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Does Domain Name Parking Still Work Today?

This week includes a double dose of DomainSherpa!

In this excerpt of DNAcademy office hours, Michael Cyger walks students through two questions:

1. Does domain name parking still work today?

2. What types of domain names produce revenue with domain name parking?

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Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/does-domain-name-parking-still-work-today/

Is domain name parking dead, or does it still work today? Watch this to find out.

There are four types of domain names that make money with parking.

There are domains names that naturally get type-in traffic because people expect there to be something there. I get that with instruct.com. People think like I want to learn something I’m going to go to instruct.com. That’s the first type, they expect something to be there so they type it in.

The second one are typo domains. I typed in “amaxon” trying to get to amazon.com and I typed in amaxon.com. That’s gray, dirty trademark, or typo traffic. There are domain investors that buy those domains and park them offshore and they’re under whois privacy protection and Amazon doesn’t even know that they’re losing traffic to them.

The third type are adult domains, you know the sex.com, —-.com whatever you want, people are typing it in, sort of goes back to this first type (type-in domains).

Then there’s fourth type which are domains that have a back link profile. So they used to be operating websites, they used to have a ton of links coming in and even though the website has gone out of business. The domain name may have auctioned may have sold to somebody else, its still going to have hundreds of thousands of links on other websites and people don’t go back and update their websites, their posts, their articles, you know things like that so it can have a lot of back links coming in.

[Four fingers in the air] I’m waving at you right now.

And so given that you need to examine whether your domain name fits that profile. If its not a killer single word domain name, its not a great typo traffic, it’s not adult traffic, and its doesn’t have a link profile, you’re likely not going to get very much traffic.

And even instruct.com and other keywords that I have like diagnose.com they don’t get direct type-in traffic. They don’t get very much and when I say very much, let me quantify it. They don’t get more than 50 type-ins a day. Probably around 20, 30 something like that. That number of type-ins isn’t going to generate enough parking for me. I think maybe I would make $10, $15 a month off one of those domains diagnose.com and to me its not worth that low amount of revenue when I can pass up the opportunity to have a really clear landing page that says the domain is for sale and try and sell it to an end user who is typing it in.

Alright, so for you is it still a viable option? Yes it’s still viable option if you buy the right type of domain names.

Let me do a share screen, there is my screen. I’m going to maximize it, go over to DNAcademy. If you come down to the webinar section down here in the reference and this is just in the newsletter, and you go to view archived webinars.

This comparable sales right here 43things.com case study. AbdulBasit, I hope you watch this, it’s not only six minutes, AbdulBasit sold a domain for $24,000. It was called 43things.com. It was a task management, bucket list sort of app. It was really popular, didn’t charge anybody anything so a lot of people used it and it had a back line profile of hundreds of thousands of links such that he made 200 to 300 bucks a month off all of those people clicking to 43things and then him displaying parking.

So, you know there is an example of does parking still work? Yeah, you bet, in the right situations.

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Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/does-domain-name-parking-still-work-today/

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35 Responses to “Does Domain Name Parking Still Work Today?”

  1. Dee says:

    Domain parking is not generating much money to domainers anymore since the best, single and popular domains have been registered.The most effective way now is to clearly have a For Sale Landing Page for your domains to sell quickly.Check out my website.
    http://www.doticom.com

  2. Steve says:

    Thanks, Michael, for the great video! I enjoy your videos, and I’m a student at DNAcademy (taking a while to finish the mid-course test.)

    Can you recommend a good step-by-step tutorial for identifying domains that have good parking potential, i.e., traffic, or a good probability at least that they might have some traffic? Is it as simple as checking out estibot and SimilarWeb as per the video, and then purchase inexpensive domains (hopefully) identified in that manner? Is there more to it than that?

    Thanks

    1. Hi Steve,

      Traffic domains are a topic that clearly involve domains. But like development (also involving domains), I think the topic is one that is sufficiently different valuation, buying and selling — and one that I have not developed resources around.

      There are a great number of cons around traffic domains, and traffic can vanish very quickly. If I put something together, you’ll be the first to know as a DNAcademy student.

      There is nothing that I can recommend at this time. Sorry.

      Best,
      Michael

      1. Steve says:

        Thanks Michael, I understand. I know parking is a bit of a marginal topic these days, and not strictly domaining. I am fascinated by how these various systems and methods work. There’s plenty in the buy/sell realm to keep me busy for now.

  3. Matt Wegrzyn says:

    Slightly late to comment here.

