how to make money with the 404 pages

[baiatbun]

Hello guys

I need some advice on how to make money with the 404 pages.

Thanks a lot.

[greeneagle]

That's not what 404 pages are for, not any where that I can imagine.. Unless you are a hosting company and your hosted choose not to design and implement custom 404 error pages as a catch all basket. What do you mean?

Ken

[shilmy]

The easiest way is put PPC Ads on your 404 pages. Allfeeds.com provide this service.

You can look how their 404 pages looks like here:

http://pesonadigital.com/type_anything

Sjarief

[angelpure]

Ken,

Many hosting companies allow you to design your own 404 error messages. They can include a pitch for another product or service.

Gordon

[greeneagle]

Gordon,

Explain to me why, if you had a legit site and could design your own 404 error page, you wouldn't want to redirect lost visitors internally, unless you were spamming.

I don't believe that teaching anyone how to use page replication software to build mega-sites specificly designed to rotate pages in and out and 404 spam the globe up is what this forum is for.

My current opinion is that this is not an appropriate topic here or anywhere in WPW.

If I am looking at this wrong , change my mind!

Ken

[cbp]

I signed up with a very cheap host for what was going to be small low traffic site - they did that -- the 404 error pages that was shown to anyone who got a 404 on any site hosted with them was full of their affiliate ads!!! - I don't host with them anymore - guess thats why they were cheap.

They and anyone who hijacks like that should be shot - especially when they were not explicit about it up front .... it was in the very very small legalese that no body reads (my bad)

CBP

[angelpure]

Ken,

Don't take me wrong! I have all my error pages return them to my site.

http://www.angelpure.com/400
http://www.angelpure.com/401
http://www.angelpure.com/403
http://www.angelpure.com/404
http://www.angelpure.com/500

To do anything else is really stupid. The idea is to capture customers that may have stumbled onto an old page or misspelled a typed in URL.

And, I like you, don't think teaching someone how to spam with error pages is appropriate here, or anywhere!

Gordon

[greeneagle]

Gordon:

"To do anything else is really stupid. The idea is to capture customers that may have stumbled onto an old page or misspelled a typed in URL."

______

Those issues are handled by custom 404 error pages too!

example of mispelling from your site:
http://www.angelpure.com/honey-bodybutter.html

Ken

[greeneagle]

cbp,
The issue here I believe, is that we are talking about being able to selectably replace a 404 error page on your host with one customized to your own site that redirects "the lost" internally or to an affiliate SPAM page.

If the host doesn't allow a replacement, you can't replace it with either.

Now if you are hosting or reselling hosting then that's another story. But even then, most realize their custom pages are better spent advertising their own hosting services.

IMO - This one stinks like an advanced spamming technique!

Ken

[Faglork]

I agree wholeheartedly with Ken.

From a visitors point of view, your site just bombed.

Do everything to make sure that the visitor will not leave, but goes on, and provide him with means to find what he is looking for. An onsite search with the search form right up front would be best IMO.

Ads are out of question here.

Alex

[28overpar]

Surely a 404 that has a function, is the best way forward, rather than just a page saying "sorry, bad page."

Maybe a custom 404 page with your logo on and a link to your own site map to entice the user back into your site rather than the perception that they just have to start again?

[greeneagle]

28overpar:

"Maybe a custom 404 page with your logo on and a link to your own site map to entice the user back into your site rather than the perception that they just have to start again?"

We are not just talking non-redirection here, we are talking ghastly, ugly, spam techniques, that even if I was a surfer and happened on a Site that sent me to SPAM HELL in an accidental URL misspelling - I'd crank the GOOGLE SPAM reporting handle!

IMO this is more obscene than Internet PORN! - and it would definitely tweak me into reactionary measures, because I have enough knowledge to know what the game is! - IMO this is a "gapper"!

This thread is ruffling my feathers more than any in a long time, because it has the implications of millions of pages of utter spam, mass generated by stupid software, plastered across and rotated out in a common media that will be expensive for hosting companies, search engines etc...

GOOGLE - I hope you are aware of this "pending"
atrocity!

I don't lose my "cool" very often but this thread gets me there!

This isn't even gray - IT's BLACK HAT AS BLACK HAT COMES!

Ken

[Jason Tor]

Originally Posted by baiatbun

Hello guys

I need some advice on how to make money with the 404 pages.

Thanks a lot.

You want to make money with 404 pages? Direct them back to your site!

If my hosting company did that (which they don't and I'm more then happy with them http://www.fxstudios.net ) I would go somewhere else that very second.

This was most definitely the wrong place to ask that question! That shouldn't even be something you would want to do.

In my opinion that's one of the reasons it's getting so hard and time consuming to optimize correctly for the search engines. Maybe I should bill these spammers for my time.

Jason Tor