Domain Parking: Tips & Tricks to Help You Earn More!

[smurge]

And so it begins!:wave:

My goal is to help people learn more about the parking industry and help them earn more money while spending less of it.

There are tons of tricks,tips,secrets that people use to make money in this business.

Let me say this, I will not discuss illegal or bad practices here so please don't ask.

What will I talk about? How to find domains,with traffic for cheap. Creating long term wealth for yourself and how to do it on a budget. I will answer questions and talk about what I know. If there is something I'm not familiar with or not knowledgeable about I will say so.

I am not here to start flaming wars with other domainers or parking gurus. Everyone has their own set of rules to making money. If you don't like mine, that's okay , but please share your ideas with everyone instead of bashing others.


Myths I want to debunk now:

#1. Parking is dead. (Far from it)

#2. You can't make money doing it. (B.S.- you can make a ton of money in it)

#3. Only the rich can do this. (This is not true!)

#4. Google doesn't like domain parking! (Yes they do, they make a ton of money off it. If they hated it so much why do they continue to support it?)



----

So what's the point of all this? It's to help people with parking.

Please feel free to email,pm, or post your questions here and I will do my best to answer them all.


Thanks!

RJ

(P.S. I'm not the best writer so I apologize for any grammar or sentence structure mistakes in advance.)



--Answers to Questions I'm frequently asked!--

#1. What parking companies do I support/like?

These are the main ones I use and have had great success with. I base my success not only on the amount of money I make but also, customer service and transparency.

In alphabetical order:

- Bodis.com (Supports Foreign Traffic)(Zero Click Model Supported)
- Domainsponsor.com (Supports Foreign Traffic) (Zero Click Model Supported)
- Parkingcrew.com (Supports Foreign Traffic)
- Voodoo.com (Highest Payouts In The Industry)


#2. What tools do you use to help you evaluate domains?

Besides my own "TOOL", which I'm not here to promote I would suggest the following;

1. Push2check.com - Great resource site (I do not affiliated with them in anyway)

If we break down the tools I generally look at the following:

Traffic Sources: (Understand that no tool is 100% accurate but together you can get a great picture.)

1. Compete.com
2. Alexa.com
3. Quantcast.com
4. Verisign Labs: http://domainscore.verisignlabs.com/ ( WARNING: This tool to be used when you have mastered other tools. The information on this site is tricky but can be useful)

History of the domain:

1. Archive.org
2. who.is

Backlinks: ( There are plenty of tools for these but here are some sites I use)

1. Majesticseo.com
2. Google Backlinks
3. Yahoo Backlinks
4. DuckDuckGo.com
5. AHrefs.com: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/brickbuyers.com
6. opensiteexplorer.org (Enjoy this one. It's the search engine for backlinks)



Keywords:

1. Google Keyword Tool


#3. Where can I get lists to analyze:

I have my own tools that do the work for me however here are a few places you can grab lists from to analyze:

1. Dynadot.com
2. Expireddomains.net - (good site)
3. Namejet.com
4. Snapnames.com
5. Godaddy.com
6. Freshdrop.net - (this covers a majority of the above & more)


#4. Do all your domains make money?:

NO!

I'll say it again : NO! I STILL PICK LOSERS!

In fact anyone who says they make money on every single purchase is lying. No one has a 100% success rate and you don't need to. What you need to do to win in this business is;

#1. Pick 51% winners
#2. Make sure to keep your costs low and make more then your spending.


Understand a single domain can make up the costs of lost ones. I picked a domain that makes me $15.00 a day in revenue. That means I'll make $450 a month with it and it's recouped $300 I've lost on previous domains.

Trust me, the sea of domains is massive and there are ton's of GOLDEN NUGGETS ready to be mined by all.


#5. How much do you spend on domains?:

I've spent anywhere from $.99 - $x,xxx! If I like a domain I will spend what I need, to get it as long as "I CAN STILL MAKE A PROFIT"! That's the key.

However, recently I am testing a new program which allows me to buy strictly "HANDREGS". YUP, Handregs! You would be surprised at how much stuff is just sitting on the ocean floor of domains that people think are garbage.


#6. Blacklisted Domains? Revenue Sucks! HELLLLLP!

This is something that's not addressed a lot and something everyone should be aware of: THE BLACK LIST!

This still happens to me this day. I'll buy a domain only to find out the previous owner got blacklisted from Google. This will affect your revenue greatly because Google will not allow Parking Companies to display the proper ad's on your site. If this happens you will need to go to a second feed like Yahoo! or Zeroclick model.

