Domain parking offers the possibility for web administrators to earn money with temporarily unused domains and thus pay for hosting costs. The fact that a domain is not used for a period of time does not mean that it does not have maintenance costs. This is where domain parking appears, which in some cases can be an alternative to a sale. It is usually differentiated between monetized and non-monetized parking. Among the first we find a simple notice such as “Page under construction”, enough to notify the visitor that the desired page is not available. But many domain owners go one step further and host ads on unproductive pages in order to generate revenue.
Why park an unused domain?
A top-level domain is a valuable commodity. That’s why many webmasters decide to continue managing domains for existing web pages until the right buyer comes along. The market value of a domain results from several factors, among which are both the name and the type of domain. A catchy and precise name will have much more value. The most popular top-level domains or Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .com or .es fetch better prices than other less common endings such as .us or .biz. Decisive is whether the domain contains relevant keywords. On the contrary, a name with a high probability of misspelling has a very negative effect on the price. In addition to these, other factors that determine the value of a domain are:
- The backlink profile
- Your position in the search engine
- Existing Valuations
Domains with a large number of working links from other web pages have great value since this represents a decisive factor for the positioning of the domain in search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. In the same way, evaluations such as Google PageRank or SISTRIX are taken into consideration.
If you intend to sell a domain, it is best to park it in such a way that you do not lose profitability, since by inserting advertising links on the web page you can generate income that more than covers both the costs for registration and those of management.
Parking domains: a business model
The domain parking business model consists of assigning landing pages for commercial purposes to unused domains. Therefore, the linking of content to a specific sector will be carried out depending on the second-level domain. The preparation and arrangement of the links are done by a specialized provider who in turn draws on the resources of advertising partners such as Google or Yahoo. Thus, when a visitor clicks on one of the advertising links, the advertising company pays a certain commission according to the Pay per Click principle. The profit generated by the parked domain is divided between the domain owner, the parking provider, and the advertiser.
Domain parking providers:
There are a wide variety of commercial providers that you can turn to if you want to park a domain and advertise it temporarily or permanently on pages that are not working. Generally, these providers also facilitate the sale of the domains. Alternatively, you can use the domain parking service offered by some Internet providers.
When choosing the provider, there are, as a general rule, two options:
- Professional Domain Parking Providers – Parking a temporarily unused domain is an essential component of the domain business. In addition to Sedo, the European leader in the sector, at an international level there are other providers that also offer this service, such as NameDrive, Domain Spa or Domainsponsor. Depending on the domain parking provider, more or less flexible options are available in terms of landing page design or design templates. These also often define a keyword appropriate to the domain name in order to generate as high a click-through rate as possible, as it helps to tailor advertising links specifically to visitors to the parked domain and to the offer or information they expect to find.
- Domain parking through the web provider: some Internet providers with domain registration services also offer their clients the possibility of parking domains in a fairly simple way. Instead of cooperating with advertising partners, these companies usually advertise themselves, and clients who make their domain available for advertising are charged a broker commission. These parked domains can be reactivated at any time if the need arises.
Sell a parked domain:
In most cases, domain parking is usually a temporary solution. That is why, in the meantime, the most important domain parking providers offer owners the possibility of publishing the “Domain for sale” notice. And not only that but these domains can also be auctioned on partner portals. To do this, a domain appraisal, usually paid, can help outline price proposals. By comparison, transferring a domain is a much more complicated process, requiring a written contract and encompassing both the notarized transfer of the parked domain to the new owner and full payment to the previous owner.
Domain parking and cybersquatting:
The dark face of domain parking includes cybersquatting or “ cybersquatting ”, which consists of registering domains with well-known brand names or similar words, or “typosquatting”, a variant that consists of registering domains with misspellings. These types of registries are basically moved by financial motivation since these domains with misspelled names or very similar to famous brands are usually taken advantage of as a way to divert part of the web traffic from corporate pages, online stores or information portals.