Domain parking is a great choice for your unused domains that are sitting around twiddling their thumbs!
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Domaining is a fun business. It takes a fair amount of time to learn the ins and outs of having a successful domaining business.
Owning a domain is similar to owning real estate. You buy the property when it is still cheap and developing. Then you sell it when the property becomes more attractive and scarce. But in the meantime, you can rent out your property by parking your domains.
What is domain parking and why does it concern you?
Domain parking is like renting out your house while you wait for it to go up in value and then sell it at the right time.
Domaining requires a bit of knowledge about trends. The best part is that anyone can start domaining with a small investment, which is a lower risk than purchasing real estate or some other investment.
Pierre Eustache from ASK EUSTACHE states "If you’re just buying domains for selling, you may waste a lot of money for sure. You have to study the market to invest where you can get a smart income passively.”
Once you have a few domains, you will want to get the most out of them and parking your domain is one revenue stream that I will discuss in this post.
How to make money with domain parking
You can make money with parked domains, instead of letting them sit at your registrar. Domain parking is a good way to make money from on otherwise lost traffic and then potentially sell it for a profit. Relevant pay-per-click ads are shown on landing pages for the purpose of generating revenue.
Moreover, with domain parking, you temporarily direct your type-in traffic that your domain is receiving to a domain parking company that specializes in monetizing the traffic that is received from your domain.
Chamel Awari at CA Entrepreneur Mind states, the traffic is the most important thing about earning with parked domains. If you have a domain that might never generate any visitors then most likely will you not make any money in domain parking.
The first step is to register a domain name or redirect your domain names to a parking company. I would suggest a domain name that is understandable, pronounceable(pass the radio test) and at least contains a keyword that is known for being highly paid by affiliate and ad programs.
Domain parking companies place advertisements on a landing page featuring your domain in hopes of receiving clicks for the placed ad links. Now that is the basics of domain parking.
Good reasons why it makes sense to park your domains
If the domain was a previous website, then there are probably many links pointing to this domain. You will notice that some users who frequented that website will follow the link to a landing page that has some ads related to the domain name.
The ability to manage the sale of your domain. Ideally, you will have a “for sale” form on the landing page, which can forward inquiries on your domain to a designated email address.
If you are developing a project and you are not ready to start using the domain name.
Easy to set up.
Low maintenance.
You can see the actual potential of your domains right away through your stats.
Drawbacks to domain parking
Can be hard to show up on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Completely neglected domains that aren't set up and optimized produce very little to no income.
Dean Robinson from I've tried that says:
“If you’re keen to look into domain parking as a revenue source, the first thing you will need to know is that for this method, quantity is just as important, if not more so, than quality.”
How do I choose a parking company?
The best way to choose a parking company that is right for you is through trial and error. Sedo may be the place to park your domains for someone who is just starting out and learning the ropes.
It is simple when you want to park domain names; you will need to sign up to a domain parking company. Sedo.com, Bodis.com, or other parking businesses that allow you to park your domains for free.
All you do once you have signed up to a parking company of your choice is place your domain name on their server; this is done by changing the DNS from your registrar to your parking company.
The domain parking company of your choice will choose keywords for your domain by default, or you can choose the keywords that you want users to see when they visit your site. According to Yieldkit, some parked domains attract more traffic than others. This has to do with how popular the keywords are, and whether the domain is one that is likely to be well ranked in the search engines.
Therefore, You need to make sure that the keywords are relevant to your domain name traffic. As a result, you earn a portion of the ad revenue when someone clicks on those PPC ads.
Another good thing to do is to register with multiple parking companies and then register with Above.com which makes the parking companies compete for your domain traffic.
The best part about parked domain traffic is that you get to learn which names generate type-in traffic and how much. The information will help you decide which names are worth the most money should you ever choose to sell them.
Also, traffic numbers can reveal any domains that might not be worth renewing.
Park your domains at the parking company of your choice for a couple of weeks to a few months to get a baseline for performance. You’ll begin to notice the strengths and weaknesses of the parking company.
You’ll be able to take your new found knowledge and apply it to other parking companies.
What is so special about domain parking?
When you park your domain, you will be able to convert sales through the ads placed on your domain, and this is due to the target ads placed on your domain name.
The best part is that you don’t have to do anything other than owning the domain and parking it. You may not earn the big bucks, but anything beats a blank.
