NameDrive: Enough is Enough?

[Our House]

A few weeks ago, Mark from ND offered to "optimize" my portfolio. He said that his optimization would take a few days to kick in. Being new to the domaining business, I was anxious to see the results. It's been almost a month since this optimization process, and (warning: mass understatement to follow) it hasn't been pretty.

Stats from the past week on some of my domains:

OMG, what is going on here? $0.00, $0.00, and $0.01 clicks?

Growing up, I learned that "there is no such thing as something for nothing." It appears that NameDrive's PPC amounts have proven that cliche` to be untrue.

I guess it's time to call it quits and move on to another parking company.

 

[linker]

I have to say that I really like ND, I have had decent luck there with some names, not so good with others, that is the way it goes... However, one of my better traffic names that gets 1-2 clicks always pays $0.02 a click at ND... I have moved this domain to TrafficZ, Parked, and Sedo and still have not had much luck...

But, I just joined ParkingPanel the other day and I moved that domain there and had one click yesterday that paid over $3.00!

I am planning on trying all my domains with them to see how it works for different names and different keywords, but I suspect I will still use ND for some...

The moral of the story is that you need to try different domains at different parking companies to see what works best... No sense bad-mouthing one over the other... :imho:

 

[harkster]

Ok, what I am about to say may get a contract put out on me.

I am so happy that ND is there for the little guy like me. I don't have a bunch of high traffic names and therefore cannot get accepted by the 'elite' parking outfits. Until ND came along I managed to get maybe a buck or 2 a month from Sedo (I tried a couple others with no better results).
My average click at ND for Sept $0.23, Oct. $0.29, Nov $0.44, Dec. $0.35, Jan. was $0.32, Feb. $0.21, Mar. $0.13 and so far this month $0.12.

Granted that this shows a downtrend but when compared with my Adsense revenue there is a very similar result. In other words clicks for terms will fluctuate over time. For one of my domains I can tell when a particular auction is running a campaign cause they bid my primary term way up for a few weeks before a major sale.

For those complaining about $0.00 clicks look at your Adsense results and I will wager that you will see $0.00 clicks (paying less than $0.01 after big G takes their cut). Is ND perfect? Hell no because I get very pissed at getting logged out when trying to tweak things and usually just give up trying.

I am disappointed that it appears my names aren't good enough to try Parking Panel. I applied on Apr 13 with a reference code from an NPer and haven't heard back but that is life. A major reason why I am into building mini-sites. Nearly every time I move a name from parking to mini-site revenue increases. An exception to this is a 50cent name which gets a near 40% click rate at ND paying much better than the mini-site I had. ND has a great template for names like this - averages under $0.10/click but the click rate is nice.

BTW I just looked and a .co.in name parked and it just received a $0.48 click from Asia.

YES THIS IS A RANT and I feel much better now. The grass IS ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence.

 

[Mike]

Hark,

it's good to know that you're content with your success. While i don't believe that your domains are of any lesser value than mine, i'm following the strategy of greed - wanting more for my domains than i've received previously. This gets to say that i had the same down turn in revenue as you had, i just faced the facts and moved on, at first i didn't park them for a while, then i tried Sedo, then 1plus.net, now i'm on PP, does that mean that any of these are the best? Not by a long shot, but i'm willing to try whatever it takes. What's concerning to me, though; is that apparently the finger pointing is starting at ND. It's Google's fault. Of course it is, but it appears that other services have found an acceptable course of action or at least attempt to create one. On the other hand, since ND is pretty prominent on NP and under constant "surveillance" they needed to step their "game" up a bit more. Logically, when you're dealing with domainers on a domainer board, your every move is going to be dissected. It's the nature of business, a very competitive business at that. Last but not least, reducing the existence of NP to be a dedicated bitch fest/board is not helping ND to regain grounds that they've recently lost.

In any way, it's all just :imho: and none of the above should mean that ND is a service that shouldn't be taken serious. I just believe that ND has somewhat lost sight of taking us serious.

 

[dns34]

Hi, i moved 50 domains from domain sponsor had no traffic at all,put them at name drive and 15 of them now geting better than 4000 hits a month,names like popfernandez.com at domainsponsor "o" is now brining in .25 a day at nd, just keep moving untill they get right.
nd has good service i like them and i'm still at domain sponsor,looking for a place to put my other 30 domains now.
Please sign up at weblo under my referal code "fef6d" weblo.com is growing fast get in on some good buys.They will open up airports for sale again soon hurry

 

[harkster]

IntelBank.com,
Well said. I am also always looking for ways to increase revenue. I am trying 1plus and...

