Why Domain Parking works for me

[privatereg]

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.

 

[AEProgram]

Here is the number one thing to consider when investing in a domain to make money from parking.

Is the user part of a demographic that would not realize its a parked page and they will click around hopefully going back and forth clicking all over the place.

Obviously I won't mention that the domain must have traffic coming to it from older links, directories, social media, that is a given. However, if you picked up some old popular tech blog or domaining blog that still gets 300 hits a day it will do nothing for you because the audience will know they reaches a parked page / not the intended page, they will rarely click.

You want to see a parked page with a high CTR? Pick up some site that the traffic demographic is mostly people 65+. Or a site that caters to people that are drunk or high (joking).

The next category is sites that are pages that people that visit tend to be in serious trouble. A site that used to belong to someone offering 24 hour plumbing etc. The visitor is more likely to go on a click binge. Now combine the two, and you have a mini gold mine. Even if it gets 25 clicks a day (not easy to find such sites) if the demographic is right expect to earn about 450 - 1250 per month off the name depending on the niche obviously.

I know a lot about parking, this thread hasn't offered up the real good stuff so I decided to start with some little known info.

 

[privatereg]

Hey guys!

It looks like I haven’t gotten any haters on this thread so far (except for the SEO guy who’s not really a hater – I didn’t want to really blow his mind by saying that actually a number of my domains have a CTR% much higher than 100% - He’d really think I was a scammer HAHA). Short answer – parking companies allow a visitor to click on more than one link so 1 visitor, 2 clicks on 2 different advertisers, 200% CTR. So parking stats is much different than traditional G analytics type stats.

I thought about this and decided I would share something that might dispel the notion on why some people think domain parking doesn’t work, or at least they think it works for the elite 1% with deep pockets but not for the little guy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you ever attended domain conferences on domain monetization, you always hear the CEOs end up saying the same thing. They want “quality traffic”. First of all, you might think what exactly does that mean, and secondly why should they care – don’t they just make a percentage of any traffic your domain sends and shouldn’t they want as much traffic as they can get (maybe I’ll write another post on that one – there’s a lot to that – looks like I’m writing a free E-Book HAHA).

But let me share why traffic quality matters and how it ties into your possible bad experience in domain parking. I’m going to use GD Auctions as an example, because I think a lot of beginners start with this site to try out parking. See if this happened to you….Since GD is one of the few auction sites that publishes traffic numbers, you figure you’ll just buy one of those domains that shows 300 visitors or maybe go for broke and go after something that shows over 1,000 visitors. And hey, traffic numbers even exist in GD Closeouts! Jackpot! So let’s say you battle in the auction, you outbid everyone else with something that has 300 visitors a month, you park it, and you wait for those 300 visitors…and you wait…and you wait…and 1 visitor shows up (maybe it was you HAHA). And others on the forum suggest that you should wait a few days for the nameservers to propagate worldwide and then it will pick-up. But it never does. Your first thought is you just got scammed. Either GD pumped up the traffic numbers just for the auction, or the parking company is stealing your traffic. Am I right?

So I’ll share with you that GD did not pump up the numbers for auction purposes (I spoke with the GD Director of Marketing at a domain conference once to get more information about this), and the parking company didn’t steal your traffic, which caused you to think maybe Parking is dead or it’s a scam. I posted previously that parking companies heavily filter out bad traffic – not just bots but bad IP addresses, and a host of other criteria. You may not know this, but your domain name is still getting 300 visitors a month, just like GD posted. The problem is you never did the research to see if most of those visitors were real visitors (that’s where all the hard work comes in and why this is a sophisticated business) and they are getting filtered out so they never show up on your stats. GD=Raw Traffic, Parking Stats=Filtered Traffic. Why is the parking company filtering out the traffic other than the obvious reason that those don’t convert? Why not just take it all and redirect the bad ones to zero click advertising? Because they’re obligated to with their G and affiliate contracts. Its obvious that Advertisers only want quality traffic that converts, and if you open the floodgates and send everything to G for example to serve ads, the parking company itself loses rev share with G, gets on probation, or worse yet, gets banned (look what happened to RM a few years back). So it’s not the parking company filtering out bad traffic because it’s a nice thing to do – it’s a requirement and why they say over and over in domain conferences that quality traffic is key. It’s important to you and it’s important to them.

Let’s go back and talk about GD auctions again. You see a domain that shows 12 visitors and you immediately skip over it and go after the 300 visitor one. But the real question is would you rather have a domain with 12 visitors that filters to 5 quality visitors or one with 300 that filters down to 0? But please, don’t start going after 12 visitor domains without doing your research!

