Is the sky really falling?

These are times of crisis – the Snowe bill could be the end of parking as we know it. I have been reading blogs, forum posts, emails all talking about the end of the domaining world. If your domaining livelyhood has been based on parked pages, there is a chance that your sky might be falling. As a Domain Flipper, the sky is still the limit.

Let’s face it – parking pages are misleading and angering to the end-user. I did a random poll of 20 people, a whole variety of ages and computer experience-level. Across the board everyone agreed – pages full of links make them angry. Even those with very little computer experience still knew what these pages were and said they rarely clicked on the links. It’s pretty easy to see that people don’t like parking pages, and in fact, some people are downright angry at them!

When I asked everyone the #1 reason they didn’t like these "pages full of links" they almost all agreed – they felt like they were being tricked or scammed. As a domain investor this should be unsettling. Now I’m not saying that parking is the devil – remember I oftentimes park pages before flipping them…but let’s be clear, in the end I do flip them.

A domain name can be a very valuable asset, but it also comes with a bit of an ethical responsibility. I think a good thing is starting to happen; domain names being invested in with a  "set it and forget it" attitude are going to have some trouble. Think about it. When any of us go online we are seeking reliable information and as quickly as possible. With the huge amount of parking pages now our web of information has become tangled with parked pages. In the end it is a disservice to the end-user who is looking for a reliable source of information.

So is domain parking wrong? Does it make you a bad person? No! However it’s important to never forget the obligation you have to the end user. This doesn’t mean you need to develop every single domain you own right away. It does mean that you might want to change your perspective a bit and start thinking a little more like a domain flipper, rather than a domain parker.

Unfortunately there is some bad news – it’s going to take some time and energy. Find me a successful investor that doesn’t contribute their time and energy to their success. If you could throw $10,000 in the stock market and just forget about it for years, you might be in big trouble. By re-balancing and adjusting for market conditions you can optimize your profits. The same is true for domain names.

In this new era of Domaining you’ll have to put on your investor hat. Know your market, study which domains have the best potential for development, build creative websites with content an end-user is looking for. It’s a brave new world and just like in the stock market, real estate market, forex market, really any market that exists – you need to adapt to changing conditions.

So don’t freak-out, Flip-Out, it’s time to make some domains worth visiting!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton