Domain parking, anyone?

[Golan]

I have tons of domains that are on sale or just laying down waiting for their turn to be developed somehow. Meantime I put them all on parking.

What I want to ask my respectful colleagues, - from your experience, is it always true that if a parked domain shows some traffic and brings some revenue, then if I develop it to the state of at least MFA it will bring even more revenue?

Few of my domains bring stable few bucks weekly. And two days ago I got one crazy click on $5.67... Never though a thing like this is even possible in parking.

So it's tempting to throw some quick MFA on such domains because it seems reasonable that a real site with real content running real ads should bring more money than just dumb parked placeholder. But from another hand, I have a gut feeling that it's not necessarily so. Starting from dealing with Adsense, which obviously doesn't like MFA so much... And Chitika and others - I'm not sure they would bring more than parking.

Anyway, would appreciate hearing your thoughts.

 

[dsoul]

What about thinking..

"this domain actually already has type in traffic, or referral traffic that is looking for something. In fact, it's worth $5.65 a click. Instead of a shitty MFA, what if I developed a product or service that completely served the end users needs? then maybe I'd have a goldmine.."

 

[Golan]

What about thinking..

"this domain actually already has type in traffic, or referral traffic that is looking for something. In fact, it's worth $5.65 a click. Instead of a shitty MFA, what if I developed a product or service that completely served the end users needs? then maybe I'd have a goldmine.."

Right. But i don't have a time for all those sites, even for this one. Nor i have a budget to outsource. Yes i'm sure this one will be one of my next big projects. But meanwhile... Reality is like this: either parking - or MFA.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Seems like you could at least unpark it and then create your own "parked" page with some ads but also create a "coming soon, get notified" message and an email optin. That way you can gauge interest and develop it if you find tons of people are eager enough to give you their email address. You could probably create a nice template to roll out to all of the possible winners and let that ride for a bit and then narrow it down to the few or even just the one that's most worth your time.

 

[dsoul]

Seems like you could at least unpark it and then create your own "parked" page with some ads but also create a "coming soon, get notified" message and an email optin. That way you can gauge interest and develop it if you find tons of people are eager enough to give you their email address. You could probably create a nice template to roll out to all of the possible winners and let that ride for a bit and then narrow it down to the few or even just the one that's most worth your time.

That's actually a great middle ground between developing and plainly parked, a good idea. Maybe (and I've no idea what the domains niches are) the leads themselves could be sold.. making you more than adsense. Or opt in to an email autoresponder that hits them with offers in the niche or aff links.

 

[builder]

Depending on the niche, having a simple lead generation page as home page can be a good idea.

Example: If I found out that I am getting type-in traffic to FindChicagoContractors.com, I would sign up for something like Angie's List's affiliate program, build a lead page, and send leads to them. Or, if I have more time on my hand, I may even partner with a couple of contractors for even more revenue.

 

[miketpowell]

If you don't do anything to get more traffic, the parked domain format will get the highest eCPM out of type in traffic in many cases. Building out a site would be likely to actually get you less money from your type in traffic per user.

Going @builders route if you do something to be "more direct" you can increase your money.