OK, so here’s another observation about GD auctions and you’ve probably asked yourself. What about the ones where GD shows zero traffic and yet there are 20 bidders fighting for it? You look at the domain, it’s not a keyword, there’s no value to the name whatsoever – maybe it’s the original owner fighting to get it back you think, or maybe you have absolutely no idea why people are going after it. Some of you may already know this, but while there certainly is some value to exploring the domains that display traffic stats, it’s the ones that show no traffic at all where many of the better domain names exist. What? That’s crazy! How can that be?

So when GD first started their auction site, it was a closed auction house where only domains that were expiring from the GD registrar (and their direct affiliates) were shown there. A few years ago, they started opening it up to other registrars to start using their platform and from what I can see they are on an aggressive strategy to bring many more onboard, either through acquisition or lease arrangements (I’m not 100% sure, but that’s what I see when I scan the domains and see the whois history grow into ever increasing outside registrars like ENOM, TUCOWs, and many more non-US registrars). OK, so that does that mean? Well, the answer is obvious – GD does not have those traffic numbers, and so no traffic appears. Secret is out! Maybe you’ve been focusing on the wrong domains all this time. I don’t have any problem sharing this because there’s so many of them that show no traffic every day.

So what does this mean? Obviously it means that there is no lazy way to riches by either looking at a traffic number on GD and buying it, or jumping in on an auction that already has 5, 10, 20 bids or more, winning the auction and realizing that you just got scammed because guess what? FOMO kicked in, you with everyone else just bidded up a completely worthless domain that had low quality or garbage traffic and now parking is dead to you.

Let me finish this post by saying that even with all the technology and APIs and intelligence that I access and internally developed to try to find those quality traffic domains I still make mistakes and have to keep improving the process. This is not an exact science – I don’t have a crystal ball – I just combine a myriad of methods to look at the probability that quality traffic probably comes to that expired domain, and if it ticks most of the boxes, its probably something I’ll go after.

Don’t think for a minute that the stats I showed you in my OP resulted in every domain killing it with loads of clicks and revenue. Far from it…I have lots of domains that don’t make any money at all – at least on a given day. Some make money because of a single visitor in one month, but it’s enough to still hit the 12-24 month break even target. But some are still a partial or total loss and I let them go – You can do all the research in the world and still get fooled – it happens to all of us – the key is to have more winners than losers – just like the stock market or most other investments.

Hope this helps…

 

[privatereg]

Pretty interesting how this thread has turned…Yes, I have been busy with my full time “respectable” business in the workforce (I work in Legal) along with a couple of side-hustles.

As I stated in my OP, my purpose was never to give advice – I was very clear on the reason why – so not sure why I’m still being hammered with questions, suspicions, accusations when I don’t respond to your satisfaction, as I was very clear about my purpose in posting. I can see why a lot of members don’t bother sharing what they’re doing for this reason.

I stopped responding to PMs because I got buried with questions – no offense to anyone, but I requested in my OP not to PM me – I simply don’t have the time to do that. I made the mistake of trying to be cordial with the initial ones that ignored my request, but then the follow-up questions kept coming, and then when I stopped responding, questions on why not, and finally accusations. So I’m done with that – my bad for violating my own directive.

Look - I’m not a mentor – not right now anyway; just an average guy trying to earn revenues in multiple business lines, parking being one of them. Parking is fun to me; it’s not the best revenue stream (as far as time value of money), but it has aspects that I enjoy – and it’s not for everyone – some people may find it too tedious or boring – not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a lot harder today, but I love to treasure hunt and problem solve why a domain didn’t pan out, so it ticks the boxes for me.

I’m sure it’s rare for anyone to post anymore without having a self-serving agenda. I suppose mine was an attempt to dispel rumors about domain parking today since so little was posted about higher revenues or whether anyone was doing it as a business in today’s world – not sure if I convinced anyone that there are some that make these types of revenues in parking and much higher (based on my conversation with others in past domain conferences and other portfolios I’ve seen in private sales – I’m in the middle of the pack for individual investors if your curious about revenue potential). And of course, I’ve tried to be clear that this not the only form of achieving monetization in this industry – I respect anyone who has found a method (selling, affiliate marketing, arbitrage, lead generation, traffic switching, you name it) that is successful for them.

I realize my opinion is only an opinion, or more truthfully simply one person’s experience with the parking industry for over a decade that was willing to share a certain peek at what some investors are doing with it today, not a how-to guide. I do enjoy seeing member posts that share success with parking – and I’m learning too about new approaches - it’s not about total volume – it’s about scalability; it’s whether people do parking in any shape or fashion today, so I applaud those that were willing to share their experience – good or bad.

