You can cash in on direct navigation type-in traffic through domain parking. It is an advertising practice used to monetize those people who type in the address into the browser bar.
When a visitor is taken to a page containing ad listings and links you, the domain owner, are paid based on how many links are clicked by that person. Thus you are earning money from pay-per-click advertising (PPC).
It’s a form of AdSense (or Yahoo, or other ad network) revenue, with a lot less work than creating a website. It’s easy income as it is “set and forget”. Once you have acquired the domain name, set up the parking page, and optimize the parking page, you just move on and let it continue to generate an income for you. No more work to do – except bank the check.
Another way to profit from direct navigation is to have it drive traffic to another website. So if you have a site that’s generating a lot of traffic through type-in traffic — a name that’s similar to your primary site or is catering to the same type of consumer — what you can do is have that name just forward straight to your main site. Or you can drive it straight to an affiliate program.
Domain Tasting
This practice is currently under review by ICANN and others. It is creating a lot of flack as professionals are abusing the opportunity for domain registrants to have a 5 day grace period before they actually commit money to registering a domain name.
The term, “domain tasting,” is also known as “domain kiting.” It is the practice of using the five-day grace period that exists at the beginning of a domain registration to your advantage. Originally it was introduced to assist people who may have mistyped in registering a domain name. However this 5 day grace period allows you to take advantage of the sytem to test the marketability of a domain name. During this period, your registration fees must be fully refunded by the domain registry.
So you are allowed, for a five-day period, to conduct a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether that’s a decent name, whether we’re generating traffic and whether that traffic is clicking on the links. Domains that are successes are kept. And the ones that aren’t, we just let them go and get a refund (a credit).
Domain tasting it the trick the pros use to “try out” a domain name without risk. This is one the key parts of getting involved in this business. Each month 72million new domains are registered. One group of firms are under the spotlight for registering 11million domain names per month and then ditching them.
Consumers are complaining of the lack of availability of attractive domain names partly caused by this practice. It can be expected that sooner or later the practice will be discontinued. ICANN is saying it will keep its 20 cent fee and registration firms are considering retain about 20 percent of the domain registration fee in the event a purchaser does not want to claim the domain after 5 days.
While domain tasting is permitted you may as well take advantage of it – but recognize it’s days are numbered.
Steps to Success
First find a name to test. You need to know how to locate the type of names that are likely to generate decent revenue for us. It is dealt with later on.
Then you park the domain name and taste it for five days. If there’s traffic, keep it, and if there is not then just let it drop and get a credit and move on to the next name.
The pro’s business models
Actually there are two business models the Pros use.
1) the pay-per-click parking model.
2) the “development model”
The development model is where the real money is. It is when a domainer takes a domain name that has proven traffic and turns it into a business serving those visitors.
The business can exist at several different levels. It can be a mini-site, it can be a blog, it can be a full-fledged portal. Whatever it is doing, it’s offering ads, reports, merchandise or services. Something that
allows profit on the traffic the name is generating.
On the pay-per-click model, the advantages are that it’s simple to operate and there’s low overhead (other than just the cost of acquiring the name and keeping it registered every year). Once the parking is set up, there’s no overhead other than the cost of the name.
The advantages are that it significantly increases the value of your portfolio if you do it correctly.
The disadvantages are that it takes some time to build up a portfolio. Plus it takes some education in order to acquire the skills to get direct navigation – that is natural traffic, you have to learn how to do it.
Some names you will find are just naturals for development. Those are the ones that you should take to the next level.
How to Find Profitable Names
Your goals when looking for a good domain name for parking or for investment is to find words or phrases that people are actually typing in their browser address bar. What is that Internet user going to be typing in their browser address bar? What are they looking for?
You do need to perform some kind of market research. Note that here you are not interested in performing niche research. You may be familiar with niche research. Everyone says you should find a focused niche – a
hungry market that is looking for our particular product. However our goal is totally different here. You are not looking for that tight, focused niche; you are endeavouring to find a profitable domain name. You must look for as broad a term as you can register. Therefore it is essential that you cast a very wide net.
You are trying to get as many of those people who are typing in their names, their search terms, into that browser address bar, as possible. You must be able to funnel them into your parked name in order to generate revenue from that click.
Now you do not need to reinvent the wheel. A simple way of discovering the type of name that you should test is to look at what other domainers are investing in.
Being realistic you are not going to be able to get attractive one-word domain names. You might after some advanced lessons how to look for those, but right now as a novice you must concentrate on going for generic terms, preferrably two word terms – such as www.bankgreece.com or www.saturdayracing.com .
Refer to DNJournal – the industry online magazine – to get a feel for what sort of money such domains go for. You will find that the better ones sell for around $28,000 and the 3 word names vary from between $2,500 and $4,500. Great if you can come up with the better ones – but that is not essential. If you can come up with simple 2 and possible some 3 word names then you will be doing fine.
In fact is is easy to do – so come back here soon to learn how.
Parking is no longer worthwhile – all it does is work for the sponosrs – the Domain Parkers make very little – and getting less and less as time goes by.
To make real money while you sleep – if that is your ambition you need to develop a real website and sell real products – either your own or those of others – so you have achance to make bigger dollars from your visitors instead of peanuts
By: domainsbanker on May 4, 2009
at 7:50 pm