StakeWeb - Earn money from your unused domains

Hi everyone, I'm Harrison! My background is in scaling customer support, success, and experience at (mostly crypto) startups! After being let go from my job in June of last year I decided (with my 2nd child due in 2 months) it was the perfect time to finally launch my own business 😅 Needless to say, I struggled, and I wound up 6 months later with a graveyard of failed projects and far too many domain names... but more on that in a moment... In March 2024, through my network I became aware of a cool project with a domain name similar to one I had acquired at auction during the aforementioned "founder ADD" months. I wanted to use their product for my domain - yes, another idea! But as it turns out, they wanted to use my domain for their product! Selling that domain for a 4-figure sum opened my eyes to the world of domain name investing and the potential value a single domain can have. But I kept coming back to the rest of my domains -- What was I going to do with the now dozens of domains that I had acquired? After a few months of diving deep into the domain investing space, I learned I could either park them, hold them and wait for them to sell, develop them into a business, or let them expire. That's pretty much it. In the domain industry today, so much of the focus is on registering and selling (and ultimately on developing) domains. Hardly anyone pays attention to parking or renewals. Just about everyone accepts renewals as a cost of business and pays about $10 per non-premium domain per year to renew. For a portfolio of 1000 names it will cost a domain investor $10,000 a year to renew! Or they stop renewing and "drop" the name. Most domain investors have a few hundred names at least, and some have tens of thousands - so these fees can be quite significant. But what about "domain parking"? It's in a pretty sorry state these days! It looks like nobody's put any effort into it in 30 years! The "best" options out there display ugly header banners advertising primarily the hosting provider (not the domain) and some google ads nobody clicks. If they even see them. But when I visit parked pages I see nothing - no ads, no content - because of my ad blocker... And from what I understand, almost nobody makes any money with these sites unless you're parking an ultra-premium domain. Even then you make very little because almost anyone who's looking at the site is looking to buy the domain, not clicking random ads on some parked page (if they even see it, and "type-in traffic" has all but dried up). So it turns out the only time it makes sense to hold a domain is if you're sure it's worth a lot of money and you're fine paying the renewal fees for possibly years. And then it hit me - what if I could "stake" my unused domain names, bring them organic traffic, and then monetize that traffic without having to build 100+ different websites, so I could offset the $1000+ in renewals I'll pay this year? Would anyone else be interested? It turns out, a lot of people are. The *Number One* problem almost 40% of domain investors have is renewal fees (Great timing with this poll, Michael!): https://x.com/MichaelCyger/statu... And so StakeWeb was born. StakeWeb helps you improve the organic traffic of your entire domain portfolio and monetize unused and unsold domains automatically. The goal is to help offset renewal costs and make dropping domains a choice. Most domains are being parked only to be sold, but brokerage fees through traditional parking services add up fast. We're not in that business; any leads generated through your sites will go right to you, and we won't keep them or advertise to them. Absolutely no exceptions. We provide robust tracking on domain traffic and sources, which can further enhance the value of the domain when it sells. This is my first Product Hunt launch, it's my first real MVP launch, and we're just getting started! Future updates will include additional monetization paths and enhanced features to further maximize your domain's potential. Join me on this journey to transform the domain parking landscape! Thank you for reading my story! If you'd like to support this launch, here's how you can best do so: ✅ Say Hi! Drop in the thread, ask me anything! (almost anything). 🕵️ Check the product out - I'm giving PH users a sneak-peak of the app before I close the "free" tier for good (no date but I will leave it open for at least the month of August 2024) ✉️ Let me know what you think! Email hello@stakeweb.com or message me on twitter @stakeweb or @thecustomerguy - I'd love any feedback - criticism, praise, questions, feature requests, you name it. 👍 Follow StakeWeb on twitter @StakeWeb for more updates! I'm really excited and grateful to hopefully contribute something valuable to two really cool communities I've found a passion for and been welcomed warmly into. I have many ideas for where I'd like this to go based on the tremendous feedback we've already received, and we're just getting started! Thank you again 🙏 Harrison

@harrison_dimon I'm going to owe you like $291 soon ;)

Hey Harrison, Can you share more about how the organic traffic improvement works? What strategies are used to attract visitors to these parked domains? Congrats on the launch!

Such an amazing service - thanks Harrison for launching this!!!

@harrison_dimon Hey Harrison! Wow, what an inspiring journey! 🌟 It's amazing how you've turned your challenges into a meaningful venture with StakeWeb. The idea of monetizing unused domains is genius! I'm sure a lot of people will benefit from it, especially with those high renewal costs. Can’t wait to see how it evolves! Keep up the awesome work!

As someone with multiple empty domains this is a really nice idea 🤩🤩 I will for sure check this out 🤘 Congratulations on the launch 🚀

@harrison_dimon I really like the idea, have already signed up and added my first domain. A few days ago another project was launched with a similar idea. But they did not offer the option to generate a landing page, so I was stuck with the old dodgy landing pages from the hoster. How exactly can someone make money from this? The site mentions affiliate links. Are these links somehow related to the theme of the domain or are they just randomly added? Congrats on the launch 🚀

Good luck with the launch! It's a very cool project for us who have a lot of domains.

Congratulations on the launch! Are there any manual settings available for the type of content being generated and published? Thanks.

This is really fascinating, Harrison! How does StakeWeb handle the SEO aspects to improve organic traffic for parked domains?