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.

 

[Trellian]

Hi Wolfis,

Regarding stats, if there was a glitch recently I am sure that this would have been quickly resolved, as with any other reported issues. I checked and could see stats for the 3rd already. So must have been.

As for where revenues comes from, maximizer is our Direct Search Network that you can find on the trellian . com website. This is where direct advertisers bid for your traffic.The pricing is per keyword is clearly visible via the interface. This is how the traffic is sold. As for how it works, say we have have 100 unique from 10 domains, each one may have different traffic splits, rpm, ctrs etc.. and thus making a different rate via parking. All of that is pooled into our propriatary algo along with the markup to make sure that you at least get 20% more, and that becomes the benchmark, the minimum asking price that a direct advertiser will need to pay in order to get this traffic. If you find that maximizer does not increase your bottom line, than stop using it. But its basic math, the fact that it is there means that it HAS TO BE making more than parking, as its not sold for less.

As for conflicts, I have a feeling you fail to understand how this works, this is not a bug or a glitch at all, all it means that some other user has actually "manually" uploaded lists of domains that do NOT belong to them. Some do this in error, others do this on purpose in an effort to try to hijack some traffic, but triggering a conflict does not actually get the domain moved out, a human review is done on each one before any claims are resolved and moved to another users account. So you thinking that this is a bug is incorrect.

The users that do this knowingly, well this is an ongoing concern for us and we are continually closing user accounts that do this. And we have also started implementing a new system that will stop most of these type of dodgy users. So such conflcit alerts will be reduced substatially with this month.

One other option, would you prefer not to get the conflict alerts at all? As I am sure that it would be faster for us to just turn them off if you do not find those sort of alerts usefull?

Cheers
David

 

[Optimal Names]

.......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?

 

[BizBot]

I am using above.com with Bodis, Voodoo, Rook Media, DS and Fabulous. Do I have too many parking companies? Should I use less?

 

[Name Trader]

I think you should limit it to about 3. It will take longer to optimize more and there is a risk that you might get some sub-optimization.

 

[yogiDomain]

I think i will drop bodis.
Its not showing any progress.
Also i have manually added some keywords to 3 domains which were expired.
Waiting for results

 

[BizBot]

Thanks Stub. I will try 3 parking companies and see if I get better results.

What's the ww1. and ww2. in front of your domains when you use above.com?

 

[Name Trader]

I haven't paid much attention to that, assuming it's part of the parking process.

 

[Optimal Names]

I haven't paid much attention to that, assuming it's part of the parking process.

Perhaps its one per parking company?
ww1. = parking company 1
ww2. = parking company 2

and so on?

 

[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?

 

[Optimal Names]

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?

Same here. In fact, I tried to create a ticket at https://www.bodis.com/account#create-ticket;al[av=3776] and the ticket page is just clocking away, so no ticket has been created. Been doing that animated loading thing for about an hour already.

 

[Name Trader]

Assuming you are reporting the errors reported by above.com. If you reimport the Bodis earnings for the affected days, that problem goes away.

 

[Optimal Names]

Same here. In fact, I tried to create a ticket at https://www.bodis.com/account#create-ticket;al[av=3776] and the ticket page is just clocking away, so no ticket has been created. Been doing that animated loading thing for about an hour already.

Dangit. Meant to post that in Bodis forum. Sorry folks. FWIW, the problem that I was having at Bodis has been resolved.

 

[Kokoro]

The problem is fixed and all the Bodis stats have been re-imported successfully. Also received a nice email from the Above support explaining what had happened (it was a Bodis-side issue related to their recent system upgrade).

 

[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!

 

[Name Trader]

Sometime last year, I was getting so successful with Maximizer turned on I felt they were stealing traffic from my other parking providers. So I turned it off, and my revenue stabilized. I'm not accusing Above.com of anything. But I have now switch it back on for some domains.

 

[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.

 

[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]

@Hypersot - This in no way is meant as a criticism. Just a commentary. This seems to be a whole lot of manual intervention, for what is effectively an automated service. Arguably the automated service may be inferior to your manual method. Approx how many domains do you add a month? I buy domains for reselling (mainly) and for parking. I'm adding at least 50+ domains a month. This would be too much work for me to do manually, imho. Monitoring performance on a domain basis, month after month, like this, over 7 Service Providers. I let Above.com do all that heavy lifting.

I arrange my folders not by parking service but by revenue generated. All are auto-optimized and maximized. They are basically rough and ready measurements. Over $1 revenue over a 3 months period, between $0.01 - $0.99 revenue over a 3 month period, and zero revenue over a 3 month period.

I generally will renew any domain if it is making half it's renewal costs ($4) a year. There would be a few exceptions, if I thought it was a mistake to hold the domain any longer because the chances of a sale might be slim-to-none, or maybe it is a TM name (which I try not to hold). Of course I don't always get that right. HugeDomains captures about 20%+ of the domains I let drop. Not to say they have better insight than me, but of course I'm only just me, and they have build a huge business around buying and selling dropping domains. So you might expect them to have better judgement.

The domains earnings from $1-4/yr revenue, I make a judgement as to whether I think I can ever sell the domain. I have a lot of domains which might appeal to somebody for their personnel use. I'm beginning to drop those domains because the don't meet my price expectations, and keeping the domains which would appeal more to a commercial user (because they generally have more money to spend). I generally renew approx 25-50% of these domains.

For the domains earning from $0-1/year, most of them I don't own anymore. I use the same thought process as above, but probably renew approx only 10% of these.

My churn rate on my domains has gone up significantly with this strategy. I used to be a holder of my domains. But I came to the realization that this may not have been the best strategy.

Just a few words about Maximizer. When it went over 10% of my total revenue, I turned it off. There must be something wrong somewhere, if that level of revenue was beating my other Service Providers by 20%. At the same time I saw my total revenue going down. I just turned it back on, and it's gone back to a more normal 1-3% of my total revenues.

 

[Hypersot]

@stub
I do domaineering full time around 30hrs straight / day (*my* day that is)
if you think that's a lot of work then, just for info, that is peanuts compared to what I do *after* I add them to above.com lol

Everything I do is logged so as to study my actions at a later time.
Moreover, every domain I buy is getting archived along with ALL its metrics, as well as notes as to WHY I bought it, reg dates, fees, potential renewal fees which are calculated from a real time scan page I have made on excel (it scans different registrars and picks the cheapest ones)....etc. etc.

It will take me a week just to write down what I do in one of *my* days.

So, no, what I do in above is not too much work, it actually SAVES me a lot of time. My only concern is that, without above's parking management I'd be lost, that's for sure.

As for maximizer. I have some thoughts about it but I don't think this thread is appropriate for it.
If you want, pm me and we can have a chat in more detail.

btw. I'll think about your way also. I never thought of sorting my domains by revenue.