Have you thought of using domain parking to make some money? This is something that many people are taking advantage of. There are several ways you can make money with the simple task of domain parking.
Some people park a domain and decide to use it to make money while they are working out how to build the site. This is a great way to earn while you plan the site out. Some people also park domains just for the purpose of making money with no further plans to develop the website.
How do you do domain parking?
First of all, you need to know what type of domain to park. If you can think of an up and coming idea and capitalize it by buying domain names this is a great idea. If you know, for instance, that something new is in the works and becoming popular and the .com name isn’t yet taken, you can park it an earn from it. You might get approached by someone later who will pay big money for that domain or you might find that people happen upon it while looking for something else. By filling the landing page with relevant advertisements or affiliate marketing ads and banners, you can make a regular stream of income.
If you are waiting until later on to reserve that great domain name you’ve been thinking about, don’t tarry too long otherwise it could be gone and someone else might either build upon it and use it to their advantage or merely park it and wait to charge you big money for it.
It takes a bit of time to get things ready to do things this way. If you don’t want to take the time, effort and money to register the domain, sign up for affiliate programs, build a page, maintain and manage a page and fill it with advertisements, you can choose to share the profits by working with a company to do the management for you.
There are several companies that will do domain parking for you and pay you a percentage of the fees. Some offer cheap domain name registrations and other incentives to get you to join up.
Many domain parking options are available and if you cannot come up with a catch phrase, you can often come up with a similar name to another company that may get hits. There are some cheap domain names registrars out there with some great deals to offer you.
Notes Of Caution With Domain Parking
Beware though; some people that are less than ethical and will do things in the domain biz such as redirect people’s homepage to their parked domain so that people are more likely to click. Be cautious of hidden fees and black hat tactics and be sure to read the fine print because there are some known scams out there that benefit the domain parking company much more than they benefit you. Some people call some domain parking practices domain squatting or cyber squatting and some companies have been known to press charges if they suspect that someone is cybersquatting on a brand name that it their intellectual property. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) handles complaints of this nature and looks for motives of bad faith when investigating domain parking scams.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Making Money With Parking Domain Services
Investing and Making Money Out of Domain Names
Maybe you’ve seen advertisements on websites, or heard stories about a guy who made his fortune as a cheap domain reseller – buying and selling domain names as a business, instead of just for personal use. Maybe you already have a domain reseller account with your Internet service provider (ISP), just waiting to be used. But is it a good idea to buy and sell domains as a business?
Luck of the Draw?
There’s a lot of hype attached to the domain reselling business. CNN reported that “business.com” was sold for $7.5 million in 1997, and in 2003 “men.com” was sold for $1.3 million, but these are unusual cases involving very specific domain names, and most domain investors will never get that lucky. Partly this is because it’s difficult to value domain names, and partly this is because of misconceptions that all “good” names are taken. In addition, the availability of country code domains has opened up the domain naming field, allowing people to buy and sell domains with short names and new extensions.
What Makes One Domain More Valuable Than Another?
As stated above, valuation of domain names is extremely tricky. This is because the market to sell domains is driven by the perceived scarcity of “good” names. Most business owners, whether their companies are large or small, prefer a name ending in .com over a name in any other top level domain. As well, memorable combinations of relevant words that can easily be used in a domain name are already in use. Adding to the price increase is the fact that while more than 17 million domain names have been sold, not every one of them is necessarily good. Generally, in order to be saleable, domain names, in addition to ending in .com, must also be fairly generic. “Law.com” “tv.com” and “business.com” are classic examples. (CNN paid several thousand dollars for the tv.com in the early 2000’s.) The reality is that most of these domains will never be resold, and will end up being released for registration at the standard rate of $10-$30/year. The notion that highly priced domains must be one word is a myth, however. Word combinations can be extremely valuable if the words are relevant especially considering their value in terms of search engine optimization. “BookBuyer.com” might be worth purchasing, but “BookSink.com” is essentially nonsense, even if it is short. For this reason, while it is recommended that people seeking to buy and sell domains stay within highly commercial industries (law, loans, books, cars, etc.) it is important that they choose their domains wisely.
What You Need to Know
If you do have aspirations to sell domains, there are certain things you need to know. First, it’s essential to have a domain reseller account. This is a special bulk account through one of the domain reseller programs offered by such domain registrars as BulkRegister and Dotster. Such an account allows you access to listings of domains about to expire, as well as discounts on bulk registrations (generally minimums of 50 at a time). Most of the major domain registrars offer such programs to those who wish to sell domains. Free information rating registrars can be found in online domain reseller review lists, such as the one at RegSelect.com. In addition, it is important to remember that statistics are against making big money as a cheap domain reseller. According to igoldrush.com, of the approximately 20 million .com, .net, and .org domain names sold, perhaps 20,000 of those will be resold within a given five-year period, and of those 20,000, 90% of them are worth 4 figures or less (with most falling into the ‘less’ category).
Other Alternatives?
There are, of course, other ways to buy and sell domains than using the services attached to registrar-owned domain reseller programs. One is to contact large corporations directly, if you’ve secured a recognizable domain that is relevant to their brand or industry, but this is not generally terribly affective. Additionally, there is always ebay. While most products sold through the online auction house are tangible goods and services, they do allow domain sales, and the use of ebay allows investors to do additional marketing of the domains they own.
So Is Domain Investing Worth the Risk?
If you are looking to make a quick buck, domain investing may not be the industry for you. If, however, you enjoy a good gamble, and have the money to spend, reselling domains can be lucrative. Thanks to the afore-mentioned country code top level domains (like .us and .de), valuable names are still available, but successful reselling takes patience and a lot of research to find quality names, and quality marketing techniques. The bottom line is this: if you are seeking to be rid of a single domain you no longer use, your best bet is to either let it lapse, or go through a cheap domain reseller, and let them market it for you. If you want to buy and sell domains as an investment, commit to a high-end domain reseller account at your registrar of choice, and take advantage of their services and support.
Making Money From Domain Names
An economic effect of the widespread usage of cheap domain names has been the resale market for generic domain names that has sprung up in the last decade. Certain domains, especially those related to business, gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields have become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to their intrinsic value in attracting clients. In fact, the most expensive Internet domain name to date, according to Guinness World Records, is business.com which was resold in 1999 for $7.5 million. Another high value domain name, sex.com, was stolen from its rightful owner by means of a forged transfer instruction via fax. During the height of the dot-com era, the domain was earning millions of dollars per month in advertising revenue from the large influx of visitors that arrived daily. Two long-running U.S. lawsuits resulted, one against the thief and one against the domain registrar VeriSign1.
In one of the cases, Kremen v. Network Solutions, the court found in favor of the plaintiff, leading to an unprecendented ruling that classified domain names as property, granting them the same legal protections. In 1999,