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

 

[alcy]

howdy
well since you said you concentrated on history of domains rather than keywords in name or quality of name, then yes it must be true its old booksmarks and backlinks.. cause normally type in traffic relates to people typing keywords directly into address bar.. and that normally means someone looking for a "car".. or hotel.. or pet.. or dog.. etc..

and not somebody looking for a rac or letoh or tep etc.. as masy be cause for domain names of someone who concentrated on history only.. not the name..

or so I understand all of it.

this is why I figured.. well at least in part.. that having good domain names will not only give me chance to sell them at auction eventually, for someone's business or blog site or what not.. bgut also give me chance to get some parking type in traffic.. cause if I got a name that says findflights or osmehting like that.. well.. backlinks or not, there is always a chance for type in traffic..

but I'm glad I'm on right track regarding sleeping patterns and red eyes.. and that both red eyes and no sleep are requirement for doing well in domaining. so definitely glad about that.

hahha.

and no, there is nothing wrong with sending me money via paypal. so I don't see why you'd be suggesting otherwise.

 

[Name Trader]

This has been an interesting conversation. I'll just add my 2cents worth of advice about Above.com.

Above.com does a good job managing a portfolio of domains between several parking companies and getting the maximum revenue return from those parking companies. Like @Hypersot, they have been a godsend to me. I would say I would never go back to doing all the work Above.com does behind the scenes, manually.

For an average domain, with average traffic it takes 3-4 weeks per parking service to optimize the domain. From what you have told us, I would think, it's going to take at least 4 weeks per parking service. Above can only optimize between 2 parking companies at a time. So with 2 parking companies it will take 1 month for them to fully optimize between the 2 companies. With 3 parking companies it will take 2 months. 4 companies 3 months and so on. So it is better to limit the number of parking companies you add to Above.com to about 3. Otherwise, you will find that Above may well be sub-optimizing their optimization testing (by sending traffic to your lowest paying providers first).

As for your choice of companies, I have these observations. Bodis is not a bad company, but they haven't worked out for me. Sedo is not a good parking company, only paying for the first click by a visitor. I would never use them because of that. I don't think they make up for the lost revenue by paying higher for the only click they pay for. TheParkingPlace I've barely heard of, and never used. But they don't appear to have any/many recommendations. NameDrive, I've tried several years ago, and found them wanting in terms of revenues. Of course YMMV. I second Hypersot's recommendations, that you should sign up with Parking Crew and Voodoo (two parking must haves) and use Bodis as your third choice. Drop Sedo/TheParkingPlace/NameDrive. By drop. I mean simply disable them in Above.com

As for your domain choices. I understand where you are coming from. But most traffic goes to the .com domains. You should have some way of finding out what backlinks a prospective purchase has. Backlinks are a good provider of visitors, and hopefully clicks. I use the free services of MajesticSEO.com for this. You only get limited resources for free. I think you are a far cry from needing their paid services. There are also a whole slew of backlink checkers if you Google it. With 0 backlinks, you have to rely wholely on actual type-ins for your visitors. A rhetorical question, to provide some thought. How many type-ins do you think your 2 word .coms provide in a month. I don't need a reply. Just think about it. The same advice goes for your .info domains, but with substantially diminished volumes. I for example, don't park any of my non.com domains because of lack of traffic. Again YMMV.

You should separate, in your mind at least, the domains you buy for resale, and the domains you buy for parking. I buy all my domains basically for resale, and any parking revenue they make is an added and important bonus.

Good luck with your parking adventures. You will do better to heed our advices in this thread.

 

[alcy]

thanks for sharing
it's great to share knowledge.. expeirence.. too cool.

all the other companies listed on Above.com are by evaluation only. need to be accepted. they don't like newbies much I guess.. and only look for high revenue people.

to be honest, many newbies arne't left with much choice when comes to parking places.

it's sedo, parkingplace, afternic, and bodis.. if you wanna add to the list I'd be more than happy to hear.

well.. it's good to hear above.com is doing a lot of work that'd take you and me years to research and even then we'd probably fall short. makes me wanna stick with above.

since no one is even talking about godaddy premium parking or afternic parking (neither part of above.com program), I don't presume they are even worth a thought.

though I was told by above.com rep that they are working with afternic park to integrate.

