I often here people complain that they want to begin niche sites, but all the good domain names have already been taken. While it is true that the best names have been taken, it’s important to remember that the people who claimed these names did so when it wasn’t obvious that they would be worth a lot of money. They took a risk at the time and that risk paid off for them.
It’s also important to remember that even though the best names have been taken, there are still a lot of good names available, especially since the English language is so dynamic and new terms and phrases are constantly being created. There are many opportunities to claim good domain names if you keep your eyes open. Here are two that I recently picked up, how I found them and why I felt they were worthwhile to claim.
When I do my daily round of news reading, I am also always looking for possible new niche sites. If I see something in the news that captures my interest and I read a new phrase or term I have never heard before associated with the news, my first reaction is to see if the domain name for that term or phrase is available. The vast majority of the time it’s not, but there are a few occasions when it is. This is a great way to pick up niche sites for terms that are just beginning to make their way into people’s vocabulary.
For example, I picked up the domain name MoneyBomb.org a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, I just placed it up and it’s very basic. The number one priority was for me to get something up as soon as possible so that search engine spiders can find it. I will likely add some eye-candy and make it look more professional when I have some extra time, but if I waited until then before I did anything, this site wouldn’t go up for a few months at the earliest.
I opted not to go with my normal niche template because I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this site yet and I didn’t have any content written for it as it isn’t a topic that I regularly write about. Even so, it is a domain name that has the potential to be worth something in the future.
“Money Bomb” is the term that is being used by the grassroot supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul for their one day fundraising events. On November 5 they raised $4.2 million and December 16 when they raised $6.03 million each in a 24 hour period. The news media has started to refer to these one day events as a “money bomb” and I think this will be a common term used during election years in the future when grassroot supporters donate money on a single day to a candidate. If my thoughts are correct, the domain name could be a valuable niche site in the future.
This is actually the first .org domain I’ve ever purchased. I was way behind the curve to get the .com or .net for this one which I assume were claimed before the first money bomb on November 5th was launched. Still, the .org name was available even after the December 16th money money bomb. When I saw the .org url available, I went to both the .com and .net sites and noticed that both are simply default ad templates meaning the owners are looking to resell them or sit on them rather than develop them at this time. That means that if I put up some basic content on the .org site, I’ll likely rank fairly high for “money bomb” even with the .org domain.
If I get motivated in the future, I think it would be a wonderful url for a grassroots political blog since that is what the term “money bomb” invokes for many people. It might also work as a network site for those creating money bombs. It could even be a great site to lend to candidates that I support to launch money bombs from if I ever choose to do something like that in the future.
The other domain name I picked up was CheerChain.com after reading about the Starbucks spontaneous (or pr stunt) where people in line were paying for the drinks of the person behind them – referred to as a “cheer chain.” I figure that anytime something like this happens in future years, the news will also refer to it as a cheer chain which could drive some traffic to this domain name.
Again, I spent less than 30 minutes to put up a few paragraphs of content and will spend some time making sure that search engines spiders find the site. When I find time, I will add eye-candy to make it look more professional, but the main goal was to get something up asap. This is another topic where I don’t have content already created to make a complete niche site so I chose not to use my usual niche site default template until I decide exactly what I will do with this.
This is a site where I may do some things in the future. It is a good name for a blog about anything to do with “pay it forward” or “random acts of kindness” which could be well received. It could also be a good blog to document all the times I try to create cheer chains or a community blog where people could write about their experiences with cheer chains. My hope is that the “cheer chain” phenomenon will take place each year around the holidays to create traffic for the site.
The risk, of course, is that these terms will be one hit wonders and will never find their way into the news again and simply die out. Since it takes time for niche sites to make their way up in the search engine rankings, if the term never appears again in the news or is never used by others, then they may never be worth much of anything. If, however, they do become words used on a regular basis to describe these events, then they will increase in value.
I’m certainly not an expert on finding new domain names and niche sites, but it is something that I enjoy doing and I believe is low risk with the potential of a high return. This is also not the way to come up with niche site names for content you already have written, but it does show that there is the potential to still grab some decent domain names if you keep current with what is going on. It will certainly be interesting to see how these names develop in the future and if they turn out to be worth taking the risk of grabbing them.
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