What is a Parked Domain? A Complete Guide for Beginners

If you’ve ever purchased a domain, you know that providers often suggest buying related ones in a package. But what would you need those extra domain names for? Actually, they can be a perfect investment in the future! With domain parking, you can protect your brand from competitors and enjoy other long-term benefits like reducing costs and earning even more on top of that. Today we’ll explore what a parked domain is, how to set one up along with the strategies to monetise it. Curious to learn about all the perks? Let’s do it!

What is a Parked Domain?

For all car owners (and their fellow passengers) out there, the meaning of a parked domain is essentially the same as a reserved parking space. It serves to hold a spot for you until you need to use it. Let’s say, you own an active website plus a collection of URLs that sound similar but aren’t currently in use. These domain names can be “parked” on a temporary page so that they don’t sit idle.

Surely, you can just reserve them for future projects and display messages like “Under construction” or “Coming soon”. But we can do better than that, right? There are various reasons why people choose to park domains, so let’s explore the logic behind it together.

Why Park a Domain?

There are multiple reasons why parking a domain can benefit your business, here are the main four which we think are worth considering.

To Reserve a Domain for Future Use

By reserving a domain, you stock up a set of names for your future projects to make sure you have the exact one when the moment comes and you are ready to launch it. Naming means a lot, so you need to secure this important “asset” before it’s taken by someone else. Keep calm and park it!

This will spare you the unnecessary rush and extra costs when you try to buy a domain and find out it’s inconveniently snatched out from under your nose. That’s why it’s so vital to plan ahead as parked websites mean rolling out your future initiatives without any hassle.

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To Safeguard Your Brand and Protect from Competitors

If you secure related domains from the very beginning, competitors won’t be able to take over your brand’s identity. What exactly do we mean by that? The thing is that it’s much easier to impersonate someone online so that no one can tell the difference. Doing that offline would require actual presence and a lot of physical resources.

But the internet makes it easier for anyone to create a website or a social media profile which mimics your brand. It can be done to spread misinformation, redirect your traffic and harm your reputation in every possible way. This will mislead your customers and might even result in a complete loss of trust. And once the damage is done, it’s way harder to get things back on track.

Sadly, digital space provides low barriers to entry for all kinds of evil. But now you know what to do for blocking others from such malicious activities. Let your brand stay protected and trustworthy!

To Monetize Unused Domains

Apart from future plans and brand protection, you can also use otherwise idle domains to earn some passive income. Cool, right?

Let’s imagine the following scenario: you own several domains in the travel niche, for example, BestBeaches.com, TopTouristSpots.com and VacationGuides.net. What is domain parking giving you in this case? Tons of opportunities! You can partner with ad networks and use these landing pages to display ads for anything related to the topic. Travel agencies, airlines, hotels, car rentals, to name a few. This way you can get profit from ad impressions or clicks, depending on the conditions of the offers you promote. A single conversion reward can be small but when they accumulate over time, it might be quite an impressive amount of money.

To Redirect Traffic to an Active Website

You can significantly improve your main platform visibility if you redirect traffic from additional domains that you bought. You need to take into account common misspellings and keyword variations to appear on the radar of those who mistyped your web address or searched from similar terms. This can help you capture all potential leads and drive them to the destination you initially wanted them to reach.

How to Park a Domain

Parking a domain is not a rocket science, there are two primary methods to do it, let’s review them in more detail.

Setting Up a Domain Alias

Here you are supposed to set up your domain directly through your registrar (domain provider):

1. Log into the account where you bought your domain.
2. Go to the settings for the domain that you plan to park.
3. Search for an option to add a domain alias. With its help, you can point your parked domain to another one or a temporary page. For this moment, they will be leading visitors to your main website or displaying some useful information.
4. Save your changes once it’s all set. That’s it, your domain is now parked and ready for future use.

Using Domain Parking Services

You can also research third-party services for user-friendly and effective domain parking:

1. Choose a reputable service with domain parking features.
2. Create an account and add your domain to the service.
3. Customise the settings for your parking: create landing pages, configure redirects, include ads, etc.
4. Activate the parking service. Now your domain will display everything you’ve set up earlier.

How to Make Money with a Parked Domain

You can make the most out of your investments if you turn your parked domains into a money-making machine. We’ll tell you how:

• Cash Parking. This option implies that you partner with a domain parking service to list your domain for sale or display ads on it. But usually it’s both: you can passively earn some money when users visit your domain, until it is sold. So it’s a win-win: you don’t just sit around waiting for a potential buyer but also get profit from ad clicks along the way. And the money from the sale will be a cherry on top, once the deal is sealed. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s go through it step-by-step:

1. Choose a service that offers cash parking options (e.g. GoDaddy, Sedo, etc.);
2. Create an account and list your domain;
3. Customise the settings of your ads based on the options offered by the service. Most of the time, you can choose what types of ads will be displayed on your domain.
4. Activate your cash parking feature, launch ads and start earning money from clicks.

• Earning Through Ads. This method is similar to cash parking but it offers more control and higher potential for earning as you partner directly with ad networks. Besides, here you focus entirely on traffic monetisation, without the intention to sell. Let’s see how it works:

1. Sign up with an ad network (e.g. Google AdSense);
2. Add an ad code provided by the network to your domain’s page. This code guarantees that the ads are displayed correctly and you get the credit for every click.
3. Place the ads in strategic locations on your domain page to make sure they get better visibility and higher number of clicks. Don’t be shy to experiment with different layouts and positions to see what works best.
4. Monitor performance of your ads on your network’s dashboard and adjust your tactics if needed.

Making your money work for you through domain parking is like planting a seed: it’s all about letting it grow while you sit back and enjoy the shade!

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Parked Domain vs. Addon Domain: What’s the Difference?

There is one more distinction worth making: are parked and addon domains the same thing? Not exactly. Though they are indeed similar, they are meant for separate things. Let’s compare them in the table below:

How to Keep Your Parked Domain Secure

If you want to protect your parked domain from unauthorised access and misuse, you must keep it as secure as possible. But fear not, we are here to share with you some best practices to make sure your domains remain safe.

Use a Trusted Domain Registrar

As the whole journey starts with a domain provider or a registrar, you need to choose a reputable and reliable one. We recommend looking for a service that has transparent policies and offers prompt customer support and strong security features. It will give you peace of mind that your asset is in good hands, protected from fraud and abuse.

Enable Domain Locking

To prevent possible unauthorised transfers of your domain, you can turn on a security feature called domain locking. It adds an extra layer of protection so that no one except you can make any changes in your domain’s settings or ownership. Due to this explicit authorization, you can safeguard against accidental or malicious domain transfers.

Consider Private Domain Registration

Ever wondered where fraudsters can get hold of your personal details? Unfortunately, this kind of information can be acquired from public WHOIS databases. Private domain registration can protect your data and reduce the risk of spam, phishing attacks or identity theft. No more leaks, only a high level of security and privacy for your parked domains!

Now that your domains are well-protected, you can channel your energy into planning their future use and making the most of their potential benefits.

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Conclusion: Should You Park Your Domain?

We hope this article helped you to learn what a parked website is. Strategical parking of your domains is a wise decision that brings many benefits to the table.

You can reserve domain names for future projects down the road, shield your brand from competitors and get profit from advertising. Moreover, you can use these idle domains to redirect traffic to your main website thus making it even more noticeable for online dwellers. Don’t forget to follow best practices that we shared with you today to secure your domains, it will help you protect your investments so that you can enjoy long-term perks.

Whether you’re plotting internet world domination or just want some easy cash flow, parked domains are like little gold mines waiting for you to dig in. And our team wishes you the best of luck in your efforts!