Domain parking is a way to get value from a domain name without having a website. If you've registered a great domain name but don't have the time, or the skills, or the money, to build a website yet - then domain parking was designed for you!

There's even a big industry of parking domains as a business. Simple, memorable domain names are becoming harder and harder to find so they're increasing in value. Domainers search for good names at bargain prices, register them and then park them, so the sites earn some income while they look for a buyer.

Before you embark on domain parking, though, it's important to understand its limitations, and the other options available to you. While it's still a good solution for some, parked domains are not the money-spinners they once were.

Once upon a time, parked domains made good income - all you had to do was find a good domain name, and you were all set.

Unfortunately, that's not so true nowadays.

If you know anything about making money online, you'll have heard the phrase "Content is King". Most parked domains have little or no original content - the whole point of parking is that the site is created with the minimum of work. Usually, the content will be advertising links, automatically generated from keywords relevant to the domain name. And that has been the downfall of parked domains, because search engines can now recognize websites that don't provide genuine content, and penalize them. That means parked sites appear lower down the list of search results, you won't get many visitors and you won't earn many dollars.

Of course, if you have what's known as a "type-in" name, you can bypass the search engines to some extent. For instance, people wanting to buy ballet shoes might type "balletshoes.com" into their browser to see what comes up, rather than using a search engine. If they do, they'll find themselves at a parked site, packed with advertising links. The domainer who owns it hopes you'll leave the site by clicking on one of those links rather than using your Back button.

But "type-in" names are becoming harder and harder to find, as the internet becomes more and more popular.

The real value in parking domains these days is not in the passive income they generate (although let's face it, even earning a few pennies is good, if you don't have to do any work to earn it).

For domainers - the people who park domains for a living - their real profit comes from selling the domain name. The longer they hold the name, the more valuable it's likely to become, especially if the parked domain gets reasonable traffic in spite of being content-thin (because that proves the domain name has value). If they do manage to get good income, the selling price will soar!

The other customers for domain parking are people who own domain names but don't have time or resources to develop them. In this instance, if they don't park the domain, it will sit idle - and a little income is better than none.

One company that is taking a different approach to domain parking is Whypark. Instead of creating sites that are just a bunch of advertising links, Whypark has a stock of articles which it uses to post relevant content as well.

I have just signed up for Whypark so I can't say whether this approach will yield better earnings, but logic says it should. Their sites certainly look more attractive than the average link-laden parked site.

These days, setting up your own website is so easy, it's hard to see the value of domain parking, unless you have a stable of good "type-in" domain names. Even then, why would you sit on a premium name undeveloped, when it would be so easy to create a website and realise its full potential? These days you don't even have to know anything about the subject, because there are plenty of freelance writers who will provide the content for you.

If you're not a domainer, but you just want to get your surplus domains up and running cheaply, you can set up a good-looking website in a few hours using Wordpress (Lissie has written a good article on how to set up a Wordpress blog - the purpose is different, but the principle is the same).

Choose an Adsense-ready theme designed by someone else, enter your Adsense code, paste in a few articles from Ezinearticles.com (don't forget to include the credit to the author and keep the links live!) and you're good to go.

Of course, you do have to pay for hosting, whereas you can find free domain parking (though you'll have to share your revenue). And there is a learning curve for Wordpress, though it's not that steep.

For me, there is another catch to building my own "temporary" websites, and it's the reason I've decided to park my spare domain names with Whypark. I've found that once I start building a site, I can't leave it alone! The urge to tweak it, add content, make it prettier and turn it into a "real" site is just irresistible - and I honestly can't spare the time, because my belly dance and flamenco sites still need work, and I recently took Lissie's advice and started a website under my own name. Parking my spare domains is a way of getting them off my plate and forcing me to finish the projects I've already started!

*

All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photo from Danard Vincente on Flickr.