How To Make Money With Domain Parking in 2025

Key highlights

• Discover how domain parking can help you monetize domain assets and earn money from unused or expired domains.
• Choose the best domain parking service to optimize ad placement, attract visitors and maximize revenue.
• Learn how to buy parked domains strategically to expand your domain portfolio and enjoy long-term benefits.
• Create a placeholder page on your server for your parked domains to capture traffic and start generating income.
• Leverage free tools and simple domain parking monetization techniques to kickstart your online revenue streams quickly.

As of October 13, 2025, there were around 797.7 million domains registrations, marking an increase of approximately 264.6 million from January 2024, which represents a 49.6% growth. Many of these may be held by various domain registrars or grouped in a larger domain portfolio.

We’d wager that a fair number of those domains were parked, at least temporarily. If you’re interested in domain parking or want to know if you can monetize domain you’ve come to the right place.

Unlike vehicle parking, domain parking doesn’t involve any spatial awareness or exorbitant hourly fees. But to monetize domain effectively, you should follow some basic tips using a reliable domain parking service.

Choosing the best domain parking options allows you to optimize ad placement, encourage visitors click and potentially engage with premium advertising partners to maximize your cash parking opportunities.

What is a parked domain?

If you buy parked domains and “park” them, you own it, but you don’t exactly use it as a normal website. Instead, you’re generally reserving it for future use or trying to monetize domain by generate ad revenue on it.

It’s common for a parked domain to have no real website elements, save for some advertising links on a very basic placeholder page.

Sound familiar? You’ve probably stumbled upon an offline domain during general browsing.

You may have misspelled domains, like www.gogle.com. But Google doesn’t miss a trick — if you arrive at this parked domain, which Google bought, you’ll be redirected to the main domain (google.com).

Also, you may have accidentally added a .com to a keyword you’re looking for (quietquitting.com).

If your parked domain gets enough traffic — and, crucially, if visitors click on its advertising links — you could earn money or generate leads relatively easily.

Parking a domain is like parking a truck with advertisements (aka, a mobile billboard) on the side of the road for passers-by to see.

Your truck is locked, so no one can use it, but if your ad placement grabs people’s attention, you might earn some passive income or cash from domain parking monetization.

How to make money with domain parking?

To monetize domain, you’ll need more than an impossible-to-remember Internet Protocol (IP) address for a basic webpage. After all, the entire premise of a domain parking monetization strategy is attracting traffic, keyword searchers and sloppy typers to your parked domain page.

1. Choose and register a domain name

If you don’t own a domain yet, this is your first step. Remember that popular domains are quickly snapped up, so don’t wait if you have the perfect name in mind.

You can use the search bar on the Bluehost domains page to see if a domain has already been taken. If you’ve found an available domain, you can register it with Bluehost. You’ll benefit from auto-renewal, domain forwarding, domain locking and control over your customer account, all from an easy-to-use panel.

If your preferred name is taken, check whether it’s available under a different top-level domain (TLD). For example, you could register it under .net if .com is taken, which is somewhat likely considering that nearly 37.61% of all websites use the .com TLD.

If your first motive in registering and parking a domain is to generate ad revenue from popular search terms, then you should do some keyword research before registering a domain. This will help you gain the most type-in traffic and ensure your ad placement attracts visitors.

When you’re all set, register your domain for whatever length of time you want. If you’re just starting out, a year-long contract might work to keep costs down.

Typically, the longest period you can register a domain for is 10 years due to ICANN rules and regulations for domains.

2. Secure your domain name

After registration, you’ll need to lock in your domain name. This prevents unauthorized parties from trying to transfer it and helps protect your valuable domains from being lost.

You might also want domain privacy protection, which ensures that the public (and potential scammers) can’t access the personal information you used to register your domains.

If you register your new domains with Bluehost, domain locking is included as standard and domain privacy protection is available as an add-on, keeping your customer account safe and your parked pages secure from misuse.

3. Find a domain parking service

To monetize domain, look for a reliable domain parking service. As part of this service, the company will customize your placeholder page or homepage to show ads related to your domain name.

A domain parking service often partners with an international advertiser network to decide which ads show on your parked page. This decision could be based on your domain keywords or the traffic your unused domains have generated.

Some services let you buy parked domains or park multiple domains for free, taking a cut from the money gained from cash parking or display ad clicks. Others provide valuable insights into prospective buyers, which can help you sell your domains later.

