Lets take a look at two domains which I recently acquired for under $100 total. They aren’t the best keyword domains in their categories, but they are pretty good ones with plenty of potential and I will explain why they were worthy of getting picked up once they expired and investing $$$ to have them properly developed. The domains are TennisPlayers.net and PilatesExercises.net.

We just developed TennisPlayers.net the other day… Why? Because it gets about 5 to 10 visitors per day on average, mostly type-ins. The domain is very similar to TennisPlayer.net which is a well established educational Tennis site that is often advertised on TV, so there is bound to be spill-over traffic as there always is with singular / plural types of domains.

The domain TennisPlayers.net was also actually developed in it’s previous lifetime, since 2002, as some sort of a Tennis players network…  So there is some back-links as well. These free links are always helpful and boost up the SEO profile with the engines.  Basically all we had to do was buy the domain and put it to good use. We did just that by setting up a customized Amazon powered affiliate store with 10,000s of Tennis related items.

From here on traffic will grow day after day after day… Slowly but surely. I actually had this domain parked for the past month and it didn’t earn much… 10 bucks! By having the domain developed we are going to make sure that at least some of those visitors come back or even bookmark the site… Maybe even share it with their friends, associates and family. Maybe even link to it as a useful store / resource… Who knows

With parked pages, unfortunately that never happens… Visitors are “one timers” and the revenue potential is always much greater with developed sites when we make 6% – 8% of some items which cost $100s or $1000s while parking only pays literally 20 or 30 cents. Parked pages are never indexed by the search engines so there are no rankings either. Basically, things are at a standstill.

The other domain is PilatesExercises.net… I don’t know too much about them to begin with but my GF and her friends are all about this stuff. Anyways, after looking at the numbers for “pilates” on the Google AdWords keyword tool it became clear that this domain was the next best thing to “Pilates” or “Pilates Equipment” which are the highest searched keywords.

So we worked with what we’ve got, and that is the 2nd or 3rd best thing… PilatesExercises.net the domain is still very much descriptive of the whole pilates category and both keywords make sense. The same exact affiliate powered store went up on this domain the other day. I am sure that visitors looking for “pilates” and “pilates exercises” will be more than happy with what they find on the site. We have pilates apparel, equipment, dvds and books… What more does one need?

Of course the two examples above aren’t dot com domains… Of course they aren’t the best keyword combinations in their respective niches but like I said, we worked with what we’ve got. The domains have enough “hidden potential” and we are going to bring it out by doing the right type of development and search engine optimization.

It cost us around $200 – $250 total for domain acquisition + domain development of these two keyword domains… I expect us to start turning in a profit within 20 – 30 days… Domains don’t always have to be the best or right keyword domains, so long as you have a “business plan” and you know what you are doing with them… You can make them work. Development is a sure way to put a decent keyword domain to good use. It gets the ball rolling if you know what I mean

Some people would argue that the two domains aren’t even worth anything, and definitely not worth the development efforts… But look, the numbers speak for themselves. There are tens of thousands of people searching for the root keywords each and every month, plus the niche is an easy sell. It’s not like insurance, loans or cars where conversions are crazy… and the best thing I like about these types of domains is that they still are descriptive of an entire niche… Perfecto!

Everything is on auto-pilot right now and the domains were just turned into money-making machines. Literally overnight! Next time you come across a few similar domains, I am sure you will think twice about whether they are worthy or not… Whether to spend $$$ in developing them or flipping them… Cheers!