Evaluating domains for potential parking profit?

[horusprim]

I will start parking some domains I bought within the coming week.

I am curious for feed back on my parking domain selection process?

My process is based on unsubstantiated speculation and assumptions.

I search for domains that have an estimate of 1000 direct traffic hits based on Similarweb.com for USA traffic only.
The assumptions I make are:
1. USA traffic is the most valuable traffic and traffic from other countries is gravy.
2. Focus on direct traffic only. All other sources traffic except direct like social, search etc will rapidly stop once the domain is parked.

For example, I passed bidding on a domain that had 7700 total visits per month according to Similarweb.com

The percent of USA traffic was 25.46%. This equals about 1960 total visits from America from the global 7700 total visits.
However, only 12.80% was direct traffic with the bulk coming from search.
Thus 12.80% of 1960 is about 251 total visits from USA only direct traffic . Since 251 is below 1000 I passed.

How sound is my strategy.

 

[Jeff Weller]

Well - we've all learned from unsubstantiated speculation and assumptions and I'd venture to say that anyone here making serious money parking started off with spec and assumption and fine tuned their system over time. I made a $4000 mistake on a parking domain and was scammed with fraudulent traffic and then the next day hand reg'd 2 domains that make $3/day each. Wiser parking people than I will confirm that automation and mechanical/numerical system can only take you so far. Gut feel based upon experience plays as big or a bigger role.

The validity of your process will show itself pretty quickly unless all your selections throw high dollar infrequent clicks.

Raw numbers from SimilarWeb/Alexa don't necessarily reflect the true number of uniques and quality is what matters. Although US traffic is important - Euro and Austral-Asian traffic can/does pay equally well. Direct traffic is fabulous but the idea all other traffic will vaporize once a domain is parked is incorrect. We have link driven traffic that has remained constant for years. Can it disappear quickly? Yes. Does it always? No.

Domains with tons of traffic can still fail to monetize in parking. Domains that were parked with one parking company can fail with a different parking company. Keyword optimization - which can be very subjective - can play a role.
You might want to consider validating all your possible regs against Google's fail list checker which you can find for free at ParkingCrew for example. We personally do well with some fail list domains however many domainers choose to avoid them altogether. Running the domain through ScreenShots and Archive.org may show you if it was ever parked before. There are reasons for exceptions but typically a domain that has been parked for a few years with different owners each year is a domain that isn't covering its reg cost. If it is a TM misspell it may have been dropped as a result of demand letter. If it is a TM misspell it can help to Google the TM owner and see if they have a penchant for filing UDRPs.

The few aforementioned points are just a few of the very many things we consider in addition to our own numerical evaluation. There are other considerations - and I hope this helps you see how important instinct and experience are in parking name selection in addition to your assumptions.

Good luck and welcome to parking.

 

[pablohc86]

I mostly agree with all what Jeff said here.
Another suggestion to you is: not stick too much to data otherwise you will become crazy when you will see domains with 0 metrics on mutliple tools, making more revenues that many of yours..

Develop your 6th sense is the only way to be successful in parking and remember that you "just" need to earn more that what you spend, not buy a winner domain for parking every time, so yes when you buy you basically can just assume.