    We categorize domains into 4 categories:

    -Generic type-in (you type hotels.com into the browser expecting a site for hotels)
    -Expired traffic (those with backlinks)
    -Mistype traffic (keep in mind, doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Can be leaked traffic like Mike has mentioned from .io, .net, .org, etc. Can even be a generic term in itself).
    -Paid traffic (arbitrage, email marketing, incentivized, etc).

    We don’t classify adult as a seperate category because it’ll always fall into one of these 4. Most traffic/revenue is from the last 3 these days. Even generic domains that get traffic usually are a result of a mistype of another generic domain or from back links.

    Just like the big domainers that have portfolios of tens of thousands of domains for sale, there are those that have tens of thousands of revenue domains. Usually those will be either expired traffic names or mistype names. These domain owners are few and in between, but those that do have such portfolios do make tens of thousands per month.

    Lastly, there is paid traffic. Some parking companies do allow this and it is a revenue driver for many parking companies as of lately. Some parking companies only exist because of paid traffic.

    In the past a lot of factors contributed to increased earnings, such as traffic from search engines which is no longer the case with parked domains.

    1. Thanks for your input, Matt.

      The adult traffic is definitely the same as (and is most often) generic traffic. I’m in full agreement. I think I was just in a train-of-thought regarding adult traffic being different from typical generic traffic, and there are some parking providers that do not support adult domains.

      I didn’t even consider paid traffic / arbitrage domains, so thanks for providing that extra insight!

      1. Matt Wegrzyn says:

        Mike, I guess the adult can go either way depending on how you look at it! Definitely in terms of cpc it is a category of its own! :-)

        Good seeing you at TDC btw!

  4. I can tell you in 2011 I was making $30,000 a month average in parking. Yes, $30k a month with 6,000 names at the time. Now I make about $1k on 500 names I have with ParkingCrew.com now. So let me tell you what pays now and paid so well in 2011.

    1. .info names are equal to .com in advertisers approving premium click $$$ for like names I have found based on my success. I have one name I regged for $2.99 at GD about six months ago and it has made $380 by itself.

    2. The $380 revenue in the aforementioned was related to a business sector. I will not post the name here but it is related to Structured Settlements.

    3. Her are the categories that pay the most and where I make 90% of my parking revenue from:

    – Annuities
    – Structured Settlements – .info and .com only (highest approved payouts from advertisers)
    – Mesothelioma Law
    – Local meothelioma names in large cities near epicents of most meso cases. An example would be something like: houstonmesotheliomalawyers.whatever

    It does not matter how long or short the domain name. Generally, I would keep my industry knowledge like this too myself. However, we are a brotherhood in a sense so sharing this info helps others.

    The two top parking companies I like are http://www.smartname.com and parkingcrew.com. Both of these folks share premium payouts for clicks. Parking them with huge sites that sell names will result in pennies, not dollars.

    Hope this helps…. visit me as well at http://www.dotbrandable.com.

    1. Thanks for this information, Bruce. I am sure it will help other investors.

  5. hu guo says:

    Today registered Estubot, after the success of the payment, without any reaction, the user does not exist to display the user does not exist.

  6. Lucas says:

    Michael, great video! Thank you!

    There was a time in the domain industry, around 2010, where people talked about parking revenues having fallen off a cliff with respect to 2006.

    The believed reason for declining parking revenues was the up-stream ad provider was “pocketing more than they should” through their monopoly in the online ad space.

    A disruption was expected to come to change all that. Interestingly, in 2016 parking revenues are 80% down what they where in 2010. So I guess we fell off a couple of cliffs more!

    What happened to that theory of the up-stream ad provider monopoly and the disruption to come??

    1. Hi Lucas,

      I agree. From what I hear, those that were into monetization through domain parking years ago have said it has fallen off a cliff.

      However, if you can find and buy domains inexpensively that produce revenue, it can be a model that is sustainable.

      For example, I own three domains that I used to have developed that are now parked. I could have easily dropped them (if I didn’t know about domain parking), and someone else could have picked them up on the drop for cheap. They make me about $100 a month.

      Could this be a business model for investors? You bet. It just takes some research and due diligence, along with some trial and error, to build a system.

      I have no idea what happened to the disruption. Sometimes things do work as planned, I guess.

      Thanks for watching and posting a comment.

      Have a great weekend,
      Michael

      1. Care to share? says:

        Care to share what those domains are?

        I’d love to see a real-world example.

        More importantly: Is the value of those domains so high that even $100 a month is a poor use for them?

