Boosting traffic to a parked domain...legit or not?

[melmunch]

I own a pretty popular insurance forum, that I need to keep under-monetized for growth purposes. It has almost no ads, and a high trust factor amongst my members. Since I run the forum and have a lot of credibility, people generally read all of my posts and follow all of my links.

Lets say I register a generic insurance domain and just park it. If I drop in a link to a generic insurance landing page, it will get a number of visitors. No one would be clicking through as a favor, they wouldn't even understand that it is my site, but if a number of them do in fact click through, since the topic interests them, then I would make some nice $$ per click.

Is there anything wrong with this? Do the parking companies have any issues with this type of thing? A sudden, and unnatural burst of traffic may shoot up a red flag, but any clicks will really be legitimate, and they certainly wouldn't get any complaints from the advertisers.

Is boosting traffic to parked domains just simple domains 101 and I missed that class, or are their issues with it?

Thanks

 

[Steven]

I don't think you are allowed to boost traffic to a parked domain. It has to be all natural (type-in from browser) or from the search engine.
You cannot advertise a parked site to gain traffic. Otherwise it would violate the terms of service for most (if not all) parking services, and they will ban you or take legal action against you (depending on severity I suppose).

 

[The Stealthy One]

It depends on the parking company you're with. If their TOS does not address it, then no - there is nothing wrong with it. As mrdomainman suggested, just check the TOS to see.

 

[vbigdeli]

Is there is any problem for parking service providers to advertise a parked domain at adwords?

 

[NameCharger]

Some will suspend your account, others will not count it as valid traffic.

 

[clocker24]

I have never heard of a parking service where promoting or advertising a parked page does not violate the TOS. As far as I now, they all prohibit it. If you know of one that does not forbid it, please tell me, I would love to know.

Often they will not notice it, or will even overlook it, if you keep it at a fairly low level and are discreet about it. But they have the right to take action against you if they choose.

The type of action they take against you if they find out will depend on several factors, such as:

- whether they believe you were unaware that it's a violation
- how important a customer you are
- how good a relationship you have with your rep

They may just give you a warning, or they might suspend your account and confiscate your unpaid earnings.

 

[Steven]

I have a question out of curiosity.
Would posting up the domain name (without the link) for appraisal be considered as "boosting traffic" ?

 

[Varon]

I have a question out of curiosity.
Would posting up the domain name (without the link) for appraisal be considered as "boosting traffic" ?

Imo, definitely no. It is a valid legitimate act of trying to appraise your domain with an intent to later sell, which is the very basic purpose for which you purchased the domain. As long as you don't post the domain appraisal with an active link, it should be fine.