I want to share with you a recent experience of mine to show the upside of jumping on trends. In this case, it is the divorce trend. Divorce is becoming established in more and more countries and relationships are being seen as transitory and not permanent. More people are living together than ever before without getting married.
You may say “Well tell me something I don’t know”. What you may have missed is that these trends are changing our society and have consequences e.g. second marriages, step-families and so on. Those downstream consequences and their knock-on consequences are opportunities.
I spotted a website that had been around for a long time with a couple of pages and only a couple of incoming links. It was a single word name that described a downstream effect and I thought it would receive more attention as time went by. In the search engine’s “eyes”, it was “aged” meaning that it had some trust factor due to older incoming links. This allows you to rank higher more quickly than with a brand new domain. It is also better than picking up dropped names as they may well have lost trust and content and links.
I purchased the site and started developing it slowly until it ranked first for it’s main keyword in Google. After about 6 months I was contacted by a company about to launch a new hard-copy magazine in this niche area for precisely the reason I bought it i.e. increasing interest. They wanted to use the website to help drive their launch. The off line publishing industry is becoming increasingly interested in niche markets and this will benefit domainers and website developers alike.
So whats the lesson? If you want to move on a trend in the short term, it is best to go searching for poorly developed websites and buy as low as you can. Develop the website to rank and then keep an eye out for opportunities to sell to the right people. If you have picked well, the site will even sell itself. Alternatively keep it and watch for an increasing interest in advertising in that area. Remember though if you want to sell advertising, always put a nofollow on the link to abide by Google and other search engine rules. This avoids any penalties and sudden drops in rankings.
Where can you find poorly developed websites? Well I find DMOZ filled with them all nicely bundled up in categories and guess what? They already have a DMOZ link! If you don’t know what DMOZ is, please familiarize yourself as soon as possible. About DMOZ.com
Yes, these sites will cost you more than the $8 – $10 you pay for a new domain but there is great upside if you choose well. This should be yet another hunting ground for you on a regular basis but never over-extend yourself financially. Be comfortable walking away if the bidding goes outside your range. Another opportunity will be along.
Happy Hunting
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What was the domain?
I can’t get into specifics in this case out of respect for the company I partnered with. I can say it is not a unique situation though. Think about the sports in the Xgames and how they have spawned niche magazines and websites and even clothing lines. I was just using this to illustrate a point.