Domain Parking is when you temporarily direct your domain name to a website, that pays you for the traffic that is received from your domain, when someone ends up clicking on the featured advertisements.
Two of the more popular choices among domainers are: www.Sedo.com and www.Afternic.com. These two parking services have been around for many years and are both reliable in terms of payment and in providing accurate statistical data. With Sedo, they will indicate whether the domain name you are parking has existing traffic, and of course if it does, you can price your domain name at a higher range. Sedo also creates a domain name sale page for you, which the domain visitors will see whenever they visit. This means that you can end up selling domain names by doing absolutely nothing if someone stumbles across your domain and sees it for sale on Sedo.
However, you can also choose to deny their offer if you aren’t happy with it or accept it for prompt payment from Sedo, who will take a percentage of your sale and pay you the rest. To register for a free Sedo account, visit http://www.Sedo.com and click on the “Create Your Free Account” link to begin.
After you have created your account, Sedo will ask you to enter in any domain names that you wish to park with their service. And you can enter in as many or as little as you like, or you can skip this step altogether until you are ready and come back to it at a later time.
If you do decide to enter in domains at Sedo, you are able to specify a category, asking price, and a minimum offer for each of your domains.
If you enter in a minimum offer, potential buyers will be required to bid that amount in order to even be considered. This can save you a lot of time and eliminate ridiculously low bids of a few bucks.
I always enter my minimum bid to be at least $15 above my registration cost.
Here are a few reputable parking service providers:
- www.Sedo.com
- www.Parked.com
- www.Fabulous.com
- www.Bodis.com
- www.NameDrive.com
In order to direct your domain to your parking service, you will need to update the nameservers associated with your domains. By default, your nameservers will point to the main page of whatever domain registrar you choose, for example, if you register a domain name with NameCheap, your domain www.abc.com when loaded, will bring visitors to NameCheaps’ main page until you update the DNS.
This is quite easy to do, and depending on your register, the exact area in your account where you update this information will vary; however, the best way to begin is first by creating your account on the parking service you choose to go with, such as www.Sedo.com .
Sedo, will provide you with nameservers that may look something like this: ns1.sedoparking.com and ns2.sedoparking.com
After you have these nameservers written down, log into your domain account and search for the “NameServer Update” link (It may be called DNS update, Web Hosting Update, etc).
In most cases, you may need to contact your domain registration provider to ask where to go about changing this information if you are unable to locate it within your account.
Shortly after you update the nameservers, your domain will be pointed to its new parking home, and you will be able to see this by entering in your domain name and seeing where it leads you.
If you update your nameservers and your domain still remains pointing to your registrar, don’t panic- – it can take up to 24 hours for your domain’s nameservers to be successfully updated, so check back at a later date to confirm that your domain name is now pointing correctly.
However, it’s important to get to know your way around your domain registration interface because once you sell domains, you will need to transfer (or push) them to your customers.
For registrars such as www.NameCheap.com, you can click on the “Push Domain” link and enter in your customer’s username and instantly push the domain into their account, without them even having to accept.
For GoDaddy.com, transferring a domain name is a bit more complicated, as you will be required to enter in personal information regarding the customer who purchased the domain from you, after which the domain name will be transfer to the new owner..
Note: Don’t be afraid to contact your domain registrar for assistance should you be confused about how to transfer domains, register domains or update your nameservers.
Understanding The Value In Dropped Domains
Apart from expired domains, domain names that have been dropped with existing traffic and page rank are extremely valuable.
Using a service such as that of www.FreshDrop.net, you will be able to locate domain names with existing PR (Page Rank ranging from PR2-PR6, although PR2 and PR3 are the easiest to find).
PR (Page Rank) simply indicates that the domain was receiving traffic prior to expiring or dropping, and of course, online merchants place a lot of value on purchasing a domain that has already generated traffic, saving them the initial work of launching a domain, or waiting for it to be aged enough to appear in the search engines, not to mention the fact that domains with page rank carry more weight in the search engines such as www.Google.com .
There is also discussion involving new domain names being placed in what is referred to as a ‘sandbox’, where they are kept for a period of time before being released to appear in search engines, another reason why aged domains are so valuable to merchants.
At www.FreshDrop.net , you can browse through their search functions selecting to locate domains with specific PR. Personally, I set the search tool to seek out domains with a PR of no less than 2. You can do this by clicking on the tab marked “EXP Name” and running your search query.
Finding decent domain names with existing page rank, isn’t all that difficult and by featuring them within domain auctions on sites like NamePros.com, DNForum.com (paid membership) or Ebay.com can instantly generate a consistent income with little effort.
Once you have structured your system and are seasoned with doing your daily rounds of searching through domain listings, dropped and expired domains, and checking sites like Fresh Drop for domains with PR, you will find it incredibly easy to generate dozens of valuable domain names that you can quickly flip for profit.
It’s an exciting business to be a part of, no doubt about it.
Understanding Backordering Domain Names
It’s very difficult to rely on our ability to catch a domain name as it has dropped and register it before someone else does. Furthermore, most of the registrars don’t even allow the better domains to be dropped, instead, placing them in online auctions.
This is where backordering comes into play.
With backordering services, you are able to pre-purchase a domain name that is about to expire, as long as the current owner fails to renew it themselves.
However, there is no guarantee you will be given the domain name, even if it expires due to other back ordering services offering the same opportunity to other people who are looking to snag a great domain name that’s about to drop.
Still, it definitely increases your chances at being able to scoop up some of the better domain names with existing traffic and page rank.
Here are a few of the more popular back ordering services:
- www.NameJet.com
- www.SnapNames.com
- www.Pool.com