Teen Domainer » parking

What to do with Your Unused Domain Names: Part I

Brian — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:22:08 +0000

This is going to be part of a series of post about what to do with you unused domain names. When I say unused domains I am talking about domains that are not developed into full sites, this includes sites that you are parking or selling to endusers. If anyone has any things that they do with their unused domains send me an email and I would be glad to mention it in a post.

Make Sure Your Domains Show Something!

The other day, it was 2 days ago I was looking through my Godaddy and Moniker accounts and I was looking for which sites I am going to work on next. While I was doing that, I realized that I have too many domains to work on right now and all of the domains just point to nothing. Many of them were even on godaddy parking pages earning them money!

I own many generic exact match keyword and product domains, but before the day before yesterday I was under the assumption that parking was dead and no one used direct navigation anymore. I thought that everyone in the world was like me and they just went to google for everything. But I decided to try parking all of the domains for some strange reason and boy was I ever surprised.

Using the bulk change interfaces in both accounts I was able to change the nameservers in about 5 seconds to the parking nameservers at namedrive, it was the only place I had an account from a while ago and I am now looking around for a different parking provider. I have heard some great things about Parked.com and I think I will try them out. At namedrive I was able to move all of me names that I am not working on to a 1 page lander and enter custom keywords and headers. The sites look ok but that is not the important part of the story.

When I woke up the next morning my account had over 50 unique visits and some ok earnings close to $1. I guess that direct navigation is not dead and people do still type in.

$1 a day may not seem like a lot of money and I am not saying it is, but that's around $30 a month. $30 pays for over 4 domains renewals or registration and then hosting every month. This is money I am doing almost nothing to get and it helps me pay for my domain portfolio.

If you have names that are just sitting idle, I would suggest you just move them over to a parking page to give them a try. I had no idea that theses names were getting any traffic and I was going to drop some of them soon. Now instead of me paying to renew my domains they are working to pay for themselves. I will talk more about this later.

And the best part is now I can list them all for sale. On namedrive I select to have a message show up on the site that says contact us this domain may be for sale. This way if endusers visit my sites they have an easy to contact me.

I am by no way saying parking is new or it is the best way to make money in the domain industry. This post is more of a reminder to domainers to think every once and a while and not to possibly just let a name and money go to waste.

I would love to hear what you have to say please leave your comments below.

Remember this is only Part I be sure to check back soon for Part 2 which will hit the RSS sometime soon!

What can we learn from WhyPark.com and Parked.com?

Brian — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:32:02 +0000

Most of you know by now that Parked.com has purchased WhyPark.com. I do not like to report on old news there are lots of bloggers who do a great job at domaining news I just don’t have time for it all. I just want to point out how smart of a move it was for Parked.com and what we as domainers and business minded people should take away from it.

Anyone who has been in the industry for more than a few months has witnesses the slow but steady away from domaining parking. When I first started domaining which was way back around 2004 there was not a huge amount of chatter about minisites. Now it seems that almost every post is about a new minisite service or development. Over the past few years parking revenue has declined greatly and Search engines and people are getting smarter and not visiting their pages or indexing them well.

I have an account at Whypark and plan on using it very soon. I have only heard great things about the site from everyone. I applaud Parked.com for going out and making a statement purchase that says We understand that people are moving away from parking and our service. We need to do something about it, Whypark has had great reviews and it makes perfect sense for them to incorporate them into their business. Parked.com gets an established site that they can build on to make the premier alternative to domain parking. Whypark users should see an increase in services which is a plus to them.

What can we learn from this?

When you notice a change, do not try and fight it. If you try and fight the change and do not adapt, you will end up being left behind. My advice is to embrace change as long as you believe it is the right change to make, don’t change because everyone is doing it. We all need to be proactive in our business and not just let things about us while we sit passively on the sidelines.

Have a great day and take a look at the traffic auction on Domaining.com today should be fun to watch.

Time to Get Serious About Domaining

Brian — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:35:49 +0000

Now is the time to get serious about you domaining “hobby” or side job. I am not telling people to quit their day jobs, just to change a few things about the way they handle their domain names. In these times is simply makes sense to take better care of your domains and be smarter about your business. People do not need to look at the economy as a negative, but a positive change that will present them with new opportunities and ideas.

Take a look at all of your domains and make sure you know where all of them are registered and when they expire. Always keep a portfolio up online on your own personal site and put the link around. Take a look over all of your domain names and make sure you renew the names you want to keep and then decide what to do with the names you want to drop. Do not simply let the names drop unless they are worthless. Put them up for sale at Namepros in the Auction section or even the NP Sales and try and get a few dollars to cover your registration fees for your other names. You can also put the names up at eBay.com. I like to sell on eBay and it’s easy to do and does not cost too much. Even if you sell a few names for only $10 that still covers registration and hosting for a few other names.

Next, review all of your names that you want to keep. None of them should be blank pages, at the very least put up a for sale page with a contact us link. Think about developing 1 or 2 of your best names into established websites that will gain traffic and can be resold in the future. The rest of your names should be put with a parking or mini site service like Noomle.com or WhyPark.com. You can also have people create custom mini sites for around $50 just take a look at Namepros Freelance Mini Site Creators. They do all of the work for you including logos and articles and SEO. All you need to do is write a few words about each site and you will be indexed in the Search Engines and start gaining traffic. Your income from ads may not be huge but hopefully it will cover the registration fee until you sell the name.

Using this method you should still spend time promoting your sites to end users but now at least you are earning money to cover cost. This way if you do not make any big sales you did not lose money, you made a little and your sites also gained value with content, traffic and income.

One last point is to reach out to the community, go and make a few friends who own sites like yours and talk about what you can be doing better. Collaboration is one of the best ways to learn.

In these times develop a long term plan where you write down your plans for the next 6 months. What do you want to start and what do you want to sell. I would recommend developing a few websites and growing your traffic. You should look at your financial situation and if you have some spare cash now is the time to invest. There are some really solid names for sale right now and if you feel that you could get a great deal and develop or resell the name later on go ahead and buy it. Now is the time to look at long term investments in the domain marketplace. So go ahead and get serious about domaining.