Domain Parking the 411

[darkspark]

So I've been looking around at the trends behind what people try and do online, so that they can generate revenue and "Domain parking" popped up, so I did a little bit of research and I'm still slightly baffled by this one. Can anyone explain what it is?

I've figured out this much so far. You buy a domain, and you then register it to a website like "Sedo", so that if anyone goes to that domain, they will see a predifined website layout which just looks like a generic links website. Now this is all good and such, but why would anyone go to a domain that you have just bought, with no PR, no backlinks, and no real content? (that's where I'm confused).

So, allow for this to be added into the situation, if you could acquire a website that is currently running and about to expire, then place a back order on the domain name, so it becomes yours as soon as it's current ownership ends, you would get a commonly used website, but would you retain it's old "PR" for a short while?

If that is the case then does anyone know, where you can scan for expiring domains and also be givin the date, and statistics on the domain before it expires?

.... I hope that makes sense... like I said I'm a little confused by this one.

[weegillis]

Logic would tell us that a new domain with no PR offers nothing of value to your main site. No matter how many parked domains one has, there is nothing in them that the search engines can build upon. You could still garner traffic from those domains, but that's about it.

As far as an old domain that has changed hands, as you describe, the search engines don't care who owns it, only the value of the existing content on that domain, and its age and history. Since PR is based partly on content value, once that content is removed, the pages would have to prove themselves, else see their PR drop with time. The links out of these domains (assuming they are followed by robots) MIGHT pass some juice, but again, this is speculative. You would need to keep those old domains alive and relevant.

[softlogic]

The only reason people would 'see' your newly registered and 'parked' domain, is if they were looking for a domain with same or similar name, or a domain they were familiar with that has 'gone out of service'. Presumably the parking companies make money out of parking and the 'parkers' hope to sell the domain at a premium?

[coder]

The reason people do this is money.

I own around 40 domains, probably 15 of those domains I bought with the intent of doing something with them at a later date. I heard that you can make some money with parked domains or by placing banners on coming soon sites. I can tell you that yes you can make money doing this but the money is maybe $5-$10 a month. At least in my case.

Now take that little idea and monetize it. You can automate this entire process, purchase tens of thousands of websites and make a couple dollars per site per month. Quiet a few registrars have it so that you can receive a full refund if you return your domain within a certain time frame.

So now you can buy tons of domains, make money on the domains and then get your money back (minus the ICANN fee) and do it all again the following month.

If you could make $5 a month for little to no work, how many times would you duplicate this process?

[Brokentusk]

What happens is they park those garbage sites for a placeholder, there is no intention to keep the site. They will turn it over eventually. They fill it with junk in hopes it will get the occasional hit on whatever term the site is squatting on. Then when someone comes along and asks to purchase the site, the amount of traffic that showed up to the site will help them set the price. The more visits, the higher the price.
I learned the hard way of how they operate because of a complete screw-up by Yahoo's domain registration services who made a mistake that lost one of my clients domain.
Most of those guys are running software that grabs everything it can as soon as it can.

[C0ldf1re]

.... I heard that you can make some money with parked domains or by placing banners on coming soon sites. I can tell you that yes you can make money doing this but the money is maybe $5-$10 a month....

Sorry, but I don't follow this. Logically an empty "coming soon" site will attract zero traffic, so it can generate zero revenue. What have I missed?

[alienpest]

There are a lot of people doing this, mostly large companies with domains that get a lot of type in traffic. Of course, you could develop a steady stream of traffic from social media also. Google will alow you to park domains on their nameservers and serve adsense ads. I have a couple like that, and they make enough to pay the registration fees, but that's about it. It makes more sense to just put up a small but useful nformation site with Adsense or Chitika, and let it run it's course. Unless you are into domain tasting in large numbers, or can afford some of the single word, or double word domains with a lot of type in traffic, it is not likely to be very profitable.

[astro]

I may be wrong here but did not a certain Chinese domain name registrar using an accommodation address in the U.S. and non existant directors get sued for multi millions and struck off for similar tactics? I believe they registered thousands of domain names with similar sounding names to well known corporations, sold the space to people who sold similar goods and kept changing the domain owners names every few days to prevent incurring domain costs plus the advantage of tracking down who was actually doing it. When they were doing it all along.

Like C0ldf1re I see no advantage here. Especially to the customers in buying space on parked domains. I can see an advantage to the seller if they are happy to fool the buyer with a load technobabble ....... but so much work for tiny amounts......

/astro

[coder]

Sorry, but I don't follow this. Logically an empty "coming soon" site will attract zero traffic, so it can generate zero revenue. What have I missed?

I'm not saying that you will receive lots of traffic but yes visitors do come to "coming soon" sites. I don't know why visitors come or why the search engines index them but yes it happens. I have noticed an anomaly that is interesting. One of my sites was actually making more money as a "coming soon" site than when I made the site live for the first couple of months. We later determined that when the site was live there was more to read, more links and more distractions. The coming soon page was a couple sentences and google ads, so the visitors only choices was to click the ads or go back to where they came. Now the site is making a lot more money with ads.

I'm currently working on a non-profit website, the domain is about 6 months old, never added any links to the site but the site is already indexed and currently it is a "coming soon" page

[coder]

Like C0ldf1re I see no advantage here. Especially to the customers in buying space on parked domains. I can see an advantage to the seller if they are happy to fool the buyer with a load technobabble ....... but so much work for tiny amounts......
/astro

There are plenty of opportunities to make money doing this, that is the reason why people do it. They automate the entire process and do thousands of domains a month. They don't have to make much money to make it profitable, as long as they are making more than they are spending than they are doing good. Repeat this process thousands of times and the pennies start to add up.

I'm not saying that I do this nor do I recommend it but this is one of the major reasons why it happens. Clogging the web with spam one domain at a time