DO NOT PARK at Domain Sponsor

[danielr]

Domain Sponsor has made some recent changes and I have watched my revenue drop over 1000 percent in the last few days. I am in the process of moving my domains out of there and so should you....
Move to SEDO or Fabulous or GoldKey.

I received the following info from an email.....

______________________________________________________


Are the days of pay-per-click over? Domain Sponsor is the first major PPC parking service to announce that they are no longer paying on a pure pay-per-click basis. As of this past week they pay more if people actually buy stuff when they click through your links. They will pay less if people don't buy stuff. For this reason we are no longer recommending Domain Sponsor until we can fully evaluate the impact of this change.

Domain Sponsor has put so much spin on their announcement that most people haven't quite caught on. On their site they phrase it this way:

With the integration of DomainSponsor into Revenue.net, we can now move forward with the first major enhancement of the DomainSponsor service: Rewarding Traffic Quality. Over the past few months DomainSponsor has been hard at work trying to find new and innovative ways to increase payouts and reward publishers with the highest quality traffic. We're pleased to announce some of these advancements to you today.

Due to recent enhancements via our upstream partners, combined with direct advertiser conversion data generated by Revenue.net, we have developed greater insight into the performance of each individual publisher's traffic stream. We can now more accurately gauge the quality (backend sales conversion) of your specific traffic and compensate you accordingly. Many of you will notice an increase in payouts. This pricing recalibration will be rolled out at approximately 9pm PST today 10/11/2005, across all publisher accounts. This model includes adjustments to our bid values, which will now be dynamically aligned with your respective traffic quality.


Despite the positive spin, this change may well result in decreased payouts if you park with Domain Sponsor. Should you move your domains elsewhere? We don't recommend a wholesale retreat. If you suspect that the traffic to some of your domains doesn't convert well you should consider moving those domains to Sedo, Parking Dots, or Gold Key - the three services that we currently recommend.

Is this a sign of things to come? Probably. Some of the other major players have beta projects that seem to offer the same promise - a bonus for higher "traffic quality." Look for announcements from one or more services shortly.

We currently recommend three pay-per-click parking services for domain owners seeking to maximize their pay-per-click income. Parking Dots and Gold Key both use Yahoo ads, and Sedo uses ads from Google. Full
How Does Domain Sponsor know about the "quality" of traffic?

Domain Sponsor and Revenue.net are products of Oversee.net. This company sells their own ads, in addition to reselling Google's ads on our sites. They appear to be tracking click-throughs and actual purchases from their own ads and using this information to measure what they call "traffic quality."



information on these and several other services is available at Park Quick.

 

[kslup_k]

Judging from the majority opinions, which company will be the better ones in the field of PPC?

Flora.

Fab, ND,Trafficz IMO...

 

[Grrilla]

Judging from the majority opinions, which company will be the better ones in the field of PPC?

Flora.

I abstain.

May be a moot issue by this time next year, anyways.

 

[equity78]

Why abstain Michael ? I value your opinion, I think that PPC is not going away form speaking to some at the first two days of T.R.A.F.F.I.C there is no inclination in any of the seminars that this will be happening. IF ppc goes down there will be a lot of semi content sites with adsense and YPN hosting should pick up as millions of names will need a host.

 

[Smith]

I've personally seen my traffic revenue increase with the names I have parked at DS since the change. A lot of it has to do with traffic quality, if you have low quality traffic it will be reflected in your statistics.

Also, changing ppc companies won't change this in the long run as it is beyond the control of the company's such as DS, this is primarily a feed issue. Each individual account is tracked for traffic quality and is paid accordingly by the feed provider ie. Google. I think that it is somewhat safe to expect this industry wide within a matter of months.

 

[equity78]

Define Traffic Quality Please I am not sure what they mean.

 

[Matrix1976]

I've personally seen my traffic revenue increase with the names I have parked at DS since the change. A lot of it has to do with traffic quality, if you have low quality traffic it will be reflected in your statistics.

Also, changing ppc companies won't change this in the long run as it is beyond the control of the company's such as DS, this is primarily a feed issue. Each individual account is tracked for traffic quality and is paid accordingly by the feed provider ie. Google. I think that it is somewhat safe to expect this industry wide within a matter of months.

pardon my rudeness, but you are either sarcastic or Naive with that post imo....

 

[snoop]

I've personally seen my traffic revenue increase with the names I have parked at DS since the change. A lot of it has to do with traffic quality, if you have low quality traffic it will be reflected in your statistics.

