ABOVE.com management results

[alcy]

hi, I recently joined above.com with dns ponting to them to manage my portfolio for parking.

I was previously unhappy with sedo and bodis.

I added 4 accounts:
bodis, sedo, theparkingplace,namedrive

it has been only 3 days since I did that... so I am not expecting any results yet, but being newbie to domains and parking, and impatient to understand how it works.. I would like you to tell me why i get about 20 000 hits per day, about 200 uniques in that, about 100 in the "reported" column, and 0 clicks.. that's for my entire portfolio of course.. which is being managed by above.com

are these numbers in any way conclusive? can one really get 20k hits and 0 clicks?

any input from the experts here would be appreciated.

thank you

 

[Hypersot]

Totally ignore the 'Hits' column and instead focus your attention on the 'Uniques' and 'Reported' columns when you want to see how many actual visits you got.
'Hits' show you pageviews, 'Uniques' and 'Reported' show you visits and that's what matters.
If I visit your domain and refresh my browser 1000 times you'll get 1 unique and 1000 hits... you get the difference?

''Reported' show the number of visitors that the parking services reported. So, if BODIS show on their panel that you got 10 visits for domain A then that's what you see on the 'Reported' column (summed for all parking services of course).

'Uniques' show the number of visitors that Above.com has 'Normalized'.
Above.com has partnership with many parking services, each parking service have their own unique way of measuring traffic.

What Above.com does is 'filters' and 'balances out' some of that traffic reported in an attempt to show you numbers as closer as it can be to reality.

You need both numbers to make a safe conclusion on your domains' traffic.


Now, to your question.
200 visits (100 reported) and no clicks is perfectly normal especially since you mentioned that you ...

hi, I recently joined above.com with dns ponting to them to manage my portfolio for parking.

recently means a week? Above.com needs at least a month (if not more) to finish calculations PER parking service.

What above.com does needs patience. Parking is not easy, getting the right content to show on your visitors depending upon past traffic of your domain and keywords within is not easy.... be patient.

Keep one thing in mind though. Not every domain is the same. Some very low traffic domains might need manual handling. Above.com specializes (and it makes sense too) in domains that have fairly good traffic.
You'll make things very hard for above (and very slow to you) when you add domains with 1 visitor / day for example.

 

[alcy]

wonderful reply! very greatful!

by recently I meant 3 days ago.

so I get like 30 000 hits per day average for whole portfolio.. yes the same # hits I will be ignoring rom now on thanks to you
and in that I get about 400 uniques and around 200 reported average.

zero clicks still. .but I presume these numbers are not even final.. and definitely not optimized.. as that takes weeks as you put it.

I did however just drop namedrive parking from my accounts.. so am down to sedo, parkingplace and bodis for now.. I heard the fewer the better to begin. so maybe I should drop another one or two. hmm.

you mentioned that above.com shows stats and arrangers things nicely, but I am sure you are also aware thta as long as you point the dns to them, they also actually redirect and arrange which domains is parked where.. they are a stats only company if you don't point dns to them... but truly manage things if you do point it there.

hmm.. I just thought of this.. if I use a manger like ABOVE, does this mean I add another middleman for my traffic revenu to share with them? if not then how do they get paid for this "service"?

there is a nice long list of other park providers ABOVE supports on their page, so I may join some more in future. I was looking for a nice list of parking places. domainapps and voodoo kicked me out.. for being a newbie I guess.

thanks again.

 

[Hypersot]

My advice?
drop all parking services except ParkingCrew for now.
Keeping only one parking service will teach you how Above.com actually handles traffic.

ParkingCrew have a very nice interface with everything pretty straightforward and they also pay generally well.
Reason I choose them for you to start though is that they also have the option to manually set your keywords (in case you think that a domain shows irrelevant keywords) and also they show what keywords the visitors look for when they arrive at your parked domain
That will teach you a lot about keyword usage.
Very important to note though is that manually changing the keywords is valid only for the keywords show on the side and not what the main advertiser decides to show. No-one has control over that except the Main Advertiser and the Visitor.

When you are confident you have a grasp on how above.com + one parking service work then try to add another one, then another one and so on.
Ofc your total traffic plays a major role on the max. parking services you should have. I get roughly 8k uniques / day and I have 7 parking services which is WAY too much.

