Creating doorways in 2024: strategies for stable profit

In the context of affiliate marketing, a doorway is typically a one-page website or a site heavily saturated with specific key queries. Traditionally, these sites have not offered substantive information or value, focusing instead on over-optimization and a high volume of links to rapidly ascend in search engine rankings. Doorways are created with one purpose – to attract SEO traffic quickly. Despite often being short-lived and susceptible to bans, doorways effectively fulfill their role by attracting a “warm” audience.

However, the landscape in 2024 has evolved. Doorways now exhibit a higher quality, making them indistinguishable from conventional websites at first glance. They have become a dynamic source of traffic that affiliates are keen to leverage. If you are unfamiliar with doorways and their potential for revenue generation, this article is for you. Continue reading for a comprehensive understanding of doorways and their role in affiliate marketing.

What are Doorways and How to Generate Revenue from Them

The term “doorway” quite literally means entrance door. Typically, when users access such a site or page, they are automatically redirected to a landing page featuring a specific offer.

What Does the Doorway Look Like?

A doorway’s content, including its metadata, primarily consists of mid-frequency or low-frequency queries. Redirection to the advertiser’s landing page is usually completed using a redirect script or a click-through mechanism. Often, users might not even notice the doorway page as they are swiftly transferred to the landing page. This invisibility contributes to the general lack of awareness about the appearance and functioning of doorways. However, there are instances where users directly land on the site. In such cases, a more classic flow is obtained, where redirection to the offer happens through banners or clickable buttons.

How Doorways Work

The process of navigating from a doorway to the offer page typically looks like this:

1. The user inputs a search query in the search bar and finds the doorway among the top search results. This site can potentially satisfy their search needs due to its high ranking.
2. If the site has a redirect set up, the visitor is instantly transferred to another resource. This transition is often seamless, leaving the intermediary site unnoticed.
3. In cases where a clickunder script is integrated into the doorway site, the landing page will open in a new browser tab upon the user’s click. While the term clickunder might be unfamiliar to some, its function is widely used. It is similar to a redirect but is activated by any click on the page.
4. Alternatively, users can manually navigate from the doorway to a third-party resource using an affiliate link, such as a Smartlink or a push link. Doorways without automatic site loading often feature relatively attractive designs and content to encourage this manual transition.

Doorways are often associated with “black hat” SEO and search spam. Indeed, for search engines, doorways represent resources filled with meaningless text and extreme spam, violating search engine guidelines. However, from the perspective of CPA networks, doorways serve as a significant source of organic traffic, which advertisers highly value. For publishers, the strategy for monetizing through doorways is almost identical to that of monetizing any online platform. The traffic derived from doorways is akin to SEO traffic from one’s own website. The notable difference is the constant need to generate new traffic for doorways, distinguishing them from more traditional forms of SEO.

Pros and Cons of Doorways

The advantages of doorways in digital marketing are:

• Rapid Traffic Attraction: The primary appeal of doorways is their ability to draw traffic quickly. This is particularly advantageous for site owners or affiliate marketers who wish to avoid the expenses associated with advertising and other promotional methods. Creating a doorway is cost-effective, generally requiring only the costs for page creation and domain registration.
• Simplification of Main Site SEO: By focusing on optimizing doorway pages, there is less need for intensive SEO efforts on the main resource. This can be a significant time and resource saver.
• Building the Link Mass of the Main Site: A network of doorways can swiftly boost the main site’s traffic and link weight, thanks to many backlinks.
• Automation through doorway technologies: The process of creating doorways can be fully automated, leveraging doorway-generating technologies and algorithms. 
• Minimal Risk to the Main Resource: Doorways that redirect traffic generally don’t threaten the main resource. The main site is only at risk of being removed from the index if the doorway is hosted on its own subdomain.
• Global Audience Reach: Doorways enable worldwide access to audiences from all search engines.