Also, changing ppc companies won't change this in the long run as it is beyond the control of the company's such as DS, this is primarily a feed issue. Each individual account is tracked for traffic quality and is paid accordingly by the feed provider ie. Google. I think that it is somewhat safe to expect this industry wide within a matter of months.

agree 100%

 

[Smith]

pardon my rudeness, but you are either sarcastic or Naive with that post imo....

You're welcome to believe what you want, but this is what's happening.

I know for fact that Google has the ability to track traffic down to the individual account level within intermediary programs. So 2 people sending the same number of uniques a day can have vastly different results.

Traffic Quality would be for example: (this is just for example assume natural typins)

Person A sends 1000 uniques from "findlowmortgagerates.com" to an affiliate program and makes $1000

Person B sends 1000 uniques from "freemortgage.com" and makes $100

Why are these so different?

Lets assume that both are optimized to "mortgages"

Person A's traffic is looking for targeted low mortgage rates, so they are going to fill out more leads and convert to sales of mortgages for the banks etc.

Person B's traffic is going to be significantly less targeted, people looking for a free house who chances are will not actually get a mortgage in the end.

So who's traffic is really worth more to the advertiser?

Person A's without question.

Google is now looking at things like this, and I believe yahoo is soon to follow, as result the advertisers are being charged accordingly based on traffic quality.

Let me also add . . .

I post here because I'm bored from time to time, I find this site entertaining, and I don't mind helping out here and there where I might be more familiar with things than some other people.

I had the same thing happen when I posted that I knew of a person selling a registrar for example, was I lying? No. Am I going to go out of my way to prove something to people here? Not always.

So I'm sorry I don't have a high post count and don't have "street cred" with everyone here, but at the end of the day . . . not overly important to me I'm just some dude with 100 posts to you guys, I understand that, no worries, but sometimes let your minds be a little more open. Not everyone is new to the business on this forum

 

[leviathon]

I've never parked anythin there. Thank god I never tried :yell:

 

[snoop]

I've never parked anythin there. Thank god I never tried :yell:

where is the logic in that?, most of the people I have spoken with have seen substantial revenue rises.

 

[robertjr]

agree 100%

Ditto! I do not think Smith is off target on this.



I keep a few Portfolios at DS and one of the ways I separate them is by my determination of "quality" and this is where I see the biggest change in revenue during the last 10 days or so. But again, I stand by what I said earlier about a bigger sample is needed.

Personally, I think it will go the way of something akin to an affiliate "Pay Per Lead" program.

 

[TT]

I have seen the numbers first hand at DomainSponsor and all i can say is that i am disappointed. I moved a few from my portfolio into namedrive and they actually count all uniques unlike dommainsponsor, while my domains still have to be optimized i am starting to see some clicks and revenues they are ranging from 0.11 usd to 6.21 usd / click already i am much happier at namedrive domainsponsor reminds me of that kanoodle based PPC program that lasted about 6 months. I only came across namedrive via these forums so if i can help any fellow NP'rs change there minds i will do what I can. I will admit one thing so far namedrives support took 27 hours to answer some questions i had for them, while domainsponsor was email 3 1/2 days ago and still no response yet.

 

[kslup_k]

my money is not here yet...

and my 2 emails since last week is not replied yet...

 

[Grrilla]

Why abstain Michael ? I value your opinion, I think that PPC is not going away form speaking to some at the first two days of T.R.A.F.F.I.C there is no inclination in any of the seminars that this will be happening. IF ppc goes down there will be a lot of semi content sites with adsense and YPN hosting should pick up as millions of names will need a host.

OK. I park at Sedo, but to be honest, I haven't done too much experimenting w/ the various ppc sites so my personal experience in the ppc scene is limited. Before ppc, my names were parked at Afternic. When ppc started rolling, I moved them to Sedo and than later, over to Fabulous when they first started out. After about a year at Fabulous, I went back to Sedo and have kept them there since, because I have had more sales offers through Sedo than at Fabulous and the ppc income was essentially the same. Recently, I heard great things about the payout for casino/poker names at Fabulous so I moved 90% of my gambling related names over to test them out for a month. Although the uniques were about the same, there was no income, and the casino names, which pull in $2-$3 ea at Sedo, are the one name group that I do happen to have pegged for ppc. I looked into Domain Sponsor, Domain Hop and a few others, but, although I saw some nice looking landing pages, I felt that their links were too generic and I liked the wider range of possibilities for relevant optimization that Sedo offers.

Let me also add . . .

I post here because I'm bored from time to time, I find this site entertaining, and I don't mind helping out here and there where I might be more familiar with things than some other people.

I had the same thing happen when I posted that I knew of a person selling a registrar for example, was I lying? No. Am I going to go out of my way to prove something to people here? Not always.

