Creating Your Own Private Blog Network - A Basic Overview

Liaata said:

Hi mate,

I am currently creating my own blog network.
It will contain nothing but .de domains and I am looking for a good hosting for them.
Right now it is only about 15 websites, but it will grow by time.

So I am looking for a hosting provider which:

a) got nameservers for .de domains
b) offers different c-class IPs
c) where I can start with 15 IPs and upgrade as time moves on

Any reccommendations on that?

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Hey man,

Nice one on the domains!

I don't stick with just one hosting provider. I actually host each site with a completely different hosting company.

So I really wouldn't know who to recommend for hosting multiple sites as I've never done that!

I get all my hosting off of webhostingtalk (google them), it's a forum with a marketplace.

There might be someone over there that could help?

Tom

tom.toykam said:

Hey man,

Nice one on the domains!

I don't stick with just one hosting provider. I actually host each site with a completely different hosting company.

So I really wouldn't know who to recommend for hosting multiple sites as I've never done that!

I get all my hosting off of webhostingtalk (google them), it's a forum with a marketplace.

There might be someone over there that could help?

Tom

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I've already created a thread there.
I was hoping to find the 1 hosting provider, because that would avoid a lot of troubles.
Let's say I am going to manage 50 different blogs in my network.
Isn't this a lot of trouble if all of them are with different hosting providers?

Thanks for your help Tom

wow somehow i thought it would be alot more complex. thanks for the share

Liaata said:

I've already created a thread there.
I was hoping to find the 1 hosting provider, because that would avoid a lot of troubles.
Let's say I am going to manage 50 different blogs in my network.
Isn't this a lot of trouble if all of them are with different hosting providers?

Thanks for your help Tom

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I've got them all on different hosting providers and yeah, it can be a bitch at times.

For instance, this month I've had one of my accounts banned - not sure why!

It means that I need to go and create a new host and re-up the site.

Although it's a lot of trouble, it puts my mind at ease knowing I've gone that extra step.

For me, it's always about going that extra distance that will help protect your network.

Tom

BAirborne said:

Great thread. Thank you very much. One element you never mentioned is whether we should use our correct personal details or not. What do you recommend?

On one hand if you register a domain with your correct personal info then the domain it is probably yours forever. I usually give back 10% to 20% of all recreated domains just out of goodwill because former webmasters complain. Then when the transfer transpires your personal details are exposed. Also, when you buy expired domains using your personal details you have to pass on the best opportunities. For example, there have been multiple occasions where I passed on buying former government and institutional sites because I was paranoid about my personal details. You do not want to recreate the former .ca RCMP site using your real personal details. These opportunities come around quite frequently. So I miss out on the best opportunities when I use my real personal details.

On the other hand using fake personal details has disadvantages as well. More and more domain registrars are asking for more information like a copy of your credit card. Payment processing with VCC and fake paypal accounts is becoming more difficult. I just got a letter from a registrar the other day reminding me to update my private whois info because the TLD regulatory body has the right to seize the domain if they can prove I used fake details. They are getting more sophisticated and using fake personal details can turn into a clusterfuck of wasted time.

What do you experts recommend?

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I've never faked my details with registrars, for me, it's always been too much effort.

I've got my sites split between a few different registrars, all in my name, but all with who.is protection.

I've also got accounts setup in my girlfriends name, I just transfer her the money I spend.

So every registrar account I am involved in is 100% legit and not faked.

Going a bit further into your comment, it's worth remembering that Google itself is a registrar:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/01/31/google_is_now_a_domain_registrar.html

I imagine that they have complete visibility on everything, so what domains have dropped/expired.

I'm not too paranoid about my details being out there to be honest when I've handed back a domain. I think if Google really wanted to hammer me, they could do it.

But despite them having all of this information, nothings ever happened. I even see competitors PBN's with massive footprints and no who.is protection and they're still ranking!

My logic is that Google have got bigger targets to worry about than my small network.

With regard to opportunities, I only buy .com's, .org's and .net's, so no country specifics like .co.uk or .ca that you can't mask.

I usually always pass on domains that could blow up on me, as you said, anything related to the government, charities or related to legal firms.

Can you image a pissed off lawyer coming after you for a domain? Fuck that!

I regularly check emails for my network and always have a contact form. Just like you, if someone wants the domain back, I just give it back!

tom.toykam said:

I've got them all on different hosting providers and yeah, it can be a bitch at times.

For me, it's always about going that extra distance that will help protect your network.

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As long as you can get enough hosts, that is perfect. Let's assume though that you want a network in a less popular language, say Estonian. If you have 50 sites, is likely not to find 50 different, reliable, Estonian hosts. Would you rather host more sites on same host or host sites outside Estonia (use US hosts).

omaron said:

As long as you can get enough hosts, that is perfect. Let's assume though that you want a network in a less popular language, say Estonian. If you have 50 sites, is likely not to find 50 different, reliable, Estonian hosts. Would you rather host more sites on same host or host sites outside Estonia (use US hosts).

