Chapter 5
Parking
Parking is when you have a domain that does not have a website or hosting. When you have a website, you have to pay for monthly hosting. When you have a domain name, you do not have hosting or a website or montly fees, all you have is a domain name. So there really isn't too many ways to make money with just a domain name unless you sell it right? WRONG! One of the best ways to make passive income is parking domains. Parking is when you take a domain of yours and sign up for a parking service with it.You park your domain with a company, which means that they put ads on your domain that are relevant to the name of your domain. It is almost like they put a mini website on your domain. So let's say Lisa does not have a website at buy-in-bulk.com anymore. It's just the domain name. When people go to www.buy-in-bulk.com, there will most likely be nothing there but a blank screen that reads "server not found".But if Lisa decides to park her domain, there will be ads placed there. So if she parks it and I go to Joe's website, and I click on the backlink on Joe's website, it will bring me to Lisa's parked page, which will look like a one page website with ads and links all over the page. If I click on one of those ads or links, then it will take me to an advertisers website. Since I clicked on the link, the advertiser pays the parking company and the parking company pays Lisa. Lisa gets paid because it was her domain buy-in-bulk.com that had the ads on it and the parking company gets paid because they set up the ads on Lisa's page. Clicks can vary from a few cents to 50 dollars.
In general, most clicks will pay Lisa between .10 cents and .40 cents. Lisa has a domain that has a name related to the wholesale industry. If Lisa had a domain name like "FindALawyer.com", then she would make alot more than .10-.40 cents because when somebody clicks on her ads (which would be lawyer related ads if she has a lawyer related domain name), that person who clicked on the ad would be brought to a lawyer's website and lawyers make alot more money from customers than people in the wholesale industry. So a lawyer who is paying for advertising will have to pay alot more for advertising space to compete with other lawyers. So that lawyer might be willing to pay the parking service $90 for 1 click and maybe the parking service will pay Lisa $30 for that click.
This is highly unlikely but it's been known to happen and lawyer clicks are at least .75 cents minimum. Parking companies don't tell you how much they are paid by advertisers per click (at least not yet) so you will never know just how much of a percentage you are getting, but it's better than nothing I always say. If you want to get around this, you can always make your own parking company..but that's alot of hard work. Most parking companies have strict rules about links. Most of them will not allow you to build links to your domain WHILE it is parked. The only traffic your parked domain is allowed to recieve is from old backlinks that were present BEFORE your domain was parked, or from type in traffic. You will not get traffic from people who search the search engines like Google because there is no website so your domain is usally not indexed by Google. Sometimes google may index it by accident and then realize it's not a websiteand they will un-index it. The search engines like Google can not see the domain unless someone searches for actual keywords that are in the domain name (Example: Someone searching for "wholesale" is not going to see Lisa's domain because buy-in-bulk.com does not contain the word "wholesale", but someone searching for "buy bulk" may come across Lisa's parked domain in search results because her domain name contains both those words in it).
How to Park Domains:
I've used Sedo.com as an example of parking companies since they are the most well known. Sedo is a good platform to learn on but once you learn more about parking and become familiar with it, you should try out other parking companies. They all pay differently for clicks and some parking companies are better than others for certain domains. Fabulous.com is known for paying well for gambling names while NameDrive.com is good for financial names. Once you log in to Sedo, go to the menu on the left and choose "Add Domains" to add your domains to Sedo.When you are ready to move on, click "Next" at the bottom.
Now type your domain names in the white box or copy and paste them there.
Then check mark the user agreement and click the "Next" button to continue.
I've used richkits.com as an example of a domain I'm adding. On the next screen, you will decide if you want to also sell this domain, in addition to parking it. Many parking companeis also have domain market places so they will add a note on your parked page which reads something like "This domain is for sale: Contact Owner". This allows people to send you offers for your domain if they are interested, while it is parked. For this one, I've set the category to Marketing so Sedo can list my domain for sale in the Marketing section and I've set an asking price and a minimum price I'm willing to sell the domain for. If you are adding multiple domains, you will have to do this for each domain unless they all happen to be the same category and you want to sell them all for the same price. Click "Next" at the bottom when you are ready to continue.
Now you will set your name servers. If you ever need to find this screen again, you can go up to the top of the screen and choose "Park Domains" from the menu. Then choose "Redirect Domains" from the drop-down menu. To set the name servers, you will want to copy both the Primary and Secondary Server Names. For Sedo, the Primary is NS1.SEDOPARKING.COM, and for the Secondary it's NS2.SEDOPARKING.COM. In the next step I will show you where you will paste these 2 addresses. Don't click the "next" button at the bottom of the screen until you have pasted the name servers....
Go to your GoDaddy account by opening seperate window so you can still go back to your Sedo screen after this (Once again, I am only using GoDaddy as an example. Assuming your domains are at GoDaddy). Check the domain you would like to set the nameservers for and go up to the menu at the top of the screen and click on the "Nameservers" icon.
Now you will paste the Nameservers into the appropriate boxes. Paste your Primary nameserver into the "Nameserver 1" box and paste your Secondary nameserver into the "Nameserver 2" box. Click the "OK" button when your finished to set the nameservers.
Now that you have set the nameservers, go back to Sedo and click the "Next" button at the bottom of the screen to continue. Now you will see a verification screen. Sedo will have to verify that you are the owner of the domain before allowing you to park it and this may take anywhere between a few hours to 24 hours.
Now you will want to optimize your domain so click on the "Optimizer" link which is on the menu to the left of the Sedo screen.
The first thing you want to do is set the keyword. This is what determines what type of ads will appear on your parked page. Since my domain is about making money, I set the keywords as "make money". Keywords are everything and the keyword(s) you choose will affect how many clicks you get and how much you will be paid for each click. It's best to try different keywords. If I am not making any money from parking this domain after a few days, I might go back and try a different keyword. Maybe I would try just "money" or "work from home". The next thing you want to set is the background pattern. I chose "lite". This is just how the page will look and you can choose different patterns. Visitors to your parked page may be more inclined to click an ad if you have a nicer looking page. The next thing I set is the photo. I chose "marketing" since my domain is dealing with internet marketing and making money. After you choose your settings, click the "Save changes" button at the bottom to save your choices.
Now your domain is parked. Your all finished. To view your daily statistics and how much you have made, you can click the "Domain Parking" option on the menu on the left side of the Sedo screen. In your Sedo Parking Statistics, you can see how many unique views,clicks, and money you are getting. Unique Views just means how many people have visited your parked page. Clicks is how many times ads on your parked page have been clicked, and well, you know what money is.
Below is an example of what a parked page on Sedo might look like. Sedo is known as having some of the most boring, ugliest looking parked pages out of all the companies out there which is another reason you might want to try other parking companies once you get a basic understanding of how parking works.This page is for the domain CosmeticForums.com but the owner of the domain did not optimize it very well (the keywords they chose are not relevant to the domain name). You will notice that the ads on the page have nothing to do with Cosmetics or Forums so this person probably does not get many clicks from this parked page.
