How many times have you thought up a great domain name for a site you want to build only to find some effing asshole sitting on it? The site offers no value. It is a domain landing page with a bunch a keywords stuffed on top of each other that leads you to a page of some shitty sponsored ads. It drives me insane. The owner has probably sat on the domain for years. They have no intention of building a site on it. They are going to continue to collect whatever they can off of parking the damn thing. There are even companies that enable these shitheads to not do anything with the site.
I realize that many of you readers may even participate in this activity. Hell why not? Buy a domain for $8.99 minus whatever $2.50 coupon you can scrounge up and let some crap company park your domain. You collect ad fees from those poor suckers who happen to click on the garbage site. Personally I’ve never landed on one of those sites unless I do one of two things: 1) Try to buy a domain, discover it’s already taken and decide to go see what kind of site exists with the domain or 2) Misspell a domain name if I type it into the browser. 90% of the time if I do one of those 2 things I will land on a parked domain. It makes me want to bludgeon myself with my mouse.
This activity is such a waste. The owner of the URL has to have like 100 domains to park to make it worthwhile. It’s a numbers game. Of course making money can’t get any easier. They either make some dough from bored clickers trying to get the eff away from the shit parked site or end up selling the thing. I HATE this activity. Every time I decide to build a new site I run into this problem. Little things like this all add up to making this business a huge pain in the donkey.
There should be a way to determine if a URL is parked. If it’s not a trademark name then maybe you get 3 months to un-park the damn thing or you forfeit the URL. But no, it’s just another skanky way to make money on the Web that offers absolutely no value. Funny how Google penalizes you for building a portal site, ala Niche Portal Builder, that offers nothing exept keywords, links and Adsense, yet is cool with ads dropped on a FREAKIN’ PARKED PAGE with NO relevant content with their own parked domain for Adsense program. WTF?
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
The mental picture of splork bludgeoning himself with his computer mouse makes me giggle…
Otherwise a great article that I couldn’t agree more with.
Mark in Nashville
Nothing better than experimenting things, splork
. THe Parked Domains, can only bring you results if they’re pre-owned domains, and you need a substantial quantity!!
If I can give you my opinion, forget it!
Do you know what results in success?
BIG QUANTITY and FREE TOOLS!!
Alternatively, if you’ve luck a mega-ultra-super-single website, which is a myth. Use the free hosting, use the very cheap hosting companies (1$/month), and go for it. After a few hundreds of sites/blogs with hundreds/thousands pages each one (Not FULL SPAM), you’ll have success.
The problem here, is like you said before, and I said, and many others have achieved the same conclusion, we know what is necessary to do, but we’re lazy or let’s call it, we’ve lack of focus in one objective, REALLY MONEY and act like crazy!
Regards,
Dinheiro
Have you checked out your Adsense account lately? I logged in the other day and found that they are now offering Adsense for Domains. Now we can just park our domains with Goggle. Judging by your message, I’m sure you will love the news that domain parking just got that much easier.
Hey Heather. Yea it’s ridiculous. Google Adsense is such a hypocritical service.
Hi Splork,
I agree with a lot of what you say here normally, but I have to disagree on this one. In my eyes, a parked domain is just on a different level to an MFA site, or a bans site, or a store stacker site etc.
I have some parked domains on sedo. I don’t make much off the parking, but I do sell some for massive ROI.
But after studying the domainer’s business model, I just see them as the same as myself, but operating on different level.
Take bans. Go look in the forum and you’ll see that the majority opinion is that you should focus on quality over quantity – because Google and eBay have said so.
No-one seems to have stopped to think that eBay have to say this – because they are speaking to every single affiliate at the same time. Their quality scoring tells a different story and they’re not in the habit of throwing money away. Perhaps people who are eager to buy a product don’t want to have to read a ton of BS in order to get to the meat – the eBay listings.
If someone were to take that model and focus on quantity over quality, similar remarks would be made about their business – ‘these annoying crappy bans sites getting in the way, clogging up my search results.’
Conclusion – those people are more consumer than marketer.
There are many things that are worth complaining about online, particularly in the IM market. As for parked domains and domainers, I just see them as other people who do their marketing in a certain way.
