Parked Domains: Is It Worth It?

[John Taylor]

I've had mixed results from parked domains and I'm
wondering how many people have parked domains
and if they're making enough income from parking to
make it worthwhile.

So...

1. How many domain do you have parked?
2. Which domain parking company do you use?
3. Do you get sufficient return on your investment
   to cover your renewal costs and make a profit?

Thanks

John

[FBisMoney]

Hey John,

I once experimented in this field and had over 150 domains parked. I did not make even close to the amount needed to renew each of them. I found better use for them as link fodder for my sites or sometimes I built a nice landing page for a PPC campaign from them. If you have domains that are receiving a bunch of organic traffic though, then maybe domain parking can work out for you.

[phil.wheatley]

In my opinion, not only are they reeeaaaally annoying, but they don't resemble any kind of real business model. I can understand I guess if it was a site getting loads of hits, and you don't want to spend time doing anything with it, but, I just think your time would be better spent elsewhere? I'm sure Google will try their best to shut these down.

Of course, there are surely people who do make money with this system, but again, how long will that last. I used to make half decent money with adsense sites, which I guess is in the same vein, but again I got out of it because it just doesn't seem good long term, and also sucks for the poor visitor.

Phil

[tomw]

Hi John, good to see you.

At one point in the past, we had several hundred domains parked with Sedo. And guess what, they made buttons - and we had to share them. We made enough to cover renewals and privacy fees. Very little more.

Then I read a fabulous post here, by Keith Kogane a while back, about autoblogging. You may remember it got about 100,000 views, comments and thanks.

So I hired a couple of freelancers to turn those domains into autoblogs and they're ticking over nicely. Covered all costs and make healthy passive income day after day.

Every so often I get them looked at and, in true John Taylor fashion, the suitable candidates have Adsense boxes switched to ones containing affiliate products.

Maybe, a good idea is to follow you're own advice. And by the way, thanks for making that recording!



Tom

[Doug English]

I did the parked domains things for a while...had hundreds with most of the major players...TrafficZ, Sedo, etc...

From my experience, unless you are using some sophisticated automated software to immediately snatch up thousands upon thousands of expired domains that actually still get traffic, its just not very profitable. (Even then, its iffy, as most of the parking services rely on Google and Overture, which of course have dropped their payouts tremendously over the years, as anyone running Adsense ads can tell you).

Nowadays I just park domains that I don't really use anymore, and only with DotzUp.com. Their pages look more like 'real' websites, not just the typical parked domain pages. Typical parked pages will take soooooooo many visits to generate even one click (have YOU ever clicked on a link on a parked page?), but my Dotzup domains can sometimes get a decent clickthru rate. Also had a 12 dollar click w/ them once. Not the norm of course...I average about 30 cents or so.

They have some examples of their templates listed on their main site. Their site looks a little amateur compared to the biggies, but I've used 'em for a couple years now and they always pay.

[JayXtreme]

Surely...

The great JT doesn't park domains??..

How could you not be running small blogs with Adsense ads?... it is crying out for some of the Taylor testing magick!!



I currently have 0 domains parked, but over 130 that USED to be in line for parking. I would much rather get them rolling with a small chunk of content, adsense and some affiliate links...

Using various plugins, including this one for the affiliate links:

Easy WP Affiliate (<- not an affiliate link)

Peace

Jay

[John Taylor]

Tom,

Originally Posted by tomw

Every so often I get them looked at and, in true John Taylor fashion, the suitable candidates have Adsense boxes switched to ones containing affiliate products.

I've been "experimenting" and brainstorming and
I may have an even better solution. But there's
no point in having a solution of the problem no
longer exists.

Maybe, a good idea is to follow you're own advice. And by the way, thanks for making that recording!

Even my advice can be updated. ;-)

Glad you liked the MP3

Thanks

John

[tomw]

Originally Posted by John Taylor

Tom,

I've been "experimenting" and brainstorming and
I may have an even better solution. But there's
no point in having a solution of the problem no
longer exists.

Even my advice can be updated. ;-)

Glad you liked the MP3

I'm always interested in the results of your experiments...and updates to great advice.

The recording was from a while back. MP3? I thought you where still using Magnacord.



Tom

[iworkforthem]

Dun think it's worth it. Google probably won't crawl it that often since there's no content, it won't show up in SERP, and this translate to ZERO $$$. And you got to pay the bills at the end of each year.

