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Why Domain Parking works for me

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privatereg

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I was going to title this thread “How to Make a Million Dollars with Domain Parking” but I figured that would make a lot of people think it was click bait so I’m taking a different approach HAHA.

The reason I’m taking some time to write this (and more importantly taking up your valuable time reading it) is I get really tired of everyone saying Parking is Dead. Let’s see if you know one of these people:
  1. They never tried it – just like to troll the forums….
  2. They took 100 names they had lying around desperately trying to sell, and figured they’d try parking and it made $0.05 in two months.
  3. They have a domain portfolio from 5 years ago without ongoing reinvestment and watched the traffic, EPC, CTR and revenue die over time.
  4. They believe the registrars are faking the traffic stats at the auctions, the parking companies are keeping all the clicks, reporting falsified data, stealing your money and think it’s all a scam.
  5. They tried to game the system with fake traffic or 100 other methods (that I won’t get into) and got their accounts and domains banned (from DRID tracking), and now want to seek revenge.
  6. They have an inherent belief that domain parking is for “bottom feeders” of the domain industry and should be avoided at all costs.
So why am I posting this? I just want to put it out there that Domain Parking is a serious business and some are making substantial revenues with it even today. But one thing is for sure – it doesn’t work like it did in 2005 – you can’t just randomly pick a domain that looks good to you and expect to make money. And there is no lazy way to riches with domain parking anymore – those days are long gone. The big players know that it takes several hours a day of their time to research, buy, optimize and manage, and you have to do it every day of the year – no time off. But the good news is once you perfect a formula it actually works, and it’s a serious business for corporations and individual domainers alike, even in today’s competitive marketplace.

Before I go any further, I’m not going to tell you the tricks to find the right domain name that makes money and I’m not going to sell you anything nor offer consulting services for the simple selfish reason that it increases competition. This is not a business of “the more, the merrier” – that will clue you in on why you don’t see in the forums how to really do it (unless they want to sell you something). Instead I want to give you my experience with domain parking (since 2007 but more importantly in recent months) and why I think it’s still a viable business today for a select few.

So let’s take away the mystery and talk about it being a serious business. Like any true business start-up, you need capital, and with domain parking today you need lots of it. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of naysayers but one thing that has become extremely difficult is drop catching solely for parking domain monetization. It’s basically dried up – too many players and companies like DC dominating the market. Put another way, you’re basically out of luck finding that domain that’s going to make you hundreds or thousands of dollars through your own drop catching – maybe if you’re lucky you can cover renewal fees, but that’s about it (yes, I know there are exceptions…).

Buying someone else’s portfolio is out for most of us as well. With publishers demanding 30x or more of monthly revenue up front, and the requirement to purchase blocks of domains costing $xxx,xxx, isn’t worth it to me. And the traffic for many of these domains will die before you can break even (or worse, the traffic was faked and you’re screwed).

So that leaves you with the auctions which are far more competitive than years ago. And since domain owners have gotten smarter and registrars have made greater efforts to notify owners of upcoming expirations, what is leftover to go to auction pales in comparison to the traffic rich domains of the past. Those of us who battle in the daily auction houses fight against big conglomerates like HD for bread crumbs in most cases. Just try to find an expired government site anymore. And nothing pisses off a domain investor more than some lazy guy who does zero research and waits until they see a lot of people bidding on a domain so they can jump in at the last minute or someone who trolls the bids to drive up the price just for fun.

So that means the serious domain investor is going to pay more for these domains, and the price goes up every month it seems with longer time to recoup your investment. But in spite of these odds, one can still find domains that can recover your ROI in 12-24 months (or sooner if you’re lucky). That’s where the capital comes in. A serious investor knows that ROIs purchased at the auction house are not going appear for a year or two, if at all. Or to put it another way, if you think you’re going to get a domain at auction and start making a profit in a month, you’re probably wrong (or have a better system than I do!).

