question Are Parking earnings these days...

[DanBingham]

REALLY that good?

Are more people opting to DIY using Adsense for better returns?

 

[Acroplex]

PPC is definitely not good "across the board" anymore. Certain keywords pay well, but overall, the PPC model is unsustainable. AdSense makes sense when domains have traffic and there is plenty of content to share (Google will ban ad sites without content.)

 

[.X.]

@Acroplex is speaking the truth for sure, Using adsense alone is not ideal these days, I use adsense + Chikita + Amazon + sharasale + clickbank + ebay-EPN. Yes, you can use all of them together with out getting into any ban type troubles.

I know, that is A LOT, but that is what it takes today to keep your head above water, And it is necessary to strategically use all these streams together as well.

PPC is a very weak income stream by itself, Domain Parking is really close to shutting down IMO, I wish it weren't the case, but unfortunately i believe it is. Progress will always prevail in this industry, the learning curve never stops.

 

[stewmath]

My parking isnt very good, its around $0.50 per day for about 50 domain names, so im thinking to have developed the higher traffic ones

 

[biggie]

My parking isnt very good, its around $0.50 per day for about 50 domain names, so im thinking to have developed the higher traffic ones

just for fun stewie:

@$0.50 a day income for the year, would only make you short $317.50 in funds, to renew those "50 names", if average cost was $10.00 each.

if you could increase that to $1.00 a day, you'd only be short $135.00

a sense of "portfolio sustainability", can be achieved, by making simple adjustments on either end.


imo...

 

[stewmath]

just for fun stewie:

@$0.50 a day income for the year, would only make you short $317.50 in funds, to renew those "50 names", if average cost was $10.00 each.

if you could increase that to $1.00 a day, you'd only be short $135.00

a sense of "portfolio sustainability", can be achieved, by making simple adjustments on either end.


imo...

Yeah exactly, i park them while im trying to sell them. But im not in profit, more of an expensive hobby

 

[Hypersot]

Parking earnings are getting less every year, that's true, there is still profit though if you know where to look.

One thing is sure though, there is a war going on when searching for domains to park.

For some unknown reason to me -and while most of us accept the fact that finding good domains to park is exceptionally hard- it seems that there is a sudden surge of people looking to park domains. It started last year and it gradually increases exponentially.

How do I know? because of the 'type' of domains getting purchased and the nameservers they are attached to after registration.

A very striking example is an .info domain I looked to purchase yesterday which I personally valued at <$3 (adult, erratic backlinks, etc.) so I tried to catch it with Namecheap's $2 offer by constantly refreshing the screen.
Well, that domain was caught by snapnames (that's an $80 backorder) and since it still hasn't been transferred to anyone, I can only assume it is being auctioned(!)...

You can just imagine what happens with domains that have obvious parking value.
After 4 years of being totally dedicated to parking, I really can't understand that crazy-spending business model on such worthless domains (and, according to my experience, they are)

So, parking dead or shutting down? I really don't think so. As long as there are such generous 'customers' it will live quite a bit longer imo.

 

[Donny]

Parking isn't dead, somehow I would probably know more than most. We paid out more money last month than any month ever.

Also in a previous life, I managed a sizeable portfolio. It was more than 500k domains. Traffic comes and goes on a domain and sometimes comes back. The most important thing you can do when managing your portfolio is to learn what to renew and what not to renew.

I still remember we had a domain that made $1,000 one year, then the next year it made $0.64, then $0.32, and we were about to drop it when we realized it was an event that happened every 4 years and that next year it made over $1,000 again.

We have somebody who parks with us an awesome eclipse domain, the domain normally makes about a dollar a day, definitely a domain to renew. But Monday, it made over $2,500 in a single day. But it won't make that much again until the next eclipse whenever that may be.

I could probably write a book just on domain renewals.

Donny

 

[anantj]

I could probably write a book just on domain renewals.

