It is something that every webmaster goes through, the dreaded expiration notice for the domains they own. You originally had all these ideas when you first bought all of those domains. Now another year has gone by, and you have your domain registrar messaging that you have to spend $90 to renew all your domain names. You might be thinking whether it is worth it to renew your domains or not. What options are available?
1. Take no Action
Although it may be hard to believe, most people actually do this. Their theory is that they only have two choices: pay the fee to renew their domains or decline to do so. Although this is not the only choice available, people still choose to take no action.
2. Park it
Paying for your expiring domains is the only dilemma that exists when renewing them. So, if your domains wer e to pay for themselves – problem solved. The way to do this is to ‘park’ your domains, where the companies offering the service share the ad revenues produced by your domains with you. Sedo is arguably the biggest and most popular company offering this service, but Sedo and all other big players should be avoided. All they do is fill your page full of ads and results in stripping your domains of organic search engine traffic and pagerank with Google. The best option is to choose a smaller, niche player in this field (for example, Finnish startup BenePark.com) that will continue to add new links and original content to your sites. Doing this will not only give you the money to pay off your renewal fees (90% of domains accepted to BenePark’s system get $5-$30 per month), but it will also boost your organic traffic and pagerank for your domains over time.
3. Auction them Off
Auctioning off your domains is a viable option and there are plenty of companies that perform this role. The aforementioned Sedo is probably your best option, whilst BuyDomains.com is another good choice. The auctions these sites host attracts thousands of domainers, who aim to purchase domains for resale, development or parking. The biggest negative towards going down this route is that, in these ‘domain marketplaces’, the more premium domains receive the most attention. If your domains are long-winded, then they will be overlooked for the snappy, one-two word domains that are available.
4. Visit Domain Forums
Nearly every large domain forum (for example, DNForum.com) has a section that allows you to sell and/or appraise your domains. Although you will never get that much money from your domains on these forums, you might, however, be able to regain your costs. Plus, the appraisals on these forums are generally accurate. If your domains are seen as worthless, then you will be told that they are worthless. However, if the domains are worth something, then you will start to receive offers straight away.
5. Sell Directly
You may have had big plans for your domains, but time and effort got in the way, and you abandoned the idea. So rather than keep them on the shelf, you could email eBay sellers or existing stores that are relevant to your domain names. Propose to them that you are willing to sell your domains for $50 each, or they can have them for exchange of links or products.
I've got many, many domains with cash parking at GoDaddy (actually, I am impressed that you got through this whole article without mentioning them once!). I hardly make any money at all. But I will check out Bene Park for sure, thanks for the reference.
I think BenePark.com service is good but not best. If i will be go for domain buy sell business, i will prefer to make a website with 4-5 page and then put my ads on it. This will sure work if i will done some SEO on it.
I was on another article when I saw this one and landed on this page. You have exactly pointed out the real problem of most of the bloggers. I have many domains and usually I go for the first option but after wasting of 2-3 years I feel that it was just a waste of time/money.
THIS IS REALLY WISE PIECE OF ADVICE ….. THANKS FOR SHARING
WOW! that's a great article. I couldn't thank my stars more.. I've a few domains that are collecting dust. I tried to park my sites with parked.com but they simply don't let me in..
I'm heading straight to benepark.
Thanks David Deprice!
If i were a business man i will park it all to the main site as one SEO strategies.
While we know that is hard to target lot of keywords in one site and rank all keywords with single domain .
So we need lot of domain to help us target those niche keywords and bring those traffic to your main site. That Cool ?
If i wish to earn money i will came up with a simple website design and came out few content to add up value toward the domain and sold it .
I have no money to buy a pro domain name. I'm using free domain. so sad
same here..
This is really amazing article. I have never thought that we can save money by doing such things. Now i will park all my Expire domains.
I think this very useful because question been us everyweek in forum with topic domain name.
They keep on ask the same thing which what to do with the domain which going to expired.
And i think you get the complete answer.
That is so true, great article, I also have one domain that is expiring soon in November and don't know what to do, and recently I bought on godaddy auction domain name adstalk.com, actually I won the auction and also got one more domain that is great but don't know what to do and where to sell it, this list is going to help me, and if anyone of you guys is interested just send me mail.. thanks
I'm always good at picking domains for my ideas but just don't get enough time to do all the things which I actually plan out. Have worked with SEDO earlier but BenePark is completely new to me. I have to explore it further. Well got to know something new from this article.
Good post David 🙂
This is very big task to maintain Domains but we shouldn't ignore anythings related to that because Domains are playing very good role to post a blog or for a site.
Same is the problem with me.. whenever I have plans in my mind… I go on to purchase a domain to implement the idea but then, I am not able to maintain more than 2 blogs at a time… Trying to manage things… 😉
But what happens when you want to reuse the domain? Do BenePark remove their content or let you keep it?
"Reuse the domain", can you please elaborate mate?
r u still using benepark service ?? is There any negative effect on my adsense account or adsense income from my personal blog.Please elaborate more about benepark..
Didn't heard about BenePark till today. Some of my domains just went expired. 🙂