Disadvantages of Doorway Sites:

• Inevitable Search Engine Blocking: Regardless of their sophistication, doorways are eventually detected and blocked by search engines. Even “white” doorways, which closely resemble regular sites, cannot operate indefinitely without being identified and penalized.
• Unpredictable Traffic Volume and Quality: The traffic generated by doorways is inherently uncertain in both volume and quality. This lack of predictability makes their use somewhat risky, akin to a “blind game”.
• Constant Need for Adaptation: Effective doorway use requires ongoing vigilance in monitoring search engine algorithm updates. Users must continually seek new strategies to keep doorways indexed for as long as possible, necessitating a significant investment in time and resources.
• Selective Network Acceptance: While many networks accept traffic from doorways, this is not universally true. It is essential to confirm beforehand with the account manager whether a particular affiliate network or advertiser accepts such traffic. It’s worth noting that LosPollos, for instance, allows for the monetization of any SEO traffic.

Making Money with Doorways in Affiliate Marketing

To successfully generate revenue from doorway traffic in affiliate networks, it’s important to adhere to a fundamental rule: create doorways tailored for a specific CPA affiliate offer rather than the other way around.

Different types of doorways can be effective for various verticals, including dating, gambling, betting, Nutra, merchandise, and finance:

• gambling doorways often resemble websites with reviews of online casinos or their “mirrors.” Another popular format is download sites, where users don’t need to register, and affiliates earn through the CPI model.
• betting doorways typically feature promotional codes and “secret” schemes for earning money at bookmakers. It’s common for doorways to be created under the guise of one betting office and then redirect traffic to another.
• adult doorways are used as traffic sources for adult nutra offers, online dating sites for sex, and similar themes. Generally, the more “sensitive” the subject matter of the doorway, the shorter its lifespan tends to be.

In each scenario, the doorway serves as an intermediary, channeling traffic to the final landing page where the actual offer is presented. 

Creating Doorways in 2024: What Are the Nuances?

The ongoing battle between search engines and doorways is intensifying with advancements in detection technologies. Creators of doorways must strive to maximize the lifespan of their sites. Different search engines exhibit varied responses to these resources. For instance, the Russian version of the Google search engine doesn’t consistently identify automatically generated content that lacks meaningful context. Such content is often mistaken for legitimate text, reducing the likelihood of these sites being blocked for using “fish text.” The primary goal is to maintain the doorway in the search index for at least a week or a month, ensuring a steady traffic flow. It’s also important to focus on building backlinks, ideally through posts and comments on forums and public pages, though having your own Private Blog Network (PBN) is preferable for quicker results.

Alternatively, the Yandex search engine operates at a variable pace in indexing pages. A doorway on a new page might require 2-3 re-indexations before it is indexed, a process that can take up to a month.

To expedite this process and achieve indexing in the first or second ‘wave,’ it is recommended to acquire more trusted domains.

Moreover, Yandex rigorously assesses content quality and favors websites with a complex structure. Therefore, investing in a well-organized homepage, complete with a site map and other essential attributes, well-thought-out navigation, and a custom 404 page is beneficial.

Where to Start When Creating Doorways

The process of creating a doorway is quite similar to that of a regular SEO website. The primary rule—and key difference—is the extremely high density of key queries. You may use thousands of them; the more, the better. Focusing on low-frequency keywords is recommended, as they often make reaching the top of search results easier.

Before you begin creating a doorway, decide on the method: manual creation, using a generator, or a doorway creator. 

Here’s a guide on where to start and what you need:

1.Choose a Niche and Collect Key Queries

You can parse keys from other doorways or use special SPY services if the topic is popular. You can also purchase a ready-made key database or use a list of requests the affiliate provides (if available). If the affiliate program is new and the product is recent, you might need to collect the keys yourself, as there is no existing database yet, and parsers are updated approximately once a month.

Popular tools for parsing key queries:

• Free options include Yandex.Wordstat and Bukvariks are particularly useful for RuNet.

• Paid ones include – A-Parser or Ahrefs, SemRush, and Key Collector:

A “lifetime” purchase of an A-Parser license will cost the following:

A Key Collector license costs 2200 rubles, with subsequent licenses priced at 1700 rubles. It’s important to note that this service no longer collects Google Ads statistics. However, the Key Collector remains useful for further work with keys.

Tools like Rush Analytics or KeyCollector are helpful for clustering doorway sites with multiple pages. Another option for desktop software that facilitates clustering is Key Assort:

To analyze content and search for Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) words, tools like JustMagic, A-Parser, and similar alternatives are used.