Even if your domain is great, people will go see the ads, click one or two, and NEVER return again. What's the point really? You need to do it in masses.. As in thousand of domains to be profitable...

[FaJeeb]

I have 18, not nearly as many as some people. Mine exist as previous business ideas that I never got around to starting, some exist to reserve URL's I might want to use in the future, and the rest are "typos" that someone might make when trying to visit a high traffic website. Most have at least a little content, a couple are actually parked because I'm lazy and this thread has just reminded me to put content on them. My typo sites make the most money with the ads I have placed on them which is roughly $80-$100 a month out of the 6 typo sites, total. So, it's not the thousands and thousands a month other people say they are making, but it pays the renewal fee's.

[Nigel Greaves]

At one stage I had around 40 sites parked at Sedo and I barely covered the renewal fees. The only really good thing that came out of it was I sold a single word domain name for £3,000 net because it was seen on there.

So to answer your third point John, yes I have made a good profit overall but it's hardly a long term business model

Nigel

[aleksander]

i had parked domains and its not worth it... you can get money from parking if you got a domain which has a high traffic but tell me this who is going to visit a parked domain ?

[I.M.Retired]

John: I have had domains parked with Sedo an goDaddy for about 10 years now. For a while I was making about $20 - $30 on Sedo. The domains listed with goDaddy sold better and for higher prices, for some reason.

Now my income from Sedo is about $0.12 a month. And I have some good keyword domains listed with them. Definitely not worth it at all!

So what I am doing is turning the parked domains one by one into niches site using Big Mike's Easy Niche builder software. It's fast, easy and effective.

(Now, don't ask me to see a site, however as everything I have created to date has been sold. But I have some more domains on the drawing board, almost ready to publish.)

[Oscar D]

Good day,

Good question John and a good thread to help others.

My experience with domain parking has not been good. I have about 5 or 6 domains parked at the moment all with Google Adsense Domain parking and so far I have earned small change, nothing decent at all. I have even parked some great domains that are one word and valuable, but with little success.

To answer your question about the return, well at the moment I am not even earning enough off domain parking to pay off one domain. So, definitely NO! I am not even covering costs - let alone making a profit.

Well in my opinion and experience I believe that domain parking can be successful but I think it depends on the domain and the niche of the domain.

So far I have not had any luck with domain parking but in my opinion a domain that is parked at least has the opportunity to make something, it’s better than just leaving the domain blank.

Hope that helps

[Gene Pimentel]

John,

The formula you must follow to make domain parking profitable is this. Continually invest in domains (after doing your homework to find strong keywords), park them for a few months, keep those that are generating enough profit to cover the registration fees, and sell off or ditch the rest. Generally, 5% of the domains you register will be very clearly profitable to park. The rest are just clutter. It's like panning for gold. Keep the real gold, toss out the sand. It's an expensive process, but as you build your portfolio of parked domains, it is indeed profitable.

Register 100 domains = -$800
Keep 5 of those domains, which can yield $100 or more per year in parking = +$500
Sell off about half the remaining domains at cost (the other half will never sell) = +$400
Break even in 1 year. Year 2 earn $500 with no work.
Repeat this cycle every month (100 domains per month) = $6,000 passive annual income.

Of course, the "100" can be any number you want. 1,000 domain registrations per month can yield $60,000 passive per year.

Out of the 1,000 per month you're only keeping around 50 and dropping the rest.

I have domains earning me $5 to $10 per day (each). I've received as much as $18 PER ONE CLICK on a parked domain. The older they get, the better they perform (generally). They often get indexed. If you have a strong keyword domains, type-in traffic will account for much of the profit.

In my experience, the best places to park are Fabulous.com and Parked.com. Be aware that Fabulous.com requires that you have a portfolio of at least 50 quality domains.

With Parked.com, you can edit the parked page. Customize it. Add an article or other useful content.

[John Taylor]

Gene,

Thanks for such a detailed response and for laying
out a realistic strategy.

Your approach is not disimilar from my own, my
monetization model isn't the same. But I don't get
emotionally attached to domains.. they don't pay..
they go. ;-)

Thanks

John

[Chuck Underwood]

I had two domains that I purchased just to experiment with parking on Sedo last year. One make nothing the other that had an adult term in the domain made about $20 a month with no promotion.