Common Terms for Blacklisted:

1. Faillisted
2. Blacklisted
3. Fail

Check the status of a domain when you park it and you'll see what I mean.

Edit:6/12/2012: Thank You www.ri.sch.edu.sg for this tool!

Originally Posted by www.ri.sch.edu.sg

One thing I can add to this thread is to check if the domain is blacklisted before you purchase them, simply point to:


https://api.bodis.com/domainclassification?domain=(Insert Domain Here)

Classification:

Primary = Google

Secondary = All others but Google (Faillisted,blacklisted, etc from google)

Hope that helps






#7. YUM! YUM! Domain Tasting


If you're not sure what this is it's when you buy a domain and test the traffic for a set amount of time and if your not happy with the traffic you can get a refund or partial refund of your handreg fee.

One thing I see all the time is: Domain tasting is dead! No it's not!

Yes; it might not be as prevalent as it once used to be but there are companies out there that still allow it. How do I know this? Because I do it.

#8. Can I promote or advertise my parked domains?


No, No, No, No, No, No,No, No, No, No, No, No,No, No, No, No, No, No,No, No, No, No, No, No!

If I wasn't clear let me repeat it; NO!


#9. What do all those backlinks mean from different sites?

(Thanks Martiinko for the info)

All those sites "backlink" scanners work by "downloading" the pages all over internet and then searching for URLs in it. Moving from one page to the other over these links. But...

1. There maybe a difference in last time they check this domain for backlinks.

2. There is definitely a huge difference in their databases of pages. That means if one site has smaller DB they don't probably have all the backlinks from as many pages as the other site.

3. Some backlinks are maybe updated, some maybe aren't. The process of "crawling" the web is very time consuming, so not all the backlinks can be verified every day.

To your other question. The links like you described are ok. If you park a domain all the requests go straight to the main page. But what is important is where is the link located. Is it a "spam in comments section", is it in the "blog post" or is maybe a "banner"?

..

So I collected couple different pages (and I'm collecting even more) for you to check if the webpage/domain was ever parked before Some have form input some are just simple url + domain name.
I will make it into a simple web app, so you don't have to go to all of this pages when checking a domain name for parking history. Mostly screenshots.

Was this domain name parked before?
All of them are free. And I don't have any connection to them whatsoever.

Fun fact: This article got to 2th place in google search for Domain name parking history after 20 minutes.




..

*** WORDS OF WISDOM ***

1. Never spend money you can't afford to lose! Consider every domain investment a loss till you make your money back because that's what it is. No one can tell me different on this and the reason why is you are "NEGATIVE" that amount of money till it's recouped.

2. When you buy a domain to park; look to get your initial investment back within 6-12 months.

 

[GiftedDomains]

Sorry if this was posted/asked before:

I experienced that when people use browser plugins like adblock plus (millions of users), most if not all parking companies are blocked and you don't see any ads. But sedo for instance is not blocked.
I guess sedo complies with the "exception policies" of adblock or they made some sort of deal.
Then again sedo is the worst i have experienced and lowest visitors/income even with this "huge" advantage. This is not something new though and has been like this for 1 or 2 years.
So normally you would think that there should be way more clicks/income at sedo, where in fact its the opposite. This is really weird and makes me wonder if the data that sedo gives to its customers is true or not (as mentioned, transparency is a huge problem in this parking biz).

 

[mwaida]

Does anyone have a recommendation as to what site/tool I could use to see where my domain's traffic is coming from geographically? For example U.S./ Asia/ Europe.

 

[GiftedDomains]

Since you posted this in "domain parking", i assume you parked your domains.
Parking companies give you the traffic source info and it is visible in your account.

 

[advaita]

mwaida - if you're not parking your domains then you can use - Statcounter - it's free

 

[mwaida]

mwaida - if you're not parking your domains then you can use - Statcounter - it's free

Thank you; this has just what I was looking for

 

[martiinko]

Smurge (if are coming back here) or audience would you buy a domain for parking if it has solid links, even though like... 6 years old. Cause that was the time the domain first dropped and then for like a 4 years it was some kind of chinese search engine site?

It's typical scenario, good domain was dropped someone picked it up and used "not for parking". If it was for parking and was dropped again, i wouldn't buy it that's for sure.