You should

 

[biggie]

Parking isn't dead, somehow I would probably know more than most.

The most important thing you can do when managing your portfolio is to learn what to renew and what not to renew.

I could probably write a book just on domain renewals.

Donny

Hi Donny

appreciate your post!

the knowledge you've acquired from being on the inside of parking for so long, is very valuable info.

some things you share, are the reasons why ppc services get acquired by others, along with those who try to create similar models.

as the data received from serving and hosting, is a gold mine in istelf

imo...

 

[Acroplex]

Parking isn't dead, somehow I would probably know more than most. We paid out more money last month than any month ever.

It'd be interesting to share what verticals/keywords delivered such an impressive feat, and to what percentage of your customers. For the average domainer, parking is an unsustainable source of income, a mere shadow of its glory days.

 

[Donny]

Parking is whatever you make of it. Let's say 10 years ago you bought 1,000 .com domains, all hand regged. For ease of calculations, we will say that each domain costs you $9.00 a year for 10 years. So the first year is $9,000, but you only make $2500 in parking revenue. Do you keep all 1,000 domains?

I'm sure they are the best 1,000 domains in the world, so you probably kept all of them for 10 years. You paid $90,000 in those 10 years to keep all 1,000 of them. You probably averaged $1,200 a year in parking revenue and you may have so 5 of them for $1,000 each.

Your total revenue you brought in was $17,000. But your cost were $90,000.

Who should you blame? The parking companies because you first were making $2,500 a year with these domains, but now only $900? The sales platforms because they only sold 5 of your domains? Or yourself, because you 1,000 domains you paid $90,000 were actually only worth $17,000. So you lost $73,000.

If you would have only renewed the domains that paid for themselves in the first year, let's say you would have kept 100 of them. And you continued to renew all $100 of those domains, your total cost for the 10 years would have been $17,100. Let's say you sold 2 of them, again $1,000 each. And you still probably made $12,000 in parking revenue over the 10 years. So now your total revenue is $14,000, but your cost was only $17,100. So you still lost $3,100.

If you required a domain to pay for itself every year, you may be left with only 25 domains after 10 years, but everyone of them pays for itself. And you are making money.

It's purely an example. It's not a perfect example, but it's one I used for a long time until I let leathercouch.com expire because it didn't pay for itself. It sold for $12,500 on namejet a long time ago.

Parking is very sustainable, it just may not be sustainable based on what you are expecting. If you are trying to replicate what some of the largest domainers in the world are doing, you are doing it wrong. Ask them if their portfolios pay for themselves purely by parking, they don't. The problem is some have to sell so many domains to be profitable that their portfolios continue to get smaller. And usually they sell the domains that make them the most money.

Donny

 

[Acroplex]

I'm basing my statement on the fact that as a long term holder of domains, their revenue plummeted. Their traffic remained the same, but PPC is a fraction of its past - across several PPC providers - and let's not pretend we don't know who's to blame here: Google.

Also, traffic domains and those with high paying keywords have become expensive to acquire in the aftermarket, further diluting the investment one might want to make.

 

[Donny]

It's a little more complicated than saying Google is the problem.

First of all of you go back 10 years the amount of traffic that you had on a domain is 99% of the time less. Domains back then would get indexed by the search engines and today though they get indexed, never get any traffic. So you definitely have lost that traffic from every domain you own. And then most ads are javascript now, and if somebody isn't using a real browser, they don't even see ads. And we can't forget about dumb phones, none of those will show ads now either. Can't forget about ad blockers either. With all of that combined, there is no way that a domain you had parked 10 years ago is getting the same traffic volume today. Unless it was getting 1 hit a day then.

Second, if you really think of the peak of parking which is problem between 2005 - 2007, the technology changes that have happened between now and then are enormous. I always laugh when people tell me they have good traffic, the question is good to who? Yahoo who was the largest parking company back then didn't even really filter traffic. It was up to the parking companies to keep the traffic clean. I remember people buying 100% bot traffic paying less than 1/10 of a penny and then complaining they were only getting like a dollar a click. Now I can see every 15 minutes what the quality of traffic a particular customer has. I know what traffic is good and bad in minutes, not 6 months later. Bots and all kinds of bad traffic are usually a thing of the past.

