Domain Monetization
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Contents |
Background
Domain Monetization is the concept of purchasing domains and running Pay Per Click advertising on a landing page to earn ad revenue from traffic.
The traffic to these domains can comefrom a variety of sources : old bookmarks, people typing in the domain ie "direct navigation", residual traffic from the previous web site or search engine results. Also Domain Monetization has spurred the business of dropcatching domains which have been allowed to lapse by their original registrations.
Traffic can be obtained by typosquatting. For example gooogel.com. Mispellings of popular but mispelt 'branded' domains can often sell for hundred of dollars.
According to a November 17, 2005 Wall Street Journal article, "revenue from text ads on these sites will total $400 million to $600 million world-wide this year and may reach $1 billion by 2007, according to Susquehanna Financial Group analysts Marianne Wolk and Roxane Previty, who track the online ad industry."
Adsense
Google Adsense is one of the preferred methods of converting this traffic on parked domains into advertising revenue and they have a special service for domain parking. (Google AdSense for domains).
According to Google, "AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related keywords and advertisements to parked domain name pages by using Google's semantic technology to 'understand' the meaning of each domain name. Powering over 3 million domain names, AdSense for domains is the industry's leading parked page service."
Additional services have sprung to assist domainers in monetizing their parked domain traffic. One of the market leaders is Sedo. Another domain monetization service is operated by Namedrive who also offer an exit strategy allowing domainers to cash in their portfolios.
Economic Benefit or Harm?
Does the role of these "professional registrants" or domainers hurt "user registrants" and their ability to receive domain names that they would like? Another question is whether domain registrars should be limited in their ability to participate in this business.
