Effective parking investment

[Steven]

I've been lurking here for a long time, and I have never really focused on parking/monetizing my undeveloped domains.

I hear of some people getting into this parking business and earning hundreds a day. On the other hand, I also hear people earning couple cents to several dollars a month.

In order to make a good income from domain parking, what types of tools should I (or other domainers who are interested in parking) get? (What is the best way to get quality traffic domains)
What is the required (reasonable) finance needed for serious parking investors?
How much hours of research/work does it take per day to properly monetize/find good domains?

I look forward to learning from the experts or anybody with good experiences

 

[kokbaw]

I am not an expert but I want to show my opinion.Living on parking is a little hard.
As you know,there are few available traffic domains now.It is necessary to buy traffic domains from others.No pains,no gains!Good luck.

 

[geb9696]

From what I have experianced Arbitrage is a key to parking income. It makes for a great supplement. Along with arbitrage putting up custom content to get indexed by the search engines is also important. If you have strong keywords your site should come up on the first pages of the search engines.

 

[faisj]

I've been lurking here for a long time, and I have never really focused on parking/monetizing my undeveloped domains.

I hear of some people getting into this parking business and earning hundreds a day. On the other hand, I also hear people earning couple cents to several dollars a month.

In order to make a good income from domain parking, what types of tools should I (or other domainers who are interested in parking) get? (What is the best way to get quality traffic domains)
What is the required (reasonable) finance needed for serious parking investors?
How much hours of research/work does it take per day to properly monetize/find good domains?

I look forward to learning from the experts or anybody with good experiences

Yes, it is very good possible to make more then a few hundreds a day.

It is is very hard to say what domains you should get.
If we all knew we would have taken them ourself

Everyone has another strategy.
- some go for investmenting in domain names that "perhaps" can be
sold later to a end user
- some buy traffic domains to park them at parking programs and
monitze them "they hope" better
- some go to buy domain names that are not available a lot
- some get domain names that "perhaps" have traffic and park them
- some buy domain names and make own sites
etc.. etc...

I started many years ago with $500,- I think and made some good purchases.
These days I spend sometimes double in a day on new domains.
It all depends how fast you want to grow and the strategy.

I do advice you to read this board alot and spend "a lot of time"
I always say: you must live the domain business.
Every object you see... you must see the .com possiblity behind it
and have a pda with you to check it (or a pen and paper)

I spend a lot of time working on my domains and thats sometimes the
complete day. (morning till morning)

Goodluck!!

Ps. do check my website: http://www.theppcparkingguide.com/
for more information and a 6-step program.

If I can help you in anyother way... do let me know...

kind regards,

Faisj

 

[GILSAN]

Have you read the "Word of Advice Thread" at: http://www.namepros.com/domain-newbies/378795-word-of-advice-thread.html

or the "Domain Mistakes I Have Made (Please Share Yours)" thread.

The best tool you can get which I think you've already done is read as much as possible here at NamePros.

Next in line is a good keyword selector tool like "Wordtracker" or "Keyword Discovery" which you'll have to buy.

Or you can use the free ones like Wordtracker Free at: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

or Keyword Discovery free at: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html?query=cellular+phone+accessories

or Google's Keyword tool at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

GIL

 

[discovernow]

I would look at IDN and foreign languages, or what might be hot future trends.
In the last year I bought some very good Spanish names that get traffic and there are still opportunities in all type of other languages. Go to
http://global-reach.biz/globstats and you can research some of these trends.

 

[Steven]

Thank you all for your great advices.
I will take them into account and do a lot of studying in all parking related.
+ Rep for all

 

[BrainPower]

For any of the more profitable parked domains that I have, it seemed to be a mix of evolving content pertaining to its original traffic audience. In short, know who your readers are and give them great content!

 

[fatter]

what ever you do dont beleive traffic stats or income provided by seller if you go the route of buying names with traffic, make sure you get a trusted source to analyze the traffic first.