As for your other observation, what benefit above.com have from handling all our domains?
Well, that's a good question. The obvious answer lies on the 'Maximizer'.

The Maximizer is a feature where some of your traffic is being tried out on Above.com's advertisers and gets monetized...or not.
You don't have control over it other than to turn it ON or OFF. It's totally up to you though if you want some of your traffic randomly to be redirected.

 

[alcy]

My advice?
drop all parking services except ParkingCrew for now.
Keeping only one parking service will teach you how Above.com actually handles traffic.

ParkingCrew have a very nice interface with everything pretty straightforward and they also pay generally well.
Reason I choose them for you to start though is that they also have the option to manually set your keywords (in case you think that a domain shows irrelevant keywords) and also they show what keywords the visitors look for when they arrive at your parked domain
That will teach you a lot about keyword usage.
Very important to note though is that manually changing the keywords is valid only for the keywords show on the side and not what the main advertiser decides to show. No-one has control over that except the Main Advertiser and the Visitor.

When you are confident you have a grasp on how above.com + one parking service work then try to add another one, then another one and so on.
Ofc your total traffic plays a major role on the max. parking services you should have. I get roughly 8k uniques / day and I have 7 parking services which is WAY too much.

As for your other observation, what benefit above.com have from handling all our domains?
Well, that's a good question. The obvious answer lies on the 'Maximizer'.

The Maximizer is a feature where some of your traffic is being tried out on Above.com's advertisers and gets monetized...or not.
You don't have control over it other than to turn it ON or OFF. It's totally up to you though if you want some of your traffic randomly to be redirected.

 

[alcy]

thanks! I'll give it a try.. is that one of them places that need to check out your stuff before they let you in? and if so, do you know of any good ones that accept pretty much everyone? newbie or not..

cheers

 

[Hypersot]

hmm, I just noticed that Above.com does not have the automatic account creation anymore

in the past, above.com created an account for you on some selected parking services. Those accounts were automatically accepted by said parking services. So, I can't answer if they accept you easily or not. Honestly, I don't know.

imo, they easiest parking services to get started are ParkingCrew and Voodoo followed by Bodis. All have very low payout limits (BODIS actually have NO limits at all)

so, stay with BODIS then but you won't be able to check anything I mentioned about keywords. You will be able to check the referrals though ie. Where the traffic is coming from (URL) and which country.

Before you buy any more domains check the various threads about parking, especially the threads suggested here:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/popular-monetization-discussions.844939/

 

[alcy]

got it.
thanks!

hmmm.. all in all, do you think it's worth the bother wiht above.com at all?

are they getting any of my revenue profit in the end, for their sergvice or how else they make a buck?

I am tempted to just park everything at bodis.. for say a month, see where that gets me in revenue.. then maybe switch to sedo.. or some other places..

you think that's not as good as having everytihng managed by above.com? even if I only stick with one parking company like bodis?

it sure is nice to see all those stats at above.com.. but if I'm goign to leave only bodis in my account anyway, then I can't quite see the point of it.

let alone if above.com becomes middleman and gets share of the little I'll be making on parking anyway

 

[Hypersot]

With over a thousand domains I own (both for parking and not), if I didn't use above.com I'd be completely lost.
As I said, I honestly don't know if they get revenue from us other than the maximizer. I get paid for the traffic that is reported by the parking services I'm with and never had any problems with that.

Finally, from time to time I visit some of my sites because I realised that, sometimes, parked domains don't show what we intend for them to show. Anyway, by visiting them I've never found a single domain showing something 'obscure' (ie. in the case that above.com redirects the traffic for their benefit)

All in all, even if I lose -let's say- a 1% by using above.com it's definitely worth it. On the other hand by the use of maximizer I might even getting more profit than without maximizer.

If you plan to stay with one parking service then Above.com might not be for you but note that there is no parking service that pays well for all kinds of domains... otherwise it'd make no sense using 7 different ones like I do.

 

[alcy]

oki doke.

I'll stick to above.com for now.. you think I should still just use one parking company at a time in the beginning instead of 3 or 4? and only later on, have several companies at once?

 

[Hypersot]

Why would I change my mind in 45mins?

 

[alcy]

hey there.. thanks a lot for this info again I appreciate it a lot!

