His Vampire Website Earned $500,000 in 1 Year

Check out this recent article in Wired…

• Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin

💬 The blurb…

Serbian DJ turned internet entrepreneur Nebojša Vujinović Vujo floods abandoned news sites with AI-generated articles. But he wants you to know he’s a nice guy.

Vujo apparently operates 2,000 such sites 😱

He basically snaps them up as expiring domains after they’ve been abandoned.

Some of the sites he’s acquired…

• TheHairpin.com – previously a famous women-run media site.
• TrumpPlaza.com – former official website of the hotel and casino.
• Pope2you.net – once an official Vatican website.

From the Wired article…

His most significant—and consistently profitable—purchase is women’s media outlet The Frisky…

“It cost a lot—all the money that I had—but that was my opportunity,” he says.

Vujo says the site generated over $500,000 in the first year he bought the domain. In addition to healthy income from ads and clients willing to pay for backlinks, the brand was a magnet for companies willing to pay for sponsored posts.

From a 2019 BuzzFeed article…

The Frisky as it once existed is gone. Today it’s a vampire website feeding off the property’s former popularity and brand name to sell pay-for-play articles in order to influence search engine rankings.

Back to Wired 👇

Vujo was born in what is now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his family fled during the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars I escaped… It was terrible to grow up in this part of the world.” 

He says his economic options have been limited, and this was simply a path available to him…

“Maybe it would be better for you that I’m a bad guy,” he tells me. “Better for your story. But I’m just an ordinary guy…”

“I’m just one guy who, yes, in business I am using AI to create shitty content on the internet to earn money or a fortune,” he says. 

He’s not a mustache-twirling supervillain, chortling as he spews journalism-killing AI slime. He’s an affable young dad who wants his kid to have a nicer childhood than he did.

Plain to see why people get into this line of work.

Easier to make big money fast, even though it’s unlikely to last.

Case in point: that website The Frisky earned Vujo $500,000 the first year he acquired it, but apparently its earnings are down to $50,000 a year now, a 90% drop 📉

So he has to keep hunting for new sites to take advantage of.

Personally, I’d rather invest my time and effort into building a legit brand/site that can thrive long term 💪

Also, Google is actively trying to find and punish these vampire websites. And Google is a tough opponent to fight.