I could see where if you had enough it would be worth it. The problem is I am sure that if I had used either domain with some content I would have made more in the long run.

Chuck

[TristanPerry]

Some parked domains earn $x,xxx per month. Others earn $0.00 per year.

It entirely depends on your traffic, your domain, your keyword's niche (etc).

On average though, it's pretty difficult to find a good hand reg where you can make a profit from parking it (since very few hand regges will get any good traffic nowadays)

As mentioned above though, usually parking is an 'inefficient' way to make revenue though - developing a mini-site with well placed adverts probably would generate more revenue than a simple parked page.

[tomw]

Hi Gene,

Thanks for sharing your insight. I just have a quick question that might spark additional discussion related to John's original topic.

Now that ICANN are soon to be assuming complete governance over all things domain name. There have been many rumblings, speculations and allusions around the web concerning potential plans to impose registration fees in proportion to an arbitrary valuation of the domain. We all know how crazy these can be.

How badly do you think the domain marketing, parked profiteering and indeed every other domain name related business will suffer? In fact, just how seriously will this hit almost anyone that owns and uses domain names when renewal fees could well be outside of their reach and domains may literally be sold from under them?

Are you concerned? Any further knowledge or insight?

Tom

[mhartmann]

Point the DNS to your host, post a bit of PLR/Googled related content on each site, link from a blog, let them age.

You can always have a big "BUY THIS DOMAIN" graphic or something, but even if you just have a one-page setup that is INDEXED, the domains should be worth a whole lot more. If you had, say, five weight loss (for example) domains with an indexed page with relevant content, and these sites had been indexed for 2 years, many people would buy them off you for $400-500.

These kinds of sites are invaluable for SEO efforts as they can be used as network sites to push up an existing site or a site to be launched, even though you haven't done anything with them in 2 years.

Parked domains are great, but why not do this as well? I'm sure you could get some extra cash out of the domains. You have the hosting already anyway.

[JayXtreme]

Hi Tom.. I know your questions were for Gene... but that's never stopped a manc answering before

Originally Posted by tomw

How badly do you think the domain marketing, parked profiteering and indeed every other domain name related business will suffer? In fact, just how seriously will this hit almost anyone that owns and uses domain names when renewal fees could well be outside of their reach and domains may literally be sold from under them?

It won't... ICANN will be making BIG moves in that side of the industry, but the "rumblings" we hear are like RedTop newspaper bull****...

It ain't gonna happen, I'd be willing to place a very large sum with my bookie on that one

Are you concerned?

Nope!

Have a great day

Peace

Jay

[tomw]

Thanks for the reply, Jay.

Forthright and full of down to earth nay, salt of the earth, Northern phlegmatism.

I'll take it on board.

Aw...I know it's tough on you Salford-supporting folk - says a born and bred Rafa-loving scouser.

Only ten days to Torres time again.



Tom

[Gene Pimentel]

Hey Tom,

I'll echo what Jay has said... rumblings are just rumblings. Whatever ICANN decides to do, I believe they'll do it responsibly (naive? maybe, but I have seen no reason to doubt).

Even if something this drastic was to become the norm, the domain selling industry will stay intact. Pricing, whether high or low, effects everyone on the same level, across the board. $8 registrations yield a lot of $30 sales. $500 registrations will yield domain sales that are priced accordingly. Yes, there would be fewer sales, but at better profit margins. The domains would be more likely to end up in the hands of the end-user to a much greater extent, rather than being stockpiled in portfolios. Naturally, the parking industry would collapse if this scenario played out, but domain sales would continue to flourish.

It's a moot point though, because it's not likely to happen. If it does, it's just a matter of readjusting sails.

[Richard Tunnah]

Originally Posted by Gene Pimentel

John,

The formula you must follow to make domain parking profitable is this. Continually invest in domains (after doing your homework to find strong keywords), park them for a few months, keep those that are generating enough profit to cover the registration fees, and sell off or ditch the rest. Generally, 5% of the domains you register will be very clearly profitable to park. The rest are just clutter. It's like panning for gold. Keep the real gold, toss out the sand. It's an expensive process, but as you build your portfolio of parked domains, it is indeed profitable.

Register 100 domains = -$800
Keep 5 of those domains, which can yield $100 or more per year in parking = +$500
Sell off about half the remaining domains at cost (the other half will never sell) = +$400
Break even in 1 year. Year 2 earn $500 with no work.
Repeat this cycle every month (100 domains per month) = $6,000 passive annual income.

