Are you a domain collector? Somebody who owns dozens, even hundreds of domain names that you just can’t seem to get around to using? Well, Q4 is a good time to go through those domains and put them to some kind of use — and here’s six ways you can do just that.

1 – Sell them through a brokerage site. If you’ve got domains you simply don’t want, put them up for sale at an easy-to-use domain afternarket site like SnapNames.com or Sedo.com.

2 – Redirect them. Simply redirect the domains you want to keep to one of your existing sites, or even to an affiliate link. Just be sure that the domains are relevant to the site you’re linking to.

3 – Use a revenue share domain parking service. If you think your domains would make good landing pages, try a domain monetization service like DomainSponsor, where you can park your domains, and get content and ads placed on it for free.

Services like this will create and optimize custom landing pages for each of your domains, and include relevant ads and targeted content. You make a percentage of the earnings generated through your domains. Be sure that your domains are a good fit for this type of service, since short, niche-themed domains will probably perform better than longer, keyword-based domains.

4 – Park and monetize the domain yourself. If your web host allows you to add multiple domain names within a single account, you can put a simple page up for each domain. Then you can monetize with a service like Text-Link-Ads.com. Again, the domain name needs to be appropriate for this type of service — this is probably the best choice for longer, keyword-based domains.

5 – Put a blog on the domain and update it automatically. This idea is applicable to both domains you plan to develop later on, or domains you plan to sell. Ideally you should have a plan to keep these blogs updated.

One of the simplest methods is to use a plugin like FeedWordpress, which updates your blog with RSS news feeds. (Note: We do NOT advocate creating spam blogs with this plugin — it’s simply a way to do something constructive with an unused domain, or add news updates to an existing blog). You can also outsource the writing of blog posts to a freelancer on Elance.com or Guru.com.

Once you’ve got 40-50 posts on the site, you can think about adding AdSense or affiliate links. Keep updating both manually and through RSS for a year or more, and you can try selling the site, which leads us to our final tip…

6 – Put a “lightly developed” domain up for sale. Many sites and forums offer website sales services — BuySellWebsite, NamePros.com and the SitePoint Marketplace are some of the most popular. You can also try searching WhoIs records to contact webmasters in your niche to let them know the domain and website are available. Be sure to keep the inquiry brief and to the point.

Next in this series… how to review the products and merchants you’re promoting.