What Is Domain Parking. The Power Of Domain Names

Posted by Nick Niesen on November 1st, 2010

Domain name selling has for long given the best returns on investments. Today domain name sales account for some big numbers. For example vodka.com sold for an estimated $3 million. In most cases these domains were purchased for $6-8 which is the price for registering a new domain name. Unbelievable, but true. The returns on domain names are amazingly volatile.

But what do domain resellers do till they are able to sell their domain names? This is where domain name parking comes into the picture. A solid method of making revenue even while the domain remains unsold.

Let us now delve further into what is domain name parking...

Domain parking is a method of revenue generation on undeveloped domains from advertising streams/links. Domain parking services are provided primarily by domain registrars. However, emerging trends show that domain parking services are now also being provided increasingly by non- registrar domain parking services. Domain parking services use advertising feeds from web advertising services to display ads on parked domain pages. Domain parking service providers offer domain name owners two options for monetizing. One being a "one click lander" and the other a "two click lander". A landing page is the page where a site visitor first lands on. A one click landing page offers visitors a range of advertising links on a single page. On the other hand the two click landing page first shows up a home page with various category links. A visitor selects a category and is then directed to the specific category of advertising links.

A publisher (domain owner) gets paid for every click on ads deemed valid by the domain parking service. This is termed as EPC (Earnings per Click/ Pay Per Click).Other terms used are CTR or a Click Through Rate. For example, if a site receives 10 page impressions or unique visitors, and 1 click on an ad link, the CTR would be 10%. The base calculation being the ad clicks divided by page views or impressions multiplied by 100.

Domain parking is generally practised by domain owners not intending to develop full scale sites. Most domain parkers fall into the category of domaineers who purchase potential niche domain names for resale. Domain parking proves very useful for these domaineers who profit from ad revenue generated even while their domain names remain unsold. Domain parking also proves useful to website owners planning to develop a site over a long time period. Instead of simply displaying a "site under construction" banner, they can easily monetize their site potential using domain parking services to generate ad revenue till the site actually launches.

Today, domain parking services offer geographically targeted advertising to optimize domain revenue. For example, a site visitor from Germany would view ads specifically for the German/European region. This helps in maximizing the domain potential to the utmost. You might find it hard to believe but advertisers pay decent dollar amounts for ads in niche keywords like debt consolidation, credit cards, mortgage etc. Getting $2-5 per click is a reality and domaineers making $200-300 on a parked domain name is no myth.

If you haven't yet made your first domain investment, now is the best time to start a profitable business investment. You could be surprised with your returns.