        1. Hi anonymous,

          Here’s an example:
          https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=advancedsurvey.com&IndexDataSource=F

          Check out the Wayback Machine and you can get an idea of how I used to operate this site pre-Survey Monkey and a slew of other competitors.

          If someone wants to come forward and make me an offer to buy the domain name and make use of it, then I’m all for the discussion. What, specifically, are you suggesting when you made your last statement.

          Parking is a a great, no-effort way to continue to monetize this asset.

          Hope that helps,
          Michael

  7. Talbea says:

    I was in a hurry earlier sorry for the misspelled words, back a long time ago you did not have such stringent rules with Adsense so I was shocked to see that I could not get an account without creating my own site, this is strange to me, so I guess you are saying Google is doing this becuase of HIjacking of domain names? There are other parking companies that do not require an Adsense account so I guess I have a choice. Why would a parking compnay only pay out through Adsense accounts?

  8. Xavier.xyz says:

    A million thanks for this!

    A lot of new investors contact me to get more information about domain parking. Now all I have to do is redirect them to this video.

    There’s one important thing to add.

    Domain parking can reduce your chance of wining an UDRP. If your domain might be similar to a TM, don’t allow ads related to the TM.

    I avoid parking now to protect my domains from domain hijacking and to attract potentiel buyers.

    1. Great point, Xavier.

      That’s the case that I mentioned with Amaxon (as purely an example in the video). There are certain words that are trademarked that people mistype. If the owner parks a domain name and benefits financially from that parking revenue — by, say, displaying an ad for that company — then that can make it more likely to lose a UDRP.

      Anyone that wants to learn more about UDRP can start here:
      Your first step is to become educated. I suggest you familiarize yourself with trademark law and these shows might assist you in your journey:
      https://www.domainsherpa.com/david-weslow-wileyrein-interview/
      https://www.domainsherpa.com/do-not-register-trademark-domains/
      https://www.domainsherpa.com/david-weslow-udrp-interview/
      https://www.domainsherpa.com/howard-neu-udrp-interview/

      I’m not sure why parking would make your domain more likely to be hijacked. Can you explain that further?

      I definitely agree with you that if there’s a better chance of selling the domain name, then a for-sale landing page should be used instead of a parking + for-sale landing page. Some people are easily confused, and the quickest way to a sale is to be clear with your intent.

      Thanks for watching and commenting!

      1. Xavier.xyz says:

        Michael,

        I was referring to domain hijacking by the use of udrp. I try to avoid giving any reason to a company to think about filing a udrp on random domains.

        Thank you for your time and hard work :)

        1. Ah, right: RDNH (reverse domain name hijacking). Your comment makes sense now. Thanks!

  9. Talbea says:

    Thanks! So I wanted to use a certain parking company (one you had an interview with, cause I liked what they where doing) and I can’t “park” mine until I have an Adsense account. I can’t get an Adsense account unless I do “full sites” of each domain name! I wanted to just park them and also put a for sale sign on the parked page which this company allows and they are the best for parking! But they will only do pay outs if you have a scenes account! See my dilemma…
    Plus most likely I will start buying through this compnay. I am not naming names but they did and interview with you, I followed up and really like what I saw so I was going to do it it then got blocked by not having the absence account and as I remember I used to have an account with them a long time ago and back then this was not a requirement, (Adsense )

    1. Hi Talbea,

      I think you’re misunderstanding what you’re saying. No parking company will require you to have a Google Adsense account to use their platform. That’s what they do — determine what ads will best monetize on your domain name, then serve the ads through their Google/Bing relationship.

      I suggest you try to clarify the situation, or pick another parking company from the list I provided to get started. Try Bodis (https://www.bodis.com/); I believe there’s no approval process to get onto their platform, and you can get started immediately.

      Best,
      Michael

  10. Talbea says:

    Just wondering, for newbies, doesn’t Google Adsense now require you to have a fully developed site in order to get an account?

    Unfortunalty I do not have a Google Adsense account and when I went to get one becuase that was a requirement of one parking compnay I wanted use I was on a dead end. Granted I am a newbie at this, I got started a while ago becuase I bought some domains from Godaddy and just wanted to sell, now I find the whole thing very intriguing

    1. Good question, Talbea.

      Google Adsense is for website monetization. Here at DomainSherpa, we typically talk about domain name investing, management and monetization (although I have done a few interviews on development). The two areas are clearly related, but require a different skill set and experience.

      So, with domain names monetization, Google Adsense won’t work directly (unless you have a massive portfolio and have a relationship with them) — because most investors that have hundreds of domain names specialize in investing, not development.

