Finding a Niche

[Ferraristi]

I wanted to share with everyone an idea I stumbled upon recently for identifying a niche that you might want to get started in.

From time to time, Jon has thrown up lists of niches for us to have a go at developing both on WF and on his blog. They've been a help and I have had a go at a couple of them, but I always wondered where he got his ideas from and how I could try to come up with ideas on my own.

Then I just stumbled into something, while I was indulging in another of my interests, which is domain name marketing.

I have been looking through lists of expired domain names in the hope that I might stumble across one or two that I might be able to sell on for a profit, when it suddenly hit me that some of the names I had identified could quite easily be turned into money making websites as I knew merchants existed in those areas that had affiliate programs.

Consequently, I have placed my orders for some of the domains and instead of then trying to sell them on, I intend to develop websites for them.

The site I have been using to identify domain names is deleteddomains.com. It costs $9.95 for access for one week, or a hundred dollars per year if you're more serious. With the niches I have identified in the last couple of days, I believe my $9.95 was a worthwhile investment.

Anyway, I hope this idea works out for some of you.

 

[Peter]

Yeah, that's a good idea - thanks for sharing. I've come across this site before, it might be helpful to check for dropped domains - http://www.justdropped.com/

 

[Andrew]

Yeah, the other benifit to picking up a deleted domain name is the possibility the site has backlinks. If you use justdropped.com you can click the "links" button after a search under the domain. For some reason dmoz slows it was the hell down, which is kind of annoying, but still better than the alternatives..

 

[Rrev]

I read somehere about this and they said if a domain got a new owner, the old pr by google is lost. It´s like you start with a new domain. All old backlinks and stuff is erased from the pr algo. Anyone know if this is true?

 

[ChrisS]

Do you run the risk of the domain being blacklisted or banned?

I guess there are tools to check for that though.

 

[Ferraristi]

ChrisS - I'm sorry, I don't follow. Do we run the risk of the domain being banned for what?

 

[Charlie]

If the domain was previously banned in the search engines, you would effectively inherit that ban.

 

[Ferraristi]

Ah, I see, good point. How would I find out? By the way, with regard to identifying niches, there is nothing to say you have to register the domain that sparked the idea of the niche. There may be one you could make up that would be more suitable.

 

[Mike]

If the domain was previously banned in the search engines, you would effectively inherit that ban.

That doesn't really make sense. If the Big G is sharp enough to realize that the domain is under new management, and not give you credit for the previous PR or Backlinks, then it is definitely smart enough to not penalize you for someone else's bad doings.

Now, that's not to say you wouldn't be penalized by some of the smaller engines, but since most of them follow Google's lead, I doubt it would be much of an issue.