NameDrive.com Domain Parking Review

Putting everything to work is the key to making money. Every little amount contributes to the big end-of-month picture - and that certainly includes all of those domain names that are sitting around, collecting dust!

There are several parking services - many, if not most, are now free. Its in your best interest to use ANYTHING that's free in your money making toolbelt. If you're looking to build up your affiliate or work-at-home empire, and this is no exception to the rule.

Note that the amount of money you'll make through domain parking is completely unpredictable - it depends on your site, domain, backlinks, keyword competition, the market you're in, and many other unseen factors. Some of your dormant domain names just might be jackpots...you'll never know, unless you give them a chance!

While I do not endorse any particular domain parking service, I have tried many, and found NameDrive to be the most advantageous. Take a look at some of its features, and judge for yourself!

NameDrive.com is the newest domain parking service I've tried - apart from SEDO and Parked.com. Unlike the others, NameDrive has more everything: more options, more customization features, more promise, overall.

I was most impressed with NameDrive's landing page customization than that of the other services. I will never be fully satisfied with domain parking until I can create my own 100% custom built landing page, but this is the closest thing to it that I've seen so far. NameDrive lets you pick and choose templates (most of which are horribly generic looking), but it's better than a plain text landing page, or other end results - such as the templates that auto-generate based on your URL's keywords (much like what Parked.com does). One thing you'll want to do is mix and match templates, headers and category/subcategory until you get the look you want.

My favorite aspect of all is how NameDrive lets you choose Keywords for your domain names. This is a relief for those who have un-descriptive URLs, and are afraid at what their end result will be. Unfortunately, these are not META keywords and will not appear as such - they simply help determine the contextual ads that show up. In fact, NameDrive pages don't utilize META whatsoever.

Setting up a Namedrive account is simple. Let's say you have a GoDaddy.com account (the same process should be identical on any other domain service panel). All you need to do is check the box next to the domains you want to park, click the "Nameservers" icon and fill in Namedrive's name servers, which are ns1.fastpark.net and ns2.fastpark.net (only the first two name servers are needed):

Statistics for your parked domains are all presented in a daily-updated table. Put domains in categories to make them easier to locate, if you desire. A separate tool lets you generate a report through drop-down boxes, that allow you to select months, days and years.

Assign keywords to each individual domain, to increase the probability of more relevant PPC ads showing up on their landing page.

As usual, all of the run-of-the-mill stats for click and payment performance are listed for each domain. Another interesting tool is the ability to target your parked domains toward individual countries.

NameDrive reports your earnings with a 48 hour delay. They'll actually wait for advertising partners to report earnings data before putting a number down (...if only Widgetbucks had used this tidbit of common knowledge!)

Above: A screenshot of a typical NameDrive.com landing page. This is the parked page of one of my 4-letter .com domains. While NameDrive parked pages vary greatly depending on what template style you choose: this is basically what you get. They have generic and un-changeable stock photos, and generally large fonts and links (which kind of scream "this is a parked page", although others may have success levels to prove otherwise).

Since you can actually choose the basic topic of your landing page, the links that show up won't be a complete surprise. In the above example, I chose the categories "internet" and "anti-virus." The center columns typically show a rotisserie of topics, which could either prove to be detrimental, or could also entice a click or two.

There's one final tool in Namedrive's arsenal that you'll want to know about: pop-under ads. Namedrive is perhaps the only parking service I've seen that allows you to turn on a "pop under ad" feature. Yes, it's annoying for the end user (I personally hate having to click off a site, then click off that annoying ad under it), but it might help give you some more pocket change here and there.

NameDrive is a worthy free domain parking service, and should be a final contender in your list of services. Between its somewhat advanced landing page layout, contextual ads based on keywords you choose, and other services - such as the ability to put your domain name up for auction or through "Park and Sell", NameDrive gives you the most bang for your buck, albeit - you're spending $0.00!

Personally, I did not earn much from NameDrive. After spending quite a bit of time on forums like DigitalPoint, I found that many other people had the opposite experience, while a good deal had an identical experience. Many people told me that NameDrive works best with foreign domain names. I can't confirm or deny this, as the only foreign ccTLD's I own are a few co.uk domains, and I haven't experienced anything special happening on NameDrive with them. Regardless, give NameDrive a try and see if you fall in the bucket of people who are getting good pays-per-click.

On a closing note, I will probably never find a parking service to be "5-star worthy" until it allows you to upload or manually edit the landing pages yourself.

If you've found this review to be helpful, try out NameDrive yourself through my promo! The setup is quick and painless, but you'll want to customize the landing pages for each of your domains. Thanks for reading, and happy parking!