The main reason to park your domain while you are waiting to develop your site is for income. The domain does you no good if you keep it parked at your registrar, in which case, you are making money for them instead of turning it over to a parking company to let them monetize the domain and then accept the percentage of the profits that they make off of your domain.
Some people say that domain parking is a waste of your time
Well, let's consider that you only paid a few dollars for your domain and you are thinking that parking is going to be a waste of time.
Now, what if you spend 30 minutes signing up for a parking account and you end up making ten times what you spent on the domain name.
Wouldn’t that have been a good use of your time instead of letting it just sit? Under those circumstances, this is a good way to generate some revenue from your domains and a solid way to start getting some traffic.
Nevertheless, when you decide to develop the domain you can go directly from parked to live, and the traffic will still come in.
Therefore, by parking your domains, you can monetize them, profiting from the value of the domain name and the page views that they bring. The payments provided will vary according to some factors, but parking a domain is a great way to generate immediate revenue.
Parked Domain Landing Page
You may have seen these pages and not realized they were parked pages if you’ve ever been looking around online and came across a few of these pages.
If you click on a link or type in a URL, if a website appears with a bunch of ads or links it is safe to assume that you were on a parked page. The landing page might even say that this page is parked.
Other occasions there might be some loosely related ads, and links on the landing page and you are trying to figure out how a person could make money off of the page because the page looks so disconnected.
Well, that’s because they might not be promoting a niche, but instead, they are feeding off the name or keyword in the domain name.
Nevertheless, optimization of your landing page is about giving your visitors what they want when they visit your page. It boils down to the end users experience.
If I am looking for a page and I don’t find what I am looking for immediately and land on a page with an ad right in front of me, I click on the link and go to my page.
For this reason, the landing page provided me a service, and as a user, I was able to find what I was looking for with the help of the landing page.
The reason why the landing page was able to take me to my desired location is due to the page being optimized correctly. As a result, when I went to the page, the page offered me what I was looking for one click away.
Your work as the domain owner begins by providing a service to your end user to help them get to where they want to go through optimizing your landing page correctly.
Why are the landing pages ugly?
When you see a landing page, you might think to yourself that this is an ugly page! Well, it doesn’t matter if you think the page is ugly, if the page is optimized correctly it will perform better than a beautiful page that isn’t optimized properly.
At times, you may notice a page with lots of graphics and pictures and the page is nice, but those same nice graphic and images can distract the user away from what they were looking for when they landed on your page.
For instance, they land on the page looking for a headlamp flashlight, and they see a picture of a good looking person and their train of thought for their search gets derailed. You could lose clicks and the potential revenue that you could have earned on that click due to the wrong images on the landing page.
A common mistake that domain holders complain to their parking company is that the landing pages are ugly, but those ugly pages may be providing the best services and bring users to what they are looking for in the fastest way.
I will say that depending on the traffic a nice page for the graphic is appropriate. You need to search for parking companies that have those images, options for different templates and simple pages that you can test out.
So how do I increase parking revenue?
There is nothing set in stone for earning income from parking your domains it is all by trial and error. You can look at keyword lists in your domain’s niche. Try different keywords to see if that makes a difference?
As I stated earlier in regards to the layout of your page, each parking company offers different designs for your parked pages… different ones work best for different niches. You can test them out to see which ones work best for your domains.
There are usually many other customizing or “optimizing” features with most parking providers, things like images and different layout options for different pages.
Domain parking isn’t for everyone
Truthfully it all depends on your skill level. Your current “web platform” presence. Your goals and your reasons for owning the domain in the first place.
It also depends on your future goals. How long do you plan on owning your domain? Is it for sale? Is it a keeper? Do you have plans for developing the domain?
If you are going to build a site right away, then don’t park your domain.
You can make a decent profit if you are consistent and persistent with your business. You should drop those names that don’t make enough to cover the cost of registration.
You should invest parking revenue into names that you think will make enough to cover the cost of registration.
Always check your parking providers reports and notice which domains are performing well and which ones are not performing well.
You need to figure out why and do some investigation. Start paying attention to CPC (Cost Per Click) and CTR(Click Through Rate) so that you can get a sense of which domains tend to get a higher CTR than your other domains and which type of niches have a good CPC.
If you start generating enough revenue from your domains invest that money back into your domaining business.
What are your domain parking tips and tricks?
