Cash For Clunkers Isn’t So Bad Following All

How I’m profiting from “Cash for Clunkers”.

I’m not a fan of the government spending my tax dollars. So I haven’t been too keen regarding the “cash for clunkers” program, in which the government gives my tax dollars to other people to buy fresh cars.

When the program started to run out of cash I was even more upset. Did the government think that people wouldn’t take them up on an offer of free cash? Did they not see how much money Germany has spent on a similar program?

But my view of the program changed yesterday. You see, I calculate that my portion of the $1B program is regarding $20 in taxes. Yet I’ve made regarding $50 over the past month from the program.

Let me explain. Many years ago I bought the generic domain name CarRebate.com. Car manufacturers often offer rebates and incentives, so I thought this was a good domain name. The domain typically makes $5 a month as a parked domain. But I checked the stats yesterday and saw that it had earned regarding $55 over the past month thanks to people looking for information on car rebates. Traffic spiked from 10 visits or so a month to 350 in the most recent period.

Thus, I’ve netted regarding $30 from the program. Congress may dole out another $2B to the program, which would be another $40 out of my tax money. But as long as people keep searching for car rebates on the internet, I’ll come out ahead.

Postscript: another member of the domain media owns Clunkers.com.