So after accepting the truth that your capital investment will be tied up for potentially years with a risk of losing some or all of it, there is the research aspect. If there are over 100,000 domains expiring every day (depending on TLD, gTLD, ccTLD), 7 days a week, 365 days a year, how would anyone know which ones to bid on. As I said before, I’m not going to tell you how but to say that investors in this space spend hours every day doing research in preparation for the next auction. To clue you in, that does not simply mean throwing some filters on expireddomains dot net and going after those (no disrespect to this great free service). If you don’t have access to resources to develop APIs to multiple link traffic source sites, develop some AI techniques, have a full understanding of keyword EPCs, prediction models to forecast the longevity of traffic through analytics, and a myriad of other considerations, your risk of losing capital rises exponentially.

Let’s say you have the capital and willing to risk it, and through trial and error have developed good algorithms to narrow your search and go after the types of domains that have historically yielded results – you’re done right? No, the hard work really begins now! You have to optimize your domains and manage your portfolio. I sometimes spend more time optimizing than all the other tasks. What do I mean by optimization? Some parking companies have contractual relationships to allow the parking provider to request related search terms that G will use. And yes, even that is shifting as G will now take your keywords as a “suggestion” and may use some or all of them depending on the historical traffic that has gone to that site before you bought it (using their massive data warehouses). Why go through all this trouble and just let G auto-optimize? Because in many cases it can take a lot of traffic before they get the terms right, IF they get it right, and your best opportunity to mitigate ROI loss is in first 60 days you park it before traffic drop (unless you have strong backlinks or are lucky enough to have a type-in or typo domain).

I don’t write all of this to turn you off to parking, but to say that gone are the days when anyone with $100 can buy some domains from their drop catching program, change the name servers and make money. But that isn’t to say parking today is not a viable business – just far more sophisticated.

One question often asked is “how much money can I make in parking?”. That’s a loaded question. I think the better question to ask is “what is my target annual profit I want to achieve in this business and when can I get there?”. Profit in parking would be your gross parking revenues less any chargebacks (I rarely have any, but it’s still lowers your revenue), less the cost of the domain, less costs to run the business (your time, subscription costs, IT charges, renewal fees and so on), less the predictive loss ratio of declining traffic, taxes, UDRPs (depends on your risk tolerance), and probably a few other things I can’t think of right now.

I’m not going to give you my annual profit target; I don’t want this to go on my permanent internet record HAHA.

I already know what you’re thinking right now…. “Yeah, talk is cheap – show me the proof”. I hear you. Just to let you know, there are many in this forum that are serious in this business and have no incentive to show any type of stats, myself included. It raises too many suspicions and follow-up questions – how many domains, what kind of domains, what kind of keywords, how long did it take, the numbers are fake, you name it. Who wants to be raked over the coals with all this grief? So contrary to my gut reaction not to show anything like most of the other guys, I would rather put myself out there to show that Parking is real, at least for my situation it is. So I attached a screenshot of stats for the past several months, and no they’re not photoshopped, whether you want to believe it or not – doesn’t matter to me.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/3965/PK0lIe.png

You’ll notice my traffic and revenues rising every month. So obviously I’m in a growth mode. To answer your next question on how long did it take to get where I am right now, let me give you a little personal history… In the late 2000’s I was making serious revenues with parking, but I got involved in other ventures and didn’t have the time to devote in keeping up with it. So I just let my domain traffic die a slow death for years. Eventually I was tired of running businesses and working 90 hours a week so I went back to the rat race, being respectable and making a salary in a normal job. What I quickly discovered was I had a lot of free time to think about other sources of revenue, and of course parking like the old days seemed like a good place to start. But I kept asking myself, “would it still work today?”.

So April of last year with the pandemic driving more people online and my employer telling us all to work from home, it became an opportune time for me to see if my old methods still worked. For the first couple of months I wasn’t buying many domains, but I quickly saw that with some tweaking and serious commitment of time the process still worked – worked back then and works now. Crazy. They were saying parking was dead back in 2010, maybe earlier and here it is in 2021 and it still works. Weird.

Let me be perfectly frank. I’m not bragging about this – far from it. In fact, depending on which side of the revenue fence you’re on, you might say what I’m achieving is peanuts to what you’re making, but I’m happy with my results so far. Long ways to go to meet my net profit target, but I’m confident I’ll get there.