I hope things work out okay for me and I can at least hope to make all or most of regfees on my portoflio with parking.. so I'm talking about 1cent per day per domaqin in revenue.. which meqans about 3.5$ per year per domain.. that'd be nice.. as most of my dmains are 3$ infos from godaddy

but I fear that nowadays, even the modest 1cent per day per domqain park revenue may be a very exaggerated expectation

we'll see.

this is my trial and error first year.. where I live and learn and hopefully not lose much money.
next years I'll start looking at other options.. like domain auctions.. expired.. current.. deleted.. etc.. still, I think with a lot of researtch and time spent today seeking out good naqmes to register (coupled with some promo offers like 3$ per .info domain name),. one can make a few dollars there too.

why do I have a feeling you'll have a whole lot of stuff to say abotu what I just wrote, and 99% of it will be in disaghreement with me lol

cheers

 

[Hypersot]

When I started domaineering (ie. parking) -and because of above.com- I thought exactly as you do now, ie. if I could get even 1 cent out of each domain on average and if I owned a thousand of domains that had profit 1 cent / domain on average, I could seriously think that I could profit in the end of the year

well, here is the good news... my initial strategy ended in success

edit: btw. I started a year ago

 

[alcy]

lol
well then.. how about that for good news then.
there is hope for newbies in domaining after all. hahah.

well.. my entire parking adventure is about 1 week old.. 4 days with above.com.. so you can only see confirmed verified above.com stats from 19th march til 21-22nd.. th eprevious days before that I guess above.com just fetched some stats from other park companies I was on..

in case you are interested in checking the stats I got so far.. here they come:

Day Hits Uniques Reported Clicks CTR nCTR EPC RPM nRPM Revenue
2015-03-23 Mon 9319 67 0 0 0% 0.00% $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00
2015-03-22 Sun 28838 171 90 0 0.00% 0.00% $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00
2015-03-21 Sat 28038 255 154 0 0.00% 0.00% $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00
2015-03-20 Fri 9032 495 136 0 0.00% 0.00% $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00
2015-03-19 Thu 1065 80 119 0 0.00% 0.00% $0.00 $0.08 $0.12 $0.01
2015-03-18 Wed 0 0 398 0 0.00% - $0.00 $0.00 - $0.00
2015-03-17 Tue 0 0 120 0 0.00% - $0.00 $0.08 - $0.01
2015-03-16 Mon 0 0 414 0 0.00% - $0.00 $0.05 - $0.02
2015-03-15 Sun 0 0 153 2 1.31% - $0.00 $0.00 - $0.00
2015-03-14 Sat 0 0 132 0 0.00% - $0.00 $0.00 - $0.00


I hope this getsa better with time.. especially the revenue column the good news is that the revenue column cannot get any wost. I am real happy about that.

 

[Hypersot]

That table don't show much really since I don't know the nature of your domains

for example,
if your domains are supposed to have a high number of low valued clicks (like adult, movies, downloads, etc.) then your stats are bad since you should earn clicks from day one

if on the other hand your domains are based on low number of clicks but high cpc then you just have to wait and see.
once I bought an insurance domain which had only 3 clicks in the year I owned it in total (it expired recently). Each click earned me $15.
That's what I mean by low traffic high cpc

 

[alcy]

I see. well.. I am newbie so I have newbie methods and procedures for getitng my domains.

for instance I quite like the one word nouns in .info... like games.info or movies.info whcih sold for 20k and up... or the less valuable ones but still nouns .info which went for hundereds and thousands.. most nouns are gone.. but if you look hqard and long, some are left.. then if no nouns .info you have adjectives etc.. I think I just have a small thing for one word dictionary words... and I go for .info cause: 1-it's cheap $3 a pop.. 2-it's still a better extension than most others like lawyer etc.. 3-org/com/net are qall gone in those same names.

so I ended up with a whole bunch of one word dictrionary .info names.

now.. while this may have vaqlue.. now or later for domain auctions, sales etc.. I honestly am not sure how to view these for parking traffic. this is why i keep expectqation at at a modest 1 cent per day per domain.

then I have some coms.. mostly 2 word combos.. but well researched ones..

again my stuff is all new regs. I am not in domain auctions/expired etc, level.

and when I say researched stuff.. well.. here is my newbie method:

I find an avbailable name.. step1, I google it and see how mqany instant results this gets.. it's no fancy keyowrd research here, but if google say 20 hits for "megapulously" and 20million hits for "respectably" then that stll tells me a thing or two about a thing or two.
once I'm done there, I go to step 2- check age of domain to see if it was once registered. so then I get either negative, or number of years when first regstrd.. I try to stick to already regtrd names.. then I go to step3.. some value estomator like estibot to see exact/broad search for this term.. so I know if we're talking 1 milion per monht or 100 per month...

and then when I'm done with that.. I register my name.