So I'm sorry I don't have a high post count and don't have "street cred" with everyone here, but at the end of the day . . . not overly important to me I'm just some dude with 100 posts to you guys, I understand that, no worries, but sometimes let your minds be a little more open. Not everyone is new to the business on this forum

Thanks for adding that, Smith, and bravo for sticking up for yourself. I've read several of your posts over time, have appreciated your informative and thoughtful input, and look forward to hearing more from you as you see fit or whenever the bug to post gives you a bite. :tu: 8^X

 

[owenwww]

My daily revenue has almost doubled at DS in the last 2 weeks, and I don't mean it's gone from $1 to $2, I mean triple digits.

Sedopro will be exactly the same as the new DS when it launches.

 

[danielr]

Its obvious... that some of the people who are reporting higher revenue are talking about mortgage domains... My DS rep was telling me about the increase revenue on Mortgage by DS. Hmmm I have the strange feeling that some of the people who are reporting higher revenue are employed by DS... I am sure there must be some employees who work for DS that read these forums. And I am sure they dont respond to many posts. If I worked for a parking service I would read what others say about my service. And i would defend it if I had to ... in order to stay in business.

But the bottom line is THIS. Most people who own domains will be getting the short end of the stick on parking if all services gear towards affiliates instead of parking.

I am in the process of moving about 1000 domains away from DS and this takes time. I have freinds who park domains and all of them are reporting bad revenue's and they are also in the process of moving their domains away from DS (but they dont have near the quantity of domains I own). I personally own over 3000 domains and park with 5 services.

But i will say this... majority of the domains I own at DS are related to Poker or Banking. And some of my non poker/banking domains did receive increase revenues in the past week, however its only been 2 domains out of 1000. I did have a domain that was getting only .10 per click and I did get 1 click for $1.40.

I am really hoping that DS fails terribly in this venture; thus preventing other parking services from trying the same thing. If domain owners stick together we can prevent domain parking converting into affiliates.

There is another very important issue that everyone needs to understand. When you park at DS and somebody sees your links... they are getting impressions for free. This means that web surfers might click and see the website you are advertising and may not buy instantly. They may shop around and come back in a few days... and they may not even bookmark the site... As a result you get nothing for parking your domain because did not by instantly.

So the next time you see a car commercial, just drop what you are doing and run to the nearest car dealer and say you saw the commerical by buy the car.... Tell the dealer that you did not ever know that car was even made until you saw the commercial and the commericial was fantasitc.
People... parking is the advertising business and if you are parking with DS you are advertising for FREE..

If nobody parks at DS, then domain parking can survive. We the domain owners can not complain about the future of domain parking if we do nothing about it. If you are not seeing an increase in revenue with DS and seeing a loss its important that you email DS and let them know you are moving our domains. Its also important that you let the other parking services know you are moving your domains towards them because of the big mistake DS is making.

 

[Matrix1976]

Very good post Danielr, im glad some people are actually seeing what is ''really'' going on...

 

[NameFarmer]

GREAT post Daniel! If domainowners pull out a large amount of domains someone will take a big hit. And it's not gone be me. That's for shure. lol If a storeowner can't manage to make a sale once the customer is in the store it's not my problem.
On the other hand. I think still there are things that can be done to improve the quality of the CT

hint: DOO.ORG now?

 

[Grrilla]

The best reason for many domain name marketers, (depending on the names- see below**), to support ppc that I've seen. The benefits that are derived from residual business after the initial contact has been made is a very good point and one that doesn't receive very much examination. It would be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of online shopping habits. What % of purchases are impulse buys and what % are a result of a delayed response from shoppers who are considering their options? Once the contact has been made, how often do returning buyers go back and use the link that was responsible for the initial introduction to the target site, ie the link that got them there?? I'm willing to bet it's a very small % and I'm sure this accounts for one of the main reasons that affiliate advertising income is so difficult to come by.

There certainly are market surveys that have been done that have gathered and anayzed this info- how accessible they are to the GP, is another question. But even w/ the facts in hand, there would still be a problem with monitoring delayed response sales, whereas, the accountability for the number of visits/clicks is an accesible value and can be easily measured. With the changes that seem to be in the air, this should be a major area of interest for anyone who realizes income through ppc and may be something to consider casting a vote against, by moving your business to alternate venues.

** PS I can see where the degree of success would vary according to keyword quality and the category. Mixed results are understandable and shouldn't alarm anyone. Domains that have succeeded, (or that have the capacity to succeed), with affiliate partnerships would tend to do well under the new DS system and vice versa.

 

[snoop]

Hmmm I have the strange feeling that some of the people who are reporting higher revenue are employed by DS... I am sure there must be some employees who work for DS that read these forums.

yeah, and the people knocking them work for sedo, silly stuff.