This is a great question. Based on a previous thread I posted:
Information No Domainer Should Be Without , it looks to me like longtail domains may be on par with the vending route business (ie., snacks, candy, laundry, etc.) back in the day when retirees would often supplement their pension income with vending routes that would provide nickels, dimes and quarters multiplied by machines per location and again by number of locations.
Today, instead of selling snacks, we're selling information.
The Math
(estimate for avg. developed site income over time)
1,000 domains
@$10 income per domain/month
$10,000/month
$120,000/ year total income.
Even if I'm off by 50%, that's still some serious cabbage.
Maybe nobody's talking much about it, but IMHO, this would explain exactly why the parked page community is in panic mode. This isn't about just supplementing income, this is big money.
As a rule, I don't park any of my domains because I don't believe it furthers the industry, and it certainly does nothing for the site visitor. Even so, from time to time, when I receive an offer on a domain name, I will park it at Sedo and give the potential buyer an opportunity to push it to auction. I've had parked pages that produced $50/month doing nothing (4Tub.com was the last one of these I sold), so
I know $10/month is not blue sky thinking.
It seems to me scaling-up is a way to potentially generate a respectable income and spread your risk to boot.
I've reevealuated my domain strategy in the past few weeks as a result of what I'm learning, and this is the direction I'm moving in. The challenge will be in getting sites up, but once up and running, it's like the vending route business without having to go on a physical cash run every week.
By the way, I've got a
TOP 100 list going here at Namepros that's generated some serious laughter, please take a look and have a laugh or contribute a slogan if you feel creatively inspred to do so. Thanks!