Forward them or build them?

[monkeyman]

I've got a number of domains, that are just sat there doing nothing.

I know that they get a bit of traffic from the stats package.

They're pretty much ideas I've had for sites, but just never got round to doing them.
Some of them are similar to products/services already available.

What's the best way to redirect them?

Build content for them using info from the merchant/ add feeds etc or just drop a 301 redirect in and send them straight to the merchant.

Some of these names only have a few months left, so there's no real long terms with em..... unless they make millions

[zaq]

Hi monkeyman add them to sedo.co.uk you earn a few euros a month or built them and think of the long term!

[Shane]

whack feeds up, miva landing pages..etc, get some pr into them and build a merry go round of pr and links .. might come in handy for linkswaps etc to link to other sites from rather than your main sites

and earn a bit on the side.. just direct to merchant is ok revenue wise but not really an asset

[eskimo]

Hi Monkeyman,

I'm in the same situation. The google sandbox effect makes me even more motivated to develop the domains, as the sooner they are in the google index the better.

The scary thing is when these domains come up for renewal and you realise you've done nothing with them in two years.

I've been keeping an eye on this thread over at acorn domains which mentions domain parking, though I am slightly apprehensive about whether these services could hurt the domain in the long run.
http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum6.html

[aqls]

I have found that as a comparison between
a) just redirecting a url with lots of type-in traffic to an appropriate merchant with URLredirect or with frames
against
b) parking the domain i.e. pointing to NameDrive.com, and adding some keywords. (I also tried Sedo)

For all the domains with which I have done this I get slightly lower reported visits and significantly lower revenue from the affiliate route. (approx half to a third of the revenue I got with NameDrive.)

i.e. parking with NameDrive was much better for me.

So I conclude that whilst the long term affiliate revenue potential may be much greater because you can build up repeat traffic, brand and serps; "affiliating" is not just a simple, easy, point-and-wait ride.

(also over many domains I got about 20% better revenue with Namedrive than Sedo, though that varied by domain.).

-aqls-

[eskimo]

That's intersting aqls

I guess parking pages can monetise all traffic, regardless of age, location, intention, even language. But affiliate pages are a lot more hit and miss.

[Azam.net]

Interesting conclusion aqls. (As you imply) I think affiliate links might be better in the long term as I can imagine it is quite easy for search engines to weed out Sedo/NameDrive pages.

Shane - how well do miva landing pages do for UK traffic? We're going to start using 'em next week.