To monetize email to your parked domain names — MailboxPark wants

Firm will pay you for email sent to domain names you own.

[Update: please see response from ThreatWave.] MailboxPark, a fresh offering from 250ok, will pay domain name owners for their parked domains’ email traffic.

The fresh service requires domain owners to point their MX records to MailboxPark, at which point the firm will start paying domainers for email messages sent to the domain names.

MailboxPark sounds similar to Bounce.io, a service that used to monetize parked domain email traffic with bounce messages that contained ads. But 250ok/MailboxPark CEO Greg Kraios explained some key differences.

We do not view ThreatWave (formerly Bounce.io) as our competitor; in fact, they are an notable 250ok vendor, and I believe they would tell you that we are a valued client. I know the Bounce.io founder Scott Brown very well and previously served as an advisor to them. Current ThreatWave CEO Tom Bartel and I are also friends. The sole reason we created MailboxPark was to de-risk our business by obtaining as many unique sources of email data as we can.

As you know, Bounce.io pioneered the opportunity of paying domain owners for data found within their mail traffic. Their clients were paid based on a percentage of revenue generated from ads placed in bounced mail traffic. Needless to say, there were complications with that model that led their leadership to pivot to what is now the ThreatWave offering (i.e., a focus on malware and other malicious content).

At 250ok, we collect and analyze email data sent to parked domains to look for phishing attacks on legitimate domains and brands. We also use the data to help determine the quality of a firm’s mailing practices. There is a growing need for this type of data considering the severity of phishing attacks on businesses today. Also, as stated by a 2015 survey, 73 percent of firms note having issues with email deliverability. These are the types of problems we address for our clients using the email data generated by MailboxPark.

Based on the monies generated by the 250ok clients paying to access this data, we offer a monthly payout total that we split among the MailboxPark partners. Partners receive a payment that reflects the percentage of email traffic* that was generated by their domains for that month. For example, if your MailboxPark account was responsible for three percent of our email for July and the monthly payout total was $100,000, your earnings would be $3,000 for July. We are also developing a fresh product that will payout based on domain count. So, to be clear, our business model does not involve bounce messages or ad revenue.

*There are some program thresholds every domain must meet to be included in our feed

Following speaking with some high profile domainers, we get the impression that most domain owners are not doing anything with their MX records. Our goal is twofold: 1) MailboxPark will help domainers and domain parking firms generate additional revenue for no additional expense, and 2) we will bring greater insight to domain owners regarding the type and volume of email sent to their domains.

As stated by MailboxPark’s FAQ, it is seeking email sent from businesses, brands and other official organizations–not personal email.

MailboxPark certainly seems like a good way to monetize parked domains beyond just pay-per-click ads. For many domainers, I think it will be more effective and easier if their parking firms integrate directly with the service like they did with Bounce.io.

Update: I received this response/clarification from Tom Bartel, CEO of ThreatWave.

We’ve been asked what our take is on the newly disclosed email parking service, so wanted to share our thoughts.

Surprisingly, this is the first we are hearing of a directly competitive offering from our longstanding partner. As it sounds similar to what we provide, this is a good opportunity to clarify our domain monetization offering.

We are ThreatWave (formerly bounce.io) and as our domain partners know, we have been providing an MX monetization service since 2013.

We are proud pioneers in establishing the first production MX monetization service for the domain industry. Yesterday’s post mentioned our early advertising focus, but minimized the scope of our current business, so we’d like to expand on that.

Our focus is broad data monetization, not just malware and malicious traffic use cases. Having become experts in data intake and processing, we have now established a data marketplace for data consumers. Our refined output feeds help data consumers across Threat, Reputation, and Market intelligence use cases. Our Threat intelligence feeds help protect users, networks, and devices from common scourges like spam, phishing and malware. As for Reputation intelligence (through partners like 250ok, Return Path, and others), digital marketers are empowered to understand and improve their mailing practices.

And it is the broad power of our network that accomplishes all that. Overall, we intake billions of messages monthly, collect and analyze, reduce noise and streamline that data for all these use cases, and in the process support some of the world’s most influential security and email-focused firms who use this data to make the world a better place.

We have created a strong and passive monetization opportunity for Domain Investors and Domain Services firms. For our current Domain partners, we have a number of exciting platform enhancements to announce through the end of the year and into 2017, counting improved insights and payouts.

We are proud to work with many in the Domain Industry, but we do not take that for granted. If you would like to hear more from me regarding this or sign up for our service, I can be reached at tom (at) threatwave.com.