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Neat Idea on 404s

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 5:05 pm
by volomike
I have a neat idea I thought I'd share on making money with PHP. Someone should come up with a "404 Replacement Kit", and the incentive is that it helps people earn money. Basically, it's like a one or two liner in an Apache .htaccess file that connects back to the kit-maker's website. The 404 page on that kit-maker's website is rebranded slightly with the logo of the developer's website, has a link to the homepage and perhaps a search page, but also has advertising on it with " target='_new' " on the links. When the ad revenue comes in from those 404 pages, the revenue is split between the guy who made the easy 404 replacement kit and the developer's website, minus any detected referral fraud.

I mean, I was thinking, think of all the times you've come to an empty 404 page with one of those default IIS or Apache messages. Now think of those as a missed advertising venue.

If there were enough perks and ease of installation in one's "404 Replacement Kit", I would think it would take off as a great idea that could earn someone some good affiliate marketing income.

Re: Neat Idea on 404s

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 7:17 pm
by Bill H
One weakness of that idea is that I actually can't remember the last time I hit a 404 page. Of course, I'm not as much of a web geek as many, more of a political blog reader junky type, but still...

Re: Neat Idea on 404s

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:42 pm
by alex.barylski
I recall Verisign or some major company doing something like that back around 2000ish...where people were shown ads instead of 404...I think MSN did something similar...didn't go over very well with most people.

Maybe I misunderstand. I install this .htaccess file on my web server and when someone gets a 404 they are shown advertisments with my logo to retain branding strategy?

Who finds the advertisers? A third party company would send me a cheque?

What happens to all that diverted traffic? Are the ads context sensitive, like AdSense? So my web site for instance would show ads for my competitors?

My custom CMS detects 404 and does one of several things:

1. Checks to see if it's relocated
2. Checks to see if there are not similar documents which may have replaced it
3. Checks to see if there are related articles (mirrors effectively) in another langauge

This way they are never shown a 404 error and they stay on my site...in the case they really did access a 404 page...they simply see a standard 404 error message.

I don't think it would work for me however content web sites, articles, etc...maybe a good idea if the publisher wants to make extra money. I'm thinking bloggers mostly.

Re: Neat Idea on 404s

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 2:25 am
by matthijs
I think the way you should do 404's is make them useful by default. So when someone on my site arrives at a non-existing page he gets to see the normal site with a friendly message telling him the page doesn't exist. Then add some suggestions of sections in your site he might be interested in, a search form and a link to the homepage.

It would be stupid to present visitors of your website (intentional or not) a page with advertisements. Say someone had your website bookmarked or something, wants your business, clicks the old bookmark to visit your site. But unfortunately that page doesn't exist anymore. Then present him with some adds? Oops. or say he mistyped the url. Same situation.

A similar situation exists with non-existing subdomains by the way. I know some hosts or internet providers "hijack" those and put pages with adds on them. That's quite bad I think.

Re: Neat Idea on 404s

Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 2:36 am
by josh
search feed used to do this, problem is people that are going to "sell out" like that.. statistically are probably less likely to have a website with "real" content

Re: Neat Idea on 404s

Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 10:51 am
by panic!
Couldn't you just make your own 404 page with some adsense code on it?