Above.com Review

[Name Trader]

Where was I? I had all my .com domains at Parked and everything else at Bodis. Back in February I was waxing lyrical about Parked being back on top of their game. I had 2 months where I received almost record payouts (of all time... maybe in 3-4 years of parking). Then everything fell off a cliff and I was getting approx 2/3rds less. On 7th July I received only about $6.50 in revenue, which was abysmal. The day before that I had decided to try Above.com.

What is Above.com? In short, it's a traffic forwarder to your Parking Accounts. It decides where to send the traffic for each domain based upon which parking service gives the best returns. This sounds great. No longer do you need to park a group of domains with company A for a couple of months, enter the results into a spreadsheet, then park them at company B for a couple of months, enter the results in a spreadsheet. And so on. Now all this is done in Real Time, by Above.com.

Who are Above.com? They are part of the Trellian network of companies, who I first came across using their KeywordDisovery.com tool. So, I had confidence in them from the getgo.

It was easy to setup an account. You then go to Manage Accounts and setup the Parking Companies you wish to use from the list of companies they support. I chose Bodis, Parked, TrafficZ, DomainSponsor. The latter two I probably haven't used in a couple of years. You need to provide your username and password for each account. Of course there is a slight risk in this, but given the size of Trellian, I didn't have a real problem with this.

You can then go to Manage Folders and setup Folders for groups of domains. I however, imported everything into the default folder. Subsequently, I created two other folders, 1) Revenue, and 2) No Revenue. I moved everything from the default folder to No Revenue, and then moved them to Revenue, once Above.com reported revenue. You do this by downloading the .CSV file for the Non-Revenue domains, sort the SpreadSheet by Revenue, and then copy/past these into the Add Domains to the Revenue Folder. There is no copy/move command in Above.com. You either Add or Remove Domains, and Above.com moves the domains to the new Folder.

You of course have to add all your domains to each Parking Service individually (even if this can be done in bulk).

What is Maximizer? This is Above.com's inhouse Parking Service. They say that by some complex algorythms they monetize visitors which are poorly monetized by regular parking companies. For example, Asian traffic. When I look at the stats compared to the other parking companies (which is easy to do by clicking on Statistics and choosing what you want), I see mostly very low rates per click, like $0.02, significantly less than the rates/click for the same domain from the other parking companies. Who is to say that Above.com got it right or not? Maximizer provided about 1/5th of my Total Revenue for August. I've turned it off for Sept to see how the portfolio perform without it.

The Statistics are very comprehensive. You can select one or more parking services and a whole slew of stats like clicks, revenue, EPC etc.

How is support? I think there is only 1 support personnel. I usually get answers to my questions in about 1-3 days. So not the speediest support in the world, but I can't think of any support question which requires an immediate reply. So i'm reasonably satisfied.

How did I do? Well Above.com say it takes about 2 months to get your portfolio optimized. It's now been just two months for me. So maybe my best month will be Sept. But anyhow, in August, my 2nd month, Above.com managed to give me returns just below my record earnings of February. So, about 80-100% better than my earnings in June. This is a significant jump in earnings. It was split (in approx terms) 20% each from Bodis, Maximizer, DomainSponsor, and most of the rest from Parked. Almost nothing from TrafficZ, barely making the minimum payment for both July and August.

The website is sometimes a bit flakey. Not really surprising considering the amount of data they must be churning out. But usually it works itself out within a short time, usually minutes. My biggest gripe is that the Statistics Reports only allow you report 100 domains per page (whereas the Reports allow 1000). Also that there is no portfolio total reported in the Stats. You have to add up each page total.

Am I going to continue with Above.com? You betcha! I've disable the Maximizer to see how my portfolio performs without it and I'll probably disable TrafficZ also. I'd recommend to anyone to try Above.com. It really take away the drudgery of manually testing domains at different parking services.