I managed to put together quite large portfolio of my newbie domains over the past month I'm doing this. I can't see how by end of year when regs run out, I wouldn't sell for enough profit to at least not lose on my first year of venturing into this.. heck, if things get tight and short on time for me, even some firesale auctions on ebay at 1$ start price shoudl fetch some money.. cause a whole lot of research went into getting my doamins and names.. so it's not just some random crap.. though most of it is crap.. it just isn;'t random lol but.. show me a a newbie whose portfolio is not 80% crap...

thanks for your tips!

p.s. I know sedo is crap for parking but let me tell you true story:
when I began buyijg domains and parking, I started with sedo.. I was getting about 200 uniques a day and out of that.. about 100-150 clicks.. I had no previous ref to go by.. so I thought okay.. that's not bad clcikthrough ratio.. then I decided to join their premium certified pqarking or whatever its called.. and the day I did that.. it all went dead.. to zero!
to this day I cannot figure out the connection or why.. not that the clicks before paid anything.. it was pennies.. but still... from many clicks to zero.. I still wonder why.

 

[Name Trader]

You should definitely proactively apply for accounts at ParkingCrew and Voodoo. They are amongst the top payers at the moment. Of course YMMV. You should really attempt to get PC/V/B as your parking companies you use with Above.com. IMHO, you will fall short with any other combination. If after 3 months Bodis doesn't work out for you, then switch from Bodis to RookMedia. Or just add RM and watch. You should also turn on Above's Maximizer.

 

[alcy]

yep.. left above settings default.. so maximizer is on.
won't touch that. thanks for tip.

well... okay.. I didn't know I can keep trying at voodoo etc.. but.. I guess it makes sense.. as our portofolio changes, why shouldn't we try again

I was still up to last nite considering just moving all domains to one park site at a time.. and giving it a month at each to see.. but after what yo said about above, plus reading some nice reviews elsewhere, I think I'll just stay there.

so right now I have there:
sedo
theparkingplace
namedrive
bodis


I have been on above.com for exactly one week now.
I get about 400 a day on whole portoflio and zero clicks. about 20 000 hits which don't matter they say.. which to me is amazing even if it's too early to tell.. cause how can there be 400 uniques and zero clicks.

I think I mnay need to edit my whople portfolio for keywords and such on bodis etc.. to get better results.. cause I don't think above.com and their maximizer do anhy of that.

 

[Name Trader]

No Above do not do any of that. For example, if you optimize keywords at one company, Above will notice they are paying better than elsewhere and move domains over to that service, on a domain by domain basis.

You should ask yourself why you failed with your previous applications at Voodoo. They only ask to see your best 10 domains. So send them your best 10 .com domains. They don't like new registrations, so don't send anything under a year old. Send them domains which make sense verbally, have some backlinks. Pick your best 10 domains with these criteria, and try again. Do the same at Parking Crew.

 

[alcy]

got it.. well... looks like some optimization keyword work ahead of me. a whole lot of it lol

I better make sure I won't be dropping those companies afterward.. like sedo. I probably shouldn't bother optimizing there.

i'm curious if ayoen ever did any afternic parking.. no one ever talks about oit.. most probably don't even know its there.. I like afternic.. beautiful site. nice customer service.. plus I almost sold a 3$ .info there last week for 7k... offer accepted and all.. sadly, escorwed payment failed.

and yes, I know why I failed. voodoo was the first place I ever applied to. and when I did, I didn't even know what a good domain name was. then I got better. I like my portoflio.. it's like my baby. it shows progress and progression... evolution.. lol.. when I look at my first domains, I want to puke and get a refund.. then when I look at the rest.. I feel proud.. well.. prouder.

now all I buy is english one word domains. they always get some traffic.

I also make sure thye've all been registered before. even if I don't know how recent the traffic was on them.. at least I know they were once registered.. in most cases, 10 years ago and up. which to me is a good thing.

 

[Name Trader]

You should always check the domain history before purchasing, at the wayback machine, web.archive.org. Obviously a developed website with relevant content is the best you can hope for. But it really needs to have backlinks as well.

I come from the camp that .com is king. And I suppose those one word domains you are now buying are not .com's. So I don't really agree with your strategy. But that's ok. Any strategy which is working, is ok by me.

I'm not feeling the commitment of, yeah, I'm going to file my application for ParkingCrew and Voodoo parking accounts, tonight. They will definitely be better paying parking companies for you than the one's you are currently are using. I can't promise I won't harp on this again until you say you have applied again.

I have kinda used Afternic for parking, a long time ago, and well, it wasn't so good. Did I give them a fair crack of the whip? Probably not. Well when other companies pay you more for the clicks, your head usually goes in that direction. I'd rate it as a third rate parking company, like GoDaddy who now owns it.

