To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context!

[CyberKing]

Domainers, investors, end users whatever the situation might be - it is fairly common to monetize domains either temporarily unused or not developed to be parked with a service provider (such as Sedo, DNS, etc.) or develop your own ad serving parking page. Which all points to commercial activity for "gains".

If you have several hundred names or thousands of names with a significant one time and renewal investment, you would want to utilize every means to recover the investment costs. No one is here for charity as best as we can tell (we do not own .orgs and participate in this forum).

The risks one runs as best as I can tell:

a) Even on generics, non trademarked domains, parking for revenue seems to be the first threshold or check against a domain owner when a INDRP is filed against them and works against domain owner irrespective of their clarifications and genuine intent?
b) Zero Clicks offered by some providers had phishing links as they redirected to another URL - see my previous posts on that risk
c) The revenue earned is typically not enough to cover renewal costs in a majority of cases - unless significant ad parking configuration and SEO effort is put in , so why park?

So it may be best to not park domains especially borderline or clear cases of domains that could be subject to INDRP?

In our case we are evaluating domain traffic patterns, domain visitors sources and pruning and growing as the needs may be our investment in .IN domains...One method we followed was to register a whole list of related domains in a category example hotels and drove all type in traffic to a singe hotel booking brand site.....we have for now taken down active sites and are evaluating relaunching them (Travel, hosting, domains, eCom) etc.

What do experienced Domainers in this forum suggest we do - continue to park all .IN/.CO.IN domains, selectively park or NOT PARK at all? If so why?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Truekumar]

Re: To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context

A good thread, lets get some opinions on this guys? I would also love to hear what people have to say about this.

 

[a2zofb2b]

Re: To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context

You have summed up the risk associated with parking very well.
Personally, I don't park the premium domains.
I park some of the 2nd tier domains primarily to measure traffic and trends and if the traffic & revenue is not significant drop the domain.
Outside of parking, monetising Indian domains are challenging for domainer and in some case depends whether one has PAN card or not.
Travel, Shopping (ecom) are few areas one can monetize by developing co-branded sites.
Do you care to share some of you niche .IN/.CO.IN domains

 

[Kokoro]

Re: To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context

I check if a domain has any TM's in the Indian TM database. If it's TM'ed I put it on parking for testing. After some time I check the domain results and have to decide whether remove it from parking or leave it there. The decision depends on how much it earns and how much risk involved - sometimes it is only 1 weak TM found in the database and sometimes it's heavily TM'ed. Unfortunately most decent keywords have multi-TM's and they shouldn't be parked, but if a domain brings significant revs and one needs funds for renewals, it's not an easy choice.

Using zero click is problematic because it's not possible to control or verify what's happening when someone visits such domain. I would prefer to sell the traffic directly to someone and redirect to his/her website but don't see much demand for this. If a domain has value, I wouldn't risk zero-click on it.

INDRP decisions clearly show that a domain may be lost whether parked or not, bah, even generic domain may be lost because assumption of bad-faith registration.

I'd suggest to check TM's for your valuable domains and park selectively. Also get a script for bulk checking all classes so it takes much less time compared to manual checking.

 

[CyberKing]

Re: To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context

Great responses, lets keep the discussion flowing, will respond to each one of you...Thanks again.

 

[ramkumaritrvs]

Re: To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context

I suggest you to park and earn money. I just parked my 25 domains for 3 months and got $50. It's saved few bucks in next renewal.

 

[CyberKing]

Re: To Park or Not to Park - That's the question folks in a dot .IN or .CO.IN context

After a 30 day trial at VooDoo and another 30 days with Sedo prior to that - we have established that the best option for us is to develop the top names, redirect category traffic as appropriate to the primary name and prune the rest (either drop or seek alternatives)...so about 25 of our prime properties are back online! We also noted that the average payout (and traffic) on parked dot coms were significantly higher than .IN via Google! Of course all this is subject to individual domain development efforts, keywords, domain name quality etc. etc. so each ones experience is expected to vary - parking however is not for us...

 

[sharkantropo]

It is a fairly common and logical step to monetize domains either temporarily unused or not developed to be parked with a service provider or develop your own advertising parking page. Of course, is only actually profitable when you hav a good bunch of names registered, and anyone would want to utilize every means to recover the investment costs.

I concur that the best option is to develop your best names and redirection of traffic towards them.

 

[GraceB]

I don't bother with parking my domains, as most of them tend to be something that wouldn't receive type-in traffic in the first place. I just add them to a hosting package, drop a simple PHP page there and that's about it until I get around developing them. Sure it won't generate any income, but I really doubt parking would make a difference in my case anyways.

 

[Junkyard]

If you plan to sell the domain, you might want to park it first. Sometimes people who are looking for a specific domain will just type it in to see whether it's already an existing site first and when they see that it's parked, they know it's more likely to be for sale.

 

[oportosanto]

Yep, nothing like parking it prior to selling, you'll have better chances.

 

[Jas]

If you plan to sell the domain, you might want to park it first. Sometimes people who are looking for a specific domain will just type it in to see whether it's already an existing site first and when they see that it's parked, they know it's more likely to be for sale.

I wonder if the advertisements or the dummy content ever drive buyers away. I've seen domains with so many advertisements that it's more annoying than just an empty page, but I guess it doesn't matter if the intention is to buy the domain. I don't believe that parking it can bring enough revenue to do much, but I see how it's helpful in case of selling the domain.

 

[sorrow09]

I suppose we will see the income from parking domains only if we have so many parked. Unless the domains contain really popular keywords, I doubt they will receive traffic that much. If we have many unused domains, parking them sounds better than doing nothing at all for the income.

 

[oportosanto]

That's the thing, it has to have popular keywords or else the traffic will not appear. All in all we need to analyze how to monetize it better.

 

[Aree Wongwanlee]

To park or not to park? That depends on what you intend to do with the domains. Some domains can be treated like real estate. In real estate, you may buy a piece of land in a remote area and just park it in the bank until the day when the land price goes up. Likewise with a domain name. You can register the domain name of a place which is currently not well-known. Then park it somewhere until the day when that area becomes well-known. Then your domain name can be sold for a good profit.

 

[oportosanto]

Good explanation right there Aree, the comparison with real estate is a good one as we can simply wait until it values.

 

[Aree Wongwanlee]

One thing, though, before you get started. Make sure that the domain name which you are registering does not infringe on anyone's copyright. It would be a sad thing to invest money in maintaining a domain name for years only to find out in the end that it cannot be sold because it belongs to someone else by copyright.

 

[oportosanto]

Thanks for the tip. At the same time, how can I check if my domain name is not breaking any copyright laws?

 

[claire02]

I think parking is the way to go, especially if you can earn something to help you with the money for renewals and other expenses associated with those domains.

 

[Aree Wongwanlee]

Thanks for the tip. At the same time, how can I check if my domain name is not breaking any copyright laws?

I think the easiest way to find out is just to ask Uncle Google. If there are people who are already using the name which you have in your domain, then you should tread warily. Most companies have a copyright on their company names. Same with brand names.