 

[Name Trader]

I just had an interesting conversation about how optimizing (not maximizer) works at Above.com.

Above say it in general takes about 3 weeks to optimize a domain, with more than a few visitors. So lets just say 1 month for sake of illustration.

Above told me they can only optimize between 2 companies at any 1 time. The Primary and Secondary Services. So if you are like me, with 5 Service Providers, then it takes 4 months to fully optimize a domain between 5 Service Providers.

But what Above couldn't tell me was in which order these Service Providers were chosen to optimize. From my results below, it looks like they are chosen in alphabetical order, because from my test below, about half of my domains were with my worst 2 paying Service Providers, which are also the first alphabetically.

Now I want them to optimize overall the best two paying Service Providers, first, not last. They said it was not in their algorithms to do that. But they at least made me a suggestion.

They provided me a list of domains of my worst 2 paying Service Providers, where one or other of these two was the Primary Service Provider. It turned out that about half (or more) of my domains has one of these two as my Primary Service Provider. Well I was a tad shocked to see that, but not surprised since my whole account is undergoing optimization, and assuming the order they select providers to optimize, is alphabetically (rather than the best paying).

They told me to create a folder, and add all these domains to that folder. Turn auto optimizer off for that folder and then select which Service Providers I wanted to test and the percentage of visitors to send to each Service Provider. Now I could have got very sophisticated, with the percentages of revenues from all 5 of my providers. But decided to just share the visitors to my top 2 Service Providers, equally. Now after 1 month, I will add these domains back to the normal folders I use (which are auto-optimized), and they will then auto-optimize, all 5 Service Providers, already having the statistics from my best 2 Service Providers. I think this is a far better scenario, than trying optimize all these providers alphabetically, or with the worst payers first.

I liked this idea so much that I decided to open 12 folders from Jan-Dec, and add all new domains into the current month instead of the Default folder, and to share the traffic equally from my top 2 paying service Providers and then transfer them out on the first of the month following the month in which they were added. For example. Domains added in Feb would transferred out on 1st April. This gives between 4-8 weeks for the optimization between my best two paying providers.

Of course for any one domain, it's not to say my best 2 paying Service Providers, will be the best paying choice. But the probability, imho, is that it is more likely to be the case, than choosing the Primary and Secondary Service Providers randomly, or alphabetically.

Hope this tip is helpful to a few people.

 

[pfloyd]

I personally love Above. I have used Above for almost 2 years. I direct traffic to Above and let it auto optimize. I have tried both above servers and direct servers and in my personal tests have not seen any real variance in traffic IMHO. As always trust your own data over others, but I feel that any minor under-optimization is worth the constant testing of different services. I note over the last few months there has been a big change in payouts over the different companies, and I am have had many domains that were with optimized with Voodoo for a long time moved to DS or even some of the smaller companies (this surprised me). If I did not have auto-optimization it would have taken me a while to catch on to this trend.

I disagree with the 3 parking company strategy as a hard rule, IMHO. I think you need to take into account the number of domains you have, the minimum payout of the parking companies, your domain niche, etc. I'm not saying if you own 25 domains you should have 8 parking companies....just that some thought should go into the number of parking companies based on your volume, goals and strategy. For new ideas sometimes I see what type of traffic a new parking company is looking for. For example: joined Dopa because they claimed they could monetize under performing Chinese traffic. Found a new niche. Broke even, ha, which is why I am sharing, but a source of new ideas.

I use Maximizer, but not for all domains. At first when I saw how much traffic Maximizer was pulling I shut it off because I was not getting ANY clicks on the traffic for my main niche (I only had 1 at the time), but great per click rates on a tiny fraction of the traffic on certain domains. I asked my above account manager (you can find contact info on your above dashboard) for a list of the most in demand keywords for Maximizer (my main niche was not on there btw). Then I created a new folder in the manage folders tab on the dashboard (I previously had all my domains in the default folder) and called it "maximizer". Then I went to "edit" on the manage folders page and turned off maximizer for my main folder and turned it on for the maximizer folder. Then I moved all my domains that matched the in demand keywords into that folder. End result: I only send in demand traffic to maximizer and treat it like I would any other parking service, only sending traffic that will perform with their service. I have been very happy with the results, but do not hit minimum payout every month. More like every 2-3 months due to the $100 minimum.

Finally I will say, do not hesitate to contact Above through their contact us page. They are not the fastest response, especially around the weekend but they do always respond...they have a good ticket system to handle issues.


Disclaimer: I don't disagree with anyone to step on their toes..or to try and sound smarter (I ain't) because most of my ideas and strategies have come from this site to begin with, but to try and share ideas back with the group...thanks NP community!

 

[Victor Pitts]

The "ww+number" in the URL from Above to the parking companies, indicates which parking service is being used. Below is a list of the more common parking service identifiers, but there are many more of them.

1 | SEDO
2 | DomainSponsor
3 | DomainApps
5 | NameDrive
6 | SmartName
10 | Fabulous
16 | Hitfarm
17 | Skenzo
23 | DDC
25 | Bodis
31 | DomainAdvertising
34 | Overdrive
35 | RookMedia
36 | InternetTraffic
38 | ParkingCrew
43 | Voodoo

 

[Victor Pitts]

Any ideas about Parklogik.com compared with Above.com ?

Both optimize parking earnings for domains over multiple parking services. The intelligent algorithm driving both platforms is similar.

ParkLogic vs. Above

PL - you outsource the management of your domains to PL. PL optimizes your earnings and takes a fee from your earnings for their service. You are paid your parking earnings by PL. You are use PL's parking feeds as you do not have a direct relationship with the parking service providers.

Above - you enter your existing parking account information into the Above platform along with you domains. Above optimizes your traffic. You keep 100% of your earnings from parking companies and parking companies pay you directly. Service at Above is free. You have additional revenue earning opportunity at Above with Maximizer. When Maximizer is enabled, Above will let direct advertisers (zero click) compete with the parking companies for your traffic. Earnings from Maximizer are paid by Above.

 

[Centaur]

Hey guys,
Hope you are doing well!
I please need to know the best parking platform to work with because i have a huge traffic volume
Many thanks to who is going to help me

This guy just wanted to buy voodoo accounts to shoot fake traffics. He asked me to buy my account. He already got banned by adsense and other parking companies. Be aware people, fake practices.

 

[Name Trader]

From their manual,

What do the columns mean?

Hits

Total hits (page impressions) for all domains for the selected period. This figure includes ALL hits received by the domain including images, crawlers, bots, etc.

 

[Name Trader]

OK. It's been a while. But here are my performance figures for the last 4 months.

Feb12 - Bodis 28% DomainSponsor 28% Maximizer 6% Voodoo 34%
Mar12 - Bodis 33% DomainSponsor 22% Maximizer 7% Voodoo 38%
Apr12 - Bodis 31% DomainSponsor 21% Maximizer 4% Voodoo 44%
May12 - Bodis 29% DomainSponsor 18% Maximizer 3% Voodoo 50%

...... % of Best... % over
........ Month..... 2011
Feb12 86%..... +32%
Mar12 86%..... +45%
Apr12 79%..... +42%
May12 83%..... +27%

So the striking thing is Voodoo has now grabbed 50% of my total revenue. Whilst the frothy optimism of the months Oct11-Jan12 has dampened down, running 15-20% below my best month ever (Jan12), this is usual for this time of year. but year on year gains have been impressive, between 27-45% per month.

I had been under the impression that Above.com was not performing as well as it should. But the facts show otherwise.