Third, prices on clicks have come down in some cases, purely because of the volume of traffic advertisers get. 10 years ago Google and Yahoo really only got external traffic from domain parking, today Google, Bing, and Yahoo get traffic from many different sources. If you want to get 100 leads a day, and you bid $10 a click you can pay $1,000 for the hundred leads and get all of that traffic in minutes. But now advertisers know that if they still want that 100 leads, they can day-time their ad spend pay in many cases for less than $1 for that $10 click and get just as good if not better quality. One of my good friends runs campaigns for a large company and his job is to do whatever possible to keep the $/conversion as low as possible. If one of their products is only looking for 50 leads a day, once they hit 50, their price they are willing to pay for a clicks is cut 90%, but they don't turn the campaign off.

Just the tip of the iceberg on some issues that could be effecting your parked domains.

Donny

 

[Acroplex]

Bottom line: parking is unsustainable per 2000's expected levels. Not worthy of extra effort for minimal earnings. That's for the domain holder. For the PPC companies, well....

 

[Donny]

If you are expecting 2003 level earnings, then your expectations will not be met. If you are expected 2010 level earnings, your expectations will not be met either. Technology has changed, some for the better, some for the worse.

I know plenty of domain holders who still make a very good living parking domains.

As far as parking companies, there are a lot fewer of us, we usually all make a lot smaller percentage than 10 years ago as well. I remember the first parking company I ever worked with, I remember them sending me a contract that said I would get paid 35% of what they were receiving from goto.com. We laughed and went directly to goto.com and got the same deal the other company was getting.

Acro, I remember back in the day how much you used to complain about Sedo, you would move your domains somewhere else for a few days and then you would move them back to Sedo. It's just one of those things I always used to remember.

I still have a domain that makes $9 a day, it's made that much for about 12 years now. It's not my fault somebody bought the .net and decided to build it out after I bought the domain. And they haven't contacted me once to try and buy the domain from me. That domain is worthless without the traffic, and the traffic never goes away.

Parking has changed, traffic has changed, quality of traffic has changed, but expectations haven't for some reason.

Donny

 

[ResoluteDomains]

.......The most important thing you can do when managing your portfolio is to learn what to renew and what not to renew. ........................... I could probably write a book just on domain renewals.

Donny

You've got at least one buyer for that book if you write one.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

I've said this before elsewhere, to me parking is a giant black box. I am far from any expert in traffic or parking.

What I see happen is this: I get traffic that goes to a parked page, the traffic either clicks an ad or does, the result is sometimes I earn revenue from that traffic's click. What happens inside that black box is beyond what I understand. I cant figure out why some days the same high traffic domain can generate a lot of revenue (for me thats over $1 a day) and the very next day, same amount of traffic and clicks but ZERO revenue. But then I have other domains which dont receive much traffic at all. These may get, at most, the same amount of visits per year as my higher traffic names get in a month. However, when those lower traffic domains - they consistently get 3 or 4 times more than that "good day" for the higher traffic names and pay for themselves slowly.

I'd like to understand because I am curious but I dont need to because my end goal is to sell the domain name. However, knowing where the traffic is coming from and why they're clicking - what they're clicking has definitely helped me sell the names in the past. Buyers liked that I could give them stats and explain a bit about the traffic.

As far as knowing what to delete - I dont. I have allowed names to drop which had very little traffic and no clicks. I track my dropped names. Almost 50% of my dropped names have been picked up and are in use by a company. So I am definitely dropping valuable domains and I certainly need to learn which ones to keep.

Still learning each day after a dozen + years.