Of course, the "100" can be any number you want. 1,000 domain registrations per month can yield $60,000 passive per year.

Out of the 1,000 per month you're only keeping around 50 and dropping the rest.

I have domains earning me $5 to $10 per day (each). I've received as much as $18 PER ONE CLICK on a parked domain. The older they get, the better they perform (generally). They often get indexed. If you have a strong keyword domains, type-in traffic will account for much of the profit.

In my experience, the best places to park are Fabulous.com and Parked.com. Be aware that Fabulous.com requires that you have a portfolio of at least 50 quality domains.

With Parked.com, you can edit the parked page. Customize it. Add an article or other useful content.

That's how I use my parked domains Gene. I see it as covering the cost of my domain renewal only. I think over the last couple of years the commissions from parking a domain seems to have dropped so I'm switching a lot of mine over to a static on topic blog with clickbank/affliate links.

Rich

[Richard Tunnah]

Originally Posted by tomw

Thanks for the reply, Jay.

Forthright and full of down to earth nay, salt of the earth, Northern phlegmatism.

I'll take it on board.

Aw...I know it's tough on you Salford-supporting folk - says a born and bred Rafa-loving scouser.

Only ten days to Torres time again.



Tom

Well said Tom! Didn't know you were a fellow 'true' red. :-)

Rich

[Gene Pimentel]

Originally Posted by Richard Tunnah

That's how I use my parked domains Gene. I see it as covering the cost of my domain renewal only. I think over the last couple of years the commissions from parking a domain seems to have dropped so I'm switching a lot of mine over to a static on topic blog with clickbank/affliate links.

Rich

It's almost always best to build a quick mini-site on a domain name rather than park it. But when you have thousands of domain names, parking is an "instant" solution to try to get the domains to pay for themselves. Parking requires no time involvement. Developing the domains as you go is absolutely the best strategy.

[JayXtreme]

"True Red"

BLEH!!



I'll see both of y'all, drying your eyes on the 25th of October when the Torres train is de-railed! .... w00t!

Peace

Jay

[Steven Wagenheim]

John, I honestly don't even see the point of a parked domain. Why not just
put something on it, like and article related to the keyword, and some Adsense
if nothing else?

I've never done anything with parked domains and honestly don't see the
point to them.

[Kay King]

I use a simple variation of Gene's method - I'm not in the domain selling business but found parking new domains I haven't had time to do anything with often identifies domains I should be developing.

If I park a domain and it's getting traffic - I could have a winner of a site and that has proven to be true several times.

kay

[TristanPerry]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

John, I honestly don't even see the point of a parked domain. Why not just
put something on it, like and article related to the keyword, and some Adsense
if nothing else?

I've never done anything with parked domains and honestly don't see the
point to them.

Sometimes you get large domain companies who run automated scans and algorithms and register any domains that may get traffic. Clearly (since they may own tens of thousands of domains), they'd just slap up a parking page and be done with it.

This is lazy and they'd get more money per domain by developing it, but sometimes large portfolio owners simply haven't got the time/motivation to start developing them.

(Which is short-sighted IMO, I agree with you, but I *can* sort of see why some people/companies may do it)

[John Taylor]

Steven,

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

I've never done anything with parked domains and honestly don't see the
point to them.

It's a numbers game. With a parked domain
there is zero hosting cost. There is zero
setting up and maintenance time. The only
cost is the annual domain renewal fee.

One reason for parking domains is to allow
them to "age" before developing them.

When I had over 3,500 domains, parking
was a useful short to medium term option.

John

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by TristanPerry

Sometimes you get large domain companies who run automated scans and algorithms and register any domains that may get traffic. Clearly (since they may own tens of thousands of domains), they'd just slap up a parking page and be done with it.

This is lazy and they'd get more money per domain by developing it, but sometimes large portfolio owners simply haven't got the time/motivation to start developing them.

(Which is short-sighted IMO, I agree with you, but I *can* sort of see why some people/companies may do it)

Okay, what I don't understand though is how you generate any income off
of a parked domain. Where does the money come from?

[tomw]

The parking company redirects from your domain to a "parking page" full of Adsense or other ads. Revenue from clicks is shared between them and the domain owner. Ever thought of a great domain name that you'd like to buy, typed it in and thought, "Oh bugger!" because someone is using it as a template page full of links - that's probably a parking page.