 

[wolfis.com]

@ above : how about fixing your system that the control panel shows traffic and revenue for this year too , after all it is jan 02 and the control panel shows numbers until dec 31 and not any further .

half of your system does not work half of the time - so what makes you sure that the maximizer actually works ? - there is no control over it - it only gives the revenue but not where it comes from - i guess it is based on trust ? hmmmm - how about trust as for customer support or system reliability ??

ever few day when i log in it shows dozens of MY domains in ownership onlflict even so the whois clealry show me as the owner ( for many years )

so please just get you system fixed - will you ?

 

[Hypersot]

Somehow I figured that above.com worked that way since the beginning of my domaineering and I was quick to create folders depending upon the optimization I wanted on each.
(For the record, I use 7 services: PC, DS, RM, Sedo ,Bodis, Voodoo and Namedrive)

What I have done, and seems like it's working for me, is:
-I have created one folder for each parking service I use with maximizer off
-I have also created one folder with Auto optimization again with maximizer off
-One folder with Auto Optimization with maximizer on
-and, finally, one folder for the domains that are dedicated to selling only (I use different templates and specific services for those)

Now,
whenever I add a domain and depending upon its traffic and niche. I move it around on using the folders I mentioned above and I monitor closely its performance for a short while (about a month)

-If I see that one parking service clearly outperforms the others then I leave the domain on that parking service for a while until I see a drop in performance in which I switch to the next best performer service.

-if I don't see any parking service standing out then I set the domain on Parking with Max off.

-if I after a while I'm not satisfied with the domain's performance then I move it to Park + Max folder where it stays until the end.

There are times where some domains perform really bad with some parking services. That's where I use the 'block' feature where I remove the not-so-good parking service from the domain's auto optimization.


Of course, for simplicity reasons, I don't include the keyword research etc. I do for every domain. That is just a general strategy on how I use above.com

hope it helps

 

[Name Trader]

I disagree with the 3 parking company strategy as a hard rule

I refer you to my "interesting conversation" above. Assuming for arguments sake, and being quite close to reality for the ordinary joe, it takes one month to optimize a portfolio. The problem is that Above can only optimize between 2 companies at a time. So that's 1 month. Add a third company is another 1 month, adding a fourth company, is another 1 month, adding a fifth company adds another 1 month. So if you have five companies, it takes 4 months to optimize your portfolio.

But hey, it gets worse. How do Above select the order in which the companies are optimized. They won't tell you. But from my non-scientific (observational) tests they take them in alphabetical order, not in the order of who has historically paid the most. In my case, the two lowest payers were both at the beginning of the alphabet. My revenue plummeted at least 50%+ after I triggered my account to be optimized, because all of a sudden my two lowest payers were the preferred destination of choice for the clicks. IMHO, they are sub-optimal in optimizing your portfolio with more than 3 parking companies. After correcting for this sub-optimal optimizing, my revenue went back to approximately where it was before.

As a consequence, as of today, I have discontinued DS and Bodis, leaving only 3 companies PC,RM,Voodoo.

Now Above.com argue I shouldn't do this because their optimization will always provide the best results. That may be true, until your portfolio needs to be re-optimized. Then you will lose out big time. And besides, I really don't want to deal with companies which are paying me low $x-xx a month. I'm happier one of my other companies takes over the responsibility, even if potentially, they pay me less.

 

[dombastic]

Above.com shows me different stats than the parking provider, e.g. Rook or Sedo. Have you noticed that?

 

[sirlordcomic]

Not sure why my clicks at ParkingCrew are worth zero....as shown by Above stats.

 

[Name Trader]

Yes I do. But since before my last post, all domains which didn't pay half their renewal fees in a year, went to my domain for sales website. New domains went straight to my domains for sale website. Because Voodoo also stopped paying me over $100/month, the only provider left is Parking Crew. The amount of parking revenue is still dwindling. But they are still just paying me over $100/month (just), on about 50 domains. The parking heyday is in the past, IMHO, for my particular strategy. It won't be long until I stop using parking at all. It's only a matter of months, IMHO. My strategy has always been that this was extra income from sales. So if domains couldn't pay their way they weren't parked. This is a self-fulfilling prophesy, which is reaching it's natural conclusion in a couple of months (my guess).

