While doing some research on renting out my condo in Charlotte, I found a novel technique for making money from Craigslist.  About once a week, someone posts links for a condo for rent. The person’s posts have pictures and a very reasonable price listed. Instead of providing a phone number or email address, he encourages people to contact him through his website. The site is a domain parking page at Sedo with PPC ads for condos in downtown Charlotte. The condo market is pretty hot here, and related keywords are going for over $1.00 per click on Adwords. Even after Sedo takes their cut, he is still doing pretty well. I am curious how much traffic this could generate.

You can check out the ads in question here.  The landing page at Sedo is located here.

Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a new site to make buying existing websites and domains easier. Tonight, I can proudly say that SiteViper 1.0 is now up and ready for action. I was spending a lot of time scanning forums that listed websites for sale. The process is terribly inefficient, and I am not a big fan of the tools that are already out there to help aggregate listings.

So why is SiteViper worth using?

• SiteViper aggregates for sale listings from around the web so that you don’t have to spend time wading through forums. Listings are refreshed every 15 minutes, so you will not miss anything.
• You can subscribe via RSS.
• You can search and set up RSS or email alerts for new listings matching your criteria. This feature is invaluable when you are looking for a site or domain that matches a specific niche.
• Listings are grouped into categories so you can view just sites or just domains for sale.

I plan on making a series of improvements to the site over the next few weeks. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at paul@monetizetraffic.com.

As someone who has been building websites since 1996, I have a small collection of domain names that I am not making use of. Over the years, I have tried a variety of methods to monetize these domains.

1.) Domain Parking Services. These services allow you to point your domain to their name servers and they show semi-targeted pay-per-click ads on the domain. The level of input you can have related to targeting varies for each service, but most let you provide some keyword suggestions.

Advantages

• It’s Easy. You can pretty much set it and forget it. Most of the parking services have landing pages with high click through rates, so you will not have to spend any time optimizing the site.
• Works with any domain.

Disadvantages

• Unless you have a huge domain portfolio, the parking services will take a sizable chunk of the revenue.
• For some domains, you may not be able to come up with relevant keywords that will pay well.

I have had some good luck with both DomainSponsor and Sedo. There is also a post over at WickedFire recommending a few other domain parking services and DNForum has some great posts on reviewing parking services.

2.) Redirect to Affiliate Programs. Recently, I have been experimenting with redirecting some of my unused domain names to relevant affiliate programs. For example, on CollegePower.com, I wrote up a quick little PHP script to redirect visitors to one of five scholarship programs on Azoogle and HydraMedia. I have also tried this with a few typo domains that are very well targeted to affiliate programs. I am currently redirecting Blinkco.com to the ringtone offers on Blinko.com. I am not yet ready to discuss my results with this technique, but I certainly see some potential here.

Advantages

• With well-targeted affiliate programs, this can be more profitable than parking services.
• With a simple redirect script, you can test multiple affiliate programs/offers on one domain.

Disadvantages

• Not all domains will have an affiliate program that is a good fit for it.
• You must remember to change up the site if the offer that you are running expires.

3.) Domain Resale. One of the best techniques I have used to monetize my unused domains is to resell some of my holdings. After I sit on a domain for a year or two, I usually consider reselling it if I will not start using it within the next six months. When selling my domains, I have had success using DNForum, Webhostingtalk, and Sitepoint forums. If you find the right buyer, you can get a good price for your domain. For example, I have sold techcoupons.com and webhostinglab.com for a few hundred dollars each. This was a huge return on my initial investment.

Advantages

• Lump sum of cash upfront
• Reduces your overall domain portfolio which can be good if your unused domains distract you from focusing upon your mains sources of revenue.

Disadvantages

• May require some time investment to find interested buyers.
• Obviously, you can no longer use the domain after you sell it.

4.) Build an Automated Aggregator Site. I do not have much experience with this, but I have seen unused domains monetized by setting up blogs that republish (scrape) RSS feeds from other sites. The scrapper blog is then loaded with Adsense and affiliate programs. I am toying with the idea of doing this on TheKnicks.com.

Advantages

• Ability to build audience and repeat visitors
• Potential for multiple revenue streams (ex: Adsense and affiliate)

Disadvantages

• Limited traffic from search engines because you will be penalized for duplicate content.
• Will take some time to set up site.

A domain name portfolio can be a great asset to an Internet marketer. I encourage you to build up that portfolio and continue to not be afraid experimenting with different monetization techniques on your domains. Even if your unused domains earn just enough to cover your annual renewal fee, you will be ahead of the game.

Have you ever wanted to give a domain a test drive before you sunk $9 into buying it for a year? Pool.com just released a new service allowing you to do just that. With their new Catch & Release program, you can register a domain name for 4.5 days to test it out for $.20. A $250 deposit is required to use the service.

Big time domain companies have been doing this for a while. In April, Bob Parsons of GoDaddy fame wrote an expose on the domain name add/drop grace period on his weblog. The add drop grace period allows a registrar to grab a name and drop it within five days without paying for it. According to his data, the vast majority of domains (up t0 92%) are registered and then dropped within five days. Registrats are grabbing the names, testing if they can make any money from landing pages with CPC ads on the domain, and then dropping the unprofitable names.

If I had some more time, it would be an interesting experiment to spend $20/week to register 100 domains. On each site, I would put up a landing page from someone like domainsponsor.com, sedo.com, or make my own landing pages with CPC ads. I would also put the domains up for sale on sites like dnforum.com to try and flip them within the 4.5 day window. If the domains had some traffic, I would hold onto them and work to monetize them for the next year. Between the ads and flipping the domains, I think that it could add up to a nice little business.

In browsing through my favorite webmaster related forums, there are occassionally a few posts that stand out as hidden gem. This post on Niche Selection and Site Creation Process is one of those gems. I especially like the tips that people give on all of the tools they use to evaluate new opportunities. SEOBook’s keyword suggester and NicheBot were two of the best that I saw. Personally, I also have used Symbiotic which has a nice database of Adsense prices.

I will keep pointing out these hidden gems as I find them, and I plan to write a case study about the process of finding a niche and monetizing a new site.