I’ve previously written about how I “park” the majority of my domains with Fabulous. The beauty of their system is that they allow people to have a 2 click lander where you can insert your own keywords.
This feature is absolutely vital when you have a portfolio of acronym domains. Under auDA policy, the links on your monetisation pages must be relevant to the domain name. They specifically say that the onus is on the registrant to comply – no excuses!
However, should someone complain to auDA about your domain, you are given the opportunity to rectify the situation. I wrote about that in this article.
Crocodiles Are Present
Living in Far North Queensland, I often see signs on the riverbanks and beaches that crocodiles are always present. Danger is never far away!
And there are some similarities with parked domains (not just talking about 3L acronym domains now).
You could be quite innocently parking your domain when out of the blue you get notified that someone has lodged an auDRP complaint against you. The crocodile strikes!
This is not an auDA complaint where you have an opportunity to try and fix any problems. This is serious stuff. You could actually lose your domain if you’re not successful in defending the proceeding – and get a blot on your copybook.
This was driven home to me yesterday in this excellent article by Andrew Allemann on Domain Name Wire.
In essence, a registrant lost their dictionary word domain name because of the ads that were running on their parked page.
Please read the story – but in particular, read the “comments section” – particularly the first one written by famed IP Attorney John Berryhill.
If this case doesn’t make you review some of your parked domain portfolio, then nothing will!
Its not worth parking the domain as most often the ads that will appear are often linked to the person that will file the complaint , And sometimes you will have your domain name taken away because it is viewed that you are using this name in bad faith ie making profit from ads relating name to advertiser ie your domain name so for the few bucks you earn you stand that chance of loosing it, just park it with a for sale sign best policy
@Shane – Robert is dead right in his response.
Under auDA policy, everyone has to have a “close and substantial connection” to a domain. Domainers generally choose “domain monetisation”. To just have a for sale sign and nothing else is asking for trouble.
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way Shane, but this is bad advice for Australian domain names.
Parking a domain with a For Sale sign is against auDA rules. You can’t just buy (register) an Australian domain name with the intent of only “selling it” reasons.
You should read this article – http://www.auda.org.au/policies/index-of-published-policies/2012/2012-05/
You must have a “close and substantial connection” to purchase (register) an Australian domain name (see section 10 of the link above) or else, if you are a domainer and are planning to develop the name at some point, you can register a domain for the purpose of “domain monetisation” as noted in section 11 of the link above.
Don’t worry, I’ve made a few mistakes in my time (well-documented in my articles on this very site) – I just don’t want to see any new domainers coming to this site getting the wrong information.
All the best in your future Australian endeavours, Shane!
It’s so important to get it right when it comes to parking, particularly in the .au namespace.
I feel a lot more comfortable running my own parking platform for .au domains. Dicussed this topic in the article here: http://www.domainer.com.au/monetisation-101-part-2-parking/