We spent a couple of days at an interesting internet trade show called DomainFest.
Did you ever notice how often you do a search and find a domain name exactly matching your search term. (eg. SeattleSailBoat.com, click image at right). As often as not you’ll find the page is full of PayPerClick links, Google ads, Yahoo ads etc. You have stumbled into the domain parking industry.
There are three major components in the parking marketplace.
- Domainers – companies, or from the looks of the attendees – reformed xbox addicts- that own dozens, hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of either targeted or obscure keyword based domain names. (Fabulous.com claims to own over 500000 domains).
- Domain name parking services – they will take your domains and use backend software to display appropriate advertisements (the ppc/overture/google ads that earn money) and they’ll split any revenue they make with the domainer.
- PPC companies and advertisers that pay for the whole deal.
My sense is that eventually the search engines will come to see this as clutter and they’ll start to cut these very thin, contentless clickthrough lists out of their search results. But until they do, go grab yourself some cool domains, find a parking company (try parkingpanel.com or fabulous.com) and make yourself a few extra dollars per month.
If you want an excellent domain, you can even finance it through a company called DomainCapital and pay it off over 1-5 years.
Dan Warner of Fabulous advises that you look for domains that have:
- Brandability
- Mindshare
- Commerciality
- Specificity
- Realization
- Immediacy and
- Intent
Check Fabulous where he explains what he means.