Getting Maximum Parking Revenue

[danielr]

Something I have noticed in the past is on parked pages that I own... if there is a "FOR SALE" banner on the parked page... the PPC or click thru traffic is reduced.

Let me explain why I believe this to be true:
If you were driving thru a new city and saw 2 restaurants. They both looked the same on the outside and served the same food; however, one of them had a "HELP WANTED" or "Restaurant For Sale" sign on the outside. Which one would you care to eat at?

Majority of the people online do not even know what a parked page is. We do ofcourse, be we dont put ourselves in the shoes of our visitors. I think for the most part when they see the "For Sale Sign" they get spooked or think something is wrong with this site. They might think "If I buy something or click on something this is a fly-by-night website and I will get screwed and the website will be gone tomorrow.

If a visitor sees the "domain for sale" on the top part of the page, I am sure this greatly increases your chances of selling this domain. Ever notice why SEDO's statement "This name might be for sale" is in very small text? Sedo wants to make a percentage of your PPC rather than the ecrow fees of a sale. The sale is a 1 time deal and the money generated in PPC is gone after the sale.

After meeting with a Fabulous Rep a few weeks ago, I discussed this issue. I never put any "for sale" banner on my fabulous parked pages. However, I do like the "inquire about this domain" that Domain Sponsor uses at the top. I hope Fabulous (in the future) offers a similar statement at the bottom of the parked page soon.

 

[dgaussin]

Possible, but I'm not sure a lot of people read everything on the page. The most of them think "oh my god, a full bunch of crap ads !"... Sometimes, by mistake or dunno what, some click and I have some $$

 

[downloadfreak]

That is a very interesting point you have made, but I also have to agree that a lot of people don't read everything on the page in some cases.

 

[kslup_k]

Very interesting point there, and nice terminology too.

I do have to agree with you... although some people woild not even bother to read

 

[gazzip]

Probably the vast majority are not interested in the domain name anyway, but someone that is interested to see if it is available will type it in and they are very likely to notice any signs like - may be for sale - domain for sale etc

Its better than not having it if you are interested in selling your name, a blank page tells the person nothing and not everyone will know about doing a whois search

 

[Callmoney]

I totally agree!
I've done exactly the same with my domains parked at Sedo and the CTR increased about 5% to 10%.

 

[Grrilla]

The best of all possible worlds for a domain name parking program, IMHO:
1)Customizable graphics for the landing page.
2)Ability for the owner to add relevant content to the landing page or, even better, yet, having the ability too add extra pages of content.
3)An true partnership between domain owner and the listing site regarding disclosure of affiliate payments. The domain name owner would receive a defined percentage of the affiliate income and could view the payment and stats at a 3rd party site, ie CCBill.
4)The ability to add on one's own affiliate banners and links- perhaps on a seperate page. The listing site would share in this revenue getting a % from the domain owner's ads equal to the % that the domain owner was getting from the listing site affiliate ads
5)An option on the terminology, font size and placement of the sales listing. ie "Domain Name Addresses are Often Available for Sale. Click Here To Learn If [Example].com is Available. Font Size: 8 Placement Footer-Justified.

I know that all of this is not workable in the real world, at least, not at present, and that there could be problems w/ affiliate competition, agreements etc. But even if some of these ideas could be modified and integrated into the equation, particularly those ideas that relate to content, these modifications would represent an improvement overthe current avail. options and would better serve the public, the domain name owner and, perhaps, the affiliates. I'm not so sure about the listing site, however.

I think that we can be forgiven if we have a utopian dream, from time to time, as long as we don't let it get too far out of hand.

 

[DJ-Sound]

I also belive about 90-100% of visitors to parking pages usually try to get out as fast as they can before the popups kick in. Somtimes a like will catch thier eye and they'll check it out, but becase parking pages are a nusance(sp?) to the public we'll all contine to get low under 50% CTR's

 

[movingconcierge]

Hey...ppc newbie here...

How long did it take your sites to get crawled and really start to develop a traffic pattern. I've been with GoldKey with 250 sites for less than a month, and nothing, nada, zip. I visited some of the sites and the landing links they use have nothing to do with the name. I used their tool to see if they had been crawled and not. Does GK submit, or is that on me?

 

[Grrilla]

I also belive about 90-100% of visitors to parking pages usually try to get out as fast as they can before the popups kick in.

Agreed.

How long did it take your sites to get crawled and really start to develop a traffic pattern.

I've been parked at the same listing site for about 9 mos. and still can't figure out the answer to this one. Overall, my names aren't optimum ppc names, ie heavily searched keyword .com words and terms. The results on the busier ones are sporadic, to say the least. Right now I've got one domain that has about a 40% click rate that has OS fix links on it, but that's a first for this name. Some of my Casino links are 1 or 2 shot wonders- clicks and nice pmt one month, nothing the next. A term that might show 100 uniques one month drops out of sight a month or two later. Some of my better keyword terms that are not .com or .net do terribly on ppc. It's tough to find a pattern, although there are a 50+/- names that seem to stay fairly consistant, out of the 1000+ names that I have on ppc pages.

 

[worldstar]

Good point there! Next time try a non'for sale' page!
Thanks!

 

[bizbj]

A good idea,I thin I should try it on some of my parking names.Thanks

 

[IdahoFarmer]

Grrilla,

What you're talking about sounds an awful lot like adsense. No?