Web Hosting Reviews & Ratings

January 20, 2010

Parking Your Domain for Profit

Internet domain sales represent a multi-billion dollar industry, that is rapidly expanding in the passing of each day. Domains are purchased by the thousands daily, by people all around the world. While the purpose that each domain will serve is vastly different, the stages of domain use can be summarized into three categories; domains in construction, domains in use, and parked domains. These stages are pretty self explanatory, with exception to the stage of parking a domain and we will take a look at common questions such as what is a parked domain? why do they exist?

Some people purchase domains with the intent of using them immediately, while others park them for later use. People also park domains to keep their competitors from using domain names that are similar to their domain name. For example, if you own the domain entitled “nonparkeddomain.com,” then you may want to purchase and park a domain entitled “non-parked-domain.com.” If your business begins to grow, your competitors may want to use the success of your business to their advantage, by buying a domain name that is similar to yours. Competitors may also squat on domains that are similar to yours to prevent you from buying them in the future.

Advertising with a Parked Domain

Monetizing parked domains has become a regular practice by many advertising agencies and domain registrars. Most of the parked domains have links on them that earn revenue for the registrar when someone accidentally types in the address of the parked domain.  Usually the parked domain is littered with links that are relevant to the name of the domain. For example, if the parked domain name is: “profits-from-parked-domains.com,” then you'll see a number of advertisements related to parked domains. This is primarily how advertising dollars are generated with parked domains.

Assuming Expired Domains

Many webmasters engage in a practice known as drop-catching, in which they assume a recently expired domain. This can be beneficial because the expired domain still has many of the incoming links that the old owner spent so much time building. These links offer a boost in search engine optimization without having to do the work that is usually involved in gathering backlinks. Using this method you can have a domain booming with traffic right after you've acquired it. It is important to set up the domain as soon as it expires, because the other webmasters that have linked to it will remove the outgoing links to the site once they realize it is no longer active. Therefore it is important to minimize the amount of time the domain is inactive, to retain all of the backlinks acquired by the previous owner.

Reselling Domains

Another way to profit from domain parking is to buy domains with attractive, easily brandable names and then sell them in the future to interested clients. This is a good way to make money from the needs of others. In fact, many companies buy domain names all day long, and then park them waiting on someone to come along who is interested in the domain name. This is definitely another way to monetize a parked domain,as some domain names even sell for several thousand dollars.

Tags: domain squatting,  domain sales,  domain registrars,  Domain Names,  assuming expired domains,  search engine optimization,  parked domains,  parked domain advertising,  drop catching domains