I’ll check in from time to time – Best of luck all of you – I’m sure I’ll continue to learn something on these threads – thanks to all who shared.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thank you for the detailed and informative post, @privatereg. While I have not really studied parking in any detail, your observation that parking is not dead but you need to now be much more sophisticated than was the case a decade or more ago. Lot's of gold in your post, I particularly like detail given in this:

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.

Best wishes for continued success in parking, and thanks for all that you have shared.

Bob

 

[privatereg]

I’m the OP for this thread and haven’t written in several months….

What I’ve learned since last year….

1. Looking several thousand domains parked in 2021 my Revenue Per Click (RPC) hasn’t gone down; in fact its trending higher which either means G is raising their Adwords rates, or I’m just getting better domains. What is my RPC? It averages to $0.38 over the past 12 months. Hope it continues….

2. Also I can say that my CTR% has held pretty steady and I applaud Bodis for continuing to find ways to keep or increase the CTR. I think when they changed to only serving up 3 adds on a parked page instead of 5-7 in the past has helped me. What is my CTR%? It averages 33.5% over the past 12 months. As an aside, I’ve been challenged in previous posts about how the CTR% could be so high, but it’s basically how Bodis removes bot and garbage traffic when they calculate # visitors to the site, which is a basis for determining CTR. In other words, if they let all the visitors come to the parking page, my CTR% would be less than 5% based on G analytics that I have on all the domains. Still, it’s a good CTR for a parked page and I have no complaints.

3. I still do the work and suggest keywords to Bodis for every domain I get. G ignores most of them these days, but occasionally they use them because it helps point them in the right direction when they serve up the ads from my experience.

4. I almost never get any chargebacks because I look for clean domains only which has continued to give me high smart pricing percentages with G.

5. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at finding the right domains at the right price based on many years of experience, but I still end up with some domains that result in a partial loss (it’s less than 5%). No matter how good you think you are, you can’t predict when a solid backlink is going to be removed.

6. Although I don’t put any sales banners on any parked domains, I still get approached by domain brokers and can say that 5% of my domain portfolio last year is attributed to sales revenue – not earth shattering, but I appreciate it. I only work with domain brokers; never directly with any previous owner or individual.

7. Domain parking is really about investment. For me, picking up deleted domains is a non-starter so you that leaves you with auctions and pending deletes. For auctions, I have seen that the competition continues to get more aggressive every month with higher prices needed to secure them, so net profit will continue to get squeezed over time (and no, I’m not sharing that metric). At some point in the future the cost/profit ratio will be such that I’ll be forced out of the market and either let the parking revenues die over time or sell the portfolio. Regarding pended deletes, it’s something I look at every day and I’ve had some success, so for those that are starting without a lot of money it’s a pretty good way to ramp up over time; however, if you don’t have intelligent automated routines, it’s impossible to find candidates – too many drops.

8. The more domains you manage, the more time it takes out of your day. I’ve written several routines to semi-automate everything but it’s still time consuming. Since I have a full time job, it can be a challenge on some days, especially when I’m on vacation (haha).

9. How much you “get” from domain parking is really misleading because of the expenses associated with new purchases, renewal prices, and registrar transfer fee consolidation, as well as the rare UDRP (I don’t buy trademark typos). For me, profit percentages are still good (but not sharing that metric).

10. Finally, I will strongly state that this is just me and my results. I’m not telling you this is the way to do it. Everyone has a different method to make money in the domain business, and there are smarter players than me out there – just look at domaining dot com.

Domain parking remains a crazy business; the reason it’s gotten so competitive in the auction market is because individuals/institutions are obviously making money with it and more are willing to play long instead of a “get rich quick” scenario which worked 15 years or so ago (those were the days…). It’s also remains a secretive business where those that make money never share how they do it because it increases the competition and drives up the auction prices. But I will say there’s nothing magical about it once you figure it out – it’s how much you’re willing to invest and how long you’re willing to wait to generate profit, which is not guaranteed.

As I’ve always written in the past, I put my money where my mouth is….Here are screenshots showing proof of revenue with Bodis which is the only parking provider I use and trust. I now have two accounts because I have two different payment methods and currently the only way to do that is to set up two different accounts. That also gives me a long term advantage to watch one of the accounts that I try to keep frozen in terms of adding any domains and see what the declining percentages of revenues are over time (although the one screenshot I did inadvertently move some domains to the other account but will keep it frozen from now on). That is one metric that I haven’t been able to quantify yet. In other words, if I stopped purchasing domains, how long would it take to lose 50% of my revenues, etc. That is a metric I want to figure out this year and factor it against expenses.