Setting the keywords is nowadays marginal at best because Google thinks it knows better than you what keywords should be used on a domain. Very often, you can set keywords, and Google just ignores them and uses their own. YMMV.

 

[alcy]

you're right. the english one words I'm keeping an eye out are not coms. the only one word english dictionary you can find today in com is something like "hypothermoticitally"

I think you get the picture.

whereas in org or net you can still find tons of good one word english words.

then even more in biz.

and then fewer .info than biz.. but still more info than org or net.

I'll definitely keep applying. thanks for these tips!

but if my portofolio they do not like, then I am sure all it means is that they see no park revenue potential for it to begin with. so I think being rejected will be good indication of parking potential of my portfolio.

I am mostly interested in reselling domains.

before I knew anything about domains and parkibg, which was a pretty short while ago, I was under impression I could relativley easily recover annual reg fees from parking.

the more I understand the more I realize that registering new (or once before registered) domains and parking them for revenue are mutually exclusive things.. in most cases...
and therefore recovering annual reg fees for your domaqins, while just keeping them round waiting to sell, is fools gold dream.


that being said, any thoughts on adsense and developing some content at all? I read a lot. most say it is not much better than parking if any.. plus loads of work.

any thoughts on this or personal experience?

regards

 

[Name Trader]

You should only give them your top ten domains they ask for, not your whole portfolio. I think if you are submitting .net or .org one word nouns you ought to be accepted. I wouldn't include the .com you mention above. If you like you can PM me your domains and I will suggest which ones you could submit.

If you are mostly interested in selling, you should stick with two word (which make sense) .com's. But I had the impression from this thread that your main interest was in parking.

Parking and Reselling are not diametrically opposed. I sell a few domains each year from my for sale links in my parking pages. Good domains will sell themselves. Parking revenue requires visitors (usually from backlinks). This is where a previously developed website which had done good seo work is a bonus. Type-in visitors, I feel, are becoming fewer. YMMV

It's probably 5-10 times harder to sell a non-com than a .com. I have never sold a non.com domain I wasn't liquidating. I've been in this business since 2006. <10% of my portfolio is non.com. That %age is going down. I've let a lot of (what I thought were good) single word non.com's go. I've only bought one or two.

I think you need to be quite gifted in designing your adsense pages to make much money with adsense.

 

[alcy]

hmm.. I didn't think it was 10 times harder to sell non .com... I just thought it was 10 times less profitable

which is fine by me.. cause as a newbie, my goals are modest and realistic. by end of year I'd love to simply recover my investment money from buying my portfolio (in my case this means strictly registering my portfolio domains). if I do that, be it from parking or reselling for profit, then I'm content newbie. then next years we can talk about profit etc..

hmmm... I thought decent one word english dictionary words for org and net and even biz and info were a good strategy.. I still think they are.. so I'll continue to keep an eye out for those, but I'll definitely incorporate more well thought out twoword .coms too as per your advice. I guess anything like bestCars or bestHotels are still great com options.. and while at it why not make it 3 word coms.. like thebestcars thebesthotels.. that sorta thing.

from your experience is there a potential for reselling adult related names? coms or other..

thanks for the pm offer, I have no proven past traffic domains cause I do not get my things from auctions, and wwth some proof of revenue in auction description.. so until I do that one day, I have my doubts as to acceptance into the better parking companies.. but if you still feel there are chances for that, well, then I can pm you something in future.

cheers

 

[Name Trader]

Personally, I don't like domains like bestcars.com, etc. I'd prefer domains like musclecars.com, kitcars.com (all outside my reach but they were given as examples only). I think three word domains which include a "The" tacked on the front, might be in the range you can sell (at your level), but I don't like them. I have a few two word domains which include "The". Adult websites are cheap charlies. They prefer regfee domains, unless it's sex.com Your single word .net/.org domains are ok. But some people will disagree with my assertion that single word .biz/.info domains are mostly crap. YMMV. Of course cars.biz has some value.

But we digress. your thread was posted in Domain Parking and Monetization. We have strayed far from that subject. Also, your lack of interest in taking any advice about your parking strategy which could potentially increase your parking between 100-500%, means I'm going to bow out of this thread.

I hope you have learned something from @Hypersot and myself.

 

[alcy]

good info as always
thanks a lot.

interest is the one thing I don't lack. sorry if I gave that impression. it's obviously some kind of unfortunate misunderstanding.

take care.

