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Many domainers often quickly find themselves with a domain name portfolio with 100 and more, often even thousands, of domain names. Many of these domain names might find themselves a home in your portfolio for a number of years before it eventually is sold.
Most experienced domainers, through experience, learned that this portfolio can in fact earn a generous income, instead of laying wasted for a number of years before it is sold. Your next question: How can income be generated through these domains?
This is simple. Income can be generated in two ways. Firstly, create a website
for each domain and monetize the site by means of advertisements. Attract
visitors and you are set to earn an income from your domain names, before they
are sold. This is often a time wasting experience, very expensive and could
almost be near impossible if you own a portfolio of 2000 – 5000 domain names.
The alternative? Parking domain names.
When a domain name is parked, you are basically diverting all traffic to a
parked page, which is monetized with advertisements. Each time a visitor clicks
on any advertisement you earn a fee per click.
Income from parked domains various according to keyword quality and the number
of clicks. Some advertisements might offer an income of $0.01, while other
advertisements might generate an income exceeding $2.00 per click. Having a
large portfolio with large number of traffic to your domains often ensures a
great monthly income from parked domains.
How are Domain Names Parked?
Domain names can be parked on two ways. Firstly, you can create parked / landing pages yourself or secondly you can make use of parking service providers.
1. Self-Parking
In order to park your own domain names you will need to create one or more
landing pages. These are often a one page-website, which contains information
related to the domain name. The page is monetized by placing ads, such as Google
Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network ads on the page.
Ads need to be placed strategically, in a manner that visitors would rather
click these ads, which ensures your income.
Again, if you have a large portfolio, this can be a tedious task, as you need to
create a landing page for each domain, each page with its own unique content
related to the domain name. This ensures that the domain name’s parking page
displays relevant ads, which visitors are more likely to click on.
2. Parking Programs
Parking programs are much easier to use and often free of charge. These programs
in general share revenue with members.
When making use of parking programs, you sign up for an account and add your
domain names which you need parked. These services offer various methods with
which you can customize each parked page. As example, you can change the page
template or keywords for the advertisements you need displayed. You simply
change the DNS setting of your domain to point to the parked page, and you are
done.
These programs are highly recommended when you own a portfolio with a large
number of domain names and do not have the time or resources to monetize each
domain individually.
Recommended Parking Providers
There is a number of parking programs available on the Internet. As
explained, these services in general offer a free membership plan, but generate
their income with revenue sharing. Some providers may take up to 40% of your
monthly income, while others might opt for less.
Here is a list of recommended parking service providers:
Optimizing Your Parked Portfolio
If you have decided to make use of domain parking and started the process of parking your domain names, your next, most important step is to optimize each and every parked page. With optimizing your parked pages, you will attempt to make every page attractive and relevant to the domain name you are parking.
Firstly, you need to have a look at what options your parking service provider
offers. Generally the options will be changing of the page template and setting
keywords.
Keywords
You will need to ensure that the keywords you set for the parked page are
relevant to the domain name. As example, you domain name you are parking is
www.makeasitemap.com. You will need to set keywords related to making a sitemap,
e.g. sitemap, make a sitemap, generate a sitemap, Google sitemaps, Yahoo
sitemaps, sitemap generator.
By doing this, the ads appearing on the parked page will be related to
generating sitemaps or informational websites about sitemaps. Visitors visiting
your domain are likely to click these ads, as they were initially looking for
something related to sitemaps.
Templates
You must look at the available templates the service provider offers. The template must suite the domain name you are parking. You do not want a car related template for www.makeasitemap.com. It is suggested that you choose an internet related template for this page.
By optimizing your parked pages correctly, your parked page might almost appear
to be a valid website, on which visitors are guaranteed to click on the ads.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is also very useful when it comes to monetizing your domain names or developed websites. If you would like to learn more about SEO we recommend Aaron Wall's SEO Book.com. You'll find a lot of interesting sections on the site like SEO videos, free SEO Tools and the SEO blog.
Unique Parking Service - Whypark.com
This provider was not mentioned in the list of service providers above, as I want to spend some time explaining this unique service. Although this is not a free or revenue sharing service, they are in high demand, but why?
Whypark.com is in all likelihood the only service offering the following unique
service. Members can create parked pages as mini-sites. Whypark.com also offers
unique articles for parked pages. In addition, they allow members to add their
own Google Adsense codes to their parked pages. This means that members keep
their own income generate through clicks and it is not shared with Whypark.com.
Whypark.com charge an annual fee of $99 for 100 domains parked.
If you are an Adsense publisher, this option is worth your while to explore.
