As a Domain Flipper I spend a lot of time building custom websites on my domains. I’ve found that before making a full-blown website I can make custom Parking pages for my Domains to monetize them at a much higher rate than Parking services offer.
The basic concept here is that Parking services have a two-tier commission structure. When a link is clicked the advertiser now pays you *and* the parking service. This means for each click you are essentially splitting your commission. Parking service pages are also quite generic and identifiable: people know when they hit a Parked page vs. an developed website.
I first noticed the effects of this when I replaced a Parking page with a quick custom site I put together in about an hour. Immediately I was making about 10x what I was with the Parking service. This was a surprise so I started making more sites and found the same results.
I’ve found Google Adwords to be a very effective way to serve targeted ads to your website visitors and 100% of the commission goes to you. Website visitors are becoming more and more used to reaching Parked pages when there is no existing website on a domain. As Parking sites are pretty identifiable people will leave them pretty quickly realizing that it isn’t a real webpage and instead just a collection of links.
By creating a website that connects with your visitors, offers relevant information and targeted Adwords you can greatly outshine the potential of a Parked page.
I thought this was important advice to share for those new to domaining and trying to find-out the best ways to monetize your domains.
It is important to note that for large portfolios (hundreds or thousands of domains) you will most likely be Parking a lot of your domains as there’s not enough time in life to build a thousand websites overnight! I use Parking services myself as I can’t realistically build a custom website on each of my domains. I find that my Parking pages need to get thousands of hits a month for me to make any real money. For my Google Adword pages even a few hundred hits a month generates revenue.
In summary, you can get a lot more from your domain by building a custom website with Google Adwords powering your advertising. Parking is still a good way to monetize a site but don’t expect to make a fortune unless your site really gets a lot of traffic. Anyone else that has experience with this feel free to chime in and add your opinion.
<!-- google_ad_client = "pub-9984123926112360"; //468x60, created 12/12/07 google_ad_slot = "3979989646"; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 60; //-->
