If you’re looking for an explanation of what a parked domain is and what benefits it can provide, it can be difficult to find everything you need to know in one place. The concept of a parked domain is easy to understand, but it can be complex. Parked domains surround an entire industry.
The difference between this article and others is the small details. By the time you finish reading, you will know all about parked domains, but you will also know about the benefits of creating one and why there is such a large market for parked domains.
What is the domain?
Let’s start with the basics. Domain is an identifier used to represent a website, application, or email. For example, YouTube is a website that we all recognize, but the YouTube domain is www.youtube.com Basically, a domain is a web address.
What is a parked domain?
A standard domain is registered for the purpose of assigning this domain name to a website. For example, www.youtube.com will send you directly to the YouTube site.
However, a parked domain is registered with the intention of holding that domain so that no one else can own it. The domain itself cannot link to any content, but as the owner of the domain, you can be sure that no one else will take it away from you.
Anyone can purchase a domain from different domain registrars. It’s as easy as finding a domain on a website like GoDaddy and buying it if available. For this reason, domain parking can be very important.
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There are many reasons why it makes sense for a company to park a domain, and there are other options available to those who keep a close eye on good domain names. Let’s talk more about this in the next section.
Benefits of a hosted domain
To fully understand the benefits of a parked domain, you must imagine two different scenarios. One from the company and one from the domain reseller. Let’s start with the mindset of the company.
Let’s say you have YouTube and you know that some of your users are from the UK. Many UK websites use unique .co.uk domains, and some websites have regional versions of their websites that use .co.uk instead of .com.
Since YouTube wants UK users to visit their real website, YouTube will buy and park the Youtube.co.uk domain. On the back, they can set it up so that Youtube.co.uk will automatically redirect to the main site Youtube.com.
By purchasing the Youtube.co.uk domain, UK visitors can still find YouTube, and YouTube prevents an attacker from acquiring the YouTube.co.uk domain. If another person owned YouTube.co.uk, they could use it to send spam to users with ads, trick users into giving their real YouTube credentials through phishing attempts, or require YouTube owners to pay them a large sum of money in order to transfer domain rights.
These are just a few examples of the benefits of a parked domain for a company. But there are other examples as well.
Let’s say you’re Marvel, working on a new movie with a Quicksilver character that you plan to release in 2 years. If you plan to do a marketing campaign using the quicksilvermovie.com domain, you need to purchase and park that domain so you can use it later before the Quicksilver name becomes popular.
If the rumors about your movie spread ahead of time and you haven’t purchased the domain yet, someone else might buy it, and that could hurt your marketing campaign.
There are other great benefits to domain parking for profit. In fact, there is an entire industry dedicated to making a profit from buying and reselling domains. Finding a good domain to sell can be difficult these days because the market is very competitive.
But suppose you were able to start your business early and purchased the domain chicken.com. Throughout the entire history of the Internet, the number of people around the world wondering what happens when you type “chicken.com†into the address box must have been quite large. So how can you monetize this opportunity?
Hosted Domains Investment
One of the main ways to monetize parked domains is by placing ads on them. Therefore, when someone visits your website, an advertisement will be displayed that could be associated with the name of the website.
There are services that specialize in monitoring traffic and displaying relevant ads for parked domains. For example, above.com specializes in all things domain related, and they have generated over $ 500 million in ad revenue from parked domains.
Advertising on parked domains isn’t the only way to monetize. Resellers often buy websites with good names and then resell them for a profit. Companies will pay big bucks to access some of the domain names, so it might be beneficial to keep the domains if possible.
In fact, there is such a thing as a domain broker – a hired assistant to help you track down and negotiate with the owners of the unique domains. Some domains have sold for several million dollars in the past. But who will pay that much for a domain? Below are some examples.
Hotels.com was sold in 2001 for $ 11 million to help develop a worldwide hotel search website. It seemed like a lot of money at the time, but 11 years later, David Roche, President of Hotels.com, said, “Now we look back and think what a great deal.”
Tesla.com was sold for $ 11 million in 2014 as a marketing attempt by Tesla, Inc., as they felt teslamotors.com was not in line with their overall future plans for the company.
There are many other examples in history explaining how valuable owning and parking certain domains can be.
Summary
Hopefully our explanation of what parked domains are and how they work was helpful. Do you have any more questions about parked domains? If so, please leave a comment below.
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