My Favorite Parked Domain – 10,000 people a month, can you guess?
By Alan on Jul 12, 2009 in Domain Parking | 18 Comments
Every domainer has visited this page – if you haven’t then you really don’t care about trademarks and .com is not fully ingrained in your brain. I visit this page probably a dozen times a month purely by accident however instead of clicking I chuckle with joy for the owner of the domain who has quite a retirement fund I’m sure from the revenue of this single name.
What is it?
Well, the popular version is owned by the government, domainers who value and respect trademark rights use it for research and of course it’s simply an acronym we all know and quote in articles from time to time.
Still don’t know what it is?
Well it clearly states its not affiliated with any government agency and was registered in 1999 – possibly before the .gov was online (not quite sure) and no government agency smart enough ever filed for its own trademark on the initials. This parked .com gets around 10,000 people a month in one of the highest paying industries.
Take a wild guess then click here
The site we all know (for the newbies) is here
have another favorite – post below!
Reece Berg | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Darn, didn’t guess it but have typed that one in incorrectly many times in the past.
Out of curiosity, I put a few typos of top sites in to see what kind of traffic they got. Facebok.com is getting almost 300,000 monthly USA visitors according to Compete.com. Insane…
Alan | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Reese,
I would venture to guess all the big names (myspace, facebook, google) etc have loads of traffic to typos but these guys (especially the Facebok.com) example above are imo the scum of the industry. SOOO clear when you land on the page you mentioned the owners are simply piggybacking and trying to even trick the user to think there are associated with Facebook (unless they are then I retract my scum statement – but highly doubtful)
My example would hold up I believe since there is no trademark on the acronym, doesn’t link to the gov website and clearly states its not associated with the government – also the industry is one of the highest so 10,000 people looking for such targeted information has to be worth a nice dime.
Come across any good typos (not trademark typos) please post again!
Thanks for the comments.
Steve M | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Ah, shucks.
Though I’m involved w/the PTO and visit their site often, I was thinking it would be IRS.com or DMV.com.
Your, “…respect TM rights…” comment didn’t register (what I get for “working” on a Sunday, I suppose) didn’t even register.
Reece Berg | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Hi Alan,
Just wanted to say that I completely agree with you about the Facebok.com example and am not a fan of these domains either. It’s nice to see that more and more domainers are seeing these type of domains for exactly what they are — cybersquatting.
Johnny | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
10,000 a month? That’s nothing.
Try 8,000 a day on one parked domain that my buddy owns.
Johnny | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
I forgot to mention it is not an expired domain and it is a generic.
It makes enough by itself for him to have bough a million dollar home….. x,xxx a day in earnings.
Alan | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Johnny,
Its not about the traffic – its my favorite since we all talk about trademarks, all use the services of the .gov site but at the end of the day the .com is a parked domain.
The irony of it is why its my favorite. I can list many parked sites which get much more traffic but few have the irony as this.
10,000 on the scale of great parked domains is good but not fantastic – you are right.
The irony – well, that is priceless imo.
Francois | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
tweetter.com
pagesjaunes.com
Ron Wells | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Well…atleast they (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) were smart enough to register the name Uspto.us for almost 100 years (2101-12-29)!
Reece Berg | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
How did they manage to get it renewed for almost 100 years? I was under the impression it could only be renewed 10 years at a time even if you purchased a longer renewal period. Has that changed or is that one of the perks of being the government?
Vikz | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
Still 10 years as far as I can see at most registrars I just checked. Probably perks of being the government
wones | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
PeopleSearches.com
Ron Wells | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
I was also under the impression that it was only 10 years at a time…but maybe there is an exception for governments (that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a name registered longer than 10 years!).
Ron Wells | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
You guys are probably right about this being standard for government agencies (here’s a few more samples of names with “Buck Rogers” registration dates:-):
nasa.us Expiration Date: 2103-12-15
irs.us Expiration Date: 2054-12-08
usn.us Expiration Date: 2053-04-30
usmc.us Expiration Date: 2053-04-30
usaf.us Expiration Date: 2053-04-30
Alan | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
Ron,
none of these resolve – I checked with a couple people and we agreed these are most likely domains owned by the .us registry instead of government/companies/individuals.
good catch all the same. Haven’t seen many expiration dates which will outlive us all lol.
Alan
Ron Wells | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
Hi Alan,
Thanks for clearing that up…I saw a few of those with long dates in the past and always wondered about those(I assummed they were registered by the government since they have actual contact info in the Whois).
That would probably be a great idea if we could have a few that outlived us
Reece Berg | Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
Alan,
I was browsing the domain forums and came across a gem I had completely forgotten about — uTube.com. Apparently gets 600,000+ uniques per month according to Compete.com and is completely clean as it was used for a business before Youtube was ever started. They even tried to sue Youtube for all the untargeted traffic it was sending their way and then got smart and decided to metize it.