Domain name parking use to be a pretty good choice for large portfolio domain name owners and still is in a way. The biggest reason why so many still do it, is because there isn’t something as easy to come out yet that works well. My domain name parking revenues are 1/3 of what they use to be! 1/3! In Dollars, that means $100 now, compared to $300 before.

I guess we learn to adjust. For some, that means leaving domain parking all together and going with microsites, domain sales pages or full development. I have done all of those and I wish I could say one works better then another but with domain names, each one is unique, so you get unique results depending on what you do with the domain.

Now I still use domain parking for the majority of my domains and I continue to use Fabulous.com to do it. I make enough parking my domain names to cover my renewal fees for my portfolio and that is what I use the money for and why I keep doing it for now.

What is the biggest problem with Domain Name Parking? I guess I would say, Lack Of Control!

Here is an example of what I mean:

I do not just load my domains into my account and use basic settings set by the parking company. For every domain name that I load into my account and set DNS for parking, I research the specific domain name and use specific keywords and images for a reason. This reason is to best match what visitors will be looking for when they land on the page! The better the ads match what the user is looking for, the more likely they click the ad and I get paid!

So does this mean the parking company will show relevant ads to what you set your keyword for?

One would think so, but clearly this isn’t the case all the time. A domain I have parked is DrMedicalSupply.com . It get’s a little bit of traffic but only converts "Some Times". So today while checking stats, I wanted to see what Fabulous was displaying on the landing page to verify they are matching my keywords I put in and see if maybe that is why it’s not converting very well.

What? I don’t see a single "Medical Supplies" related ad on the landing page? Work, Sports, Hotel, Residency, Music???? Let’s checkout what I have set for keywords so I didn’t forget to put in what I wanted and may be the reason behind the crazy non-relevant ads showing:

Well, I clearly have my keywords set to medical supplies, so why the heck are random / non-relevant ads showing on the landing page?

I have no clue why non-relevant ads are showing. Clearly there are a lot of advertiser for the Medical Supplies term, so these shouldn’t be "fill in ads". This is also not the first time that I have randomly checked one of my parking pages to discover the ads being displayed have nothing to do with what I have set.

Seeing things like this, could very well explain why some of your parking pages may not be doing all that great (making money) while getting traffic. If the ads are not relevant to what your traffic is looking for, it’s not going to convert and your "clicks" number is going to stay at a low number.

It doesn’t hurt to checkout your domain parking landing pages from time to time (DO NOT CLICK ANY ADS) but you can for sure look! If a domain isn’t working with one parking provider, you can ask them why the ads shown are not relevant with your keywords or simply try a different service.