If you own a large number of domains and are looking to park them with one provider, you might get special perks, such as a dedicated customer account manager and access to complete certification of your domain parking monetization strategies.

4. Change your domain name server (DNS) settings

You’ll need to change your DNS for advertising purposes. Your parking service will give instructions on what your parked page’s new nameserver or IP address should be. Note down your original settings in case you want to unpark your domain later.

If you’re a Bluehost customer, you can manage your DNS settings under Domains > Advanced Tools in your Bluehost Account Manager. 

Alternatives to domain parking services

Although domain parking services are a common way to monetize domain and earn from parked pages, they’re not the only game in town. Here are a few other options to secure your domain name:

1. Redirecting

One indirect method of making money (or at least boosting traffic) from a parked domain is to buy parked domains that are similar to your main website’s homepage. For example, say your domain name is parkeddomains.com. You could buy parked domains like parkeddomains.net and parkeddomains.tech and then redirect them to your primary online store or website.

Once you buy new domains, you can configure your redirect settings using your web hosting provider’s customer account or control panel.

Bluehost customers can do this by opening cPanel and navigating to Domains > Redirects, which helps you protect valuable domains and maximize domain parking monetization opportunities.

Here, you can manage your permanent and temporary redirects.

2. Waiting

You can also register domains based on speculation (spacetourism.com) or a business idea that you haven’t got off the ground just yet (californiabikes.com). In general, the sooner you buy a domain, the cheaper it will be, so it pays to register a domain long before you intend to use it.

3. Flipping

People engaged in selling domains, sometimes known as domain flipping, might park a domain for a while to make some passive income before selling it for a higher price than they originally paid.

During this period, the parked domain might give visitors information on how to buy it or state that a new website is under construction or coming soon.    

Domain parking for cash: best practices

Here are some best practices you should consider during different stages of your domain parking journey.   

1. Choose your domain name wisely

Do some keyword research, but watch out for buzzwords that might not stand the test of time. For example, “barbenheimer.us” probably has a limited shelf-life.

Search engines optimization (SEO) tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest can help you find useful domain names related to your website’s future audience or content, increasing the potential to monetize domain and earn money from parked pages. 

2. Go for a reputable domain registrar and parking service

You can buy parked domains or new domains from Bluehost in a range of top-level domains (TLDs), such as the popular .com and flashy .tech. If you also purchase shared hosting or dedicated hosting, you’ll get a free domain name for a year, helping you manage your site efficiently.

Do some research on domain parking services and pick a company that has been in business for a while with good reviews to maximize domain parking monetization.

Do some research on domain parking services and pick a company that has been in business for a while and has good reviews. 

3. Avoid cybersquatting

Don’t try to profit off a company name that isn’t yours. This unethical use of personal names, company names or trademarks could land you in legal trouble, causing you to lose ownership of your domains and wasting your money and time.   

4. Watch out for domain expiration dates

If you choose a good domain registrar, it should auto-renew your domain before it expires or at least notify you in advance.

If your domain expires, someone else can buy your domain name, potentially capitalizing on your efforts.

On the flip side, using ICANN’s Lookup tool, you can check when certain expired domains are due to lapse and snap up bargains for domain parking monetization.

5. Consider your website’s reputation

Don’t let domain parking damage a future site’s reputation before it even launches. Generic advertisements and single page templates on parked pages can look tacky, impacting your passive income potential.

This could have a detrimental effect on your business prospects. For example, if you’re launching an upscale website in the future, but people visit it when it’s being run by a parking service, they might get a bad first impression.

In this case, it might be better to create an ad-free landing page for marketing purposes.

6. Know when to cut your losses

If you have a list of unused domains or parked domains that are draining your finances and showing no ad-based earning potential, it may be time to sell or move on to another domain parking service. Monetized domain parking can be profitable, but it won’t work for everyone.

Final thoughts

Without a domain name to park, your venture is doomed from the start. So, your first port of call should be a well-known domain registration provider, like Bluehost, to buy parked domains or new domains for domain parking monetization.

And if your domain parking side hustle goes awry, consider putting your catchy unused domains or misspelled domains to better use.

You could repackage a parked domain into a fully fledged website, such as a WordPress website or online store.

Need some help building a WordPress website? Check out Bluehost’s website builder, which is perfect for launching eye-catching and feature-rich websites.  

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