PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[ZOX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[Dr. Anthony]

I moved back to sedo.. and the clicks are almost back to normal. not sure whats happening

 

[Seabass]

There is NO doubt something MAJOR is going on with earnings and lower reported traffic from Google and Yahoo

How many of us here know a foreign language, other than English?

I know many, many of you guys and gals do speak other languages - just look at the names. I speak three languages also, and three others I understand and can speak brokenly.

How hard would it be, for example, to get a group of guys/gals in Brazil to knock out mini-sites for us, especially if we brought consistent, volume work? Brazil is loaded with talented programmers, an educated population, that is underemployed ( I know a Brazilian banker here in the U.S. cleaning houses, for example, b/c of no work in Brazil). They would LOVE the work.

Andrew over at DomainNameWire.com said that he has turned $1 a day parked domains into $15 a day using XsitePro to develop out the domains. He even gives site examples and the example pages suck in appearance, but they make him $15 a day. Here's a link to the story - it's pretty neat :

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/03/18/how-to-develop-your-domain-names-fast/

Ron Jackson’s NameNewbie is an XsitePro site too - http://www.NameNewbie.com

Now imagine if you had five Brazilian guys/gals developing your sites out using easy software like XsitePro, each getting a mere $50 a day, or $$? per site, (which is feasable, I think, knowing what I know about Brazilians - pay extra and they love working for you :bingo, just cranking out the mini-sites one after another. How long do you think it would take to start making some real money so that you could buy even better domains to develop out? And, here's the key, eventually - "your own sales team" selling ads direct to advertisers. All this while you continue to do what you do best - find domains.

I've just had the lowest two days I can remember in the last year or so with Parked.com - and FAB, Sedo, DS, etc... are not doing well either. The same thing is happening everywhere to everyone. AND, this is HIGH SEASON folks - traffic and earnings should be rocking. Just wait until summer if you want to see the dead walking in the desert - if the trend continues. I truly believe this is Yahoo's/Google's doing. But if this continues I am moving a chunk of my domains out of parking and into development to stem the losses. I used to make more money this way and I'll do it again if I have to. It's so easy to pick up the phone and get advertisers on your site you would not even believe it until you tried it. I cold-called advertisers to advertise on my sites starting in 1997 and did it for years. It was EASY sales. Honestly though, my passion is finding domains not developing them. I prefer a prospector's heart to having a builder's grit. But you must follow the money to stay in the game.

So, now, major ad dollars have been flowing to G and Y the last couple of years and G and Y are pushing our click prices into the dirt, AND I would SWEAR that they are now cutting back our reported traffic. It's just a hunch though - nixing Uniques in the Name of Fraud, and in the Name of ......... Just look at some of your generic type-in domains (no expired traffic domains) that have been at Parked or FAB or wherever for 2 + years and look at the uniques reported. There was a sudden crash in uniques reported starting last last year (you have to look closely at long term - graph preferably). You have to look at individual domains not your portfolio, b/c if you keep adding domains and your uniques stay the same or rises a bit, but it does not mean you are not "losing uniques".

After countless 15 + hour work days for years finding these domains and now they tell me they are worth much less and now suddenly get less clicks and lower RPC value. I say, "not true", you can not buy better domains in the niches I bought into. Better domains don't exist - if they had I would have bought them already in my niches. Click prices have not fallen, as far as I can tell using the tools available to check prices.

Some day's earnings seem to hold some sunshine for a brighter future, but then things just turn worse again. It's up and down with earnings every day and that makes NO SENSE. It has never been like this ever before in parking.

Even with a TQ of 10 at Parked I am getting beat into the ground. So, what's the point of Yahoo publishing the TQ score? It would seem a meaningless, scare tactic that you worry about when it drops. It also seems it has no correlation to your earnings, even though they say it does. Yahoo did not think this through well. Transparency is the only thing that will alleviate the animosity and mistrust between domainers and G/Y. So, if they are going to be clear about what our domains are worth by reporting lower payouts, then they need to open up their books. If we can't get this then development is the key, with eventual salesmen/women selling ads on our sites - not G/Y.

Anyone else interested in trying to look into outsourcing mini-sites (mini-sites sounds cheezy - they should be called sites) to begin with, in foreign countries whereby we all "buy-in" or buy directly (I'm want no interest/profit from this)for a certain amount of developed sites per domainer? Maybe one of you living in a foreign country can look into it in your own country and report what it might entail to get started. Me, personally, I will be looking into it. How fast can I get it together? I have no idea since I never attempted this. My guess is that this will only work well with mid to upper tier domains, but who knows.

It would be great if Parked.com did something bold and shocking like this, or some other mechanizations for the greater good at this juncture in time. I would be elated to see it. Maybe it's in the works as Parked has always had sweet surprises for domainers. But I can't sit and wait without knowing - I'm too fidgety when my earnings are lower at every parking company.
.

 

[cybermonkey]

Preach it, Seabass!

 

[mwzd]

The problem with xsitepro is that its kind of limiting with what you can do with it. I know its great seo out of the box, but then so is wordpress. Add an seo plugin and it takes off.

But I think seabass has put into words what the big boys have been saying for a while - develop, develop, develop.

Better for people like me though

 

[netmeg]

It's definitely rough. Over 800 domains at Parked (and another couple hundred scattered around various places) and I have virtually no search engine presence anymore. If I get impressions (visits), I get clicks, but most days I don't get but a handful of visits. And just about all of my domains used to be in the search engines, and in some cases, ranking with PR. A lot are still there, but won't come up in the first 1000 results (all you can search for) for any reasonable phrase. I am absolutely convinced that all the search engines are systematically deprecating parked domains, permanently, from the SERPS. Not sure I entirely blame them for that - seven times out of ten, it's probably not what people are searching for - but there should be *some* kind of a solution, short of full scale development. Advertising makes the world go round, after all. People want to buy stuff, and advertising tells there where it is and how much it costs. Maybe Seabass is on to something.

 

[Seabass]

The problem with xsitepro is that its kind of limiting with what you can do with it. I know its great seo out of the box, but then so is wordpress. Add an seo plugin and it takes off.

But I think seabass has put into words what the big boys have been saying for a while - develop, develop, develop.

Better for people like me though

I was thinking XsitePro b/c from what I have been told by more than one source is that it is faster and easier to deploy then WordPress, which means if you want to knock out 1K domains on a list, then you could get that job done quicker and cheaper. Once that job is done then more advance designs could be undertaken for the more obvious "winner" domains.

Maybe a hybrid scheme would work better of a mix between the two and then see how well each performs in the engines as well as with the developers before going full scale on either platform.
.

 

[rodash]

That's a good summation about the state of parking, Seabass, and unlike Cybermonkey I don't think you're preaching. You're trying to do something about this situation and that's good. In fact, I feel inclined to do a bit of "preaching" myself:

Google and Yahoo have cut back because of two reasons:

1. Direct navigation is the biggest threat to search engines and directories, so it was only a matter of time before they would decide not to feed (and financially support) the people promoting direct navigation.

2. Up to 95% of parked pages are irrelevant to visitors and what they are looking for and, as such, are meaningless. Having all those meaningless pages in search engine databases doesn't do the search engine's cause any good, so it's in their interests to flick the pages and give searchers a better experience. It was only going to be a matter of time before that happened.

If parking is going to have any future then it has to exist in its own right as a direct navigation device and not rely on search engine traffic. It has to clean its act up and rid itself of typos (actually the Snowe Bill will do that). It has to become 100% relevant both to the surfer and to the advertiser. And it can only work in future if it is based on true generic names of products or services that are reflected in the domain names.

I'm doing a trial at the moment with the view to creating a mini parking system set up around a small group of niche names that lets me compete with Google and Yahoo. I have 100 or so names in a particular niche and at the moment I've got non-paying advertisers on three of those sites/pages and am gathering stats on visitors and clickthroughs. All advertisers are 100% relevant to the domain names. The only exit points on the pages are the advertisers' links. Once I've built up stats I'll go to those advertisers and other advertisers and say I can give you this traffic at half the price that Google or Yahoo charges for a clickthrough, and the quality of the traffic will be better because people are coming to you after keying in a domain name that reflects the product or service they are looking for. Selling the concept to advertisers will be the hard part but I believe if I persevere I should be able to win out. I have no doubt that this is how parking will evolve in future. It will become higher quality, more targeted and more sophisticated but this evolvement is probably at least five years down the track.

I would like to see Bodis move towards becoming a hub for this type of highly targeted parking system. Who knows, perhaps one day that may happen

..

 

[mrizos]

Minisites are a waste of your time if your not putting up fresh, unique and interesting content.

Parking domains is for rich domainers who have awesome generics or you're on top of current events (before they are publicized current events) and you reg a popular topic as a domain name (like spitzergirl.com) ...otherwise...forget regging lame names and hoping seo will help, it won't. Google has deindexed most of my parked sites at parked.com now.

So, to sum it up. If you don't have great generics....develop a real site (or a few of them if you have time).

Would you guys agree?

 

[Seabass]

rodash - My domains are totally generic outside of maybe 30 or so, which make up a very small percentage, with only about 8% to 10% search engine referral. Mostly just good generic type-ins.

