Understanding Domain Parking and Monetization

What is Domain Parking?

Domain name parking allows you to monetize undeveloped domain names by placing highly targeted advertising on your domains. It's an unfamiliar term for the majority of web users—yet it’s something most of us have likely stumbled across at some point. Sometimes referred to as cash parking, this online entrepreneurial strategy is an effective way to generate extra cash if executed correctly.

What is a Parked Domain?

Domain parking, aka cash parking, is the leveraging of advertisements on a parked web domain to generate revenue while that domain is otherwise inactive. Similar to affiliate advertising, you make money based on how many users land on your site and click the advertisements.

Have you recently bought a domain?

Whether you’re interested in flipping it or using it yourself at a later point, domain parking can save and make you money in the process. There’s no denying that there’s big money in domains. People have made millions from buying and selling highly sought-after domains.

However, nowadays, it can be a little harder to find and secure potentially valuable domains. Chances are you have to accumulate a collection of domains to start turning a profit on them. Holding so many domains can become expensive.

Domain parking offers you a way out of paying for hosting domains on their own IP addresses. Depending on how you park your domain, you can even generate a small stream of income from a parked domain name.

Domain Parking Defined

Parked domains are registered domain names that aren’t connected to services like an email or a website.

When you park a domain, you can choose to have it send visitors to a primary domain, display an error message or ads. The exact steps to take will depend on whether you park your domain with your hosting provider, registrar, or with a domain parking service. Most hosting providers will allow you to park domains within a few clicks, but they don’t usually serve ads for you.

With a domain parking service or registrar, you can park your domain with them for free, and they will display ads on the page and split the revenue from this with you. Check out this page if you want to learn more about how to park your domains.

Why People Park Domains

There are a few reasons why you might want to park a domain. If you aren’t going to be using a domain, then it doesn’t make sense to spend money on hosting a domain on its own IP address. Depending on what your future use for the domain is, you might be interested in parked domain monetization. Buying and parking domains is also a common practice for preventing cybersquatting and reserving domains.

Domain Investing

If you are buying domain names primarily as an investment opportunity, domain parking can be a cost-effective way to hold your collection of domains. Domain names can sell for vast sums, but you have to pick ones that will become highly sought after. In the interim, you might have to hold a domain name for years until it can command a high price. During this time, you might as well put your domains to work.

Brand Protection

Another reason for domain parking is for brand protection. A lot of brands choose to buy up domain names similar to theirs and park these so other people can’t use them. For instance, let’s say your company is called Hot Dog Shoes, and your website is Hotdogshoes.com. To make sure people don’t accidentally land on the wrong site, you might want to buy up similar domains, such as hotdogshoez.com, hot-dog-shoes.com, or hotdogshoes.net. You can then turn them into parked domains, and even make them point to your active site.

To Prevent Cybersquatting

Domain parking is also used to prevent cybersquatting. Cybersquatting happens when someone registers a domain name similar to that of a big brand for the purposes of selling it to the company for a profit. Cyber squatters usually target famous individuals and large companies, and it has happened to YouTube, Obama, Paris Hilton, Madonna, Nissan, and more. For instance, YouTube has recently had to secure five typo version domains of its name, including youtbe.com, youtub.com, and yutube.com.

Reserving a Domain Name

You might also want to park a domain name if you are reserving it for future use. It’s better to do an early domain name purchase and sit on it until you are ready to build out the site. During this time, it can often make sense to park the domain.

Waiting for Domain Expiry

Do you have a domain you want to ditch, and are waiting for it to expire? If so, you can park the domain until that date.

Different Domain Parking Options

If you want to park a domain, there are a few different options available to you. You can either choose to have managed ads displayed on it, self manage ads, create a sales page, or leave it as an error page.

CPC (Cost Per Click) ads

When a visitor lands on your domain, they see a page with related terms. If they click a term (1st click), they see related ads. If they then click an ad (2nd click), you get paid a percentage of the revenue. The ads displayed are similar to those you see on search engine results.

Example of a CPC Parked Domain Page — An example of a CPC Parked Domain.

CPV (Cost Per View)

Also known as Zero Click. When a visitor lands on your domain, advertisers bid in real-time for your traffic, and the visitor is redirected to the winning bidder's site. As the domain owner, you get paid for each redirect.

There are 2 types of ZC ads: Brand ads (high quality, like hotels.com) and RON (run of network) ads (lower quality, untargeted, like ‘win a smartphone’).

With Managed Ads

This is one of the easiest ways to monetize. You park your domain with a service or registrar for free. They manage the ads and share a portion of the ad revenue with you. While this can earn you money, having too many ads might hurt your domain’s reputation over time, which is a concern if you plan to use the domain later.

With Self-Managed Ads

Here, you manage the ads yourself and keep 100% of the revenue. This gives you control over the ad type and quantity, which is ideal if you want to protect your domain's reputation. However, it requires some coding knowledge, an account with an ad network (which often requires an active site with traffic), and time to manage it.

With a Sales Page

If you want to sell your domain, you can create a simple sales page. This page will let visitors know the domain is for sale and provide a way for them to contact you or make a purchase.

With an Error Page

This is the default option if you don't choose another parking method. Visitors will see a standard browser error message, such as "This site can’t be reached."

Ready to Make Money With Domain Parking?

If you are in the business of domain flipping, domain parking is a great way to make a small amount of re-occurring cash on the side while you wait to sell. DomainParking.com is a top resource for domain parking monetization, providing you with the info you need to start successfully monetizing your idle domains.

When a visitor clicks on a relevant keyword, a list of advertiser links appears. As the domain owner, you earn a fee from the network every time a user clicks on an advertiser link and visits their page.

Domains Parking Marketing