 

[Name Trader]

I don't think it's a misunderstanding if you refuse to apply for accounts at Parking Crew and Voodoo. It shows a lack of interest in the receipt of solid advice. But lets leave it at that. I, for one, have no desire to get into a shouting match over it. To each their own. As I am used to saying, YMMV.

 

[Above_Steve]

As I said, I honestly don't know if they get revenue from us other than the maximizer.

Hi Hypersot,

To answer your question, Above.com does not take a cut of your parking revenues. The Parking Manager, now called AutoPilot, is a completely free service.

And you are correct, we only generate revenue via the Maximizer. But, typically you'll make more money via the Maximizer than any parking company anyway.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[Name Trader]

Hi Hypersot,

To answer your question, Above.com does not take a cut of your parking revenues. The Parking Manager, now called AutoPilot, is a completely free service.

And you are correct, we only generate revenue via the Maximizer. But, typically you'll make more money via the Maximizer than any parking company anyway.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

The problem with maximizer as I see it, is the potential for having a lot of unruly visitors (from wherever) which can raise the specter of your parked domain being blacklisted for parking by Google. It's why I turned it off.

 

[Above_Steve]

The problem with maximizer as I see it, is the potential for having a lot of unruly visitors (from wherever) which can raise the specter of your parked domain being blacklisted for parking by Google. It's why I turned it off.

Hi stub,

Our Maximizer service is a separate service from our Parking Optimizer. The Maximizer sends your domain traffic directly to our advertiser's landing page, so Google does not get involved in it at all. We sell this traffic direct to our advertisers as Zero-click.

Please let me know if you need further explanation, or if you have any questions.

Regards,
Steve

 

[Hypersot]

Hi stub,

Our Maximizer service is a separate service from our Parking Optimizer. The Maximizer sends your domain traffic directly to our advertiser's landing page, so Google does not get involved in it at all. We sell this traffic direct to our advertisers as Zero-click.

Please let me know if you need further explanation, or if you have any questions.

Regards,
Steve

Hey Steve,
I'm not sure you understood Stub's post fully. He is talking about the potential dangers maximizer has.

As the owners of the domains being monetized, we have absolutely no idea where our traffic goes.
We can't even see any of the ads that your advertisers show since the traffic is being used at totally random times which makes it impossible for us to check.

When we park domains on various parking services we are able to see at all times what kind of ads those parking services serve. With maximizer that's impossible.

Don't misunderstand me though. Maximizer brings great revenue, it's just the part of it that lies in the shadows that concerns us
...and there is also the issue about domains being suddenly faillisted. I have talked about it with your team but I still haven't got a clear answer on this.

 

[Above_Steve]

Hey Steve,
I'm not sure you understood Stub's post fully. He is talking about the potential dangers maximizer has.

As the owners of the domains being monetized, we have absolutely no idea where our traffic goes.
We can't even see any of the ads that your advertisers show since the traffic is being used at totally random times which makes it impossible for us to check.

When we park domains on various parking services we are able to see at all times what kind of ads those parking services serve. With maximizer that's impossible.

Don't misunderstand me though. Maximizer brings great revenue, it's just the part of it that lies in the shadows that concerns us
...and there is also the issue about domains being suddenly faillisted. I have talked about it with your team but I still haven't got a clear answer on this.

OK, yes I did misunderstand stub. Now I understand your concern.

However, I want you to know that we screen the advertiser's landing pages so we do a lot behind the scenes that you do not see.

Also, we have a strict advertiser policy in place which says:
Our traffic is not to be resold to traffic exchanges, tech support advertisers, illegal, ransom ware, scare ware or malvertising sites. This will result in an automatic suspension.

 

[Name Trader]

@Above_Steve - I have had 2 experiences which I can explain here.

1) Maximizer is there to make at least some money on domains which are supposedly banned from normal parking companies, ie google faillisted domains. Because this is quite marginal business. I'd be quite surprised if it exceeds say 5% of our total monthly revenue. So when it's reaching 10% of monthly revenues and monthly revenues are actually declining, I cannot stop the thought that you are taking revenues which should be going to the normal parking companies.

2) When this is coming from domains which are not faillisted by google, but afterwards become faillisted by google, I cannot stop the thought, that it might have been due to the traffic you are delivering to the domain.

So. Because of this, I prefer to turn off maximizer and forgo the increased revenue of <5% of revenue in order to prevent the possibility of having good domains faillisted by Maximizer's actions. YMMV.