In partnership with |  |
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One hour a month. Over $50,000 a year. |
That's Peter's reality. Not from crypto, not from some dodgy course he's flogging, but from a portfolio of websites he barely touches. |
The mad part? He's been doing this since the early 2000s, and most people still have no idea this opportunity exists. |
Peter doesn't start with business ideas. He doesn't brainstorm products or services. He starts with something most people ignore: expired domains. |
And that simple shift in thinking has built him a lifestyle where he works when he wants, on what he wants. |
The Lightbulb Moment |
Peter got laid off multiple times from startups. |
The final straw? He built a marketing product that generated a couple of million dollars in revenue, got promoted, trained an assistant, then six months later they laid him off and kept the assistant at a lower salary. |
That's when he decided he needed to control his own income. |
Now Peter had zero coding background. No computer science degree. Just someone tired of other people controlling his livelihood. |
He taught himself to code, started building websites, monetised them with AdSense. |
First $50 a month, then $300. Small money, but it proved the concept: anyone on the internet can generate revenue. |
Then came the breakthrough that changed the whole game for our man Peter…. |
The Domain-First Strategy |
Instead of building sites from scratch, Peter started buying old travel websites that ranked well in Google but hadn't been updated in years. |
Think mom-and-pop sites built in Dreamweaver, ranking number two or three for terms like "Cancun" or "Aruba." |
Here's the arbitrage: these owners didn't know the value of their traffic. |
Peter could look at their analytics, see they were getting clicks on expensive tourism terms ($2-3 per click), and calculate that with proper AdSense placement, he could make $500-2,000 a month from a site they'd sell for $3,000. |
His first purchase was TravelEnvoy.com in 2004. A directory of wineries and vineyards. |
Bought it for $10,000. The owner had zero ads on it. |
Peter simply plugged in AdSense and started making $1,000-2,000 a month. |
But the obsession wasn't really with the websites themselves. |
It was with the domains. |
Peter realised that whoever controls the domain controls the entire asset. |
Even if a seller changed their mind after the deal, if he owned the domain, he could scrape the content and rebuild. |
The domain became his insurance policy. |
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From Buying Sites to Hunting Domains |
This led Peter down a rabbit hole: expired domain auctions. |
When a domain registered in 1995 fails to renew, it doesn't show up on GoDaddy Auctions. |
It pops up on platforms like NameJet, Snapnames, and DropCatch. |
These are the places where premium domains (the ones with trust, authority, and search history) become available. |
Peter started hunting for descriptive, premium domain names. |
Not just good domains, but names that practically told you what business to build around them. |
His portfolio now includes: |
DudeRanch.com. A directory of dude ranches across America. Generates leads for ranch owners. Traffic up 39% year-over-year, largely because AI tools are now recommending his site as a trusted authority. Onions.com. Partners with a Vidalia onion farmer. Peter handles all the online marketing and distribution, farmer handles fulfilment. They split profits. RanchWork.com. Job board for ranch jobs. 75/25 split with his partner, who keeps their domain but points it to Peter's platform.
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The common thread? |
He didn't sit around trying to come up with brilliant business ideas. |
He found premium domains and let them tell him what to build. |
The Partnership Model |
Here's something Peter didn't expect: he's not actually a solo builder. |
He thought he was for years. |
But looking back, every successful project involved a partner. |
Dude Ranch, the onion business, Ranch Work. All partnerships. |
And he's brilliant at structuring these deals. |
With the onion farm, it was simple: "I'll handle all the online stuff, you handle fulfilment, we split it down the middle." |
With Ranch Work: "Keep your domain, point it here, 75/25 split, you take zero risk." |
These aren't just partnerships. |
They're no-brainer offers that make it easy for the right people to say yes. |
The Tool Stack |
Peter keeps it remarkably simple: |
Clicky Analytics instead of Google Analytics (he ditched GA years ago) NameJet, Snapnames, GoDaddy Auctions, DropCatch for domain hunting ExpiredDomains.net for searching across multiple platforms Shopify for transactions ShipStation for managing orders
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That's it. |
No fancy software. No expensive tools. |
Just the basics, used consistently. |
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Why This Still Works (And Might Work Better Now) |
I found this fascinating: Peter's traffic on Dude Ranch is up 39% year-over-year, partly because AI is now pointing people to his site as a trusted source. |
Instead of AI killing directories, it's actually validating them. |
Why? |
Because Peter's site has photographs, videos, detailed information. Things AI can't create from scratch. |
It's providing context and trust that raw AI-generated content can't match. |
The domains themselves carry weight. |
When someone searches for dude ranch information and sees DudeRanch.com in the results, there's immediate credibility. |
When Peter talks to elderly customers on the phone and tells them "just go to Onions.com," there's no spelling confusion, no typos. |
The Principle Worth Stealing |
Even if you're not ready to drop thousands on expired domains, there's a principle here worth understanding: start with distribution, not ideas. |
Peter doesn't brainstorm business ideas anymore. |
He looks for domains that already have trust and authority, then builds around them. |
It's the same principle as starting with a marketing channel and working backwards. |
You don't need to buy DudeRanch.com to use this thinking. |
You could find an underserved niche on a platform you already understand, build something people actually want there, then figure out the business model after you have attention. |
But if you've got capital to deploy and patience to match, the expired domain game is still very much alive. |
Premium domains with history, trust, and relevance aren't getting any cheaper. |
And as Peter's seeing, AI might actually be making them more valuable, not less. |
Worth watching if you're thinking about building assets that compound over time rather than trading hours for dollars indefinitely. |
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Full interview here if you want to dive deeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ_bjRV6xx0 |
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P.S. Fancy FREE access to my digital writing course? Just forward on your unique link below and I'll give you the keys (RRP $159): |
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P.P.S. This newsletter is built on Beehiiv —after MailChimp banned me for sharing genuine money-making opportunities (yep), I needed a platform that supports creators building businesses and Beehiiv has been a fricking Godsend. Get a 30-day free trial via the link. |