 

[GILSAN]

what ever you do dont beleive traffic stats or income provided by seller if you go the route of buying names with traffic, make sure you get a trusted source to analyze the traffic first.

How do you go about finding a trusted source to analyze the traffic? Where do you go, what tools do you use?

GIL

 

[geb9696]

If you are buying a name on Sedo you can ask a rep from Sedo to varify the traffic if the domain is parked with them. When buying traffic names on forums I would be very wary if the member does not have a lot of positive feedback. Quantcast.com will give you some numbers but in my experiance their estimates are on the low side. Alexa.com is also a good place to look to see if the name has a rank or not. You can google the name with the .com attached to see how many backlinks the name has in order get an idea of where the traffic is coming from. If you use an escrow service you normally get a 5 day inspection period before the money is released. If the name is supposed to be receiving 100's of visitors a day you will be able to tell rather quickly if the traffic is legit or not. Also, you will want to look at archive.org to see if the name used to have a site on it and that may be were the traffic is coming from. In the end there is no way to be certain that the name you are buying has the traffic numbers that the seller is claiming but by looking at the above things you can get an idea whether it is probable or not.

 

[Mike]

Either have broad understanding of the "domain game" OR specialize in the area where you know most of. For instance, for me it's Finance, Aviation and psychology/business/philosophy. The latter doesn't pay squat in association with one another .
The reason why i mention the "specialist" avenue is simple: If you know what's going on in your industry, you'll find it a lot easier to buy domains with future potential. Such as the Airbus 380 for example. If you're an aviation specialist, you'd have known for years what Airbus is working on and would have invested in the appropriate domains. That's something for the long term though, since you have to be considerably ahead of the curve.
For immediate investments, see what's available on the auction houses. Search for domains that have traffic or PR or any good combination thereof. Many people forget to renew their domains, their loss - your gain. Morally questionable to profit from someone else's mistake? Not in the least. After all, it was the previous owner's failure to secure his property. This is the proverbial "wild west" the one that draws faster and shoots more accurate will rule the town.

....i get on my horse now and ride into the sunset.

IB

 

[evilopinions]

and yeah if you are just starting out and dont have a very big budget I suggest starting on typos at dynadot....Get some good typos will take a lot of research to find one but you will get a few ones getting 20-30 uniwues each day....Park them for a few months and while you park read read read and read some more...

In 3 months time you will have enough understanding and domains 3 months old with traffic stats...sell them and you will have a good budget to acquire traffic names....

BTW the phase where you buy domains and wait to get traffic stats to sell them never comes...Once you taste it u never stop buying...gets very addictive more like sex...

 

[liquidcherry]

Wohoo....whe have now our own "Lucky Luke" at Namepros....."ride on Mike, ride on...."

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_tvshows/472-lucky-luke/

Cheers,

Frank

 

[faisj]

If you are buying a name on Sedo you can ask a rep from Sedo to varify the traffic if the domain is parked with them.

I sometimes wish the system was 'smart' enough so, we don't have to
get in contact with a rep when you want to have 'correct' traffic info. (at sedo)

 

[DnPresident]

How much hours of research/work does it take per day to properly monetize/find good domains?

Not per day but Minimum of 80 hours per week for Newb........Never enough time in the day!


If you know what you need to know I'd say a minimum of $3,000 to start as of "Friday December 7th 2007" ...........Which is getting more expensive every week.. That's buying high quality keywords in low quality extensions and knowing what to do with them.

This is figuring you want to profit at least $1000.00 -$1,400 per week domaining

Be more than happy to show you my numbers, what I know, what you need to know and the names to purchase for $20,000 plus the cost of the names which will run around $1,000...Any names in your portfolio that will work will be reduced from the $1,000

I posted above what you need to know......That's meaning what you need to know to make $1,000-$1,400 per week sarting out. You could make more or less, no guarantees...I think it's quite stable and very good but it has it's ups and downs. For instance Thanks Giving Day was very slow. If WW3 breaks out the net will probably slow down....You have to think about things that effect internet shopping.