 

[Acroplex]

Donny, what I'm expecting is to stop hearing the pipe dream that parking works. I've been around the block of parking, and I used Sedo, Parked, Domain Sponsor, Parking Crew, Bodis, and Voodoo.

In 2012-2014 before Google finally killed parking with its mobile push, even Domain Name Sales (Uniregistry) performed great. But not any more.

Domainers who turn to PPC for "random" portfolios won't make any money and are better off sending the aggregated traffic to a lander for selling the domains.

 

[biggie]

just for fun stewie:

@$0.50 a day income for the year, would only make you short $317.50 in funds, to renew those "50 names", if average cost was $10.00 each.

if you could increase that to $1.00 a day, you'd only be short $135.00

a sense of "portfolio sustainability", can be achieved, by making simple adjustments on either end.


imo...

Parking is whatever you make of it. Let's say 10 years ago you bought 1,000 .com domains, all hand regged. For ease of calculations, we will say that each domain costs you $9.00 a year for 10 years. So the first year is $9,000, but you only make $2500 in parking revenue. Do you keep all 1,000 domains?

I'm sure they are the best 1,000 domains in the world, so you probably kept all of them for 10 years. You paid $90,000 in those 10 years to keep all 1,000 of them. You probably averaged $1,200 a year in parking revenue and you may have so 5 of them for $1,000 each.

Your total revenue you brought in was $17,000. But your cost were $90,000.


Parking is very sustainable, it just may not be sustainable based on what you are expecting.

Donny

seems we trying to explain the same thing, just using different numbers

where one could show how sustainability could be achieved.

I also memba those 'sometimes heated" conversations, i, you, Acro and others were involved in, when you were representing Parked.com

man.... those were good times!


i guess the biggest difference with parking now is, none have affiliate sign-up programs anymore.

as a sedopro user, i was earning $$$ a month just from the income of "other people" that i helped get approved for sedopro and also had a few under my belt at domansponsor.com


still have some 10 year earners, though they not producing what they used to make, but they still produce.
and we gonna milk that ppc cow till the udders runs dry


imo....

 

[Donny]

Parking does works fine for some people. It just depends on what your expectations are and what type of domains you have. I have domains I have paid $30,000 for and they make $1.00 a year parking. I have domains I bought by hand that make thousands a year. And a lot of people have portfolios that are better for selling than parking and some that are better for parking than selling.

I'm not sure what you are talking about what happened in 2012-2014, I'm assuming you are talking about CAF, which was a technology improvement to require that all ads be shown via javascript instead of XML? But this also stopped dumb phones from working, because they didn't support javascript. Frank's system is good, we each have things that we do better than others, his just happens to be that he has a great sales system with a great team of brokers.

I have my domains broken down into traffic domains, money makers, normal domains, and quality domains. If I have a quality domain and let's say it's worth $15,000 in my eyes anyway, the odds of it making money are pretty low, but I'm still going to park it. I would rather make some money than no money. I'm not really interested in selling domains to be honest with you. The last 3 domains I have sold have tv ads for them now, all 3 of them are huge apps. My last one I sold I just saw an ad for earlier this morning, dominations.com. That domain made me about $30 a year for almost 10 years that I owned it. Now it's a top grosser on the app store.

And Biggie oh yes, I remember. Those were the days!

Donny

 

[Acroplex]

I'm simply referring to the PPC performance, not sales. I don't disagree that things have changed, and even DNS/Uniregistry dropped the custom, category-based landers on non-mobile.

Google is doing whatever they want with payouts. This is for the same basic (larger, even) portfolio I moved around over the years.

 

[dnk]

With almost the same number of domains, sedo parking income has declined rapidly in the last few years

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

My average ZeroClick RPM at ParkingCrew with medium quality traffic is up to ~$12...
With Google PPC - a few times lower.

 

[TheWatcher]

Back in the days... we do the happy dance in our parking earnings.
Now we need to develop, park and sell to make a profit.

I'm still dancing though.