Better domain parking?

[greggb]

I'm new to the business of domain flipping, and I've found the issue of domain parking very mysterious. Like why did my Sedo parking essentially try to install a virus on my computer when I first parked my domains there? And why have I gotten 200 clicks on one site at Sedo and made 39 cents? And why after I parked a bunch of domain names at Bodis have I only gotten 13 views, and no clicks?

Shi* just isn't adding up.

I'm getting ready to create a parking platform for my own sites, which will allow me to have my own ads and analytics so I can see what's really going on. I also want to make it very clear that my domains are for sale, and make it easy for a prospective buyer to get in touch with me.

It occurred to me that I could make this service available to anyone. So I just thought I'd drop a line and find out what the people here think about the idea of a domain parking service that's fully customizable, where you can have your own ads (i.e., google adsense) and your own traffic tracking so you can really know what's going on.

I could make this free and profit by having an affiliate link to escrow.com, and maybe have one section of ad space reserved for me.

I just figured I'd get some opinions here before diving into this. What is wrong with the ideas I mentioned?

 

[shiftaction]

I think maybe the only thing I can think of 'wrong' with the idea is just it will have to be moderated of course. Heavily in my opinion.

I listed with Sedo and forwarded to them and had my sites going to ads saying my site was not to be trusted because it was a virus. Sedo refused to do anything about it and now I have 50 domains listed with them with absolutely 0 traffic in 2 months. They are a joke

I will list my site in my signature in a second. I offer free domain listings, and I created the site because of the whole thing you are talking about. Tired of paying someone good money for nothing other than escrow for 1 domain sale, while they bank on all my domains traffic.

 

[greggb]

So as far as the moderation you're talking about, you mean people are likely to install scripts that do what Sedo has been doing? Because that's something that can be automatically prevented. I hadn't planned on allowing scripts, knowing what kind of nightmare I'd be setting up for myself.

I'd thought about letting people choose from one of a number of templates, and then customizing the templates the same way you would with wordpress. Like dragging widgets here and there and uploading header images and all that...

Then maybe allowing users to upload their own templates, which they could also sell, kind of like wordpress. I'm really talking about modelling wordpress in a lot of ways, the difference being that wordpress is for a blog or an entire site, and the platform I'm talking about is for one landing page. And I should add that the functioning scripts would remain solely on my server, which is one big difference between my idea and wordpress. You wouldn't download my software. You'd just create a free account on my site, add and park your domains, then setup your landing pages. Again, with far more transparency than I've seen with sedo or Bodis.

Hopefully that clarifies a few things.

 

[baseballworld]

Whats the domain name you are questioning about and what type of traffic is it getting and from where?
I mean is this type in traffic or traffic from existing links. You also have to remember when you first park a domain name with a parking company like bodis you should give it time to set in pretty much. They tend to tweak things for you to optimize it.

 

[greggb]

I think maybe the only thing I can think of 'wrong' with the idea is just it will have to be moderated of course. Heavily in my opinion.

I listed with Sedo and forwarded to them and had my sites going to ads saying my site was not to be trusted because it was a virus. Sedo refused to do anything about it and now I have 50 domains listed with them with absolutely 0 traffic in 2 months. They are a joke

I will list my site in my signature in a second. I offer free domain listings, and I created the site because of the whole thing you are talking about. Tired of paying someone good money for nothing other than escrow for 1 domain sale, while they bank on all my domains traffic.

If your site is ifuge.com, nice domain, and nice site! I like what you're doing.

And again, to clarify, I'm not talking about setting up a domain-for-sale listing site, although I could do that and have with a couple of the links in my signature. The problem is that at my sites, a buyer has to go to Sedo or Flippa or GoDaddy to purchase the domain, which works out well for the buyer, but the seller definitely pays with a success fee. I agree that that's a definite injustice.

But, to clarify, the injustice I'm attempting to mitigate is that of not having a decent parking page for your website and not having any idea of how many people are actually landing there, and probably not getting as much as you should for clicks/views.

I'm saying, I'll provide this free parking service for you where you can install your own ads and analytics. Though I'm not doing this purely out of the goodness of my heart. I get a spot for some of my ads. And, if someone chooses to buy based on their landing on your parking page, and the sale occurs via escrow.com (which I'm definitely going to suggest), then I get a percentage.

But overall, the seller pays much less than they would have had to Sedo or anywhere else, and they have control of what their parking page looks like, and what kind of ads appear on it. And I'm extremely transparent and forward about all of this.

 

[Asfas1000]

I' m not sure you will be able to put on Google ads because of their terms.

 

[greggb]

Whats the domain name you are questioning about and what type of traffic is it getting and from where?
I mean is this type in traffic or traffic from existing links. You also have to remember when you first park a domain name with a parking company like bodis you should give it time to set in pretty much. They tend to tweak things for you to optimize it.