I’m sure I’ll hear from a lot of people telling me “you’ll never make any real money with parking – selling or leasing is the only way, or developing your website with affiliates or adsense, or zero click direct traffic advertisers, or smart traffic switching”, you name it. And I say to all of that is if it works for you – great! I’m not talking about that – I’m just making a point about domain parking in today’s world, pure and simple. I enjoy it and you’ll never convince me it’s dead.

So let the haters weigh in but at least I got this off my chest…Domain Parking is real folks!

P.S. Please don’t IM/DM/PM me trying to sell your traffic domain, join a JV, try a new monetization service, ask for my methods, more details on my portfolio, etc., etc. I will not respond – no offense.
 
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Awesome data @privatereg Many thanks for all.
I review this thread and view that speak spanish: Enhorabuena por tus numeros !! :xf.wink:

If I may ask a question. I hope you don't mind answering it. It is not at all compromising.
I view your screenshot and you said that have a few thousand domains in Bodis.

1- What is the average monthly number of visits for all your domains?
2- How many monthly visits does your best domain have?

Go with some numbers:
In Dec 2021 you had about 400.000 visits in all domains in one bodis account.
If, for example, we calculate that you have "only" 1.000 domains parked in Bodis... :

400.000 visits / 30 days = 13.333 visits per day
13.333 visits per day / 1000 domains = 13,33 visits per day per domain (in average)

13 visits per day per domain is really too few, no? :zippermouth:
And if you said that have a few thousand parked in Bodis the visits per day in average will be even lower.

I'm missing something I don't understand ??
Sure. I don't share the number of domains I have parked, but I will say there are days when many of domains get no visitors, no clicks and no revenue, and then one day in a given week or month, the domain gets one visitor and 5 clicks totalling $5. I have another domain that I'm thinking of that gets about 500 visitors a day and most days zero clicks. You really can't look at visitors because Bodis constantly filters bots from their stats, more so I've seen than other parking companies; I've also noticed that over the years, the number of visitors has continued to drop while the CTR goes up because of their ongoing filtering algorithms. Actually I like that Bodis doesn't show every single visit to a domain because they seem to be trying to ensure that the visitor count represents actual human visits to the best of their ability. At the end of the day, all I care about is the revenue, so what I choose to go after and what my automated routines try to tell me is the best domains that would at least get me enough revenue to break even in 12 months (based on purchase price).
 
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Sure. I don't share the number of domains I have parked, but I will say there are days when many of domains get no visitors, no clicks and no revenue, and then one day in a given week or month, the domain gets one visitor and 5 clicks totalling $5. I have another domain that I'm thinking of that gets about 500 visitors a day and most days zero clicks. You really can't look at visitors because Bodis constantly filters bots from their stats, more so I've seen than other parking companies; I've also noticed that over the years, the number of visitors has continued to drop while the CTR goes up because of their ongoing filtering algorithms. Actually I like that Bodis doesn't show every single visit to a domain because they seem to be trying to ensure that the visitor count represents actual human visits to the best of their ability. At the end of the day, all I care about is the revenue, so what I choose to go after and what my automated routines try to tell me is the best domains that would at least get me enough revenue to break even in 12 months (based on purchase price).
Thanks for reply.
it is strange how these domains work for you, that one week they have a lot of clicks and other weeks they have nothing.
In my domain with Google Analytics (not working with bodis) view I see a constancy of visitors over time.

This is other example found in internet.
Have a good amount with Bodis but with numbers very different from yours.
The owner of this account said that 40% of its traffic is due to typos and other 50% comes from a single domain.
EoGUIE5XcAAYWac.jpeg
 
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Hi
i concur, revenue is all that matters.
as 1 visitor on a particular domain could earn $$ that day



Hi

are those your stats or someone else's?

imo...

since u been doing it a while... wanna take wild stub guess how much percent park company takes and how much to us? do u think this percent varies for people? for companies?
 
