Parked domain getting 1 Million uniques/ mo. What should I do?
I bought a premium domain last year and sort of forgot about it.
Domain details: It's a common english word. Six letters. TLD is .io.
Just logged in to SEDO (where it's been parked for 6 months) and noticed crazy traffic. Over 1 Million hits in one month. 🤯
Would love any thoughts the community has about what to do with this thing!
[Update. Decided to share the domain name. It's cancel.io]
you're making $143k a month on Wavve - do you really care about a domain name ;-) Go lie on a beach somewhere.
Actually, serious answer - just put an advert/link to Wavve on it. Surely you have already done this though without even thinking about it; if not why not...
Mostly worried about hurting our SEO ranking with unrelated traffic that could have a high bounce rate. We've worked for years to reach the top of Google and I'd hate to do anything to put that in jeopardy. Maybe my fear is misplaced and Google wouldn't penalize for that sort of think...
Here's what I'd do in your scenario. It's low effort and could be pretty rewarding, whether or not you decide to devote more time to it.
Write a list of ideas for apps/services related to the word "cancel." They don't have to be great ideas.
Here are a few:
On the website:
Title: "What would you like to cancel?"
then list each of the ideas "Subscriptions", "Contracts", "Events", etc
each one would have a button that leads to an email/form. You could also have a freeform response so a visitor can type anything. Might get some pretty amusing responses :)
See what happens!
Great idea. The free form can also be used to gather possible pain points if something related is asked. The business may shape according to it.
Would love to learn more and talk through ideas for what you could do with it. Looking for a side project right now and this sounds exciting. My email is in my bio.
Thanks Jacob! I'll give this some thought. Currently a little spread thin and my wife is going to kill me if I take on any more new biz projects, but give me two weeks. If I can't find a home for it, I'd be open to maybe talking further.
I would start by asking where the traffic comes from and what the people who visit are looking for. Based on that, you may be able to actually offer them what they expect. Or sell the domain to someone who will know what to do with this traffic.
Thanks! Just started redirecting traffic to a separate website I control to get a sense of what's going on.
Like others have said it's probably best if you could monetize it somehow by offering something that aligns with the domain name or try sell it 🤔
Guess it depends on the domain name and if it's something that can be used to put a product behind
I can connect you to a broker that is specifically interested in developing their .io portfolio! Feel free to reach out!
Thanks! I might shoot you a message to inquire more about that!
holy shit. that's so cool. i have one that does a few thousand... wow! please let us know what you do with it!
For sure. This has been a total mystery. Unless it's a botnet with millions of unique IPs spread all over the world, I don't know what could be driving this much traffic.
Domain name is cancel.io so maybe people are typing that accidentally into their search bar?
dang. dang!
That's crazy! Any idea where all the traffic is coming from?
Is it just people entering cancel.io into their browser directly?
Put up a site (don't know if you can do it without putting up a site). Put Google analytics into it and see where the traffic is coming from. Could you be bots going wild or something.
Thanks! Seems like the best way to get to the bottom of this.
Could it be bot traffic? Throw Google Analytics on it and see where the traffic is coming from.
That's my best guess, but it would have to be a huge botnet and not sure why someone would be wasting it on parked domains. Will update this post when I get to the bottom of it.
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Haha, I got the renewal notice and figured it was time to list it for sale. Had no idea a parked page could get this sort of traffic in 2021.
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Agreed. I understand the hesitation but it's hard to make suggestions if we don't know what niche it's in.
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I know he already posted it, but in response to the hesitation, there are consequences to building/sharing in public.
He's already sharing metrics on his very successful other company, so the point is moot, but sharing info about a very valuable domain could invite unwanted attention (hackers, etc).
Tangentially, I'm convinced that someone copied (almost to a tee) one of my apps because I posted its MRR here on IndieHackers.
Alright, I'll spill. 😂
The domain name is Cancel.io. I'm now redirecting traffic to a static site that i control to try and analyze traffic, but it's hard to tell what's driving this.
Backstory: I picked it up as a possible domain name for our new company before we decided on the name Churnkey. I was thinking along the lines of "Close.io." In the end we decided the connotation was maybe a little too negative for our new business and it wouldn't been harder to trademark/ brand.
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Interesting! I'd been thinking mostly about canceling a subscription or something... hadn't even thought about cancel culture. Could be on to something there...