If you compare the typical big-money SV-style startup sales to be like people building/flipping properly, this would be the equivalent of fixing up and flipping cheap cars or furniture. It’s a fun side hobby that makes you some extra spending money, not something to make you rich.
I could imagine someone basically picking these up and collectively monetizing with ads, or other methods. Likely not suitable for a massive business, but likely able to sustain a sole operator or even a small team if operated frugally.
Do you have any personal experience or any other sources that estimate this kind of thing? I'm legitimately curious, I've often wondered what kind of revenue these types of things pull in. Obviously if they're not running ads and don't have any explicit monetization then it would be very little. But I always wonder about the ones that do.
Would it? Like, Google isn’t going to boot you for running AdSense on your site.
I’m guessing the money is made off search engine visitors rather than recurring visitors that would figure out how to do it by command line.
also, how would a search engine visit make money?
Simply running ads doesn't really seem like an issue as long as you're not making the site unusable. I'd be more concerned about the fact that the average user in need of a base64 converter is arguably more likely to be using an adblocker.
In the end I shut it, because I realized that with a newborn in the house I didn’t actually have the time/energy to run another one. Also prev. owner had priced it such that it was impossible to source legit good quality products.
I did run it for a bit and just about got the investment back (it only cost $3k) before shutting it down.