Domain parking

Over the years I have amassed a collection of domain names, mainly as a result of experimental websites that never really went anywhere. Some are obscure names, some are actual English nouns. I did not like to part with them, they were like old friends so I kept paying the renewal fees. One day, I came across an advert saying “Earn cash from your unused domains” and that is when I discovered domain parking. Basically, you allow your domain to be hosted by a parking company, who use it to run advertisements, paying for any links that get clicked by my users.

I was not expecting much, you cannot have a business plan that says “sit back and wait for the money to start rolling in”. As uk domains are only £3.00 per annum, it only takes a few pennies to pay a significant percentage of the domain renewal. I signed up, and within a few days I already had numerous clicks, and a few pennies earned. Admittedly, this was probably due to my testing.

Domain parking analysis

After the initial surge, the clicks dried up. I guessed this was due to search engines slowly updating, removing the now non-existent links to the previous websites. So, I looked into the system a bit further and discovered that it was forbidden to direct traffic to the parked page. I could not put links on my live websites, saying “Please click here to boost my funds”. Nothing was allowed, any marketing of my parked domain was stricly against the contract.

The result was that once the search engines no longer indexed the domain – I also discovered that the search engines specifically stop indexing these parking sites – the only way someone could see the adverts was to type in a direct URL. If you had a good name then this was a possibility, but lets face it, no one would be typing in “Llama Flippers”.

So, my obscure domains would never get used and my noun domains stood a very slim chance of being found. My conclusion is the only people to benefit from parking is the parking company. They end up with hundreds of domains to sell onto their advertising customers, but the people supplying the domains stand little chance of making the minimum payout level.

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