Currently I'm sorting a list of 390 thousand domains to get the rightones. I'm able to get those with a lot of links easily, but that doesn't actually mean they will be good for parking. As I understnd the majestic it is the TrustFlow that counts.

(these are all dropped, or recently rebought)

 

[domainzaar]

What about creating mini-sites instead of parking?

Smurge, your list of tips and recommendations is quite extensive, however why don't you recommend people consider semi-developing their parked domains, i.e. create mini-websites with real content? In many cases, this is far more profitable than simply parking since it allows you to put content ads, including relevant affiliate ads.

 

[Domainer_1]

Smurge, your list of tips and recommendations is quite extensive, however why don't you recommend people consider semi-developing their parked domains, i.e. create mini-websites with real content? In many cases, this is far more profitable than simply parking since it allows you to put content ads, including relevant affiliate ads.

How much do you earn with your mini-sites? If you have some ideas to share, make your own thread and tell us them! Making mini-sites is another big industry with a lot of tips and tricks. And why do you think parking is extensive? Explain in details. I think CTR in parking is higher than CTR at websites, where people read content instead of clicking ads.

 

[B&J]

Mini sites area always better as they get better ranking and traffic too.

 

[smurge]

Smurge, your list of tips and recommendations is quite extensive, however why don't you recommend people consider semi-developing their parked domains, i.e. create mini-websites with real content? In many cases, this is far more profitable than simply parking since it allows you to put content ads, including relevant affiliate ads.

Because I don't want to spend time to do the work on them. Think about it for a moment, all I do is buy a domain that has traffic, I park it and I make money. Why do I need to complicate my life? Sure, I could spend time developing names, etc but i have more important things to do like spend time with my wife and children.

Think about it, do you need more than $10,000, $20,000 , $50,000 a month in residual income to have a nice life?

This is why I don't develop them. I don't want to hassle with it all since I have more important things to focus on.

Hope this makes sense.

 

[samran_expert]

very well laid out information, it's people like you which makes this forum more interesting and we able to clear many confusion surrounding us with myths created by so called GURU's.

 

[smurge]

Sorry I've been out of the loop last couple of weeks. I have child #3 on the way so I've been preparing for that. lol

Anyways I am back and should be able to respond ot the P.M.'s i've been getting.

 

[namemarket]

I think CTR in parking is higher than CTR at websites, where people read content instead of clicking ads.

A parked domain typically has at least 10 times the CTR compared to a minisite, i.e. roughly 20% or more parked vs a website's 2% or less. That 20% parking page number can also be much better, as much as 50% CTR or more but it's rare for a minisite CTR to exceed 5%. This means on average you will need at least 10 times more site traffic to get similar revenue vs parked, assuming the EPC's are about the same.

 

[Igor Mironyuk]

What's Pop Under revenue?

 

[martiinko]

However, recently I am testing a new program which allows me to buy strictly "HANDREGS". YUP, Handregs! You would be surprised at how much stuff is just sitting on the ocean floor of domains that people think are garbage.

I see you added this line to the topic introduction. Can you tell us more? Are those handregs without backlinks? Are they based on keyword search, CPC etc?

Thanks.

 

[BullS]

From what I have experienced, different domains perform better on other parking platforms.

I don't know why but you just have to try each one for at least 3 mths.

for example:
One domain gets 0 click on Sedo, but gets $$$ per mth on Vodoo

who knows!!

 

[vipanil7]

Sorry if this was posted/asked before:

I experienced that when people use browser plugins like adblock plus (millions of users), most if not all parking companies are blocked and you don't see any ads. But sedo for instance is not blocked.
I guess sedo complies with the "exception policies" of adblock or they made some sort of deal.
Then again sedo is the worst i have experienced and lowest visitors/income even with this "huge" advantage. This is not something new though and has been like this for 1 or 2 years.
So normally you would think that there should be way more clicks/income at sedo, where in fact its the opposite. This is really weird and makes me wonder if the data that sedo gives to its customers is true or not (as mentioned, transparency is a huge problem in this parking biz).

u are right

 

[Igor Mironyuk]

What is Pop-Under revenue in parking?

 

[pablohc86]

What is Pop-Under revenue in parking?

domain parking services like domain sponsor offer pop up when a visitor come over the lander.. if an user click on it you get revenues.. that revenues is pop under revenue

 

[Ulriikkasmith]

That is really a ton of information you got out there..just awesome..i was quite intrigued by the content of the write out here..