For those of you that don’t want to pull out a calculator with the screenshots, here are parking revenues (USD) for the past 3 months (assuming I added this right - HAHA):

October - $80,167
November - $74,697
December - $79,164

I’m going to remain aggressive this year and keep pushing the revenues higher, but competition may not allow me to push it much further – we’ll see and I’ll post my findings next year.

Finally, as I’ve always said in the past, please don’t IM me with questions about how to get started, what domains to look for, how much can I make with a $5K initial investment or partnership opportunities. Putting myself out there always brings the haters and doubters which is why most people/institutions that make money in this business never post. I have no incentive to provide this information; I’m not selling anything, but I like to contribute to the community from time to time because it is a legit business – just not for most people. Thanks in advance.

Account 1

Account 2

 

[biggie]

Asking Questions doesn't make some a newbie, I seek knowledge everyday, this is how my mindset is working

Hi

asking questions does not make one a newbie,
but how the question is asked.... and whether that question has been answered, prior to the latter question....
then, when the same knowledge that one seeks, was already spoken to, in other threads.....

Is Parking Really Dead or It Has Gotten So Different? - NamePros
Is parking worth it? - NamePros
Parking domains, is it worth? - NamePros
Where to Park for monetization - NamePros
Do Parked Domains Make money on Clicks?? - NamePros
Domain Parking Companies 2019 - Rewind - NamePros

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

if one cares to feed themselves.- rather than going to deep end -
they could have read other threads in this section, that shed same light for one who walks in darkness.

don't hate the players....hate the hate and move on

imo....

 

[privatereg]

ps just speculate for me..with zero optimizing and letting bodis it. how much less u think u would make..in fact it shouldn't be speculating cause u know what u did b4 optimizing and after.

also...why bodis...have u tried all others? I thought they had special places for high rev parkers

Yeah, there is a significant difference with no optimization. With no optimization, when you pull up your domain name, there might be one or two related terms that look OK, but several other terms are completely unrelated. My guess is a visitor will quickly know the site is garbage and clicks out. If you can force terms (in Bodis - they show 7 for desktop, 5 for mobile), AND G allows it (because its completely related to past traffic), then in most cases, they will see your related terms and the CTR% goes up. It's hard to tell you % difference, but it's definitely a difference. My fear is one day G may disallow all forced related terms, but hopefully that will be years away. I think they changed last year to take your related terms as a suggestion instead of literal is due to bad actors in the space.

As I said in a previous thread, I've tried them all. Since G controls all ad display now (no more javascript and allowing you to intercept the display and insert affiliate links), they all output the same. As far as special deals, I don't know of any other than if your smart price score is high and your chargebacks are $0 or less than 1%, G rewards you with higher RPC - just a guess. Finally, as far as special deals, yes, higher volume quality traffic owners will get higher rev share - it's not automatic - its based on your relationship with your domain parking account exec.

 

[privatereg]

Woaw....amazing...
may i know how many domains you have/you parking?
and where do you parking your domains? (sedo/afternic or...?
thank you

1. I'd rather not say number of domains (its in the low thousands) - I don't think it matters how many domains - the key is does the domain have an ability to break even in 12-24 months - even if you have one.
2. I've tried multiple parking companies in the past. There are slight variations but as long as I can force related terms, they all balance out about the same since they all have the same source feed. At that point, it depends on what rev share you have with the the parking vendor since the pay rate from G will be similar for all G companies

 

[privatereg]

I have good experience in SEO, Adsense, adword and Google analytics, seeing your revenue picture, i felt one thing very out of place CTR . A CTR (click through rate) of 41.25% is really unbelievable and if it true, which ever ad company you use could have banned you on 1st month itself. sorry i feel its Photoshop one.

Yup, that's exactly the reason why guys like me don't post because of guys like you. I have zero incentive to fudge stats. I don't know how to use an image editor nor do I know anyone who does. Even showing you a 1099 would cause you think that was photoshopped as well. I'm not going to go on and on trying to convince you so I'll consider you a doubter not a hater. Since you are an SEO expert, let me try to offer one explanation for the CTR....

I did a test on a few hundred of my names - random selection against a page with google analytics to see how many actual visitors come to these domains due to raw URLS. There are 5 times as many visitors as the parking company shows as number of visitors. So if the parking company reported all visitors to come to the site my CTR would be 20% of what is reported. Not sure how much experience you have with parking companies, but each has different filtering rules which is why sometimes one parking company shows a lot more visitors than others. Some are more strict on disallowing them to come to the park page and they constantly filter out bots, bad traffic, etc., and report the actual visitors that will see the park page.