Those are my exact questions. And I have no way of ascertaining the answers, because neither Sedo nor Bodis provide me with shi* in the way of analytics. The platform I'm suggesting is more than anything a remedy to all of this damn ambiguity and obfuscation. On my platform, you get to see how many people are arriving at your site, and where they're coming from. And that's the only thing I guarantee you -- that you will know what in the hell is happening. With 100% transparency.

And for the record, I have a strong feeling that there's some click fraud going on at Sedo, on Sedo's part, because why in God's name would 200 people have clicked on ads at mylectronics.com?

That was one of my first regs, and a pretty poor one, which only further illustrates the point that 200 people should not have clicked on ads on the parking page. Where are these people coming from? I don't know. And there's no way for me to know. But I want to know. But I don't get to know, because that's how Sedo rolls.

I'm going to end this reply right here, before I get into a rant that no one will enjoy.

 

[greggb]

I' m not sure you will be able to put on Google ads because of their terms.

I actually just looked this up. Google has a program specifically for parked domains.

 

[baseballworld]

If you are talking about stats for the parked page parking companies like bodis provides this telling you how many visitors and from where. If you have your own template for the parked page and are selling it you could just install google analytics to it and get the stats to tell you who and from where as well.

or are you trying to provide more detailed stats as well here?

 

[baseballworld]

Now that I reread your first post I know what you mean more like the old school parking. Where you chose the template and could put in your own keywords that would help reflect what ads would show up on your parked page. Bodis used to do that but now has what they refer to as auto optimization basically where they try to fit the best ads themselves for the best payout and conversion.

 

[greggb]

If you are talking about stats for the parked page parking companies like bodis provides this telling you how many visitors and from where. If you have your own template for the parked page and are selling it you could just install google analytics to it and get the stats to tell you who and from where as well.

or are you trying to provide more detailed stats as well here?

I was unaware of any customization that could be done at Bodis, and about any more stats than the number of views. If I'm missing something please let me know.

So let's assume that Bodis does actually provide you with the kind of info you're looking for. I still have some problems with the site, like the fact that the note about my site being for sale is in little tiny, gray text at the top of the screen. If it had a voice it would be a whispering mouse with a bad chest cold.

Here's the deal. I'm not expecting to get rich on clicks from a lot of my sites. I'm not expecting to sell my domains for 7,000 dollars. I figure a lot of my domains will go for $100 to $200 right now.

If a prospective buyer arrives at my site, I want it to be immediately apparent that my domain is for sale. I, personally, want them to know they can have it for $99.99. I want it to be easy for them to buy my domain. I don't really want their focus to be on the ads, because 19/20 of them aren't go to click the ads anyway.

But I'm not going to tell you how you should run your parking page. What works for me very well not work for you. So I want to give you the option to set up the site in a fashion that pleases you. I want you to add your own ads and analytics, so you know what's going on, and don't have it to trust that I'm doing you right, because given that trust, I'm probably not going to do you right. So don't give me that trust, and I won't ask you for it.

Transparency. That's what I'm talking about.

 

[greggb]

Now that I reread your first post I know what you mean more like the old school parking. Where you chose the template and could put in your own keywords that would help reflect what ads would show up on your parked page. Bodis used to do that but now has what they refer to as auto optimization basically where they try to fit the best ads themselves for the best payout and conversion.

Exactly! They're setting up the sites so they'll make the most money. Does that really benefit you? That little line of text a few nanometers in height, in light gray, almost apologizing for the fact that the domain is for sale.

I, personally, want my parking page to scream: THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE! And make it easy for a prospective buyer to buy it from me.

 

[carob]

I, personally, want my parking page to scream: THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE! And make it easy for a prospective buyer to buy it from me.

You can just forward a domain to the sales page on Sedo. That then means it is not parked at Sedo so you pay 15% commission rather than 10%. Afternic landing pages are better.

If you use Sedo's escrow-only you pay just 3%, but you need to send an individual email to initiate it - if you did that a lot I guess it would be worth building a form to kick it off, since it needs the customer to input some info.

But back to the stats question, if you just add a domain to a hosting account that will generate visit stats so you can decide if it is worth doing more. I would bet most domains get little or no traffic - but that does not mean I believe everything Sedo says.

 

[carob]

Also the whole parking business has got a lot tougher - you find threads talking about "the death of parking" - meaning say 5+ years ago a decent .com stopped being a free lunch. I'm sure there are good domains that more than cover their renewal fees each year through parking, but the days of assuming that are long gone. There are also setup costs to consider, plus also possible damage to a domain.

Does anyone here think parking damages domains?

 

[Asfas1000]

Some domains that were parked in the past come up as red in some browser addons, meaning possible danger like scam spam etc so I believe parking can damage a domain indeed. Not that a buyer will always know tho..