In regards to your test. That is exactly what I did starting in 1997 and did it for years, but it is work wading through blabbing advertisers who want to talk about everything under the sun instead of letting you work. But the sales are very easy if the generic domain is really targeted to their product and service. Once you get a couple hundred of those then you are on your way. Each new advertiser puts pressure on the existing ones too to raise prices.

If your domains are good and and you have nominal sales skills then you can sell links. My advice is to not sell at half price if the domains are good. If you sell by the click it is amazing the difference in money you make if you move your minimum bid from, say, .05 to .10. The day I changed our bids from .05 to .10 is the day we started to make a whole bunch more money b/c then every other bidder has to bid .10 or higher to get up the list. We more than doubled our money, somewhat, I believe b/c of perceived value. If you sell at a nickel advertisers wonder if the traffic is any good. Sell at a dime or higher minimum, you are telling by price already it is good stuff. And if it is a good generic is will unusally convert good enough for them to bid .10 or higher anyways so everyone is happy.
.

Minisites are a waste of your time if your not putting up fresh, unique and interesting content.

Parking domains is for rich domainers who have awesome generics or you're on top of current events (before they are publicized current events) and you reg a popular topic as a domain name (like spitzergirl.com) ...otherwise...forget regging lame names and hoping seo will help, it won't. Google has deindexed most of my parked sites at parked.com now.

So, to sum it up. If you don't have great generics....develop a real site (or a few of them if you have time).

Would you guys agree?

mrizos, great generics are crashing too. I've talked to others who have good one like me and they are felling the pinch. So even the "rich" domainers are feeling this squeeze.

I'd like to make it clear that it is industrywide - all parking companies.
.

 

[mrizos]

mrizos, great generics are crashing too. I've talked to others who have good one like me and they are felling the pinch. So even the "rich" domainers are feeling this squeeze.

I'd like to make it clear that it is industrywide - all parking companies.
.

Yeah, I agree. The pinch is on. You can visit any forum that discusses parking and see that.

 

[blluckyboy]

i lived in this forum for a long time and maybe 3 days ago i plan to apply a account (40+ domains) of parked.but so despair they refused me.so unease for a tyro .
a message had be send to Donny but he can't help me because of my useless domains.what can i do?

 

[domianinvestor]

Is stats froze on last night for anyone else? Mine seems to have shut down at 8:05 PM (20:05)

 

[PowerUp]

Dear all,

How long does it take for your site to be de-index by G after you point it to Parked?

I've bought some expired traffic domains. Pointed them to Parked. Now almost 1 month and they still receive traffic from G.

 

[Donny]

Stats are a little behind today as we were putting in a new IP database system last night.

Donny

 

[Shenron]

Dear all,

How long does it take for your site to be de-index by G after you point it to Parked?

I've bought some expired traffic domains. Pointed them to Parked. Now almost 1 month and they still receive traffic from G.

It took me less than 24 hours for a domain I had with over 3000 pageviews per day.

 

[domianinvestor]

donny when will things get caught up? Also are yesterdays stats behind as well?

 

[netmeg]

I dunno, I think I am getting bot-tacked. I have a domain with one visit, and over the past three or four hours, the clicks just keep going up and up. But the visits don't. It's at 32 clicks right now.

 

[rickkumar]

Why are some of you talking about de-indexing of parked domains?

Have you seen your parked domains getting de-indexed by G? Is it across the board or just some domains?

I don't remember my parked domains ever getting de-indexed by G. In fact I always thought they were pretty nicely indexed.

 

[netmeg]

Why are some of you talking about de-indexing of parked domains?

Have you seen your parked domains getting de-indexed by G? Is it across the board or just some domains?

I don't remember my parked domains ever getting de-indexed by G. In fact I always thought they were pretty nicely indexed.

Yes, we should get our terms straight here.

Roughly 10-15% of my domains have been de-indexed by Google. That means that once upon a time they were indexed, and now they are not. A search for "domain.com" produces no results, a site: command produces no results, and Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) is greyed out. This is independent of parking company; some are at Parked, some are at Fabulous, some are at Imodo and some at Bodis.

None of the domains I've purchased in the last four weeks have been indexed.

Most of the remainder of my domains have been deprecated. It's a good word; look it up. What I mean by this is that they are still indexed, but will not be returned for a search in the first 1000 results, except very occasionally on some weird long tail string. They're still there, and can be seen with the site: command, but they may as well not be, because they won't come up when someone searches. Again, across all parking companies I participate in; it's not just Parked (and maybe we should move all this to a separate thread)

My analyses of traffic show virtually no organic search engine traffic anymore, where it used to; in fact, I hardly ever see either Googlebot or whatever the replacement is for Slurp anymore either (in the places where I used to see that)

I have maybe a dozen or two domains that actually still come up for a search, and I even found one that was PR2 the other day. But they're dropping out too.