That may not satisfy you, but nothing else I can offer as explanation....

 

[privatereg]

After seeing the recent posts, Alcy you might be right that domain parking today is for the 1%; it was for the 90% back in 2007 but the opportunity for the masses is long gone (just like BTC today – remember when you could get BTC for free with all those bitcoin faucet sites? HAHA). So from that standpoint, maybe domain parking is dead for most people; my only point in the OP was to show that it’s still alive and thriving for a few, but it’s a missed opportunity in 2021 for most. I think I’m done with making this point. Just like politics, if you’re convinced it’s a strategy that doesn’t work for you, then you’re right – parking is dead to you. My only point was to say that with millions of domains that are parked today, obviously someone is benefiting from it, and I’m fortunate to be one of those participating. Are there other ways in 2021 to take advantage of domain names and monetize them? Yes, absolutely. Personally, the money is nice, but I actually enjoy the chase and like to problem solve, so it’s work and fun at the same time. I have several other revenue streams so money in parking is not the biggest driver for me in that regard. So I’ll just leave it at that, I’ve made my point, and you all have made yours. I mean this sincerely when I say best of luck for anyone searching for new revenue strategies; they’re out there today, and new ones are yet to be discovered….

 

[privatereg]

In the end of the day , I wonder if the @privatereg is profitable?

Fair question. When I got serious again with parking last April, I treated the business like a start-up company. Like any new business, this would require capital and since I am self-funding this I was prepared to start out in the negative. I had an idea what I wanted my ultimate annual net profit to be in three years so I developed a business plan on what it would take for me to get there.

I came up with a budget for purchasing ‘x’ domains daily and have made some tweaks along the way, but the past few months with few exceptions the purchase volume has been steady. So now, I have almost a fixed expense for purchasing and a slow increase in renewals for new domains offset by any that I’m not renewing.

As of February I’m about a 40% monthly net profit for that month (before taxes) and I’m on track to hit 70% monthly profit by December. By the end of next year, I should be over 90% net monthly profit. Profit increases for me month to month because the gross revenues go up and my fixed expenses rise very slowly. This is due to the fact that my daily expenditure for purchasing domains will not change substantially (as it is achieving the desired revenue growth), taking into account increased renewal rates, increased auction prices, etc. So far I consider this business model a successful business venture especially for a side hustle HAHA.

I attached the latest screenshot of monthly gross revenues. Although it looked like February dipped a little it was only 28 days in the month (versus 31 in January). March in the first 5 days is doing better than expected. That may be because a lot of my domains are seasonal. For example, if I have a golf site located in the northern part of the US, it will do better as we move into the spring and dormant in the winter.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/8776/UfkZKS.png

 

[privatereg]

Here's a really cool quote from the same article I read about how big this domain name industry is:
"Management estimates the domain name market to be worth c US$5bn annually, with a further US$25bn pa market for domain-related internet services. There are c 367m domain names registered, with c 100m held by domain name investors for resale but the vast majority, c 267m, are owned by individuals or companies for their own use. CentralNic currently has c 13% penetration of the internet services offerings market (the group supplies at least one service to 40m of 367m domains), which is highly fragmented and ripe for consolidation."

 

[alcy]

ok, then you don't earn from parking, that's the point..
let say I have the domain that makes me 100 monthly from parking.. why I would sell it ?

I dunno maybe u need money now .. and sell it for 5k now...vs wait 4 yrs to make 5k

all kinds of people and situation

me I'm no pro in parking. I concentrate on selling. but I made good buy on a pack of some 20 names for 800.. so when opportunity arises then take it..

here is my stats

 

[privatereg]

I always had this curiosity... how much u think parking companies take of our cuts... putting aside its adjusted a.bit based on high revenues makers.. I mean doesnt something like park rev company seem perfect biz where u basically always meet yer financial goal each month...cause if u fall short u just adjust downward rev others...and guess what in this biz they will have zero clue bout it... what's yer take on that...

I really don't like to guess; however, when ParkingCrew sold their business, it was announced publicly at the time it was sold that their rev share was 75%/25%. Here's a quote from it (I don't have the link) "
It also discloses some of the economics of the ParkingCrew business. The service monetizes 22 million domains owned by 35,000 people. It pays 75% of its earnings to the investor and keeps the other 25%. This nets out to $10.09 on average per domain per year to the investor and $3.36 to CentralNic."
I don't know if the new owner kept that or not. This is strictly a guess, but I don't think reputable parking companies dynamically change the rev share behind the scenes to make their rev goals - if they did, I would see marked differences in rev. I have stats going back several years, and my EPC and CTR are fairly consistent. I just don't buy mesothelioma type sites or crazy high potential EPC sites. I stick with middle of the road...