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Hey Omaron,

I've never built something like this in a less popular language!

I would try and find as many reliable hosts as possible in your chosen language for your very best expired domains.

Once you've exhausted this, I would try and find a couple of really reliable Estonian host with multiple site capabilities.

Then, I would register all the remaining lower quality domains with that host over multiple days/weeks.

The idea being that you could see if you can get a different c-class on a different day.

This is an old trick I used to use on US hosting companies

If that's not possible, then I would just go and register on US/European servers.

I would recommend registering some of the sites for Cloudflare to try and break up the footprint a little.

Tom

Yeah. That's pretty much what i was thinking. Estonian was just an example, but i am really thinking to make a non-english, less popular language network (other then french, spanish, etc).. though i wonder.. how many PBN are there for French, Spanish or, as some1 said here, German. There are many people speaking those languages and definitely less competition and enough offers for any niche...

omaron said:

Yeah. That's pretty much what i was thinking. Estonian was just an example, but i am really thinking to make a non-english, less popular language network (other then french, spanish, etc).. though i wonder.. how many PBN are there for French, Spanish or, as some1 said here, German. There are many people speaking those languages and definitely less competition and enough offers for any niche...

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I've always thought that there is a massive potential for this in foreign languages.

For me, getting something going in France/Germany is something I've always wanted to explore, it's just the language barrier!

I would imagine that PBN's are being used in those countries though, but I've read that the competition isn't as strong in these countries - so who knows!

I don't speak those languages as well, but i am less afraid of language then technical side (register country tld, get good local hosts). For example, as far as i know, .de domains are harder to register then .com if you are not a resident and they are also more expensive.

omaron said:

I don't speak those languages as well, but i am less afraid of language then technical side (register country tld, get good local hosts). For example, as far as i know, .de domains are harder to register then .com if you are not a resident and they are also more expensive.

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You don't? Maybe I need to stop dragging my feet.

If you want to talk about anything in more detail feel free to add me on skype: tom.toykam

Good post, gives people a good understanding of how to create their own network.

One thing I would mention is that although PR doesn't necessarily matter for your network (as long as other factors are good) if you are running a network that you intend to sell spots on (e.g a service) it's a good idea to get PR domains as it will make your network look better for people who might want to pay for your service. So you'll probably sell more spots.

seomark said:

Good post, gives people a good understanding of how to create their own network.

One thing I would mention is that although PR doesn't necessarily matter for your network (as long as other factors are good) if you are running a network that you intend to sell spots on (e.g a service) it's a good idea to get PR domains as it will make your network look better for people who might want to pay for your service. So you'll probably sell more spots.

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I agree, unfortunately, lots of people use PR as the be all and end all in the link market.

Thanks for your answer mate. This is solid basic guide on creating private blog network.

tom.toykam said:

1. For every page on the old site that I can find, I recreate it on the new site.

This is dead easy to do, just create a new page in Wordpress, try and copy the URL structure as close as possible and then paste in the old content.

If I can't find content for an old page that I know exists from Ahrefs, I just 301 redirect that page to the homepage or a different relevant page to capture the juice.


2. You can use irrelevant domains! I even said in my original post that there are tons of my competition doing just this. Taking any random domain and just creating a blog on it and forcing it to be relevant. They don't even bother with a logo or images.

However, for me, this is lazy.

There is nothing wrong with it! It works, but in my opinion it is this shortcutting now that could bite you later.

If Google figure out a way to crack down on this, then it will be a blatant change of theme/copy that will be the most obvious footprint.

E.G.

Site A was about Widgets - Now it is about Payday Loans = Obvious as shit

Site A was about Widgets - It is still about blue widgets = They've had a redesign and a slight change in content, not obvious as shit.

3. Sign up for an account, I've got subscriptions to all three.

No easy way around that one I'm afraid!

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I can understand people use PR as main metric because this is official metric from google to determine authority. But since google update it lately (and i expect google will update PR once or twice per year), we should use other metrics to determine authority domain.

tom.toykam said:

I agree, unfortunately, lots of people use PR as the be all and end all in the link market.

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Great info here, thanks for the share OP!

phoenix9 said:

Thanks for your answer mate. This is solid basic guide on creating private blog network.

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No worries, if you've got any further questions feel free to hit me up on skype (tom.toykam) or dm me.

sdseoguru said:

Great info here, thanks for the share OP!

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No worries man!

Hey tom, what paid tool do you recommend for finding domains? Also, have you tried rebuilding dropped domains as I feel many domains are selling for insane prices after penguin 2.1?

Posted via Topify on Android

I like freshdrop as a premium service and I've used dropped domains as well with no problem.