How do I monetize domain names I own?

February 6, 2007 4:51 PM

I own about a dozen domain names that currently have nothing on them other than the standard GoDaddy landing page, with all their ads on it. Instead of allowing GoDaddy to monetize my site, can I do this on my own? Is there some service that will automatically generate HTML I can upload to my sites that will contain ads - for which I'll be paid, instead of someone like GoDaddy?
posted by scottso17 to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Not sure why you would need to "automate" something for only a dozen domains; surely you can create a page yourself with whatever ads you feel it's necessary to serve, and upload them to all your domains?

Or have you just bought all these domains with no idea how to create web page; I'm not sure how much money you're expecting to make putting ads on pages that serve no purpose other than to host your ads...
posted by Jimbob at 5:01 PM on February 6, 2007

Godaddy has a service called Cash Parking - you pay them a little and they split the revenue from the pages with you. I think there are different levels - the more you pay, the bigger share of the proceeds you get. If the names are good, it might be worth it, and it's almost no work.
posted by EllenC at 5:04 PM on February 6, 2007

Unless these domains have been used for something else in the past, you're probably the only one visiting them.
posted by winston at 5:09 PM on February 6, 2007

You can build an Amazon AStore like this one if you sign up for Amazon's affiliate program at this page.

So basically once you've created an amazon affiliate account, click on AStore on the left column. Follow the steps to build your store, and then go to the store page that is created on amazon's site. Then right click on the page, view source, copy and paste all that you see into a file called index.html. Then get hosting for your new web page and upload that index.html file to the root directory of your web-page. Then any hits that go to that domain will be presented with a nice looking store, and you can earn anywhere between 4% and 8% of sales based on how many sales you get.

My email is in my profile if you have any further questions about setting that up or getting hosting.
posted by farmersckn at 5:17 PM on February 6, 2007

Google Adsense for Domains provides this service, but your sites have to receive tons of pageviews to qualify so it's probably not an option.

GoDaddy will let you share their parked domain ad revenues with CashParking. Unfortunately, they charge a fee for the program so you could potentially lose revenue if your sites see low traffic.

Looks like making your own page could end up to be cheaper and more profitable if any profit is to be had.
posted by superfem at 5:18 PM on February 6, 2007

@winston: It depends on the domain name. There is a surprisingly large group of people who type in a domain name instead of searching for something on Google. For instance, one might type in the domain "alarmclockstore.com" if they wanted to buy an alarm clock, instead of searching for "alarm clock store" on google or yahoo.

Or, one that I have used a lot in the past was "hotels.com".

So, if he has domains like "debt-consolidation-online.info" he probably is wasting his time. But if he has a domain like "hotlingerie.com" or "programmingbooks.com" then he may have something worth doing.
posted by farmersckn at 5:20 PM on February 6, 2007

Open an account at sedo and use their nameservers. This may earn you a buck or two.

YY
posted by yoyo_nyc at 6:11 PM on February 6, 2007

I've used Active Audience, who seemed to deliver better results than Sedo, at least in the short time I tried both.
posted by Good Brain at 9:57 PM on February 6, 2007