If you’re starting from scratch when it comes to flipping sites, you need to pick a niche to start on. Now there are people who randomly pick and get lucky while others don’t. I do that sometimes but then again, it’s not exactly random because I look at keywords that are getting high search engine traffic, usually. But there are plenty of steps you can take on how to pick a niche for site flipping.

Personally, I like to pick a niche that I’m actually interested in or something that will keep me entertained while I’m doing it. I don’t like picking niches that bore me because when I do that, I feel as though I’m just working online for money instead of enjoying it.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are just working for the money, no ones stopping you. I’m just not a big fan of working, working, working just for a check unless I really have to. And speaking of working for money, if you have any site that’s making money then you should be able to sell it with no problem.

But let’s get into picking a niche.

What’s Hot and What Do Buyers Want?

Like I said in the previous paragraph, buyers want money making sites. Or at least the potential the site has to make tons of money. That is pretty obvious because no one wants to invest in something without getting some return back plus more. They want to invest now and in the long run, they get their money back and with some additional work, they profit from it.

A good place to start is to head over to Sitepoint’s “Want to Buy” section. But I’m only looking for things that I’m capable of doing and interested in.

If you guys take a look within the past week or so, there are a lot of people that are looking for sites that I’m probably not going to attempt to do. For instance, directories, applications for social sites, forums, etc. I think those would be too much work so it’s pointless to try to learn something brand new.

What I’m looking for is something in a niche that I’m actually interested in, that I know I’m capable of doing and something that will put money in my pockets while I’m doing it.

Since I didn’t find anything that would help me pick a niche (most people wanted something that I wasn’t interested in, something that I couldn’t do or was just asking for sites that made money) let’s try the other Marketplace sections.

The thing you have to really look for are sites that people are actually bidding on. If they get no bids, it’s either because they are overpriced, not worth it or people don’t see potential (or possibly just missed the listing).

After looking through the different sections on what people are bidding on, the main ones that I would be interested in doing are: health-related, sports, games and cars/bikes.

Is the Niche Competitive? Are Their Keywords I Can Rank In?

Out of the four niches that I’d be interested in making a site for, there’s only one that is probably highly competitive no matter what you create the site for. The health site.

People are so crazed about getting healthy and losing weight that the niche has become similar to make money online niches: they are over saturated.

You can probably say the same for the other niches that I’ve picked but every single one of those have so many sub-niches that you can work with.

I’m a big sports fan but I also want to do minimal work and sports would require me to keep up with everything daily so I’m going to pass on that.

Now video games and cars/bikes are things that I’d be interested in and I wouldn’t have to update daily or anything like that. So, let’s pick some random things relating to video games and cars/bikes and see if there’s low/high competition and if there’s good keywords for us to rank in.

Instead of using both examples, I just do the cars. What I did was Googled “new cars 2009″ because people are always into the new things. Of course, cars have the same models each year, just different. I found an article based on my search and found “the best new cars of 2009.”

After looking through, I picked some random ones and I typed it into the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool.

After looking through, I decided to go with the Nissan Skyline GT as my pick. So I typed in “Nissan” into the suggestion tool and saw:

As you can see, “Nissan Skyline” and “Nissan GTR” are highly searched for. Don’t worry, we’re going to be focusing more on the long-tail keywords rather than those specific ones.

Time to see how competition it is. All I did was a simple Google search for “Nissan Skyline GT” and “Nissan Skyline GTR” and both came up with just a little over one million search results. I know that’s a lot but I’d say if you can get a highly searched for keyword with a million or less search results, then that’s actually pretty good.

Does the Niche Have Potential in the Eyes of the Buyer?

Now it’s hard to say since we didn’t even set anything up. But based on the above, it definitely should. It’s highly searched for, I don’t foresee the car models going out of style soon and more than likely it’ll make some good money.

Our goal is to basically get all our stats up so we can have proof to potential buyers.

Now that is how I would potentially select a niche for a potential site flipping project. Don’t get me wrong, I was just showing you guys an example, I may not necessarily use the car site as the example site for you guys to follow. But don’t worry, once I actually pick it, you guys will know and be able to follow along.

Stay tuned for more on the site flipping series!