Make Your Domains Make You Money Even Before Selling

You have a huge domain portfolio but it’s been months… maybe years even since any potential buyer’s shown interest. Instead of letting your domains sit idle and keep draining renewal fees, domain monetization can be a great way to make your domains pay for themselves and who knows, even give you “Sipping mojitos on a Miami beach” kind of money.

Whether you’re a domain investor looking to hold onto your domains for the long haul or just haven’t figured out what website to build on your domain name (s) yet, I’ll show you exactly how you can monetize your domains. Let’s look at strategies veteran domain investors don’t want you to know. 

Why Does Monetizing Your Domain Matter?

Besides creating passive income, you maximize the value of your digital asset. Here’s what’s in it for you:

• Offset renewal fees: Your domains can start bringing you enough income on the side to cover those renewal fees and more, basically ‘paying you rent’ instead of just draining your wallet.
• It’s an excellent passive income source: You can also generate passive income beyond renewal fees. Many domain investors have made domain monetization a full-time job.
• Get more eyes on your domain: Monetizing your domain puts it in front of more potential buyers. When you lease out your domain or redirect it to another website, search engines index it and show it to more potential buyers.
• Monetization increases your domain’s value: You make it more valuable in the eyes of potential buyers. Buyers want domains already generating results.
• Take your domain to buyers: A landing page with a ‘for sale’ sign won’t bring in as many buyers as you want since you depend entirely on direct searches. Making your domain work and putting it out there, increases your chances of finding a buyer.

The Best Ways to Monetize Your Domain?

Are you sold? Let’s dive into some actionable strategies you can use to monetize your domain:

1. Cash parking

Parking a domain simply means registering the domain without linking it with typical services like email or a website. You can monetize a parked domain via ads or listing it on a marketplace.

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How to make money from a parked domain?

The most popular way to make money on a parked domain is via a domain parking or 'cash parking' service. Here’s how it works:

• You register with a domain parking platform and point your domain’s nameservers to theirs. 
• The platform creates and hosts a landing page linked to your domain, then populates the landing page with ads optimized to perform well in search for relevant keywords. 
• Whenever someone clicks on an ad, the cash parking platform pays you an agreed-upon amount.

Read how to monetize parked domains for more comprehensive tips.

2. Lease or rent out your domain

Another excellent way to monetize a domain is to lease or rent it out.

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Here's how it works:

• You list your domain on a specialized platform 
• You market the domain on social media or niche domain communities to reach more leads. 
• Potential lessees reach out to you
• You use an escrow platform like Escrow.com to facilitate the deal and specify use terms.

When you lease out your domain, you only point the domain to the IP address of the lessees's website. You still retain control of the domain registrar account.

The most obvious benefit of renting out your domain is you stay in the driver’s seat. Simply point to the domain and earn money. Should demand for keywords related to the domain increase, you can make more money.

Best platforms for leasing your domain

Some of the best platforms where you can rent out your domain names include Dan.com and Efty. Escrow.com is by far the most trusted escrow service domain investors use.

3. Build a mini website

Have an idle domain? Consider building a mini website and placing ads or joining an affiliate program. The goal here is not necessarily a fully functional website, you only want a few pages to generate revenue.

You can create a website for cheap using WordPress, Webflow, or Wix and create the content yourself. You can also outsource the content creation on freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr. Set up the main pages on your website and join an ad network so you earn per click. 

Use SEO to attract traffic

To complement your mini website, you can invest in SEO to improve its Google rankings and attract organic traffic. As your traffic grows, you can then explore affiliate marketing and promote other brands’ products to your visitors.

Affiliate marketing

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To monetize your domain via affiliate marketing, you join a program or network, and create promotional content for a product. You earn money when someone buys through your referral link.

In affiliate marketing, you are the ‘publisher’. For the most success in affiliate marketing, follow these steps:

• Decide on a niche: Focus on a particular niche - even better if your domain contains a relevant keyword. E.g. ‘fitnessplug.com’ for a fitness affiliate blog.
• Join an affiliate program: You can join affiliate programs directly or join affiliate networks to connect with advertisers. Bishopi’s Affiliate Program gives you 40% on all payments from buyers you refer to us!
• Create a website to market the products: Create a website quickly using WordPress or Wix. Next, add ‘Top 5 [your product niche]’ articles or similar and point to the product pages via your affiliate links. Finally, include relevant keywords to increase rankings.
• How payment works: For each purchase made through your referral links, the seller shares 10-40% of the revenue with you. For more clicks, boost your website’s performance in search by creating supporting blog posts e.g. ‘how to stay fit at home’.
• The best affiliate networks to join: The best affiliate networks to join include ClickBank, Amazon Affiliates, ShareASale, Impact, etc. Consider the platform’s charge, payment terms, and approval requirements before you join.

4. Sell domain advertising space

And the final strategy we’ll look at is selling advertising space. Brands pay you for space on your website pages so you paste their ads in front of your readers.

You can use direct advertising, where you reach out to advertisers and negotiate the ad terms yourself. For your convenience, you can join ad networks like AdSense or Mediavine to automatically match with advertisers - programmatic advertising.

Tips to attract advertisers to buy your ad space?

To attract potential buyers, lead with your current traffic figures, and if they’re decent, you’ll be getting offers quickly.

You can also market your ad space via a landing page on your website. For brand-new domains without much traffic, consider creating posts and garnering clicks via social media.

Conclusion

Monetization and domain appeal go hand-in-hand. You’re getting more eyes on your domain as you monetize it. Join a cash parking platform, sell ad space, lease it out, build a mini website, or join an affiliate network to monetize your domain.

Choose the best monetization plan by considering your domain’s current stats, the niche, and how much effort you want to put in. Then, use Bishopi’s comprehensive domain and SEO tools to analyze the domain, spot gaps, and land a killer deal!

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I need to go through a parking platform and not directly with the ad networks?

Ad networks like Google Adsense don’t offer the resources to host a page linked to a domain. They only work with fully functional websites. When you register your domain name, the parking platform creates and hosts the landing page, and then points it to the ad network.

What is the fastest way to sell a domain?

The quickest way to sell a domain is to list it on an auction site or specialized domain marketplace e.g. Godaddy Auctions, Flippa, or Sedo, and attach a ‘Buy It Now’ price. Compare recent sales using Bishopi’s Domain Sales Lookup tool and use those to set a reasonable price.

To make more people discover your domain, you can also promote your domain on social media e.g. X.com, LinkedIn, Reddit, and domain investor forums.

How much can I sell a domain for?

There’s no one-size-fits-all pricing for domains. You can buy/sell a domain name for as low as $10/year and up to millions of dollars. Shorter, one-word domains (premium domains) fetch the highest prices.