Domain parking is a great way to make money on otherwise lost traffic. You should not lose money on your domains. Not a single day. Each domain has a lifespan and you need to capitalize on the potential of your domains every single day they are in your posession. Domain parking is never wrong but sometimes there are better options. (see better than Parking) No domain should live a day without being parked.
At the very minimum every domain should pay for itself and the stars of your portfolio should produce a nice income.
The key benefits to domain parking are:
• fast to set up
• no skills needed even though you CAN put your seo skills to use.
• free of course
• hosted for you. No hosting, bandwidth or storage needed on your part.
• very low maintenance (set it and forget it - but “set it” well)
• great stats - You can see the true potential of your domain right away.
• you make money referring other domain owners.
These are benefits that are unique to domain parking and are hard to beat. There are better ways to cash in on a domain apart from building a site.
Some of the drawbacks to domain parking:
• can be hard to show up on SERPs. (SERP search engine result page)
• completely neglected domains that aren’t set up and optimized produce very little to no income.
• you must follow the rules. This isn’t a negative per se but you must be aware that domain parking companies are very strict against any kind of fraud, rightfully so. Domain parking is a privilege - not a right. So tread lightly. You may not ever click on an ad or sponsored result. Never. This should go without saying but this is direct fraud. Even if that service would be of interest of yours and even if you intent to sign up of buy or whatever. Do not click on any of your own parked pages ads or sponsored results. You will get dropped and all the hard work of optimizing your 115 domains goes to waste. I have heard that some companies offers no warning or explanations to dont take this warning lightly. You should not even look at your own pages. Some parking companies - especiallt those that only pays for clicks lets you browse your own pages but parking services that pay even for a visit do not want you to visit your own pages which is understandable and must be respected.
• there are other restrictions on what kind of traffic you can send to your parked pages. They vary slightly from parking lot to parking lot. See the details of you user agreement when you sing up and follow it to the letter.
Domain parking isn’t for every domain or everyone:
No matter how good the domain parking solution might sound it is not for every domain and not for everyone. It really depends on your skills, your current web “platform” presence, your goals and reasons for owning the domain in the first place. Also depends on your future goals. How long are planning to own your domain. Is is for sale, is a keeper. Do you have plans for developing.
The only domains that SHOULD & MUST be parked are the gazillion of domain names that currently are sitting there and collecting dust. Put all domains to work the minute you get them. Parking should always be the first step until you have a better plan.
Who and when should you NOT park:
Well if you truly are building a site right away you should not park.
If you build a mini site on a platform site of yours or host separately for cheap. You can get hosting for minisites for as little as $1/ month. But you better have yahoo ads or adsense and other related affiliate partners lined up.
Any domains that would better function as a free reselling storefront. You will make a lot more money with one domain “parked” as a reselling site. The only drawback is that good reselling storefronts are hard to find in specific categories. The key is to find reselling storefront that is both free and hosted for you if you are not able/want to host a feed page of your own.
