Parking Domains

[nobaloney]

This thread is a continuation of a topic discussion here.

Point is how to park domains relatively obscurely (complete obscurity fairly impossible given new rules on email addresses, mail addresses, etc., must be real or registrars will cancel domain registrations).

I have some pieces in place.

I have the code to stel the domain name from the host-header field so you can point multiple domains to the same site.

I think I have the code for a completely separate nameserver to point all requests to the same IP. Not sure yet; it needs testing, but according to RFCs, it should work.

I know how to create an account with Google to populate a site with advertising. I know there are other groups to sign up with as well, but haven't studied anything.

I'm looking for is a bit of php to take the request, take the domain name from the host-header, and populate a page with adverts to show the visitor.

Anyone care to get involved? This should be an open project, and of course all parts will be made available to all contributors; perhaps to the world under some kind of Open Source license.

Jeff

 

[Spook]

I was fairly skilled with a wide assortment of ad delivery systems and affiliate programs. Also I have used most of the third party domain parking services from the time. Some of the most interesting 'parking' I've seen though are sites contained in search engine results. They seem to be chameleons, upon visits they appear to be dynamically generated entirely for the search.

..I mean to the extent the domain seems to creep around among search engine results - seemingly able to fit itself on demand, adjusting & changing able to be listed in results for completely unrelated search topics. I've not tried to study or even find one in a long while but was very interesting. IIRC there was tons of data that could be had from google adsense through api.

Anyhow, at the time most typical parking pages were so obvious in appearance I could tell which 3rd party parking service fed them, so could most everyone else. I used to get hits on generic parking pages, but for new domains without traffic history it was mostly of no residual value. People turn back soon as they see it.

Topic oriented domain names plus a little work yielded much better all-around over generic parking + ads. Adding in some sort of content syndication used to help but that is probably little value these days. Worrying about keywords and all the SEO myths can be wasted time IMO for new domains + generic parking.

I found some inexpensive link library and forum scripts which with some work actually in time were getting good organic traffic and use. I had only minimal ads on the forums (small top banner style and IIRC a little square in lower left) which were extremely focused. The link libraries were also topic related but also had room for wider ad selection due to sub-topic depth in the link libraries. Also both scripts were designed to be SEO friendly.

Getting situated with commissioned affiliate programs or reseller type activities can be much better than click-through ads alone. Tons of indie and big name products on repositories like SWSoft, etc. Plus amazon can be a great affiliate relationship since that have so much stuff available and are known when the buyer get to the checkout counter.

What I'd wanted to do in the past though was typical parking with options to entertain purchase offers easily with also the means to do something sort of old school, allow people to rent or just as free hosting, sub-domain use among a pool of selected domains. Sort of like how dyn offers assorted second/top level domains to use for a dynamic address.

Maybe also among the pool of domains, option for people to rent email hosting, without having domain of their own.

It all boils down to the fact that organic use of the domains will be better than just popping up a page with ads on it about whatever seems appropriate.

People having an email of say, joe123@<cooldomainname>.com being passed around will bring traffic to the 2nd level domain IMO. I have some pretty cool names I have been sitting on for ever. Allowing people to use <cooldomainname> in a limited way for free or very little cost could be much less work than developing it just for the sake of putting it to use.

Any of the cellphones can do POP / smtp I expect so can even limit to just pop to where the use has to clean it out to keep using it. Dicing up a domain into 1 page html only I'd think could do a lot for a domain name and require minimal resources. If both services are free then I suppose it would easily also allow 0 liability for the host.

Well, maybe some of that makes sense, I have to move on soon so going to forgo proofing it, for what that's worth.

 

[nobaloney]

All makes sense, but your needs are very different from mine. As a registration provider I should have a parking page for my clients, or domains won't resolve at all. And as long as I'm going to have it, the minimal advertising page I want shuldn't be hard to implement, and then there would be at least some advertising.

I'm also interested in a note that if you're the owner you need to point the domain to your hosting company, and a note that if yu want to buy the domain it may be available; and a link to the whois data lookup.

Though I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not.

In the past I've just used http://freeparking.nobaloney.net/ but I haven't pointed anything to it in a long time; you can see how old it is by the logo at the bottom; it's an ancient version I haven't used in probably ten years.

There's one guy selling some very good software; it works with WordPress and can be used to create some nice parking sites. It sells for about $200 USD, but it requires a lot of customization per site. You probably know the one.

The problem with renting out domain names is that you have no control over what they end up getting used for. And the problem with giving out or renting out email addresses on domain names is that if they get traction as email domains you can't really ever sell them to be used for anything else.

I have a few interesting domain names, but not enugh to build a business on them.

I know what you mean about affiliate accounts; they used to be a goldmine, especially if you owned, for example, amzon.com (note missing a) or other popular misspellings . Just create a site to pass through to amazon with your affiliate link. But Amazon owns most of them now, I'm sure.

Those chameleon sites that end up in Google results? I'd love to se them all just go away; what they do is waste my time, and move searches away from Google to systems over which they make money. I'd bet Google would like to see them go away, too.

Anyway, if anyone wants to help with the code for what I need, that wold be nice, but the thread may just end up you and I .

Jeff

 

[Spook]

Most of what I wrote about isn't so much what I need but a bunch of the stuff I'd thought on in the past. I also didn't take into account the short term need for the name registration service you mentioned. Was thinking more so about just monetizing them in-house, where long term parking was important.

It seems as if much of your looking to do seems like it should be quite easy for someone versed in your registrars API. Some custom 'new home of |domain|' template/script work and in business.

I've procrastinated for so long in using my registrar API it's silly. My prior DA sever years ago was going to be for domain registration but my tangents into hosting and SEO put the registrar linkage on hold.. eventually frequent travel got in the way and I slowly let the whole project fall by the wayside.

I was somewhat skilled in php in the past, still trying to catch back up with so basic sys admin for the present. Very hard to stay limited to one facet, but feel it's going to be worth it.

In a 4-8 weeks maybe I will be able to help with the coding. Depends on how fast it comes back to me. Usually coding I can pick back up quickly. I always have problems though deciding what to favor.

With regard to the client parking service.. whois and such. I'd say it'd be better to allow some form of member <-> domain database with further info being through a form/email behind the scene. People can always get whois and all the other info from a multitude of sources.

 

[nobaloney]

Not much to add right now, except that I currently use the LogicBoxes Platform (the same one being used by NetEarthOne and by ResellerClub. I can switch to their API if I want to, but that's a lot of work. However I may do it in the future.

Until then easiest for me to simply point my default nameservers to oones which just return a single IP. That way if you choose my default nameservers at checkout you get the parking page, otherwise you get pointed where you want. This is NOT implemented now. I'll PM you with the link to my domain registration site.

Jeff