 

[Hypersot]

I have good experience in SEO, Adsense, adword and Google analytics, seeing your revenue picture, i felt one thing very out of place CTR . A CTR (click through rate) of 41.25% is really unbelievable and if it true, which ever ad company you use could have banned you on 1st month itself. sorry i feel its Photoshop one.

It might be but, as someone that doesn't know the guy personally, I can assure you that anything he says shows that he knows what he's doing.

Just my advice,
Photoshop or not, try to get as much as you get from the info that is provided in this thread.

 

[privatereg]

hello
really congrats. it's always a pleasure to read your posts.

I've a couple of questions too if you can answer.....
1)where are you living? if you can't say the country i'd like to know the continent
2) now that you are back to spend time in the parking biz, in order to keep things profitable are you still spending 90h per week?
3)in your opinion is still possible nowadays to stay profitable, spending around 50 hours/week?

Hey Pablo! Heres my responses:
1. I live in USA and pretty much focus on US/Canada traffic as well. I speak Spanish as well so that could help me branch out to those gTLDs; just haven't had time.
2. I spend about 4-5 hours a day mostly because I have a lot of programs and apps that do a lot of the work for me. Some I designed myself but it's not for public distribution.
3. I don't think the number of hours is as important so there's no magic number. Since I have a lot of domains to optimize and manage, that takes about half my time. Research through automation doesn't take as long as the old days because of the automation.

Let me finish this by saying that I am in a growth mode which takes more of my time than it would if I reached my net profit goals and just needed to maintain the traffic levels (spend less time buying domains and only replace the dying ones).

Best of luck!

 

[biggie]

Pretty interesting how this thread has turned…Yes, I have been busy with my full time “respectable” business in the workforce (I work in Legal) along with a couple of side-hustles.

As I stated in my OP, my purpose was never to give advice – I was very clear on the reason why – so not sure why I’m still being hammered with questions, suspicions, accusations when I don’t respond to your satisfaction, as I was very clear about my purpose in posting. I can see why a lot of members don’t bother sharing what they’re doing for this reason.

I stopped responding to PMs because I got buried with questions – no offense to anyone, but I requested in my OP not to PM me – I simply don’t have the time to do that. I made the mistake of trying to be cordial with the initial ones that ignored my request, but then the follow-up questions kept coming, and then when I stopped responding, questions on why not, and finally accusations. So I’m done with that – my bad for violating my own directive.

Look - I’m not a mentor – not right now anyway; just an average guy trying to earn revenues in multiple business lines, parking being one of them. Parking is fun to me; it’s not the best revenue stream (as far as time value of money), but it has aspects that I enjoy – and it’s not for everyone – some people may find it too tedious or boring – not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a lot harder today, but I love to treasure hunt and problem solve why a domain didn’t pan out, so it ticks the boxes for me.

I’m sure it’s rare for anyone to post anymore without having a self-serving agenda. I suppose mine was an attempt to dispel rumors about domain parking today since so little was posted about higher revenues or whether anyone was doing it as a business in today’s world – not sure if I convinced anyone that there are some that make these types of revenues in parking and much higher (based on my conversation with others in past domain conferences and other portfolios I’ve seen in private sales – I’m in the middle of the pack for individual investors if your curious about revenue potential). And of course, I’ve tried to be clear that this not the only form of achieving monetization in this industry – I respect anyone who has found a method (selling, affiliate marketing, arbitrage, lead generation, traffic switching, you name it) that is successful for them.

I realize my opinion is only an opinion, or more truthfully simply one person’s experience with the parking industry for over a decade that was willing to share a certain peek at what some investors are doing with it today, not a how-to guide. I do enjoy seeing member posts that share success with parking – and I’m learning too about new approaches - it’s not about total volume – it’s about scalability; it’s whether people do parking in any shape or fashion today, so I applaud those that were willing to share their experience – good or bad.

I’ll check in from time to time – Best of luck all of you – I’m sure I’ll continue to learn something on these threads – thanks to all who shared.

Hi

Appreciate your attempt to educate, inform and dispute notions that PPC was dead.

if you or anyone else reads my posts on the subject, i've always said ppc was alive and kicking

many will complain that no one shares the juice, but so many of them, fail to actually read the words written.

they want to include words that you didn't write and will ignore or exclude words you did write.
some can't read a line correctly, nor have insight to read "in between" the lines.

so sometimes you gotta come hardcore.. when folks don't "respect" your wishes.
only then, will they understand.

still, i hope it doesn't discourage you from participating in future discussions.

imo...

