One of the keys to making money with domain traffic is knowing exactly what your visitors are looking for. Understanding their desires and motivations can mean thousands of dollars a year in increased income through optimized parking and redirecting to targeted affiliate pages.

For the average Web site, traffic info is easy. Most of it is a result of advertising which is created and paid for by the business owner. You write an ad and enter your credit card number and voila’… people come to your site.

However, domainers often find themselves in the strange predicament of owning a name that gets dozens, even hundreds of visitors a day, yet they have no idea what the traffic actually wants. This is often the case with domains that are made up words or expiring names from sites like TDNAM.com. which publish actual traffic figures.

We get seduced by those traffic figures, and end up with lots of uniques, but very little revenue.

If you have ever owned such a name, you know how frustrating it can be trying different parking configurations, keywords, and graphics in an attempt to turn the visitors into income. However, there are several things you can do to uncover the mystery, and crack the monetization code.

1) What are they searching for? Most parking companies let you see what your visitors are typing into the search box when they get to the page. If they don’t, you may need to use a different parking company for a while until you get a handle on the traffic. I love Parked.com, but their stats are particularly weak, so I’ll often use NameDrive.com for a month or two, and optimize based on searches and category clicks I discover there.

2) Where are they located? Parking stats also tell you where the visitors are geographically located. I have seen domains with lots of traffic, however it was all from China or India, and was very difficult to monetize. Knowing this was a little depressing, but at least I didn’t waste any more time on the name.

3) What’s the domain’s provenance? If a site was ever developed at the domain, it’s a good bet there’s a record of it on Archive.org. Take a look and see what was online previously, and you’ll get an idea what to optimize for. I’ve picked up expired generics that were previously developed, and just redirected them into an Amazon store that sells the same thing. It’s kind of a no-brainer, and usually beats the parking income.

4) Are there alternate extensions? If you own a dot com with mystery traffic, take a look and see if there’s a dot net or dot org developed, even a dash version. You can usually optimize around the keyword or niche of the alternate name and see revenue.

For the following 3 methods, you’ll need a way to direct the traffic into your own server, either to a page you build, or through a tracking link. Most Parking companies will let you redirect traffic to them provided you don’t violate their guidelines. Check with your rep to be safe.

1) Where are the coming from? Some parking companies give you this info, known as Referrer, but many don’t. You can use Google or Statcounter or HyperTracker to see the Web page or search term the visitor used, determine their expectations, and send them somewhere relevant.

2) Give them some options. If you think you might know what they want, send them to a page with a few keyword embedded headlines and track what they click on. One of my friends uncovered a opportunity when he tested some dating links on what he thought was adult traffic. The result? An extra $300 to $500 a month!

3) Go general. There are times what you have no idea what the visitors want, and even situations where different traffic sources to the site want different things. In that case, you can optimize for (or send them to) general-interest links for ringtones, business opportunities, coupons, and consumer offers.

The more you know about your visitors, the better you can serve (and profit) from them;)

Respectfully,

Smash Masterson