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since u been doing it a while... wanna take wild stub guess how much percent park company takes and how much to us? do u think this percent varies for people? for companies?
Hi

my philosophy is:

i don't question, what they say they share, because...
what they provide in return, has been very beneficial to my goal of "portfolio sustainability" and continued growth.

it's the easiest thing one can do, and it's free to sign-up

still, most ppc's pay out about 80% > 85%, and on some platforms, the epc may be higher for a specific name or names than on another, but that alone isn't a true indicator of which pays out the most on average.

when you consider that percentage, then they keep around 15% > 20%,
which coincidentally is about the average amount of the "broker/commission fee" charged on marketplaces for domain sales.

if you're only using one platform and in general, they pay pretty good,
then there isn't much incentive to move them around.
but at the same time, you'd never know if another service pays higher epc for one or more your domains.

imo...
 
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Hi

my philosophy is:

i don't question, what they say they share, because...
what they provide in return, has been very beneficial to my goal of "portfolio sustainability" and continued growth.

it's the easiest thing one can do, and it's free to sign-up

still, most ppc's pay out about 80% > 85%, and on some platforms, the epc may be higher for a specific name or names than on another, but that alone isn't a true indicator of which pays out the most on average.

when you consider that percentage, then they keep around 15% > 20%,
which coincidentally is about the average amount of the "broker/commission fee" charged on marketplaces for domain sales.

if you're only using one platform and in general, they pay pretty good,
then there isn't much incentive to move them around.
but at the same time, you'd never know if another service pays higher epc for one or more your domains.

imo...

agreed..just wanted yer take on it... some make less so percentages become more relevant.. but to.me.its just curiosity thing. u are right tho..its basically free.service.. no signup fee.. and u get sale banner so to me its same as lander sales wise...and then u get some clicks.. I'm no park newbie..and far from pro..so little gas money of 200 per month is all I get.. but if sales just collapse one day and frankly its going down slowly but surely since pandemic
....and not just me..... then I'm still hoping I can go from sales to park revenue...lucky me my lifestyle has no villa maintenance fees...so low 4fig month is all I'd be aiming for in parking...which I'm sure with proper learning is doable.


or maybe that's dead end too and u gonna tell me like sales park revenue also going down drain since pandemic ?
 
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or maybe that's dead end too and u gonna tell me like sales park revenue also going down drain since pandemic ?
Hi

i don't got the crystal ball,
but do have some names i've owned for a decade or more,
like SVC.net >

the EPC has increased from $0.17 > $0.25 years ago to a new high of $1.50 in last 60 days @ bodis
previously it was @Sedo, where total amount earned was $378.30 since 2006.

on other hand
with CallMobile.com, the EPC $0.17 and the CTR 20% didn't change much @ sedo since 2006, earning $718.77
however @ voodoo EPC went up to $0.48, but CTR went down to 4.05%, earning $133.30
since voodoo died on us, for now, i'm checking bodis to see what it looks like.

parked those names and others on other platforms like namedrive, domainsponsor, uni, domainhop, goldkey, parkingpanel, parked, etc, etc, but most are defunct now so no data available.

imo..
 
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are those your stats or someone else's?
I wish they were mine.... but nope.
The screenshot is from another Bodis user, not mine.
 
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Its definitely not dead, my last 1 year stats

1650861733049.png


These stats are steady for last 3 years wherein I am not even looking at parking domains for more than 3 years now.

So, parking was never dead and I agree with @privatereg that if one puts in effort and money, one can make a steady income.

Also, parking name's easily sell in 10-30x range at marketplaces (based on their avg monthly revenue) without advertising as there are parking experts who are always on the hunt.

But, it has become very x 10 difficult to grab good parking domains these days and a beginner will need a lot of capital for trial and error. Its definitely not for everyone. So, think x 10 before jumping in.
 
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Its definitely not dead, my last 1 year stats

Show attachment 214607

These stats are steady for last 3 years wherein I am not even looking at parking domains for more than 3 years now.

So, parking was never dead and I agree with @privatereg that if one puts in effort and money, one can make a steady income.

Also, parking name's easily sell in 10-30x range at marketplaces (based on their avg monthly revenue) without advertising as there are parking experts who are always on the hunt.