2. Generating Text Content

There are various methods for this. One can use copy-paste techniques or “splice” together texts from competitors using the same services, machine translation, and AI tools. It’s essential first to analyze the texts of competitors, focusing on their length and structure.

Experience indicates that using unique templates for creating doorways is more effective. For instance, employing a premium WordPress theme with a non-basic style. Experienced doorway specialists note that in such cases, even copy-paste content “works” and is typically ranked adequately.

3. Selecting a Domain

Before creating doorways, you need to select domains. Here are some options:

• Free second-level domains: Examples include .co, .xx, .tk, .ml, etc. 

These can later be renewed on a paid basis, but this is generally not a concern for doorway pages due to their short lifespan. The disadvantages of such domains include the risk of losing them if the registrar identifies your “not-so-white traffic” and the inherent user distrust towards these domain zones.

• Third-level domains from designers and free hosting

Aggregators, online builders, blog hosting, and free hosting services offer the option to register a third-level domain based on their domain. This approach can provide a trustable name instantly and for free. However, similar to second-level domains, the domain will likely be swiftly banned if the administrator suspects doorway development activities.

• Newly registered domains

These are first-time registered domains in zones like .ru or .su for Runet and .com, .net, etc., for international use. Their lack of history is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, new domains are unlikely to have any penalties, but on the other hand, they can be more challenging to rank at the top. The most affordable options are domains in the .in or .xyz zones, but they generally suffer from lower user trust.

• Drop domains 

Drop domains are previously owned domains that were not renewed by their owners. These are often considered the best option for doorways. They come with an established level of trust, a history and potentially even retain links and search engine filters. However, buying a drop domain with a filter is typical for doorways, so it’s crucial to check the domain’s history before purchasing, especially when buying in bulk.

For doorways, it is better to use drop domains, preferably those that are themed. If you plan to use copy-paste content, you may first need to “season” the site with unique texts.

4. Pay for Hosting

Regular hosting is generally sufficient for doorways, similar to what you would use for a small website. However, since creating doorways is an ongoing and voluminous task, there’s no one-size-fits-all advice for choosing the right hosting.

“Keep in mind that free hosting often does not support PHP. Therefore, if you opt for free hosting for your doorway, it should be comprised solely of HTML pages.”

5. Create the Doorway

You can use a builder yourself or download a doorway generator and have it generate the doorway automatically. We will delve more into these programs later.

6. Index the Doorway

The final step involves uploading the completed doorway to your hosting service unless your doorway generator has already done this for you. Afterward, the only task left is to wait for the site to be indexed by search engines.

Where to Get Traffic for Doorways

Promoting doorways is quite similar to promoting regular websites. Several factors influence the traffic volume, including GEO, the number of pages, template design, and the domain—especially the domain zone. Getting a site indexed by Yandex is typically easier than Google, but keep in mind that gray and black hat doorways won’t last long there. For Google, doorways on freshly registered domains don’t tend to rank quickly; drop domains are a more effective choice. Below are some life hacks for quickly indexing doorways.

Traffic for doorways can be sourced not only from search engines but also from social networks. For example, in adult niches, significant traffic often comes from profiles of girls that link to the doorway, supplemented by comment spam.

Push advertising is another effective method for promoting doorways. Purchasing traffic from a reputable network and directing it to the doorway using push traffic can be quite efficient. If you’re working with adult content, using a network that specializes in adult traffic, such as TacoLoco, is recommended.

Free traffic is also a suitable option for doorways. While links in comments and posts on information sites, blogs, and forums may not bring large traffic volumes, they can help enhance the weight of the link of the doorway site.

How to Speed Up Doorway Indexing

As you already understand, the faster the doorway enters the search engine index, the sooner the traffic flows. For novice doorway developers, knowing how to expedite this process and attract a search engine bot quickly can be immensely beneficial, rather than waiting up to a month.

When creating doorways for Google, a notification about creating a new document on the site is usually automatically sent to the search engine, effectively pinging Google about the new content.

Getting the search bot to index the doorway site more rapidly for Yandex can be more difficult. 