 

[NickRac]

From what I have experianced Arbitrage is a key to parking income. It makes for a great supplement. Along with arbitrage putting up custom content to get indexed by the search engines is also important. If you have strong keywords your site should come up on the first pages of the search engines.

From my experience, it's not worth the time/money. Good old domain parking and seo are much better.

mrdomainman - w/o giving away any trade secrets...find some less popular search terms and build your parked page around those...onc eyou get indexed you'll easily be on page 1 or 2 of google...

What is better...

Page 1 of google for 1000 searches per month or page 50 for 50,000 per month?

Hint: Page 1

 

[johnny6]

I have no idea why anyone bothers with parking domains (outside of typos) when there are affiliate programs out there.

Say you have a student loans domain that gets some traffic.

Option 1: You could park it at sedo, bodis, activeaudience, parked, trafficz, domainsponsor, parking panel, fabulous, whatever. Then you can spend all day every day tweaking its layout and keywords.... and make $20 a year off 2 cent clicks. Whoopdy-do! Let's go to the movies!
Option 2: Maybe you don't have much time. You could simply redirect to a student loan affiliate site and make $40 per application. Think about the number of applications you have to get versus number of clicks to make the same money.
Option 3: You could develop a site, populate it with adsense AND affiliate links, put some effort and time into making an attractive site and deal with SEO and within a year or two or three make 1,000 times what you made parking. In the process you'll learn useful skills and probably spend no more time than you wasted on tweaking parking pages.

I'm no expert, I'm no pro, I've only been doing this for 5 years, not as long as many of these people, but I'd say the biggest mistake I've made in domaining is wasting time on domain parking LONG after the heyday of domain parking ended.

-John

 

[ollioikarinen]

Option 2: Maybe you don't have much time. You could simply redirect to a student loan affiliate site and make $40 per application. Think about the number of applications you have to get versus number of clicks to make the same money.
Option 3: You could develop a site, populate it with adsense AND affiliate links, put some effort and time into making an attractive site and deal with SEO and within a year or two or three make 1,000 times what you made parking. In the process you'll learn useful skills and probably spend no more time than you wasted on tweaking parking pages.
-John

Almost combining John' options 2 and 3: domainspark.org (fresh content every day, adsense and amazon store). I can create you an account for free (even it's not free, I listed it on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=160188978384&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=006 )

 

[fatter]

I have no idea why anyone bothers with parking domains (outside of typos) when there are affiliate programs out there.

Say you have a student loans domain that gets some traffic.

Option 1: You could park it at sedo, bodis, activeaudience, parked, trafficz, domainsponsor, parking panel, fabulous, whatever. Then you can spend all day every day tweaking its layout and keywords.... and make $20 a year off 2 cent clicks. Whoopdy-do! Let's go to the movies!
Option 2: Maybe you don't have much time. You could simply redirect to a student loan affiliate site and make $40 per application. Think about the number of applications you have to get versus number of clicks to make the same money.
Option 3: You could develop a site, populate it with adsense AND affiliate links, put some effort and time into making an attractive site and deal with SEO and within a year or two or three make 1,000 times what you made parking. In the process you'll learn useful skills and probably spend no more time than you wasted on tweaking parking pages.

I'm no expert, I'm no pro, I've only been doing this for 5 years, not as long as many of these people, but I'd say the biggest mistake I've made in domaining is wasting time on domain parking LONG after the heyday of domain parking ended.

-John

I think the biggest reason why people park and dont sign up for affiliate programs is 99 percent of affiliate programs require you to have a website
on the domain and dont allow url forwarding for commisions, In fact i think there is a real chance an entrapenuer could run with this so domainers could participate. Most domainers I would think 70 percent couldnt even build a basic site especially some of the newer ones, not counting old farts like me who dont even own a cellphone but have ten cellphone domains.