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Why Domain Parking works for me

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privatereg

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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.
 
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Care to elaborate? Which company you use and how many domain you have?
mainly bodis, these revenues comes from hundreds of domains.
 
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Better than bodis for about 15% of domains.

Just started using PC, dead at the moment click wise. How much time do you think I should give it?
 
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Just started using PC, dead at the moment click wise. How much time do you think I should give it?
I dont know, use above.com if you want to optimize.
 
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What Above does differently?
automatically switch your domain traffic on several parking services (the ones you subscribe and keep active in the traffic rotator).
then they keep the traffic on service that bring you better results.
 
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automatically switch your domain traffic on several parking services (the ones you subscribe and keep active in the traffic rotator).
then they keep the traffic on service that bring you better results.

Thanks. But it's just Bodis and PC now, right? I'm currently trying PC with 21 domains that had the most traffic on Bodis, but no clicks. I have 160 domains on Bodis, making peanuts.
As long as they cover their renewal, I'm happy..
I would say I like Bodis more than PC.

PC also don't have Dan Landers, which are probably the best in the market.
 
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parking is still working.
good luck guys https://prnt.sc/1w7x1fs
Hi David,

That is serious money for this day and age.
Of course the quality of your parked domains are obviously superior to be getting those kinds of numbers.
Others mileage may vary,

Would you care to share a few of your big hitters so others may know the difference between names that park well and whatever they have in their portfolio.

Thank you.

Peace,
Kenny
 
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What is the threshold you need to reach in order to get a higher revenue share from Bodis or any other parking company? Thanks.
 
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What is the threshold you need to reach in order to get a higher revenue share from Bodis or any other parking company? Thanks.
I don't think they make a difference. I do about 15,000 a month and I still have the same.
 
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What is the threshold you need to reach in order to get a higher revenue share from Bodis or any other parking company? Thanks.

I remember once asking parkcrew support if they have tiers.. they said yes. not sure the amounts.

as for bodis I never asked.
 
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I don't think they make a difference. I do about 15,000 a month and I still have the same.

ps how do u make 15k per month in parking? when most do 15 cents.
 
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Hi David,

That is serious money for this day and age.
Of course the quality of your parked domains are obviously superior to be getting those kinds of numbers.
Others mileage may vary,

Would you care to share a few of your big hitters so others may know the difference between names that park well and whatever they have in their portfolio.

Thank you.

Peace,
Kenny

I guess that's a no hehehe
 
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anyone wanna make money parking..look..just remember like everything in life it will take 100s of hours of studying... same as selling domains or becoming a doctor etc..

parking is far from dead... tho definitely harder and less profitable than say 10 years ago..but hey.. so is domain selling .. harder..more competitive and less profitable than some years back.

do yer own thing. and never listen to those who say everything is dead. it just proves their ignorant on the matter.
 
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I invest a lot and do it for 10 years.

do u also buy domains aleeady making money or u do it from scratch and just find the right ones to reg?

also is this 15k strictly parking or develop for clicks also? bodis yes?
 
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do u also buy domains aleeady making money or u do it from scratch and just find the right ones to reg?

also is this 15k strictly parking or develop for clicks also? bodis yes?
Only reg, parking,bodis,
 
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Only reg, parking,bodis,

appreciate the info

I have to say its ultra hard to get any tips from 4 or.5fig per.month parking pros

I think I'd be more.willing to share
. sadly I'm in the low 3fig month cat.

if it's all regs for u...do u go mostly for fresh expiries? roughly how many on avg do u reg per month? any tips for non newbie and nonpro ? ty
 
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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
 
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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

great info tnx.

those are great results...by how much we make I meant of course roi..net...after all expenses

I hope this continues for u

may I ask how many names u park? and also whether u use tools for research.. which ones do u recommend? ty
 
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I’m the OP for this thread and haven’t written in several months….

What I’ve learned since last year….
Hi @privatereg

Thanks for coming back and reposting to this thread!

the outline you shared is truly appreciated, and the statistical data you provided shows that ppc is not dead, as so many have stated.

not going to ask any questions about your domains, methods, tools used, etc, because like you said, there is too much competition out here to divulge it.

i also noticed an upward trend in EPC on some names.
won't post revenue, but CTR averaged 12% and EPC came in at $0.56 at bodis for 2021.

sedo did pretty good on a couple names that i moved from parking crew, where one of them earned 50% more revenue than previous years at PC.

Thanks again


imo....
 
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Do all your domains have some kind of backlink?
 
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looks like op here makes nice consistent 5fig per month.. I'm sure its 5fig even after all expenses he mentions

I'd say that puts him in top 10% world parkers... great

for everyone else..imo... forget park.crew...forget above... just use bodis...
 
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Awesome data @privatereg Many thanks for all.
I review this thread and view that speak spanish: Enhorabuena por tus numeros !! :xf.wink:

If I may ask a question. I hope you don't mind answering it. It is not at all compromising.
I view your screenshot and you said that have a few thousand domains in Bodis.

1- What is the average monthly number of visits for all your domains?
2- How many monthly visits does your best domain have?

Go with some numbers:
In Dec 2021 you had about 400.000 visits in all domains in one bodis account.
If, for example, we calculate that you have "only" 1.000 domains parked in Bodis... :

400.000 visits / 30 days = 13.333 visits per day
13.333 visits per day / 1000 domains = 13,33 visits per day per domain (in average)

13 visits per day per domain is really too few, no? :zippermouth:
And if you said that have a few thousand parked in Bodis the visits per day in average will be even lower.

I'm missing something I don't understand ??
 
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