However, you can use one of the following methods:

• Register a mailbox on Yandex and create a page on ya.ru. fill out the profile and add a link to the doorway in the “Links” section, accompanied by a short keyword-rich description. Also, include the keywords in the “Tags” section. Then, you need to join any top club on the platform and make a couple of posts. You can typically expect indexing within 24 hours.
• Create any website using Mylivepage, an intuitive website builder. Post content that includes links to the doorway and comment on other people’s blogs. Indexing usually occurs within 24 hours.
• Register on any news site. Leave a comment on a news article, embedding a link to the doorway. This method can also expedite indexing.

Programs for Creating Doorways 

A doorway generator is a type of program designed to automate the creation of portals. It has capabilities for collecting and uniqueizing content, automatically creating comprehensive spam websites and one-pagers, with some versions even offering the functionality to upload these sites to hosting. Before using a doorway generator, thoroughly research the program’s capabilities and read reviews about it.

Doorways come in various types, including text, MP3, VK, YouTube, PDF, and more. Each type has specific features that the doorway must be tailored to accommodate. Text doorways are the most common; hence, most programs are equipped to parse and create textual content.

The functionality of doorway generators varies, which influences their cost of use. Fundamentally, these programs should support SEO optimization, linking, and macros, which will be integrated into the HTML page template. During the generation process, these programs automatically substitute relevant content and media files and redirect scripts and banners. It’s important to note that not every software provides all these functions.

What is the Best Doorway Generator

Given the vast array of doorway generators available, let’s focus on some of the most popular ones.

1. JakoDorgen PRO: Ideal for beginners in doorway building, this service has been free since 2018. It allows the creation of simple templates, setting keywords for text content generation, and working with images and metadata. Its array of macros enables quick and skilled creation of static doorways tailored to specific requirements.
2. R-dorgen 3.x: Less known but highly functional, this doorway generator supports parsing and using YouTube videos, finding and inserting images from images.yandex.ru, offers diverse text content processing methods, numerous macros, and the ability for batch doorway generation.
3. PandoraBox: A paid desktop doorway generator that is user-friendly. It can generate HTML doorways for freehosting or PHP-insert doorways, parse snippets and YouTube videos, create texts from pre-made files by inserting keys, and perform cross-linking. 

However, it doesn’t support parsing audio files or working with subdomains. If managing more than 10 doorways, manual upload to hosting is required, which might not suit everyone’s needs, but overall, it’s competent software.

1. Seodor: A server-based program with robust functionality. It improves site rankings in search results and works with both “pure” HTML and PHP inserts. Seodor can parse YouTube videos, music from social networks, and texts. However, its mixing functionality isn’t always seamless, occasionally resulting in code fragments or disrupted sentences.
2. ZennoPoster: While not strictly a doorway generator, it helps create doorways on YouTube and VKontakte. This program automates SEO tasks and browser actions, saving considerable time and effort in content preparation.
3. Thunder: A doorway generator designed to create static and dynamic doorways automatically.

When we talk about dynamic doorways, we mean that web pages for a key query are generated at the moment when the user comes from the search results.

This doorway creation program comes equipped with a built-in traffic distribution system (TDS) and allows for parsing RSS feeds, snippets, texts, and up to five sources for media files.

The cost of using a doorway generator is dependent on the features you require. Investing in a tool equipped with YouTube functionality is impractical if your plans don’t include creating video doorways. If your focus is on WordPress doorways, ensure that your chosen doorway generator supports this feature. Overall, the best approach is to select a service not just for its popularity or extensive features but for the specific functions that meet your needs. And, importantly, avoid paying for features you won’t use.

Conclusion

Doorways have stood the test of time as a reliable source of targeted traffic. Despite the evolving methods employed by search engines to counter them, they continue to exist, much like cloaking techniques. You now have a clearer understanding of what doorways are, how to identify and effectively promote them, and the ways to monetize them.

For beginners, doorways might initially appear as a complex channel requiring technical skills. However, as this article demonstrates, the process can be much more straightforward than anticipated. Remember, every expert in this field started from humble beginnings. Take, for instance, Sasha Molodoy, a renowned doorway designer and bot farm owner, who began his career with a basic HTML book. Starting in the early 2000s, he transitioned from factory work to making a living through doorways. Today, he effortlessly crafts them, innovating new technologies and features in this niche. We plan to unveil more insider secrets on profiting from doorways in upcoming articles. Stay tuned for more.