Tom

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by tomw

The parking company redirects from your domain to a "parking page" full of Adsense or other ads. Revenue from clicks is shared between them and the domain owner. Ever thought of a great domain name that you'd like to buy, typed it in and thought, "Oh bugger!" because someone is using it as a template page full of links - that's probably a parking page.

Tom

Thanks Tom. Well, then to me it seems as if the only way this can be really
profitable is if:

1. You have a ton of them.
2. They are for absolutely killer niches and keywords that get mega searches.

Otherwise, I don't see the point of wasting time on it.

[tomw]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Thanks Tom. Well, then to me it seems as if the only way this can be really
profitable is if:

1. You have a ton of them.
2. They are for absolutely killer niches and keywords that get mega searches.

Otherwise, I don't see the point of wasting time on it.

Bingo! But you can, as has been stated, make a handsome passive income if you do.

[Update] Check out Gene' thread in the War Room for further info...



Tom

[madison_avenue]

Originally Posted by Kay King

I use a simple variation of Gene's method - I'm not in the domain selling business but found parking new domains I haven't had time to do anything with often identifies domains I should be developing.

If I park a domain and it's getting traffic - I could have a winner of a site and that has proven to be true several times.

kay

I found this useful too. I had 15 domains which I parked with basic keywords on the landing page , 5 of them got decent traffic and the other 10 hardly any. I renewed the 5 that got traffic and discarded the other 10.

I now see parking as a good method to see if a domain is feasible or not and now sometimes park them before even getting hosting.

[Big JP]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

John, I honestly don't even see the point of a parked domain. Why not just
put something on it, like and article related to the keyword, and some Adsense
if nothing else?

I've never done anything with parked domains and honestly don't see the
point to them.

I agree with this, hosting shouldn't be a problem if you have a reseller account, which cost pennies these days. I would rather stick my own ads, links etc. keep 100% and at least have a better chance of not looking like a useless piece of space on the net...

JP

[TristanPerry]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Okay, what I don't understand though is how you generate any income off
of a parked domain. Where does the money come from?

Yep as above, it's from the adverts on the 'site'.

For example, Parked.com link up with Yahoo (they have an ad network), so they show Yahoo-powered adverts.

So in effect, a parking company is a "middle man" - it displays adverts on the domain, and when the ads are clicked it gives the revenue (well, a share of it) onto the owner of the domain using that parking company.

It's just like a webmaster placing Google Ads on a mini-site (but of course a parked page has little if any content; it's a "throw enough traffic at it and hope you get some clicks/revenue" solution, IMO)

As you say though, it's not a too efficient method. I know of people who make $xxx per day solely from parking, although I do wonder why they don't develop which may get them around (say) $1k per day. I know I would

[Anna Johnson]

Hi John,

Looks like my experience is very different to most of the people who've commented on this thread.

In short, domaining - specifically domain parking - has become a significant part of our business and we are not only making a substantial income from parking, but the ROIs are exceptional. Actually, my husband and I joke that there simply isn't any other kind of investment that offers the same kinds of ROIs we are getting from our domains (e.g. ROIs of 100%+ in just a few weeks or months).

We park our domains with lots of different parking companies (Sedo, Parked, etc - we actually test domains with different companies to see which perform better) and we specifically go for quality, not quantity. We follow a systematic/formulaic approach to buying domains: we only look for expired domains that meet certain criteria, value them based on a specific valuation formula, and then only buy them (at auction, private sale, or whatever) if we can buy them for the same or less than our estimated value.

Why do we park, rather than build sites, on these domains? It goes back to the ROI. We simply generate a higher ROI by buying more domains and parking them, than by buying fewer domains and building sites on them (yes, even when outsourcing/automating site construction, article writing, etc).

We do have a ton of domains we've developed (or are developing) and haven't given up on the idea of building out affiliate sites, etc. but so far, buying and parking domains has ended up delivering a higher overall ROI than building affiliate sites, etc.

I should say that I was highly skeptical of domaining when my husband started doing it. But the results speak for themselves. Now we are not only heavily involved in domaining, but we are even developing a new service for the domaining community.

I hope this gives you another perspective, John. To me, domaining is very much like stock trading: you need a good system... and you need to stick to that system. Otherwise, it will be time and money wasted. But I can assure you that domaining can be extremely profitable if you know what you're doing.