What to Do With Your Un-Used Domains

If you are anything like me, and been in business for more than a year, you likely have un-used domains or domains that are under utilized.  Many you have owned for a while, and never really put them to work for your business.

In fact, if you are not aware, it is likely to be a boom in the number of domains you have because of the new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) being introduced.  These literally allow you to be dot anything you like.

Have you ever wondered what you should do with these TLDs (top level domains)?  Is there a practical solution you maybe haven’t considered?

There are several, and what you choose depends on you and your business. Simply letting them expire is probably not the most practical choose from a business prespective.  Let’s look at a few of the available options and steps you can take to put them in action.

You can Sell or Lease the Domains

Many domain providers expect a flood of .coms to become available as the gTLDs enter the market.  Even though new domains are not expensive, aged domains can demand hefty price tags.

This means that now is the time to sell or lease your domains before the prices are dropped by the influx of gTLDs.  The exact timing of this remains unkown, but even Google and the search engines are preparing their algorithms to deal with the gTLDs.

So selling now those unused assets it a good choice if they don’t really fit in your business strategy any longer.  Of course, the name has to have some real value, and not just be a totally useless name.  I think you can tell if a name would be valuable to others.

Using sites like Flippa and Bido to sell are good ideas.  Buyers are searching them every day.  Most registrars also provide you a way to sell your domain through their services. For example, GoDadday and Name Cheap both have auction services.

You can Park or Self-Park the Domains

Domain parking was once being used by aged domains with traffic to attract search engines and forward traffic to other sites or offers.  Mostly, this doesn’t work anymore.  The major search engines have found ways to delete parked domain resources from their indexing.

Yes, the domain parking services still exist and some thrive. However, there are more practical uses.  One is that the services provide you a way to manage large portfolios of unused domains.  Typically they are ideal for enterprises with thousands of domains that are unused.  The services include places like Bodis, Sedo, or Skenzo.

Though it is possible, and a viable choice, it is likely not your best choice.  You should know you can park your secondary domains under your primary domain name.  It can be done through your web host control panel.  So you should look into this possibility when parking domains.

You can Put Your Domains to Work

This is most often the best option, particularly if you are not an enterprise with thousands of unused domains.  Your domains can be used of other company functions, and for marketing of company products and services.

Some companies have done things like getting employees to develop personal landing pages.  This can even be done on a very small scale. Platforms like About.me can be used.  There are also places that aggregate your pages such as DomainApps, Protrada, and Octane360.

Your domains can be used as re-directs as well.  So you can literally brand you pages, for example in social sites like Facebook and Twitter using a domain redirect.  You simply use the redirect functions in your domain control panel or the registrar control panel.

This is a little technical, but your webmaster should understand this, you can even map what is known as CName from one domain to another.

Finally, the underused domains can be set up to provide clients with portals and service access.  This enables you to include your branding.  Consider doing things like file sharing or other services.  Even link shortening much like services like Bit.ly.

There you have it.  Some useful ways to deal with your under utilized domains you may not have considered.  Hopefully this spurs you to look even further for other alternatives to make the best business use of your domains.