What is domain name parking? Well, let's say that you've got a great idea for a niche website but you're in the middle of something else and just won't be able to get to it for a while, in the meantime you don't want anyone else to snap up that great domain name you've come up with, so you buy the domain name and park it until you can get to it.

When you buy a domain name you can then build a website with that name, and have a hosting company host it for you. Hosting simply means that you will have a small 'space' online where your website will appear when someone enters your domain name into their computer browser. Sometimes, though, someone will either buy a domain name that they simply can't put up a website with right away or they will buy a domain name with the sole idea of parking it to generate some income.

While it's true that in most cases you can just park your domain with your hosting account for free (you don't even have to park it but any visitors that may come to your domain will receive an error message), you can also park it with a company that specializes in helping you monetize your parked domain.

They will place ads on your parked domain and whenever you get a visitor you will get paid if they click on one of the ads. This can either be a nice little extra income stream until you can build the website or it can become a full time income, though in order to make that much money you will need to have many parked domains and you will have to be very careful in choosing your domain names.

It's up to you to decide which method makes sense for you and your financial goals, but one thing you do need to be careful of are all the scams that will promise to provide you with a system to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, by parking domains. I'm not saying that you can't benefit from learning all the ins and outs of this process by getting a system, I'm just saying that you need to be careful that you don't get taken in the process.

One of the best ways to get traffic to your parked domain for free is choosing wisely when it comes time to pick out your domain name. If you choose a term that has many monthly searches and you keep that term (keyword) intact and use it as your domain name, you will get a lot of 'organic' traffic. Organic traffic is any visitors that finds your site simply because they entered the keyword you were focusing on for your site. This is different from people who click on a link and are taken to your site.

Whether you use domain name parking temporarily until you can get to a certain website built or you use it as an income stream, just take a little time to find out the best way to go about this method for an online business.