You’re not still scraping RSS feeds are you? *Shakes his head in shame* I am so disappointed in you. How about we review a few places where only the trekies are brave enough to scrape. Its a huge content filled Internet world out there. I’m sure we can do a little better than crappy RSS feeds.
Encarta Encyclopedia- WTF?! Yeah you heard right. The articles and content are held in huge datafiles on the CDs. Go fuckin’ grab ‘em already! No one else is.
YouTube- This one is too easy. They even have a feed you can use to grab the videos, descriptions, and titles.
IMDB- Same as YouTube. There is even an example of how to grab and parse IMDB content on the LWP module example code.
Newsgroups- A classic and too easy to pass up.
Drudge Report- Nothing is more beautiful than snagging big news that has popularity but isn’t already stolen by CNN and MSN. Also consider who your competitor in the SERPS is. Drudge Report may have a ton of links but the site itself is SEO’d to shit. My little sister could kick his ass in the SERPS.
Craigslist- Same as Drudge Report but I’m going to stay out of this one because I have a ton of respect for Craig Newmark. It is also a bit harder to beat him in the SERPS, but the vast volume of new content being added every day more than makes up for it.
IRC- I’ve beatin this technique to death so I’m not even going to bother talking about it.
Froogle- I couldn’t help but mention this one. However please respect when I say, stay off my turf! Seriously…
Forums- One of the easiest way to build millions of pages of content quickly. The quality tends to suck but you hit such a high range of topics in such a short amount of data it really helps bring in traffic from those odd phrases.
Looksmart and Article Finder- Their templates make it way too easy to scrape the content. The articles are also long which makes it nice.
User Contributed(Check Comments)
Google News- Uhhhg yes.
Public Libraries- Simply fuckin brilliant!
Ebay- That one is news to me. I’m all over that one. Ever thought of scraping Ebay and then feeding it into froogle. Ebay does the same damn thing, but why not go through your aff links? Its worth a shot and there has got to be a good way to make some cash off it.
University Data- Such an asshole thing. I love it!
This is great. Keep em comin!
I heard something on a forum the other day about all the niches becoming saturated with heavy competition. Just wanted to say sorry about that 
haha just kidding. Are there any niches out there that are still wide open? Hell fuckin yeah is my answer to that, but how about something tangible? Well there are certain niches that are always bringing in new niches of their own. So if you’re really caught between a rock and hard place here is a few ideas to get you off your feet. Two off the top of my head involve the celeb business and the music industry.
Never Ending Music Niches
New hip hop artists and rock bands come out all the time. If you manage to score a niche website for one right before they hit MTV or something you got some serious bank coming your way. Pics, Music videos, bio, mp3 downloads(if legal) damn if isn’t all good in the biz. Making money is just as easy as the content. Affilliate links to buying their cds, posters, merchandise. Keep your eyes peeled and glued on the tv and magazines for these new niches. They will make you serious money faster than you could imagine. While I’m on the topic… I hate to point out the obvious but why the has has hardly anyone considered scraping Myspace for bands? Its a beautiful world where the bands promote themselves and all you got to do is be there and yet I can’t find a single other person doing this. One more thought for you blackhatters: Scrape the band names and put them into a subdomain on a music site. Grab some attention and enjoy the traffic flow. Then monitor when their profile scores so when they get so many “plays” or when they reach between a certain value than add them to a list to steal an actual domain for thier name.
Never Ending Movie Niches
There is two that fall into this category. First and foremost is new movies. Oldest technique in the book is to watch for celebs to accidentally release the name of a movie before it comes out with a trailer. Snag the domain and put it up. This is why Sony quit buying domains for their movies and started putting them up at Sony.com/moviename. It works too damn well and is too damn easy for someone not to monotenize. This comes in most useful if you are good at getting indexed quickly and enjoy stuff like SEO contests. The traffic is quick and hard, but will also consistently last you for a couple years after.
The second niche in this category is obviously brand new actresses and actors. It wasn’t until Spiderman that Toby Mcguire started getting massive searches. This niche is especially easy because most ppl are simply looking for pictures and love clicking around to find them(Adsense and image search). BIO information makes for easy content. The only thing you have to compete with are other douche bags and bloggers that have the same name. They hate the new found traffic and you want it. This makes an easy sell for a link on their websites.
There are tons more niches that fall into this category. Too damn many to name in a single post, but I hope this gave you a few ideas. So before you start getting frustrated with being beaten to every niche consider the ones like the above that will keep you busy until your old.
Sorry I have to quit typing because I have a monstorous sneeze coming on….
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAppletrailersCHEWWWWWWWWWWW!