But, it has become very x 10 difficult to grab good parking domains these days and a beginner will need a lot of capital for trial and error. Its definitely not for everyone. So, think x 10 before jumping in.

have u tried bodis.. I had better rev there...not to.mention bodis ui is heaven. and pc is hell...so are.pc sale banners ..landers and support... compared to bodis
 
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have u tried bodis.. I had better rev there...not to.mention bodis ui is heaven. and pc is hell...so are.pc sale banners ..landers and support... compared to bodis

Yes, I tried bodis for 1.5 months for some of my domains parked at PC for years and they were doing a little better too.

They paid for the first month too and they kept my domains parked for the next whole month and then banned my account on the last day of the month without any reason. So i mailed them and they replied

1650863874968.png


For the same domains with traffic from Pinterest and with backlink profile, I have never received any complaints from parking crew or uniregistry, but maybe Bodis is special.

They just kept one full months revenue, thats my only experience with them. :sneaky:

Disclaimer: - I have never ever clicked on any of my parked domains nor asked anyone else to do the same.
 
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Its definitely not dead, my last 1 year stats

Show attachment 214607

These stats are steady for last 3 years wherein I am not even looking at parking domains for more than 3 years now.

So, parking was never dead and I agree with @privatereg that if one puts in effort and money, one can make a steady income.

Also, parking name's easily sell in 10-30x range at marketplaces (based on their avg monthly revenue) without advertising as there are parking experts who are always on the hunt.

But, it has become very x 10 difficult to grab good parking domains these days and a beginner will need a lot of capital for trial and error. Its definitely not for everyone. So, think x 10 before jumping in.
How many domains do you have parked?
 
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Maybe about 20-30 names. Rest are sold and a few dropped over time.
Where did you sold them?
All the ones you sold were parking name's?
 
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For the same domains with traffic from Pinterest and with backlink profile, I have never received any complaints from parking crew or uniregistry, but maybe Bodis is special.
Hi

yes, bodis and sedo are special in that regards.
but parkingcrew and uni just aren't on the ball when it comes to screening traffic.

all names should use the platforms nameservers,
but by redirection of traffic, one can use it, to sell fake revenue names.

not saying that was your motive or intent, but i've been burned a few times so that's why i mentioned it.
host stats @bodis are essential to origin of visitors.

imo...
 
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let's think from another angle... sometimes somebody as marketing manager or even higher as marketing director handling marketing budget but totally blind with their company marketing and then putting those marketing budget into wrong online marketing and BOOM their advertising were showing up on your parking page...
 
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how are your July parking revenues going???
I got a big big cut on RPC.... btw with all what is going on in the world these days, I was expecting this.
However I've few traffic niches so I was curious to know also about other people..
 
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how are your July parking revenues going???
I got a big big cut on RPC.... btw with all what is going on in the world these days, I was expecting this.
However I've few traffic niches so I was curious to know also about other people..
We also have a reduced EPC ( 10-20 %) , we park everything on the Bodis. It can also be caused by summer.
 
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how are your July parking revenues going???
I got a big big cut on RPC.... btw with all what is going on in the world these days, I was expecting this.
However I've few traffic niches so I was curious to know also about other people..
RPC is down for me also for July but not by a large number:
April $0.41
May $0.42
June $0.39
July $0.39

But what is definitely down this month for me is CTR and not sure why:
April: 40%
May: 39.8%
June: 42.6%
July: 37.8%

Doesn't look like a big difference; however, when you have thousands of domains it does make a difference. I suspect Bodis has been trying a number of different default templates trying to increase CTR and has had mixed success - I can see them changing my template display from time to time without me requesting.

Two other things I noticed in the past 90 days - one is the prices at auctions have skyrocketed - definitely big players are getting more aggressive with buying traffic potential domains and two, the quality of domains has gone downhill. Maybe domain owners are more savvy these days about renewing their domains or perhaps some side deals going on big players to have exclusive access to certain categories of expiring domains - not sure. I hope it's not the beginning of the end for increasing my portfolio...
 
