I built a tool that finds expired domains still getting traffic from YouTube
Hey Indie Hackers đź‘‹
Wanted to share something I've been quietly working on that might be useful to some of you running affiliate sites, SEO projects, or landing pages...
It’s called Clicky Leaks - and it finds expired domains that are still getting traffic from old links in YouTube video descriptions.
The idea is pretty simple:
Every day, we scan YouTube for links pointing to domains that no longer exist
If the domain is expired and still available to register, we log it
You get a fresh feed of potential traffic sources that other people have forgotten
It’s been wild to see how many of these domains still get real traffic. Some are linked from videos with hundreds of thousands of views. Most are completely abandoned.
I'm using it myself for redirect experiments and SEO edge cases, but I think there’s value for:
Affiliate marketers
Lead gen & niche site builders
Domain flippers
Even SaaS founders doing growth hacks
The site is live at 👉 https://clickyleaks.com
Would love feedback, ideas, or any ways you think this could be leveled up. Open to collabs too if you’re into tools like this.
Cheers!
Steve
Just checked it out, cool project. Finding expired domains is one thing, but finding ones with active traffic from YouTube is a whole other level. It’s inspiring to see cool, niche projects like this come to life. Thanks for sharing it.
Hey Elaine, thank you. I really appreciate the kind comments.
This is brilliant the kind of edge that gets overlooked but has huge upside.
I can already see affiliate marketers and lead gen folks needing optimized landing pages or email funnels once they snatch one of these up. If anyone needs help turning that forgotten traffic into conversions, I write sharp, high converting copy for tools and growth projects.
Steve, love what you’re building. If you ever want to explore a way to position Clicky Leaks for max traction with content, happy to brainstorm!
Hey, thank you for stopping by, I agree I think it's a part of the internet people often ignore or don't want to explore and there are definite use cases where a tool such as this can be really beneficial.
If I need a good copywriter in the future I will keep you in mind!
This is such a clever growth hack, tapping into orphaned traffic sources is underrated.
Are you scanning YouTube descriptions via API or scraping? And how are you validating if the domain still gets clicks?
Would love to see this paired with GPT to auto-analyze niche or monetization potential. Super cool tool.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. It is an interesting and underrated tactic I think is often overlooked, there are active traffic domains just sitting there not being used for anything.
The scanning process is actually a mixture of both direct API, and additional Playwright Python based scrapers that run 24/7 to create a mixture of results. These results are then pushed through a process of validation parameters. Domains are only added to the database if...the source video has at least 20k views, the domain is indeed available to register, it has a presence in the waybackmachine archive and has current or cached google search result history, these are then pushed to a database where they are then monitored for availability.
I am actively developing some more robust and accurate traffic estimation techniques that I want to integrate into the platform to give a live estimated traffic metric for each domain right on the dashboard. I think this would be a really help addition to see what is valuable and what isn't.
Seems like a pretty neat project, thanks for sharing!
Hi Eva, thank you 🙏 it’s been fun to develop, and what it finds on a daily basis still surprises me.
Love this, but the way you set up the free account misses something to help people decide if they should pay for the pro.
For example, I’m in the automotive industry, and if I knew the number of my-niche related domains you have a month I would sign up in a second . I’d even pay more than what you’re charging for pro. but the last 10 visible in the free gives me no idea of how relevant this will be for my business. I like the idea of giving the last 10 so I can see what they look like, but I think you really need to show on free the quantity for xyz niche available at any given time.
To that, could you answer this comment here in indiehackers and tell me about how many automotive related opportunities there are a month. I’ll sign up for pro in a second if it’s enough. thank you. And very cool good job.
Hey there,
Thank you so much for taking the time to give some feedback. There is some serious food for thought in what you are saying. I may need to rethink the free model.
In terms of availability of domains in your niche, I'm not sure what exact terms you would use to search for that you would deem valuable. And it is also hard to give an accurate prediction of the number of domains that would show up each month, the scanning is done in a somewhat random fashion (just so it doesn't focus too heavily on one category of video.) So one month it may find 10 or 20, another maybe 4 or 5. But the unpredictability of how it works is almost the best bit...you never know exactly what gold it will find on a daily basis.
Thank you again for your feedback, I may well rethink the free tier and make some adjustments, I will report back as and when I have implemented anything.
This is really cool Steve,
Would love to see what you do with it in the future,
Especially stats about the domain, daily clicks and traffic received by it.
Thank you. I am actively working on trying to build additional features, including traffic estimates for each domain, I think this would be a great addition on the platform.
Tried the app, not bad at all. What’s really missing is actionable data about the domain itself. Things like whether the domain still generates traffic and what its backlink profile looks like. Right now, I had to manually copy the domain into Ahrefs to check traffic + backlinks.
Hi Martin, thanks for trying it out and for your feedback. Traffic metrics for each domain found is actually something I’m working on now and looking to add to the platform soon. I agree this is a valuable feature to improve the platform.