website just for the sake of attracting attention. A reasoned and productive criticism of the website and the offer of alternative solutions will easily garner you supporters, particularly if the popular website or brand truly performs badly in several areas.
Every popular brand, idea or business will have its detractors and being a thought leader in this faction will get you links and attention from those who agree with you and those who disagree with you.
This is a great way to establish a new website or domain as it will easily receive natural links and traffic. This is because the site is positioned from the start as a vocal opponent or solution to a popular entity.
An Example of a Effective Piggyback Website: FOX Attacks
FOX Attacks is a website created as a response to FOX News’s conservative bias in news reporting and distortion of the truth. The website itself is non-profit and is primary created to put pressure on FOX’s inaccurate journalism.
Their objective is simple:
We’re fighting FOX’s distortions by identifying and calling FOX News advertisers. All of them. Particularly local advertisers who probably have no idea the kind of hatred their money is supporting. This is not a boycott. We are simply calling advertisers and informing them about FOX.
The entire website is a response to FOX and is a valuable focal point for others who want to examine FOX’s news reports in greater detail. One of the innovative ways FOX Attacks does this is through the use of unique videos, which are then virally disseminated through Youtube and other websites who embed it or pick it up.
Here is the most popular video on their website:
FOX Attacks demonstrates how the popular FOX News Channel brand can be appropriated. FOX Attacks’s socio-political focus fuels their website and similarly your own opinion on the larger brand should set the tone for your own piggyback site.
As long as you are exercising your free speech and not defaming the other party without proof, your piggyback site should not encounter any problems. Be careful of potential trademark violations as well and steer clear from plagiarism of any sort.
Monetizing Your Established Piggyback Site
It is most important to funnel the traffic you are receiving towards your other projects or websites, particularly the ones which you provide you with revenue of some sort. People are portable assets online and your best hope of building a great and eventually profitable or successful business/website.
Here are your options:
- Redirect the website. After gathering links and attention, redirect or transfer the entire site to a subsection of your flagship site. This will work better when your piggyback site is not too big or does not have a complicated structure. The acquired links will strengthen the trust for your flagship domain although the move might be jarring for some users.
- Funnel Traffic. Direct traffic to a monetized domain or a scheme which encourages monetized community support. For example, FOX Attacks funnels traffic to this donation page which generates subscription-based income for the owner. Similarly, if you cannot monetize your piggyback site, funnel traffic to a off-site page or website which allows you to do so.
- Flip the website. Selling the site would be an option if you lose interest in the topic you’ve chosen or when you decide to turn a profit from the site or community you’ve built. This will work better with commercial websites. I would suggest getting someone responsible or with like-minded interests to take over the site.
If you have strong opinions or interests on a certain topic, creating such a website will not be difficult and perhaps, may even be fulfilling on some level.
Sometimes, the money you can make from these websites isn’t of primary importance, although they can certainly be created as a means to generate links, traffic or revenue via proxy.
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What a great topic. I’ve never thought of that but that might be because I’ve never really strongly felt that a popular website did something wrong (I probably didn’t spend time digging into it at all).
The only piggybank example that comes to me is the johncow.com one but that was obvious
It’s a great discussion.
I have a little blog and I’m really interested into web-traffic!!
Great idea but it would take a lot of work and planning though to be successful if you’re going against a vry competitive website.
Hmmm, you may have sparked some ideas for me with this post
Hi Maki,
Having “stumbled” on your site sometime back, i have to say that your site is probably one of the most informative that i had ever come across. Both in terms of breadth and depth, i had thoroughly enjoyed your well researched and presented articles. Keep up the good work.
You always have great topics. I’ve consistently reading your website for the past months. Thanks for the great articles and tips. This is just another example of what you do to help bloggers grow and generate new income.
Thanks again and keep up the great work.
Do you think this is ethical? Should you really try to become successful off of somebody else’s hard work?
Carl, I think this is completely ethical. Fansites and anti-fan sites are created all the time around online sub-cultures. If you’re not infringing copyrights, there is nothing wrong in creating a website around a specific phenomenon or brand you feel strongly about.
There’s nothing parasitic about it.. creating and maintaining a popular and successful fansite needs time and effort, and no.. you aren’t trying stealing ’somebody else’s hard work’. I don’t see how you can.
FOX Attacks is a good example…did you read my article?
“The acquired links will strengthen the trust for your flagship domain although the move might be jarring for some users.”
I would agree. I’m not sure how this would look if you did it consistently with Google also.
Of course I read your article. But, you mentioned “it may be better to take the contrarian approach and create a website that protests”
That was where I had the “problem”.
If your main goal is to find a site a “protest” it, that seems a little unethical.
Carl,
I just don’t see how ethics should be included in this discussion here. Everyone has a right to express an opinion about a specific brand or topic and as long as you ain’t defaming the other person or violating any legal arrangements, the ethics issue is not relevant.
Some bloggers slam products, businesses or other bloggers all the time. I don’t see the ethics card being flashed immediately.
Then again, I didn’t suggest that one’s main goal should be to ‘just find a site and protest it’. In my next paragraph, I wrote:
“Truly performs badly in several areas” and “reasoned and productive criticism” are key phrases here.
It’s not about attacking someone for the sake of attacking it. Piggybacking can be positive (e.g. fan-sites) and reactive piggybacking is just reacting against a specific topic or website. This doesn’t HAVE to be negative, juvenile, libelous, controversial or insulting.
Anyone who has read my blog for some time will know that I have ALWAYS emphasized having a total business plan and method when it comes to creating and monetizing websites. NONE of these strategies included aggressive rumor mongering or attack baits.
Hi, You forgot Pepsi Cola versus Coca Cola.