Just being an owner of a domain name doesn’t mean it is of any benefit to us. The days are long gone where people would pay large amounts of money for a domain containing a particular phrase, keyword or tag that they thought would be beneficial to their google ranking. Although utilizing the “right” domain might give a business owner a little more credibility, there are now a multitude of other ways that work even better to get noticed, to get increased traffic and to get higher in the search listings when people look for what we have to offer.

So a “Parked Domain” with no content on it, is of absolutely no use at all unless we have plans to use it in the future.

FIRST RECOMMENDATION …

… is to monetise your domain by using GOOGLE ADVERTISING.

If you have an undeveloped domain on which you’d like to display Google ads and earn revenue, you only need to setup an AdSense account and this guide will help walk you through the easy setup process.

There’s no need to pay for hosting at all … as long as you own the domain, you can go to into your domain registrars account and alter the DNS (domain name server) details to the ones that google specify during the setup process. Easy to do and the only cost is the price of your domain name.

SECOND RECOMMENDATION …

… is to get your domain hosted and then add some applicable and relevant written content to it so it has a good chance of being located in searches.

At the very least do a splash page with just your address and contact details and some well chosen words about what you have to offer, then make sure you add your domain name to your business stationery and any other advertising you do.

You might like to start a blog and write casually about your product or service, get other people to write for you and add the odd article here and there for variety. It is a documented fact that google ranks blogs highly … probably because they are more likely to have new content added regularly than what a static website would have.

A site like this can be easily monetized with google ads too. In fact it would be far more likely to attract better quality traffic and targeted visitors that want to click on your ads because of the content you are including.

THIRD RECOMMENDATION …

… is to get involve in affiliate programs. An affiliate program is when a person or company agrees to pay another person or company a fee for referring potential, or actual customers to their Website. Commissions are usually calculated in one of three ways: pay-per-click, pay-per-sale, or pay-per-lead.

There are thousands of different affiliate programs out there, and they sell just about everything imaginable and you can join most of them for free. Your job will be to find what’s right for you AND to attract interested traffic to your site to make it worth the time you spend adding banners and referral links … but when you have a passion for something, the time you spend will be done pleasurably and won’t feel like hard work at all.

Making use of your domain to generate money or get extra business is really the best way to get value from what is sitting there (your parked domain) waiting, poised to do what was intended in the first place.

Want some NEW ideas for a ‘catchy’ domain name…?

There’s a neat little online tool that will help you get great ideas for a new domain name, and it’s called Name Boy. You can choose a few relevant words, type them into the selector and this amazing tool will come up with combinations of suggestions for you.

Now, even the name ‘nameboy’ is something you will remember…and that’s what a domain name should be…something everyone can remember easily and quickly type into a seach box or address bar.

I did find that some of the names that were generated are no longer available, so don’t get too excited intil you check if the name you want can still be registered.

Domain Name Extensions – These days you have more than just .com to choose from. A stack of other domain name extensions have been added to the mix and I suspect even more will be added as the other most popular ones are taken.

You can now choose domain name extensions like dot info, dot biz, dot name, dot net, dot tv, dot eu, dot de, dot org, dot cn and many others.

Checking Recently Expired Domains – Some people actually make money by keeping up with popular domain names that are about to expire and jumping in to register and then resell them. You can quickly check which domains are close to the ‘use by’ date or those that have already expired by using Whois.net.

With this online domain name search tool, you can find out who owns the domain you are interested in, search domains and lookup whois information. Research and protect trademarks. Find available domains and also find previously registered domains that are now available.

Names Are Important After All – So, choosing the right domain name is very important! Wouldn’t you rather own eggonface.com than joecolinsmediamarketingcompany.com? I know I would…must go and check if it’s available…!