Is Domain Parking Worthwhile?
What is Domain Parking? It’s when you have a great idea for a domain name, you check to see if it’s purchased. It’s not… so you buy it. Instead of utilizing the domain for a website, you ‘park’ it. Domain parking is a means of additional income and some of the largest owners of domain names make millions at it. There are two ways to make money with domain parking:
- People sometimes type in a URL rather than searching for it. If you happen to have the domain name, you can put applicable advertising on the landing page. If folks click on the advertising, you get paid by the advertiser.
- People want the domain name, so they make you an offer.
As I was reading an article today, it reminded me about a test of this business that I needed to report back on. Over a year ago, I read about a couple sites in Business 2.0 magazine that offered Domain Parking resources. At the time, Sedo was one of the domain parking companies that had no upfront charges. I wrote a blog post stating that I would give it a shot.
The domain name that I had the best luck with was navyvets.com. After a year of having the domain parked, I had 93 hits that made $1.22 with no offers for the selling price of $2,500. Since I pay $14.95 per year for each renewal of the domain, that’s a nice loss.
That was my best performing link.
Of course there are ways of making this actually work. If I had thousands of domain names parked with a registrar that offered me lower rates, I managed the advertising myself… possibly putting content on the sites with some behavioral advertising – I could turn a profit. If I made a dollar a year on each name, I could buy 100,000 names and make a tidy income. But I don’t have the time to do that. As well, the best names have already been bought up so it would take a lot of time to simply wait on expired domains or a lot of money to try to purchase others that may turn a buck or two.
So, my domain parking career is almost over. My last shot will be to put my best domain up at Sedo for $39 to have it on the front page to see if I can find a buyer. I’ll point the rest of my domains to this blog, which generates a much better click-through rate on its advertising than Sedo ($0.10 EPC). I’ll let you know how it goes!
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