      However, if your domain names receive type-in traffic, there exists a service called Parking that will create micro sites or single page websites that display advertising, usually through a relationship with Google or Bing.

      Here’s a resource page I have listing the largest domain parking companies: https://www.domainsherpa.com/domain-name-parking-companies/

      AbdulBasit lists a few more further down in the comments.

      I hope that clarifies why you can’t use Google Adsense on an undeveloped domain name of yours.

  11. Tony says:

    Good stuff in this video.

    I’d like to add a 5th category. I have 10,000 dotcoms with some one worders, two worders and three worders. But the domains that make the most from parking are dotcoms whose .net, .org and/or ccTLD’s are fully developed. Some of these make $200-300/mo with the highest single day revenue from one being $299.15. I have screenshots to prove this. Incidentally, it is a 3-worder so shorter is not necessarily better all the time.

    1. Great addition, Tony.

      I fully agree with you. In fact, there can be ton of “domain leakage” that happens from non-dot-com domains, such as .io, .net and .org to the .com version of the second level domain. It all depends on how popular the domain is, of course.

      Thanks for your comment.

  12. Michael Lin says:

    Double bonus this week! Thanks, Michael. Great vid.

  13. John says:

    Really good 5 minutes worth there Michael, thanks for sharing.

    The excert where you say that having a few dollars revenue vs a dedicated parking page is absolutely on the money. Although it’s something I’ve learned myself the hard way.

    When I started out the attraction of making money whilst the domains I owned were parked up seemed a lucrative proposition. Several months later and I think I’ve made enough to buy a coffee. And that’s from about 100 domains.

    So yeah, very much about the right kinds of domains. Just to add to it, in my experience, non .com domains get almost zero type in traffic, especially the new GTLD’s. I have a few .xyz domains that have yet to register a single visit!

    Cheers.

    1. Many of my new gTLDs have yet to receive a single type-in as well. You’re not alone. :)

      Thanks for posting a comment. I think many people who used to make a nice income with parking are facing the same issue — revenue has dried up and they’re receiving only a fraction (less than 5%) of what they used to in the heydays.

      Thanks for watching and taking a moment to post a comment.

      1. Ryan says:

        If you own a good new gTLD where the SLD compliments the TLD to form a highly searched for term, you will have type-in traffic – in many cases in excess of the .com equivalent domain.

        I have said elsewhere that I own ********.Flights and ********Flights.com – the new gTLD has twice the type-in traffic of the .com domain. The reason for this, I believe, is people are searching for “******** Flights” on their phone and connecting the two words with a . rather than hitting the space bar.

        In total I have 40 gTLDs and together they receive around 5,000 unique visitors per month. The best performing gTLD I own has been making roughly $60/month and yes, paying for its premium renewal!

        It all depends on the quality of gTLDs you have but the right gTLD does have value provided the renewal is not too high. To purchase the traffic for the terms associated with my gTLDs would be very expensive.

  14. Thanks Michael for the mention and you are absolutely spot on!

    If a person buys the right domain, there is still plenty to make in parking. Although not much as domainers used to make I think in 2000-2003 period but still one can generate decent sum of money every month.

    It also depends on what parking company he uses. In my case, I have used Bodis, Sedo, RookMedia, GoDaddy, Voodoo, DomainApps, DomainSponsor, Dopa and DomainNameSales (now Uniregistry Market) and found Uniregistry Market the best one compare to every other company I used in past. There is possibility of few domains making $5 p/month and at a different parking platform same domains will generate $15 p/month. So it’s better to check at different venues and see what works best for you.

    1. Thanks for sharing your original story, AbdulBasit!

      I was “riffing” off the top of my head during office hours, and forgot to mention that Mike Carson (https://www.domainsherpa.com/the-rise-of-io-mike-carson/) also said he was making about $1,000 a month from parking one of his .io domain names. It just happened that people were typing it in thinking they were going to be redirected to a popular game.

      I only use Uniregistry for parking my 3 domains (the only ones I own that make money in parking). If I made more than $100 per month, I’d try some of the others. Thanks for sharing the list.

      1. Thanks for sharing that interview and will go through in case I haven’t read the transcript in past.

        Before there were many people making parking revenue into 5 figs but these days very few people might be making in that range because finding someone making in 4 figs on consistent basis is also difficult.

        I would suggest you to give it a try (Uniregistry) for your other domains parked somewhere else and are getting some type-in traffic to see if things get change for you.

      2. Mike Carson says:

        Actually that was $1000 *per day*, and it even got as high as $2k/day. Sadly now it is only at about $150/day, but I can’t complain

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