Adsense blog

If you’re a serious AdSense publisher, you probably own several domains. But are you using them effectively? This weekend I went through my portfolio of domain names and discovered that I own 30 more domains names than I thought I had. That’s a large number, and most of those aren’t being used very effectively at all — they’re just making the domain registrars money via their domain parking services. I don’t think it’s unusual at all to have several unused domain names kicking about, but you should really put those surplus domains to work to make you money, not the registrars. So how do you do this? Here are 10 ways you can benefit from your surplus domains:

1. Sell them. You might have bought domains on a whim because of some “great idea” you had but never got around to implementing. If you’re not going to use them, consider selling them to someone who will. You can do it privately if you know some likely candidates, or you can list your domains on any of several domain selling sites like The Domain Name Aftermarket — just search Google.
2. Park them with AdSense for domains. If you have a very large portfolio, you can contact Google directly and ask to be considered for their AdSense for domains program. Parking lets you monetize “natural” (often called “type-in”) traffic where people land on your domain because the domain closely matched a query they were making. If you’re not big enough for AdSense for domains, you can still sign up for it by using GoDaddy’s CashParking program. I’m not a big fan of CashParking because you have to pay a monthly fee to use it and you don’t even get the full ad revenues from the domains.
3. Park them with third-party parking services. If you’re not big enough for AdSense for domains, there are third-party parking services like Sedo that will host your domains for you and give you a share of the revenue they make from advertising.
4. Build single-page AdSense sites. Presumably you bought your surplus domains because you thought they had some value. Why not quickly put together some content related to the domain’s main topic (I’m assuming here that there’s a keyword in the domain somewhere, which is typically the case) and then build a single-page AdSense site (look, I even have a free template for you) to monetize any traffic you get.
5. Link to your other sites. If you’re like me, some of your surplus domains are probably related, even tangentially, to some of your existing sites. Why not create a mini-site on each of your surplus domains that links back to one of your existing sites? You don’t even have to worry about monetizing the site, it’s purpose is to provide some good one-way links (with anchor text you choose) to your other sites. (Get these sites into the search engines by submitting them directly, liking to them in one of your feeder blogs, and/or by submitting a sitemap.) Or use some of your surplus domains to create bridge sites as described in the Six Degrees of Web Separation.
6. Use them for testing. Serious webmasters often have one or tow “throwaway” domains that they use for testing purposes. If you’re going to do some “blackhat” testing, though, you might want to host the domains separately from all your “whitehat” domains so that your other domains don’t get tainted by your experimentation.
7. Host custom search engines. This is kind of like providing your own parking service. Google makes it very easy to build a custom search engine that you can monetize via AdSense. Create a CSE for each surplus domain and target the CSE specifically at the niche suggested by the domain. It’s really easy to setup these kind of domains.
8. Create directories. Although new directories aren’t as credible as the big, established ones, there are scripts available that let you host your own directories. A good article directory script to consider is ArticleMS. You can also create your own directory of sorts using a WordPress blog. Directories can be monetized, get decent backlinks, and also provide a way to get more links back to your other sites.
9. Linkbait. Put something controversial on the site, allow people to comment on it (a simple way to do this is to create a WordPress blog with a single posting) and get it noticed somehow, preferably via Digg and other social bookmarking sites. See Matt Cutts’ thoughts about linkbaiting.
10. Redirect them. This works best for domains that are closely related to another domain you already have — such as the .net version of a .com domain. Redirecting them (preferably with 301 redirects — see my link cloaking report for info on how this is done) ensures that you’re capturing as much traffic as you can and that you’re not paying a duplicate content penalty (which can happen if you can access the same content via two or more different domains).

You can combine some of these methods together, of course.

When you have some free time, then, sit down and make a list of all your surplus domains. Categorize them into groups by general topic and decide what you want to do with those domains. Then do something with them! Otherwise, they’re just a drain on your pocketbook. I’m definitely going to fix up my surplus domains over the next few weeks.

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