I recently started testing out Afternic landing pages, and when I first updated my nameservers, I quickly noticed, these aren’t the pages I was looking for. When I used ns1.afternic.com and ns2.afternic.com, for the first time, in a long time, I saw parking pages on my domains with a little strip at the top of the page that said the domain was for sale.
I was looking for this style lander:
It’s an easy fix for anyone who is using Afternic and wants to do the same, just use ns3.afternic.com and ns4.afternic.com and you’ll see landers like the one above. I quickly update my nameservers and was in good shape. I was sharing this story with a friend who asked, why don’t you liked parked pages, I gave him my perspective, it was top-of-mind, so I thought I’d also share it with all of you.
So why don’t I use parking landers? Three reasons:
- I don’t want to risk getting hit with a UDRP
- I want to make it super clear to anyone who lands on the domain that it is for sale
- I don’t typically but names that have a lot of type-in traffic so there’s very little revenue potential
At the end of the day point #1 is the most important to me. Since you can’t choose what links show up on a parked pages you have no idea if you could run an ad on your domain that increases your risk of getting hit with a UDRP.
While you might think that any company that generates a parking page would make sure not to put links that infringe on Trademarks, the reality is, they do, and you could end up paying the price.
Elliot just highlighted an example of this on his blog two days ago:
Unfortunately, it looks like my prediction about the new GoDaddy pay per click-focused landing page design was prescient. Just yesterday, I wrote “In fact, some registrants may believe this is discourteous if GoDaddy were to monetize their landing page with trademark infringing links that induce a UDRP (or worse).” It looks like this was the exact issue in the ArtPetrossian.com UDRP.(Source – DomainInvesting.com)
If you want to do a deeper dive into this issue I’d recommend reading the full post on Elliot’s blog, it’s a good post and he highlights a critical issue. The important takeaway here is that unless you really think you’re going to generate good money from parked pages, stick with focused “For Sale” landers, not only will it send more leads your way, but it will also help you avoid situations like the one covered above.
What this means is if you do register or buy a domain at a registrar that automatically puts a parking page on a domain after you buy it, you’ll want to remember to update your nameservers. I personally think registrars should be upfront with customers and give them a choice, not immediately push parking pages onto their customer’s domains.
I think it’s only fair for registrars to inform customers of the risks associated with these parking landers and let the customer make the decision.
What do you think, and do you agree with me that lead gen landers are the way to go? I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!
