Can someone explain parking domains to me?

[TheShortStack]

As with most people here, I've got a number of domains that I'm not doing anything with at the moment.

One of the options appears to be parking domains with various hosting companies, but I don't really understand how this works. As far as I'm aware, the hosting company puts up a page and I get paid for every click that the page generates.

The part I don't understand is how that can be lucrative? I mean, if I'm not doing any SEO on the domain then how am I going to get any traffic to generate those clicks? And if I'm going to spend time linkbuilding, then I may as well just have my own site up there.

Am I missing something here? It seems that the only way this can be profitable is from direct traffic, which isn't really going to happen unless you've got a very expensive domain.

Thanks in advance for the help ...

[pokerworx]

You will find that a lot of them are exact match domains that get alot of searches and the people that do them usually have 100’s if not 1000’s of domains. You imagine having 5000 domains that get 1-10 clicks a day and you see how the money builds up. Have a look around places like DNF forums and you will see people that do that. I found a good affiliate program that does parking for domains, say you have like cashcasino or something you can park an actual casino on it they have poker rooms aswell.

Reward Affiliates is the place that you can do the parking. << sub link

[MJ]

You could try SEOparking.com: Free Domain Name Parking but I have mixed feelings a out this, as the company sells links on your site via textlinks.com

I have done it though and gotten domains ranking with some traffic and you can use your own ads.

[321]

The part I don't understand is how that can be lucrative?

It's not, at least not in your case.

Registering a doman can cost $7. Hosting is free. All that someone doing this is doing is trying to earn $100 a year, ten bucks even. Now multiply $10 by 100,000 domains and they make a good return. Of course putting up an actual domain in this niche would be far more profitable, but from a do nothing perspective, its easy money.

If you only have a few domains though, it isn't going to be worth even thinking about it, especially if they are not typo or exact match domains. somerandomname.com likely won't make a penny.

[addaminsane]

i would think that it is becoming less and less lucrative. If you look at keyword research tools, you'll find that for some reason a huge chunk of internet browsers would rather google their favorite websites and go to them instead of entering the domain name in the address bar.

I find myself doing this alot too.

I would think as more and more people understand how the net works alot of things will drastically change.