I'm ambivalent about it - obviously I would like traffic (and income) but on the other hand, I'm not sure I believe that parked domains really belong in search engines as organic search results anyway. Is a puzzlement. And at any rate, it doesn't appear to be my decision either way.

 

[copper]

I am seeing lots of 1, 2, 3 cents per click lately.
Is it just me?

 

[PowerUp]

Does Parked still pay ads from hyperlinks? ie expired domains with lots of backlinks. I've read somewhere that Parked doesn't pay for traffic coming from hyperlinks (which include backlinks) anymore. Is this true?

 

[Web Trader]

Yes, we should get our terms straight here.

Roughly 10-15% of my domains have been de-indexed by Google. That means that once upon a time they were indexed, and now they are not. A search for "domain.com" produces no results, a site: command produces no results, and Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) is greyed out. This searis independent of parking company; some are at Parked, some are at Fabulous, some are at Imodo and some at Bodis.

None of the domains I've purchased in the last four weeks have been indexed.

Most of the remainder of my domains have been deprecated. It's a good word; look it up. What I mean by this is that they are still indexed, but will not be returned for a search in the first 1000 results, except very occasionally on some weird long tail string. They're still there, and can be seen with the site: command, but they may as well not be, because they won't come up when someone searches. Again, across all parking companies I participate in; it's not just Parked (and maybe we should move all this to a separate thread)

My analyses of traffic show virtually no organic search engine traffic anymore, where it used to; in fact, I hardly ever see either Googlebot or whatever the replacement is for Slurp anymore either (in the places where I used to see that)

I have maybe a dozen or two domains that actually still come up for a search, and I even found one that was PR2 the other day. But they're dropping out too.

I'm ambivalent about it - obviously I would like traffic (and income) but on the other hand, I'm not sure I believe that parked domains really belong in search engines as organic search results anyway. Is a puzzlement. And at any rate, it doesn't appear to be my decision either way.

I say, they do belong in search results. They provide a valuable service for everyone involved, and the economic activity they generate benefits the economy. When I first went online to search for this or that in the 90's, I really appreciated things like that, long before I got involved in online business. GoTo was even one of my favorite personal search resources for a while, even when they were putting those bids or prices right there next to the results, which seemed a little odd at the time.

When my best parking .com fell a million miles off page 1 of Google's results for a prime search phrase less than a year ago (for which this domain is the very search phrase itself, as in, can't get any better than that), you could still find prominently perched on page 1 what appeared to be nothing but a typical dressed up collection of affiliate links riding on a worse domain for that phrase. Are things like that somehow more desirable or better than a parking page, which aggregates resources for consumers searching for something they need or want?

Has anyone mentioned how Google, for instance, became a registrar recently? I'm not sure how much difference it makes in terms of their easy access to data compared to before, but perhaps that made it much easier to penalize parking domains if they wanted to. For instance, I would suppose it would take nothing at all to write a line or two of code such that:

"...if name servers (=, are like, whatever) *.Parked.com or *thisotherone.com or *thatonetoo.com, then add 500 penalty points to (domain), or blow it out entirely..."

I suppose this kind of thing could also be done based on what is found in the HTML source, too.

Additionally, what about the matter of Parked using a rival's feed? Would that be a factor as well? For instance, "...if parking page also uses competitor's feed to earn money and market share for rival, add heap big pile of smoking penalty points big time..."

Am I off base here, or would any of this be a factor?

1. Is there no actual slant against parking pages per se, but they simply lose based on pure and noble algorithms?

2. Is it just a slam against parking pages?

3. Is it a slam against the competition?

4. Is it a combination of the above?

Of course, if parking pages are dying in the very SE's whose search feed they are using, then perhaps they don't care about the competition factor for this.

 

[namedesire]

Doom & gloom thats all i hear dont fear looks a liitle rough ,things wiill get better theres no doubt....

 

[Donny]

Netmeg - Googlebot hits us about 400k times a day. Yahoo's bot about 200k a day. Natural SE traffic over the past 3 weeks has gone down about 5-10% on parked domains. But even out domains that aren't parked are down about 7% from a month ago. Could this be because Google isn't getting as much traffic as before? I have no idea. Domains do get delisted all of the time at google.

copper - 1,2, and 3 cent clicks depend on what country the traffic is from.

Powerup - Yes we do still pay for link traffic.

Web Trader - Google has been a registrar for a while, but it's not as easy to get access to information as you think. But you mentioned something about nameservers, why not just some the ones provided by your registrar of choice? I know a lot of people who do this today. Does it help? You got me. Google can't easily detect that we are using a Yahoo feed. We hide it fairly well. But they could get domains for duplicate content, so that's something that I could see possibly happening.

Donny

 

[Web Trader]

Anybody out there doing better with different nameservers?