Countless times, I have taken a good domain name (not always a category killer) and by adding Search Engine Optimization (SEO), original content and quality inbound links, I have been extraordinarily successful…yes extraordinarily!

Here are a few random samples (or mico case studies if you will)…..
http://www.AllFreshSeafood.com – #2 in Google for fresh seafood and fresh – site does $XXX,XXX in annual revenues with $0 spent offline

http://www.BagelBoss.com – Top 6 of Google for bagel and bagels – top 5 for new york bagels; they ship bagels all over the US. With 12 physical locations too – this is a very nice online business!

http://www.AllPrintableCoupons.com – http://www.FoodCouponsDirect.com – http://www.AllPizzaCoupons.com these are three of 50+ coupon sites I developed…..Top 3 in google for food coupons; Top 8 in Google for printable coupons and #1 and #2 in Google for frozen pizza coupons….with just adsense; this is $X,XXX – $XX,XXX a month

Bottom line – these are note category killer domains but they are making very nice money and are great business models.

Obviously category killers such as http://www.BreakingNews.com – http://www.3GPhones.com – http://www.MilitaryLoans.com, etc. will also receive great search engine traffic from SEO but it also gets the added benefit of the type-in/direct navigation traffic which from time to time isn’t always what you think it’s going to be……

So I truly believe that you have to reverse engineer a desired industry/product or business into a domain name as opposed to vice versa….

@AndrewHazen

btw what CMS are you using for tropicalbirds.com? Custom?

Thanks.