10.05.07

Make Money with Domain Parking

Posted in General at 8:00 am by Sam

Domain parking is a way to make money through the natural type-in traffic of your domain names. You essentially are using a service to put up ads on your unused domain name. You only need to make about $.60 a month per domain name for this to be a profitable enterprise (assuming you paid $7.00 for registration).

The most common type of domain name that gets type-in traffic is a typo domain name.

Typo Domain Names
A typo domain name is a domain that is based off a typo of another more popular site. For example, ituns.com is a typo of the popular itunes.com service from Apple. A site parked at ituns.com could probably expect to get a couple thousand visitors a month just from mistaken type-ins.

To find typos to register, you can use a Typo Generator Tool. People have been using this trick for years so it can be hard to find domain names, but if you keep up with fresh topics (e.g. search for typos on the name of an up and coming pop star) you might score big.

Mistaken Domain Names
Another popular domain name type for parking, are domain names people type-in when they are “guessing” at a web site URL for a product, company, or celebrity. For example, I might type-in orvitz.com after mishearing a commercial for orbitz.com. Similarly, I might type in downloaditunes.com, or zuneplayer.com, etc. These are harder to score with since you are guessing at the potential type-ins you will receive.

Domain Parking Services
Here are a few services that offer domain parking. Note that there are several services that only deal with business that require large quantities of domains before they will accept you into their program, this post sticks to the programs that do not have such limitations:

Sedo
Summary: Sedo is the 500lb gorilla that may have invented the process of domain parking (or at least created a simple interface for doing parking domains)
Pros: Easy, all you do is point your nameservers in the direction of Sedo and fill out a few fields in their sign up process and you are good to go; minimal technology skills required. Sedo will also allow you to list your domains in their domains for sale section which includes a simple traffic stat counter.
Cons: Sedo uses Google’s adsense platform (their website says that they use “partners such as Google”) to supply advertisements to parked domains, which adds another layer of intermediary (one more partner to take a slice of a pie that remains the same size). For example, Google and Sedo split revenue generated from advertisements and then Sedo splits revenue with you.

Domain Hop
Summary: Domain Hop is run by the people who bring you Kanoodle. Kanoodle is a search engine that sells pay per click advertisements in a similar fashion to Google.
Pros: There is no “middle man” as in the case of Sedo. Domain Hop claims on their homepage that their ads generate over five times the return of competitor products.
Cons: General assumption that Google has better optimization than smaller search engines like Kanoodle; therefore they may not be as good in targeting the correct ads to viewers which could result in a lower CPM.

NameDrive
Summary: NameDrive has a simple interface and an affiliate program you can use to sign up other users.
Pros: Monthly payouts, affiliate program to earn extra revenue over just domain parking, and domain stat tracking. You can also list your site for sale in the marketplace.
Cons: The web site does not divulge the exact revenue split you get for parking your domain name, which makes you wonder how much you’re really earning.

CashParking
Summary: CashParking is from GoDaddy. They are the ONLY domain parking services that CHARGES to use it. We wouldn’t recommend it.
Pros: Supposedly, this service can earn you higher CPMs as GoDaddy is out selling some direct ads for you and other sites in your genre.
Cons: This costs $3.99 a month. That ruins the whole “$0.60 a month will make your domain profitable” thing we talked about earlier. If you have a good reason to pay for domain parking through GoDaddy email us.

I currently have about 50 domains registered waiting to be developed. In the meantime, I have them listed on Sedo.com and they earn their keep! Good luck with your domain parking and let us know about your successes.

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