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Two other things I noticed in the past 90 days - one is the prices at auctions have skyrocketed - definitely big players are getting more aggressive with buying traffic potential domains and two, the quality of domains has gone downhill. Maybe domain owners are more savvy these days about renewing their domains or perhaps some side deals going on big players to have exclusive access to certain categories of expiring domains - not sure. I hope it's not the beginning of the end for increasing my portfolio...
I'm too much sure there are people wasting money paying traffic names more than what they will make.
Btw i guess there is a huge interest of expired names needed for PBN or other SEO needs.
 
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My CTR and EPC

March: 13,2%, EPC: 0,38
April: 14,1% ,EPC: 0,36
May: 15,33% , EPC: 0,36
June: 17,77 , EPC: 0,33
July: 17,51 , EPC: 0,30
 
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RPC is down for me also for July but not by a large number:
April $0.41
May $0.42
June $0.39
July $0.39

But what is definitely down this month for me is CTR and not sure why:
April: 40%
May: 39.8%
June: 42.6%
July: 37.8%

Doesn't look like a big difference; however, when you have thousands of domains it does make a difference. I suspect Bodis has been trying a number of different default templates trying to increase CTR and has had mixed success - I can see them changing my template display from time to time without me requesting.

Two other things I noticed in the past 90 days - one is the prices at auctions have skyrocketed - definitely big players are getting more aggressive with buying traffic potential domains and two, the quality of domains has gone downhill. Maybe domain owners are more savvy these days about renewing their domains or perhaps some side deals going on big players to have exclusive access to certain categories of expiring domains - not sure. I hope it's not the beginning of the end for increasing my portfolio...
Agreed. I think at this point it's impossible to build a portfolio with expired domains. There is nothing really left, they grab even average domains and trying to make money out of nothing. I think new domain investors should either handregister or buy expensive domains to build a decent portfolio. That could actually work in favour of older domainers that managed to find good deals.
Hope the situation will improve, but I don't think so. I think the door is permanently shut to new domainers.
They could probably invest in upcoming trends.

With regards to parking earnings, they are increasing every month, even during a tough month like July.
It's great to have some revenue to cover the cost of renewals while you are waiting for the right buyer stress free ☺️
 
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Agreed. I think at this point it's impossible to build a portfolio with expired domains. There is nothing really left, they grab even average domains and trying to make money out of nothing. I think new domain investors should either handregister or buy expensive domains to build a decent portfolio. That could actually work in favour of older domainers that managed to find good deals.
Hope the situation will improve, but I don't think so. I think the door is permanently shut to new domainers.
They could probably invest in upcoming trends.

With regards to parking earnings, they are increasing every month, even during a tough month like July.
It's great to have some revenue to cover the cost of renewals while you are waiting for the right buyer stress free ☺️
At least for me I have a way to know when its time to throw in the towel in terms of buying more domains even at higher prices. I developed a routine (not selling it - not available to anyone but many of you can do the same thing if you are a developer) that takes the number of domains I purchased for a given month, purchase price and then comparing 30, 60, 90 revenues in order to calculate progress on Return on Investment (along with factoring a small number for renewal cost). Over the past 2 1/2 years (since the pandemic when I started getting serious about growing my portfolio), I've been lucky enough to break even on purchase price within about 8-9 months before I realize a profit on a given monthly group. This allows me to see trending on how long it takes to break even on new domains. It will take me several months to realize that if the ROI or break even is taking longer and longer to realize (or maybe never breaking even), and if so I'm out and will just do some testing from time to time to see if the big players have finally gotten out (realizing they aren't making any money either, assuming they are using expired domains strictly for parking, or whatever they're pushing traffic to). And as you said, I could buy expensive domains but that is too risky for me to put all my eggs in one basket. And yes, I realize there are many other factors to consider when looking at the longevity of this market, but this is one simple example.
 
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Hi @privatereg

Being an Adsense user from the very start with developed infosec sites, and later just parking my domains at parking companies, I love to read your detailed postings about the current state of 'advanced' parking.

I'm not parking anymore in 2021, but I'm not a hater either. I'm just doing other things. I recognize your dedication, and I'm sure you'd succeed in any other field with this pragmatic view. You're doing your research, and keep fine-tuning w/ data you gather during the process. It's not for all, but it's certainly inspirational for all members on this forum. (Some of them being successful parkers as well).

Thanks for sharing.
Snooze
 
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