 

[S-B]

I don't understand the problem you're having. Rook Media allows you to add your own keywords, pick a template (although the recommended one is best) and gives you the basic analytics you are describing.

 

[shiftaction]

The problem is that these companies feed on in-stream traffic from sales pages, while end-users like myself get absolutely no views to a sales page of any kind. In fact Sedo is getting me 0 traffic currently for 50 domains. What use to be my traffic, they were profiting off of.

Do not park your domains with sedo. One of the reasons I created IFUGE was so that users could park to my site if they want. I get nothing, but if you forward to your personal auction/listing, it shows a professional page for displaying your sale and also, gives the other IFUGE users a chance to be seen.

As far as the problems I see, just in fraud, and you having to watch for fraud clicks, etc. Unless you do it strictly based on paying referrals.

But I like the idea though! I'm trying to implement it myself, but its hard to say to someone "give me your traffic" because they think its worth a lot, but it's not...just depending on who you park with and your domains standing.

Great idea though! Hopefully you can get it rolling!

 

[greggb]

Thanks for all the replies! I've received a few pms as well, and what was pointed out to me is that not a lot of traffic arrives at these parked domains, because why would it? Most likely the landing pages aren't indexed by google, and people aren't just typing the names in, expecting a site to magically appear. And I knew all of that.

But I've seen such a discrepancy in stats between Sedo and Bodis that I'd really like to know what's going on. And that's why I've thought about creating my own landing page platform and keeping it completely transparent.

Again, I have one site that's receiving a fair number of visits, according to Sedo. Now either Sedo is completely bs-ing me, or people are arriving at my site for some unexplainable reason. If there really are people arriving at my site I'd like to know why, and where they're coming from, but Sedo doesn't tell me. And if this is just a bunch of bs then I really need to reconsider my relationship with Sedo, because I don't like to be bs-ed.

And further, if you google "sedo virus", you'll find a number of posts about this. Though I don't need validation to know that when I first parked my domains at Sedo, I just barely prevented a virus form being installed on my computer, and that was with the use of some tactics that the average PC-user wouldn't know how to employ.

I've gotten some responses to the effect of, "Sedo only tries to install viruses on your computer immediately after you park your domain there." But that just doesn't work for me. Currently the two crappy domains I have parked at Sedo send a user on to an insurance website, earning me almost 1/3 of a penny per redirect.

If I've gotten over 200 visits to one of my crappy domains, I feel that I deserve a little more than .39 cents. And if I've gotten over 200 visits to a parked domain, my spider senses tell me this domain must be worth something.

I just want the facts, and nothing but the facts, but I don't get that with Sedo.

 

[Asfas1000]

You can park your site with Voodoo temporarily and after a couple days you will know if it is type-in traffic, where it comes from , countries etc.

 

[Asfas1000]

The different stats you see may be due to some parking providers blocking certain spam-traffic sites, like the infamous buttons-for-website.com , semalt.com etc

 

[shiftaction]

just build a wordpress site, sign up for wordpress, activate jetpack in the backend and let the domain forward there for a day/week. Jetpack isn't as detailed as you are saying you want, but for a quit trial, it gives more states than Sedo by far. That'd give you an idea for at least the one domain name.

As far as the idea goes though, I like it. Have you thought about building individual plugins for wordpress?

 

[shiftaction]

and even further, once in your wordpress backend, in the jetpack stats, you can click to go into them in wordpress and actually view country stats and a few more details like uniques, etc

 

[Doron Vermaat]

I actually just looked this up. Google has a program specifically for parked domains.

Google Adsense for domains was killed years ago. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-adsense-for-domains-shutting-down-14761.html

 

[NameOmnia]

Did anyone try to park with NameSilo?

 

[greggb]

http://www.google.com/domainpark/index.html

That's the first page that comes up in a google search. It says nothing about retirement. But then when you go to the setup page, it says that it's been retired. So it's true that google is no longer an option. That was one of the things I was really counting on.

I started this thread to get some opinions as to the profitability of creating such a platform myself. What I'm gathering is that it probably wouldn't be all that profitable.

I do think someone could do a lot better job than Sedo has been at facilitating a domain flipping platform. But I've been down the road of trying to compete with the giants, no matter how crappy of a job they're doing, and I know how tough/impossible it is.

I'm probably going to stick to niches, like the websites listed in my signature. By allowing people to list their domains and use escrow.com for escrow purposes it seems to me I could save them a lot of money in fees and make some money myself with affiliate programs and featured domains and what not.

The thing about either of the niche websites in my signature is that I can set one up in a day, so if you guys have any ideas for other niches feel free to drop me a line. But I think I'm going to scratch the original idea here.

Thanks for all the thoughts/opinions/insights!