 

[Hypersot]

makes sense.. was just newbie question...so they basically all do about same when comes to helping one find say if expired domain can make park cash?

erm.. no.

It's more complicated than that. Way more complicated.

Just to give you an idea why I'm always looking for tools to use,
let's say that 'domain authority' or 'number of backlinks' or 'total ranking keywords', each counts as one metric.

The formula I use to find worthy domains use more than 30 similar metrics.

The more tools I can use to verify what my formulas spit out, the more accurate the results and my final decisions are.

Unfortunately for me -and contrary to how the OP operates- I don't have the means for automation so it's all good old me and my Excel

 

[Whizzbang]

Hi all,
For those of you that are wondering whether domain parking has changed go to https://mcl.club.
I've put together 12 videos on how domain monetization has changed and I've made them freely available. Here's the topics that are covered:
1. Introduction
2. The four domain business models
3. Is domain monetization dead?
4. Understanding the fundamentals
5. RPM, a misunderstood metric
6. Measuring Success
7. Benefits of traffic routing
8. Rotating vs Algorithmic Switching
9. Impact of direct advertising
10. Managing a large domain portfolio
11. Running a traffic test
12. Traffic Quality

Domain monetization is not about luck....it's about statistics and using data to find domains. I do a weekly report on the monetization industry that is full of data.

 

[privatereg]

@privatereg, thank you so much for sharing, It is definitely inspiring!

Finally, a very kind and serious domain parker with balls and no shame to share he's statistics. Much appreciated!

I started with domain parking when the pandemic started and I do have times when I wonder if it's worth the investment of my time and money.
You inspired me to continue in this path even stronger than before.
I want to thank you for that!


I get about 60k+ monthly visits but I get only a fraction (400$+-) of the revenue you get for the same amount of traffic.
(I tried sharing a screenshot here but I'm not allowed)


From reading between the lines I understand that you invest good amount of time and effort in optimizing the related searches. Probably you have a successful method for it as well.
I assume that this is the key for your amazing CTR and as a result, amazing RPM as well.

I don’t know how no one here asked you about what's your method for optimizing the related searches.

But as I understand from reading the whole thread, you are passed the tolerance cap for questions . Too bad I was late.


So again, I just thank you so much for your post and wish you all the best luck in the future!

Hey Shayne,

Sorry I’ve been immersed with crypto to get too involved with this thread lately HAHA. Yes, optimizing related search terms has been a game changer for me, although it may not work for certain domains if you don’t look at it from that perspective before you purchase a domain in the first place. It seems that some may be purchasing domains for parking purposes solely based on looking at metrics from various backlink sites and go for domains that look like it will have a lot of traffic. I have seen other parking portfolios with tens of thousands of domains that only make a fraction of what they should (based on volume of traffic) and I wonder if it might be because they are focused on traffic volume and not traffic quality. I have some domains that only get one visitor every so often, but it’s a $15 click. It seems counter-intuitive to look at domains that don’t necessarily have traffic volume but traffic quality, but that seems to be the key for succeeding in domain parking today.

I say all that because I already have a basic idea what the related search terms are going to be before I go after a domain (among a myriad of other indicators). I also know the domain category (business or revenue channel) ahead of time, so I have a pretty good idea what the RPC is going to be in advance (this is based on years of history in a database I built). Once I park a domain, I immediately submit related search terms for approval (again based on a database of related terms that do well in that category channel), but more importantly, I go back after a period of time and see if those related terms are getting clicks and the volume of clicks (at least Bodis has this capability). I then re-order the search terms based on number of clicks (highest to lowest), and replace any terms that aren’t producing clicks and resubmit those terms for approval – this is done systematically for me with the API (due to the number of domains – although this could be done manually as well – just takes more time). This constant re-evaluation keeps the highest producing terms at the top of the list and allows me to maintain a higher CTR and RPC. I’ve said this in a previous thread that G has changed their process to only take keywords as a suggestion, but if the terms are related to the domain’s previous history, it seems they take most of my terms (and if G comes with some I didn’t select and they produce clicks, I’ll use those with the reevaluation/resubmission). If you have a parking provider that can give you that that type of feedback, it can make a big difference in either maintaining revenue or even increasing revenue, even if the traffic starts to die over time due to expiring backlinks.

Best of luck in your parking pursuits!

 

[privatereg]

@privatereg, Wow I can't thank you enough for your quick and in-depth response! Thank you!!!

Optimizing the related searches is something that I haven't allocated the time to do yet but it is definitely something I will do as soon as possible now that I understand that it can have a huge impact on my revenue.

I am parking with Bodis so I have the capability to see which of the related searches are being clicked and the clicks volume.

