One of the easy, and potentially profitable, ways to make money online is by 'flipping' websites. This concept is the same as when an investor will buy a house, fix it up and turn around and sell it for a profit, the only difference is that you are doing it all in the virtual world, online. You will first find a domain name for sale, purchase it, put up a simple website and sit back and wait for a few weeks or months, then sell your website for a nice little profit.

While this is a fairly easy concept there is, of course, a little more to it. The first thing you want to do is purchase a desirable domain name. It's unlikely that if you buy the domain name 'Jim Smith' you're going to get many people who would want to pay for it later.

When deciding on the domain name you want to buy you should do some research to find a hot niche that has a lot of interest in it. It could be anything from cat toys to coffee makers. When you find a niche that not only has a lot of traffic but where people are actually making purchases then you need to do some keyword research to determine which specific words and phrases people are using when they search for products in that niche.

For example, if your niche is cat toys you will need a list of words and phrases that people are searching for... a lot. So after your keyword research you might find that one phrase that has a lot of searches is: catnip cat toys. The next thing you have to do is to go to one of the online domain name sellers such as GoDaddy.com or DomainCheapsters.com and see if you can get that exact phrase as a domain name. If you can get CatnipCatToys.com than you are well on your way, you know that your domain name will get a lot of free traffic because it is a popular keyword phrase that gets a lot of traffic.

Once you've got your domain name, you need to put up a website. This can be a simple blog style. Add some content and sit back and wait, or you can be a little more proactive and help your site grow more quickly by adding more content more frequently and also by doing some article marketing to get even more traffic. It's up to you which way you choose to go, one will be easier but take longer and the other will be harder but get results more quickly.

Now that you've got a desirable domain name in a popular niche and your site is getting traffic, you can sell it and (hopefully) make a profit. There are several sites online that will walk you through the steps and list your site for sale, one of the best known is Flippa.com. It costs around $20 to list your site for sale, and of course, there is no guarantee that it will sell but if you've followed these steps you've got a good chance of selling your site and making several hundred dollars and it all starts with picking the right domain name for sale.