Chapter 5: Traffic Monetization and Domain Tasting

Traffic Monetization

Now that you understand how traffic is generated, let’s look at how you monetize that traffic. Epik.com, Sedo.com, ParkingCrew.com, and other domain-parking companies have upstream providers which are usually Google.com or Yahoo.com. An upstream provider is just a company that provides the advertisements and payments to the parking company.

When you park a domain with a parking company, you will, in effect, redirect traffic that is coming to your domain to the parking company. Your domain becomes, in essence, a conduit to the parking company chosen, and by proxy, Google or Yahoo.

Parking a domain usually means that you use a platform such as Epik.com or ParkingCrew.com to associate your domain with their service. Their system will allow you to select one of your domains, say “SelfDirectedFuture.com” and type in keywords via their online interface to make relevant links appear on the page. An example of these keywords for this domain might be: “SELF DIRECTED RETIREMENT,” or “IRA.” The parking company will generally present the same or similar links you would see as if you typed those same exact keywords into Google.com, Yahoo.com, or other search engine when they show their “Sponsored Ad” or “Sponsored Search Results.” Their system may also auto-assign keywords in so that their system does their own keyword optimization.

Now that you’ve chosen relevant keywords, or had the parking system auto-assign one, anyone who has browsed to your page by typing-in your domain may click on a link to get to seemingly relevant content. Every time someone clicks on one of the advertisements or links that show up on one of your domains, you’ll make some money!

At the end of the month you will get paid the total of money you made in the previous month.

Each parking company makes their money from the money that you make them. Every time a person clicks on one of your domains, you just made that parking company some revenue. The parking provider provides the relevant advertisements that it gets from its upstream provider to your domain, it also provides the landing pages, the management and reporting systems, as well as staff to make it all work. You provide the domains and traffic. You need them, they need you.

You also need to keep aware that if some of your names could be built into a solid content and revenue-generating website with just a little more effort, it may make more sense to explore cutting out the parking company.

Please note, there is often much more money to be made from development of the domain name into a full-blown site then there is if you just leave it parked, but it’s also a lot more work.