You mention that you are re-ordering the search terms based on the number of clicks, it’s something I didn’t know you can affect yourself, I thought G is in charge of that.
Thank you for sharing that, I will definitely try that.

In the future, I’ll research how to re-order and re-optimize RS via API, that can be a huge time-saver.


From what I understand, you are optimizing the related searches for the domain’s niche\category\channel and not specifically for the domain’s traffic.

I have tried doing that for about 20 domains a few months ago and I didn’t see much improvement in CTR, that’s the reason I neglected optimizing since. But I haven't optimized those related searches since, so I can’t expect too much.


After reading this thread I have an idea that popped to my head:
To see in the Google Analytics account that is connected to my Bodis account what are the URLs that bring the most traffic to each domain and optimize the related searches according to those URLs.

That way you can optimize the related search specifically to each domain’s traffic and not the general domain’s niche\category.
Just an idea that can work for some domains.

I will try all your suggestions and try my idea as well and I see what works for my domains.
Clearly your way is working great for you, keep the good work!



And again, thank you a bunch for taking the time to reply and share amazing details.

Have a great weekend!

Yes, I spend a lot of time on G analytics looking at the URLS in real time and getting a general idea what type of source traffic I’m getting.

One last thing I’d like to add about why I feel related terms are so important (and then I gotta get back to work HAHA)…If you look at the screenshot below, you can see G Analytics on my domain portfolio on the audience:

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/6239/nwVHep.png

This represents visitor traffic from the last 7 days. As you can see, 95% of my traffic is new – they never come back. It’s like that week after week for me. I’m surprised I even have 5% return HAHA. And like most people, I hate landing on a parked page when I was expecting the actual site. So what does this mean? It means you have one chance for them to click through a related term – that’s it. They are never coming back. And human nature will cause the person to look top down. In a split second, if a related search term doesn’t appear that ties them into the reason for coming there in the first place you lost them for good.

Domain parking today isn’t about trying to get as much traffic as you can to the site and hope that they will not only click on a related search term, but an advertiser link on the second page. You can have 10,000 visitors and no clicks. But even if I have a parked page that has no clicks, I can at least see what they’re looking for (through the parking panel). If they’re not looking for anything or there’s no traffic even clicking on a term, I’ve completely missed the mark. It may be that I can’t select the right terms, or the terms result in a zero click payout, or G is not accepting the terms at all, or any number of reasons. The domain may be dead even with traffic, but why not try to stack the deck in your favor and attempt to get that single visitor (never coming back) to get to an advertiser? There isn’t much you can change with domain parking, but this gives you a fighting chance.

 

[VaibhavA]

Its definitely not dead, my last 1 year stats

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.

 

[olegaz]

Not posted here for ages. But some info posted in this thread just made me login and reply

Google search updates do not affect parked domains traffic. NEVER. Since 2014 or so, when parked domains were removed from G index for exact keywords searches.
The only way they can affect - if domains are recently dropped, and still has some pages in G index, then yes. But those pages will be gone anyway within a month of domain drop.

For parking, all scores DA, TF, CF, ect - are irrelevant , for SEO they are important, for parking - no.

What is relevant - if domains have traffic, and traffic geo and quality.

Drop in Jan and some softness in Feb was due to google forced parking template updates and cut in ad spent. Q1 23 ad budgets (which were made at q3-q4 2022) are first to be cut in case of economic slowdown. Just look at official quaterly reports of meta (ex FB) and alphabet to stock markets. Will give you an idea of the trends.
March is fantastic. Looks like ad spent is back on track plus some more of jan-feb unspent budgets are back.

From all parking providers, only one is not back on track the way it was last year. Won't say the name, as this might be portfolio specific.

Use Above or Parklogic to balance out the traffic distribution, in case you don't have enought volume to build your own system. They do very well. We had our own, but switched to those two, with just sub 7 figure a year in revenue, keeping up own system became too much of an expense.

Just 2 cents from dinosaur. Will be back in a year or two to check if parking has finally died

 

[privatereg]

Congratulations for such splendid performance!

Though some of your data really amazed me and also month on month consistency only prove that you know very well how this parking business run. So congratulation once again!

Appreciate if you could response few queries:
1. Parking portfolio size (number of domains)
2. Tentative investment
3. Any specific reason for such high and consistent CTR

Thank and regards,

Congrats on your progress so far! As I said in a previous post, its in the low thousands and doesn't matter how many you have as far as stability. Same thing with Tentative investment. I think high CTR is definitely related to ability to request related search terms but that takes research on kind of traffic and visitors were coming to the site previously - looking at archive, back links, pop-up links, etc.