A Vanishing Domain Opportunity in Parking Killed my Free Money

When I first started buying domains a dozen or so years ago I was fascinated with the prospect of a domain name opportunity. That was finding words or combining them into domain names. I spent many hours in my spare time looking up words in my old college dictionary.

They were words not already registered as .com domain names. The vanishing domain opportunity was parking the domain at my registrar and making money from ads on it.

Dictionary Word Domains are not Necessarily Valuable

I found some that were not on www.dictionary.com, a site I normally use to check the spelling of questionable words. Also words I wasn’t sure of the spelling.

Although I did find a lot of dictionary words that were not registered as domain names, most were not common words. They were technical words, or words that most people would not know or know the meaning of. An example of this is thulia. What does it mean? To me it sounds like the name of some type of flower. But that’s far from the definition.

Over about a two year period I registered about 600 domain names. Well over a hundred being dictionary words I thought might have some value. I registered about 100 more domains before I came to my senses and stopped.

The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33) is a dark nebula in the constellation of Orion.

Here’s one of them, Stellary.com that I had an astronomy site on for a half dozen years or more. I took it down because I just didn’t have time to update it. The domain has since been sold.

Some dictionary words were proper names or part of such names, albeit I had never heard of them. One such name was Tobol, the name of a river.

There were two domains I bought through an auction for a low cost. One of those I recently sold for a low four-figure amount. Although that domain name didn’t sell for big bucks I still made about 1500% profit. That’s considering the initial cost and renewing the domain all those years. The other domain I bought at auction is this site name, yolky.com which is not for sale.

That’s not the Vanishing Domain Opportunity

I rather quickly learned that it wasn’t a nice feeling having so many domain names because the renewal fees could eat you alive. By then I realized I didn’t want to become a domain investor. I never really tried to promote my domain names other than sometimes place ads on my sites.

But that was several years later. Since I had so many domain names I parked them at my registrar except the ones I put a site on.

When parked some of the domains made money when people clicked on the ads. My registrar supplied temporary sites with ads on them. For the first few years I usually made at least $1000 a year from parked revenue. That wasn’t a lot compared to domain investors, but in my case I didn’t consider myself a domain investor.

I wasn’t paying big bucks for the domains I had. That is compared to domainers who often paid thousands for domains to go into their domain portfolio. So in addition to keeping some of my domains I thought worthwhile, I made a profit from parking revenue.

I let almost all of my Domains Expire

So I let almost all of my domains expire. I did sell a few of them and fortunately profit from those covered domain costs and renewal costs. Finally after about three years all my domains were gone except about a hundred or so.

Those were the ones I liked or ones I had put a website on. Plus there were a few domains I thought had a decent chance to sell in the coming years. Those ensuing years proved me wrong. I’ve only sold a handful of the 100+ domains I kept. But again – I haven’t really promoted them.

A Vanishing Money Opportunity

Almost immediately when I started buying domains I put up sites on the domains I liked. Some I thought might make a worthwhile profit if I could sell them. Once I had what I thought was sufficient content on a site I added Google AdSense on it.

Because it turned out that I liked creating websites, I decided early on to monetize them with AdSense. Probably half of them. Maybe 40 or 50 sites I had Adsense ads on. I had so many sites it was impossible to get a lot of traffic to them. I was a one man show and my internet activities were just a part-time thing.

This vanishing domain opportunity from parked domain revenue helped solidify my idea of not becoming a domain investor. I still buy domains occasionally but only keep them one year if I cannot sell them or make use of them in some way.

Over the years, however, at least in my case, that nice parking revenue has dried up to a measly $20 or so a year. The internet has a lot more sites on it now compared to many years ago. That surely has something to do with the greatly diminished returns I receive from my parked domains.

I made some Money from Parking and Adsense

So I never made a lot of money from AdSense ads. But the several hundred to a thousand dollars or more I made each year from parking was always welcome. That too has dried up over the years. I don’t pay attention to it anymore. I’m making about a fifth or less of what I used to make.

However, I have taken down about half the sites that had AdSense on them. Most of the others I haven’t updated on a regular basis. Three or four of my sites got penalized and my ads were removed by google.

Only one of those I knew why. I corrected what I thought Google might not like on all those sites. However, Google never reinstated the ads on the sites. Wish Good Luck is one of those sites.

Unfortunately one of those sites made the most money, far more than any other. It is still missing those ads. So for me my AdSense profits is another vanishing money opportunity.

I know it is still possible to make good money with AdSense. I think it is far more difficult than it was years ago.

It wasn’t much, but I did make some money from affiliate sales of different internet marketing products.

Even now I do. I just checked my email a few minutes ago and made a small commission. Every little bit helps, but you’ll never get rich from affiliate sales.

This was My Domain Experience – Not Yours

Although I haven’t made a lot of money with domains or websites that’s not to say you cannot. It’s always been a mostly fun endeavor for me and a part-time learning experience. There are domain investors who make a LOT of money. There are blog and authority website owners that also make really good money. They make it from advertising alone.

There are sites that make a million dollars and more a year out there. So even though I had fun doing domaining on a small scale and putting up websites, making a lot of money never happened. Just because you like the topic doesn’t justify having a website.

Take a look at this small Niche River ad of mine. Click the image to see the larger domain name ad. This site is still up and I might create a membership site on it if I don’t sell it. It is a site I put up many years ago.

If I sell it, the niche site course I’ll buy for the buyer is written by a person making a nice five-figure income. That’s from just one of his authority sites. So decent, if not very good money, can be made by a single site if you do the right things. Don’t let my vanishing domain opportunity stop you from being a domain investor. Don’t let it keep you from making money from Google AdSense.

Has anyone seen their domain parking revenue go down over the years? Have you noticed the same for your AdSense revenue?