Guide to making a buck in the world of domain names (Part 4)
August 13, 2009
4. Parking Your domain to gain a little extra scratch.
The next subject for this series of posts is parking your domain. If your domain(s) aren’t parked, you’re not making any revenue and will not be able to fuel your domain buying hobby for very long without any money coming in.
So, how do you park a domain?
To answer that question, I first have to tell you that there are 2 types of domain parking: monetized, and non-monetized. We’re going to talk about monetized domain parking here, because the whole idea of these blog posts is to help you make money.
In case you were interested, non-monetized domain parking is basically just hanging on to a domain name for future use. Many registrars give your domain a non-monetized spot by default. These parking services won’t help you turn a profit, but you can get other companies on board to help you generate revenue from your space on the web. It’s like a billboard on the side of the road. Except it’s on the web. And you have to contact the advertisers yourself.
Monetized domain parking is what we’re interested really interested in, not that non-monetized stuff. In order to jump into the world of parked domain monetization, you must first find a site that will help you get the advertisers onto your page. A quick search engine query will bring up some good results, but it’s easier just to go with a trusted name like sedo the first time around. If you spend time monkeying around with sites that haven’t been tested, you could find that you’ve thrown away a lot of easy revenue.
I recommend sedo because not only do they allow you to park your domain for free, but they also give you the chance to sell your domain in their auction house. You may not be tempted to sell domain names that are raking in the big bucks, but if you’ve got some premium domains that can sell for a few grand, and they aren’t making as much money as another parked domain, you might as well let the domains go to a willing buyer.
So how does parking your domain generate revenue? That depends. Some sites offer you small amounts of money whenever a visitor clicks an advertisement on your site, while others will actually give you money per thousand people that view the ads. This is something you’ll have to research on your own, as each site is different. Some sites also require that you attain a minimum balance before they pay you. Quite unfortunate, but necessary if your domain has been rejected from all the ‘good’ sites. Hopefully that doesn’t happen unless you have a completely worthless domain. After you’ve parked your domain, try to promote it using the SEO techniques, and you should see some major gains in your income in no time at all. I sincerely hope these guides are helping you. Good luck parking your domain, domainers!