My comments above are no reflection on Voodoo or Parking Crew, or Above. They have all been great providers, which my domains probably have not best met their particular niches (if they have them). Parking Crew were simply the last (but not yet) to fall thru the cracks.

One benefit of stopping parking has been no more UDRP's on my domains. Parking the domains and earning revenue definitely makes you an easier target for UDRPs. I haven't had any since I drastically reduced my parked domains.

I'd like to hear from any other users of Above. How are you all fairing?

 

[Name Trader]

Still on track for my best month ever using above.com after half a month.

 

[SpareDomains]

Hai folks,
i just joined above and added my portfolio. now, do i also need to ad the same portfolio to other parking companies i use in above? currently i use bodis and parked as my ads provider. so my question is, do i need to ad the same portfolio which i added to the above.com to this two companies also?

yes, any domains you add to above have to be added to the parking company and optimized. Above is simply a rotator to see which company does the best for each domain so the domains need to be added and optimized for each company you choose to add at above.

 

[Name Trader]

May jumped back from my terrible April numbers to be 81% of my Dec 2010 record earnings. The Revenues by Parking company were relatively stable at Bodis 45%, DomainSponsor 30%, Parked 20%, and Maximizer 5%.

But 1st half of June is looking very bad again. We shall see at the end of the month.

 

[Name Trader]

That was exactly my settings when I started. 12 hrs isn't much time. Maybe DS was the first one on the list to try. Wait another 48 hours.

 

[Intersolved]

Because we use so many parking services for our portfolio, above is great at keeping all the revenue organized, and it is super convenient to have one place to look up parking stats when determining selling price. The one complaint I have right now is there reporting feature needs some serious work. I much preferred Bodis' reporting system.

 

[stoork]

Hmm, what does the maximizer do exactly? I just thought of it as another way to optimize domains so I let it on

Should I turn it off? I also notice that the maximizer is $0.00 under balance , does that mean I have used it wrong or something?

turn on
above takes a piece of traffic for themselves and monetize it

 

[Name Trader]

Yes. You need to turn on Maximizer for all of your parking companies. What it is supposed to do is is try to maximize your revenue for domains which don't work well at other places, ie your worst performing domains. What I think it might be doing is not sending traffic to a parking company but sending it to Maximizer instead. This could be the reason for increasing maximizer revenues but falling parking provider revenues. I'm not necessarily saying they are doing that, but it would be one explanation. I won't really know until I turn it off.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

.......The problem is that some domains have rest time period of lets say 1 week to 10 days......

What does "rest time period" mean?

 

[yogiDomain]

I am using above.com for 15 days now. with Bodis, PC, RookMedia and NameDrive
I dont have a great portfolio. Being a newbie i parked some hand regd domains initially. during that period i did not have any traffic or 5-6 views no clicks at all. after that i got some expired domains some were good and some were just garbage (again a newbie work). Then i started to get good traffic. but still this traffic is not getting converted to click. Somedays i get 100's of views but not even a single click.
In 15 days i have just got 2 clicks of 0.03$.

:td:
There is one thing i would i like to know about above.com
what is "Hits"??, Does this "Hits" includes bots and crawlers??
i get 20000 Hits daily but uniques and reported are just around 100's and 0 clicks.
anybody?

 

[Kokoro]

There is a problem with importing stats from Bodis since the 29th Dec. I can see an "unknown error" in the daily reports and $0.00 revenue. I mailed that issue to the support but no reaction till now. Have you got the same problem with the Bodis stats?

 

[Name Trader]

When entering our parking account information, is it secure? I assume that our account ID and password is being entered and wanted to make sure that its encrypted.

I think that is something you should look up on the Above.com website or fire off a support question to them.