I guess befor estarting out in domaining, I had choice between investing my money into one domain name worth couple grand.. or into 1000 newreg names.

I know they say quality over quantity.. but I waas never good at following majorities.

the way I see it.. is that if some dude at some point was able to sell his tips.info name for 2.5k
or his christians.info name for 3.383$ or his sailing.info for 3.600$

then if I get me a whole bunch of .infos .. well.. sooner or later selling one or 10 or heck why not a 100 of them is gonna pay my whole newbie portofolio .. and still leave me with some for later!

and as newbie, I am not into making money, I'm just into not losing any.

 

[Hypersot]

I think you are confusing reselling with parking. Those two are different things with different approaches.
Since, as you say, you're totally new to this it's better if you stay on one path, ie. parking OR reselling.

Don't get me wrong now, ofc you can sell your domains intended for parking and get parking income from domains you intended reselling but it's the strategy followed and time wasted that you lose in the process if you try and invest on both at the same time.

One other thing that you seem to have gotten wrong (at least imo) is the past sales.
Past sales are a way to boost the sale price higher to end users and that's it. A past similar sale by itself won't get your domain sold.
As long as we're not talking about the obvious rare domains that sell by themselves (one word coms, 3-4 letters coms, premium numbers, etc.) you need to do your research and use your sale abilities to sell a domain that has no past traffic and is based solely on a name.

So, for starters, choose your path.

If I had to talk about myself, the strategy I followed was to try and earn a relatively steady income from parking, by totally ignoring the name value and focusing only on past history, and then spend a portion of said income for domains that I believed had name value.
So far this has worked.

 

[alcy]

I see.

but at same time.. if I do not ignore domain name when comes to parking, this can kinda guarantee or bring in some traffic too.. typein traffic.. that comes from good names.. popular ones etc..

at least that's how I thought things work.

once someone ends up on your paqrked page, and what chances you have of them clicking on ads or not, should not hav eanything to do whether they got there from typein traffic from domainame only, or because the domain was once registered and is aged.

oh well.. if all else fails.. I'll be doing a firesale for regfee on ebay or elsewhere for my names..

thats option 1.. and option 2.. I'll be making my eyes even more red if no sales and no parking revenue in few months.. and try to develop as mqany domains as possible.. and put adsense on them..

as far as I read, developing and ad sense is pretty much gauranteed way to make money.
and get real red eyes. lol

cheers

 

[alcy]

well, thank you again! I hope my newbie ways did not offend you by their stupidity or such!

I am a very open minded fellow and I take all advice seriously!

rest assured what you said was not taken lightly.

that being said, to end our friendly talk I want to ask you this final thought:

if you said you concentrated on buying domains for parking reveue, which I assume meant domains with proven recent traffic before you bought them.. or developed for traffic by you.. then my mind cannot phatom how such domains can continue to generate steady parking revenue for you once they are parked.. and left their full of ads only. why would people continue to come there and generate parking revenue for you, and keep clicking on ads..

what a puzzling thing!

I mean I can understqand how people will keep coming back to a website with contents you constantly supervise or develop, or in very least just keep their in constant quantity, when you do this with adsense websites and adsense ads.. but for a simple prked page full of ads, how do you manage to have people come back to you on constant basis for constant forever and ever revenue?

cheers

 

[Hypersot]

First of all, since I don't use my own traffic tracker I have no idea on the bounce rate of my domains, that is, I don't know if they are the same people coming back or if they are new.

My parked domains' traffic comes mainly from type-in (mostly old bookmarks I guess) , search engines and backlinks ... in that order

now, don't ask me how I do my research because If I tell you that it's like sending you money via paypal
suffice to say that I sleep only once / 2 days and during that time I work full time looking for domains non-stop
I also use a vast array of tools, either bought or custom made by me using excel (it's the only single 'programmable' thing I know how to use :P)

I'm saying all that just to give you a glimpse for the level of difficulty of finding domains that will 'probably' have traffic.