How to make money from expired domains
If you have not read Understanding the value of expired domains please read that first page before continuing.
Once you have fully researched an expiring domain, used all the resources mentioned in this article or were lucky enough to have registered your expiring domain manually, you are ready for the next step to making money with your new domain (s).
There are many different methods used by domain owners to monetize their domains, and each domain is unique, so there is no one method that works better than others, and there is no one service that will definitely perform better than others for all domains.
Most domain speculators that have hundreds or even thousands of domains send their traffic to PPC (Pay per click) search engines, often referred to as domain parking. There are numerous PPC search engines available, and the major ppc’s listed at ParkingIncome.com are, Domain Sponsor, Sedo, Fabulous, Trafficz, and a few more. Pay per click parking services were first started to allow domainers an easy quick way to park their domains. The domain owner is paid for each click. Most ppc’s split 50% of what they are paid from advertisers with the domain owners. The pages are often search engine pages and a visitor can click on a link or perform a search for what they are looking for. The webhosting, page development, and bandwidth are all provided to the domain owner. These pay per click search engines are free to join, but some do require a minimum number of owned domains, or unique visitors per month. Each of the major ppc search engines have unique features that make them perform better (recieve more clicks from visitors) for certain targetted traffic.
Domain Sponsor landing pages (the webpage that your visitors will see when they visit your domain) are dynamically created auto optimized pages. These pages show the most searched for terms at the top of the page for that specific domain, increasing your chances of more like minded visitors to that domain, searching for simialar products or information and clicking the links to find out more. This method does require two clicks for you to earn a comission, but Domain Sponsor offers some of the best payouts per click in the ppc industry.
Sedo offers one click landing pages (your visitors are shown search results immediately), this results in a comission being earned for each click made on one of the related results. These pages are not auto optimized and do require you to know what your visitors are looking for. What sedo lacks in high payout per click, they make up for in volume or RPM (revenue per thousand visitors).
Fabulous offers a variety of landing pages. Having unique looking landing pages make the visitor not realize that they are visiting an expired website (domain), and imrpoves the chances that the visitor will click around to explore the site in search of what they initially visited for.
In my opinion any of these companies could easily outperform the others in the ppc industry.
To provide everything needed to recieve the best results from targetted traffic, the ultimate pay per click parking search engine would have to provide the following.
Fast loading pages.
A variety of unique landing pages to choose from.
One click landing pages for highly targetted traffic domains.
The ability for the domain owner to add a paragraph of text and one small image with the ability to add alt text to this image. This would help in keeping or improving SEO (search engine optimization)
The ability to enter to have complete control over meta tags. (again focused on seo)
And a diverse selection of advertisers paying optimal percentages for each click.
Many of these services offer a few of these options, but none currently offer all of the above.
Some people choose to develop their expired domain names into websites. Providing content simialar to the previous owners website model. Which is not a bad idea if the domain and traffic warrant this, and you have the time to develop the website, and devote time to keeping it updated.
Some people choose to create a small information site or fully developed website, selling no products but relying on google adsense. Webmasters display a small box or a few small boxes of advertisements on their website, and are compensated for each click that a visitor makes. This method, as with the second method, requires a bit of time to develop the website or webpage, but works pretty well, if targetted to the visitors.
Some people choose to forward their expired domains to affiliate programs and are paid on a commission basis. If a visitor purchases a product the owner of the forwarded domain is compensated a percentage of the sale price. Many people that use this method rely on commission junction to provide the sponsors. This method also works with the correct targetting of your visitors.
