Dear Kalena

I would like your opinion on what to do with a domain I have owned since 1999 or so.

I believe the name is highly brandable and would be quite valuable and conducive to a killer business model in the right hands. It is pricechoice.com (I also have .net, .org, .info and .biz). A few months ago, I began designing a model built around cosmetic supplies, but my progress fizzled when I became too busy with clients while moving forward with other projects.

I would be open to a joint venture, case-study project or selling the domains outright. Your thoughts would be appreciated!

Dino

Dear Dino

Regarding domains – I am probably the worst person to ask! I own quite a few myself – some with half-baked designs, some with outdated content, some with no content   They are also the victims of a hectic schedule, I’m too time poor to develop them but not keen to sell them.

I have heard the domain after-market is pretty hot these days. There are lots of domain auction sites but I’ve heard very good things about the following as places to sell developed or undeveloped domains:

• SitePoint Marketplace
• Sedo
• NameConnect

The other option is to sign up for AdSense for Domains and put up ad code on your unused domains so you can at least earn a little ad income from them while you decide what to do with them.

Good luck!

Kalena

Hi Kalena

I’m a regular reader, but have not “asked Kalena” anything in probably over a year now. I own around 40 URLs, all related to real estate in the Atlanta area. Currently they are sitting in my Hostmonster account, doing nothing. Q: Should I “park” all of them which will point them all to my main URL?

Thanks!
Rob

Dear Rob

Thanks for your question. It really doesn’t make any sense to point 40 domains to a single domain.

In my opinion, the only logical reasons to park one domain to another domain include:

• Moving an entire site from one domain to another.
• Pointing identical domains with different regional suffixes to a central domain for targeting purposes (e.g. redirecting site.com.au and site.co.uk to site.com).
• Pointing several brand-related domains with different suffixes to a central domain for marketing and trademark purposes (e.g. redirecting brand.net and brand.org to brand.com).
• Pointing misspelled or similar sounding brand-related domains to a central domain for marketing and branding purposes (e.g. redirecting misite.com and maisite.com to mysite.com).
• Pointing hyphenated domains to a un-hyphenated domain, or vice versa, for marketing and branding purposes (e.g. redirecting my-site.com to mysite.com).

You should think carefully about your motivation for buying the domains in the first place. If some of them meet the criteria above it might be worth parking them to your main domain. But there really is little search engine value in redirecting so many domains, even if the keywords are of a similar theme.

I think you would be better off monetizing the domains using Google AdSense for Domains and making some affiliate income from them. You could still include a text link or image ad promoting your main domain on each of the parked domains, but just be aware that 40 instant incoming links to your main domain may trigger a red flag in Google’s ranking algorithm.