And to be frank, I’ve seen parking pages with a lot more value to be had from them than many IM courses and websites. At least the parked pages don’t mislead…;-)
Yea they are definitely similar to SS and BANS sites. I just find them to be a waste. Like 90% of the shit on the web.
Hey Splork,
I laughed when I saw the Adsense for Domains – not at all surprised but couldn’t help but wonder how the Google folk convinced themselves that this would be OK for them in spite of warning others that such sites were a no-no. I suspect they took note of Sedo’s earnings and made a decision based solely on “higher ideals”. Right?
You are a welcome voice online Splork – don’t ever stop.
Btw – Yes. I wasted no time in parking a lot of domains on G. Yeah – they are pricks but they are where the money is… like it or not.
.
Hey Griz. Thanks for reading.
Yea, Google is going to continue to straddle the thin line of making the shareholders happy while also making sure they provide search results their advertisers expect. I suspect their hypocrisy will know no bounds as the world economy continues to circle the bowl and ad revenue begins its inevitable decline as companies of all sizes continue to tighten their belt. They will probably look to any means to increase the bottom line. Somehow I don’t think that they are going to be as picky about things next year in an effort to shore up those revenues.
DUDE
Quit revealing your lack of online investment strategy by purchasing valuable domains by attacking those who did what the land barons do at every level of real estate today. Good grief, bro. You’re actually whining about finding out someone else owns a domain you “suddenly” realized was a good domain name to own? So you dog them here for beating you to the punch?
By the way, domainers own 1000+ domains, not “100″. Get a job, study domain values by picking up a domainer ebook (check my site at successclick.com) and learn how to make $30,000 a year with 2 hours a day and a few hundred dollars a month of investment.
Easiest money I ever made – using my head, buying domains BEFORE someone else does.
I sold a domain today for $875, that I bought for $10 two years ago. With two years of renewal fees of $7.50, that’s an additional $15 on that $10 investment, totaling a whopping $25 investment on my part. Return – $850.
Multiply that by 20 domain sales in this ballpark a month, and it’s hefty profits.
If you don’t talk to the experts in this industry to get a quick leg up, and save your money to invest in this type of info, then you’ll be working your day job, and writing complaints like this, revealing your complete shortcomings in understanding how the domain industry juggernaut works.
If someone asked me right now how to invest $2500, I’d tell them “hire a domain consultant for $1500, and learn how to buy 100 quality domains with the rest. Then learn how to sell them for 5000% profit on your cost.
Success stories from people buying/selling domains are rampant. DNFORUM.COM
successclick.com (check the product and service links to decide how to get started, although this site is directed to people already dedicated to learning how to become top domainers. Don’t bother if you’re a whiner and don’t have at least $2500 to get started.
Yep I’m a whiner.
Nope I have I have no problem with someone buying a domain before me. I find it a bummer that someone buys a domain and never has an intention of doing a thing with it except parking it with 4 blocks of Adsense placed on it. But I move on and find one that you now can’t own.
Nope I have no problem if you buy domains with the intent of selling it for thousands of dollars. Capitalism is a beautiful thing.
I think you are correct that if you are smart enough to figure out what domain name will mean something to someone in the future then it’s a fantastic game to play. As with many IM ventures, there are risks, hard work and a little bit of luck involved.
Thanks for reading and commenting Stephen. Your backhanded insults really motivate me to look into your business.
lol, this is my second blogs i love to read after Grizzly’s site, keep posting
. btw how many domain did u invest for domain parking ?
Hey. I was actually wondering if “SEDO” is a legitimate domain reseller. The fact that someone mentioned it above gives me SOME reassurance. If I want to bid on a site, I would like to know if SEDO is legit before giving any credit card numbers.
Thank you!
You are absolutely right – it frustrates me too. But I wonder whether the new domain extensions that are coming into being will provide a solution? Or will the .ws and .me never ever compete with a .com – time will tell I guess. But meanwhile. I can’t decide whether they are worth buying or not. What do you think?
They aren’t for me. I stick with the .com’s. Tried and true.