I was just seeing ND bashed without at least a bit of thought behind the comments.

Things are a changing quickly. We haven't :imho: seen the beginnings of competition for the electronic world advertising dollar. Those that are aggressive and innovative will thrive and those that don't will wither and die.

I am not tied to ND but for right now they are providing better results than other parking services I have access to.


Getting off topic but... I can see a time when a parking company will have software which reads cookies and builds a landing page which will not only show keyword relevant ads but also ads related to cookie information. Amazon appears to already be doing something like this. Holy $hit does the idea of bigG/Doubleclick come to mind?
Got a little experiment for y'all. Go to Amazon and do some looking around then go to a site which has Amazon affiliate links where Amazon decides what ads to display. I wager you will see some results which are not relevant to the site. Hell, I am always hanging out on pottery sites and I can go to a Zune (for example) and see a link to a Pottery book at Amazon.

 

[dns34]

watch out at 1and1 i had some bad luck with them people,so did a lots of other folks,thanks

 

[kwan]

I'm with hark, ND is good for the little guy. I buy names only to develop them and parking for me is just a holding place until I get round to it. So I don't have typos or grab dropped names just for traffic. And for that reason I can't get into sedopro, trafficz, parked or any of the other sites that only accept "quality names" (and yes, I have tried).

I know most wont like to admit it, but probably at least 80% of the names of all NP'ers combined have little traffic, going by the ones you see posted here for appraisal or for sale. And even if ND and Sedo have lower average PPC than the others (which I honestly believe is not always the case) some people (like me) should be happy they're there. And if it doesn't suit you, by all means move :imho:

Btw dns34, that's 1plus.net not 1and1

 

[rickkumar]

I don't use ND but I am surprised to see them bashed here. Why doesn't ND respond?

 

[harkster]

I don't use ND but I am surprised to see them bashed here. Why doesn't ND respond?

They have. See response #24.

 

[SpareDomains]

gotta move them around and test and keep each name where it does the best for you, as far as my parked domains go I have seen very good click amounts from parked, fabulous and namedrive, yes I have seen a few .02 clicks here and there from namedrive but I have also seen $1.78 clicks as well that only make .11 elsewhere, the question that comes up a lot of "which parking company is the best?" has no simple answer as the category of domain, traffic source of domain, country of traffic, how much traffic is the parking companies filters blocking, etc.... all comes into play, park them all for 1-4 weeks depending on traffic amount at namedrive then switch them all to parked, then to sedo etc.... analyze your stats and spread them out where they make the most money for you, as far as customer support goes I have no complaints with namedrive, parked or fabulous, I have used other programs as well but these 3 and sedo are the only ones I have used enough to speak up on, I have yet to find 1 program that makes the most income for every category of domain so you gotta test to see which company does the best for your portfolio, I would say namedrive is probably one of the easiest to use but don't expect every category of domain to do the best there, don't expect that anywhere, testing is the only way to find out, if you find a domain that doesn't make money anywhere then develop it, make a minisite, or send it straight to a sales page.

 

[Premium]

I had a big long reply that I was going to post...heres the deal...

Stop Complaining >> Move names that suck at ND >> Form a Smile

I'm earning over $xxxx/month from NameDrive, so all traffic cannot be that low paying?

 

[GreenGambler]

With all this moving of peoples names and the payout thresholds that parking companies have. I am going to assume that the parking companies make alot of money from the "little guy" domainers.

 

[NameDriver]

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure how much I can add to the debate, but I can put across our own view on differing click prices with us and elsewhere.
Firstly, to address the point about clicks on Google paying differently on different platforms: Not all Google contracts are the same. Domain Sponsor, Sedo, Fabulous, ND do not all have Google Parking In A Box. We all have different feeds into Google which are paid and serviced in different ways. Having worked with them closely for 2 years, the inner machinations of that gargantuan company are bewildering. I can appreciate that this makes it no easier for the consumer to judge the difference between Google feeds accurately, it does explain why a 3$ click on DS could be a $0.50 click on ND and, conversely, why a 3$ click on ND could be a $0.50 click elsewhere. The fact we have over 700,000 domains parked with us points to the fact that there are a great many clicks paid better with us than elsewhere.
My reasoning not to use Google as a scapegoat but as support of what I was saying was simple: we are the only major parking company to show exactly what Google pays us on a daily basis - hence the daily revenue update. So, if you are getting a 0 cent or 2 cent click, no matter how much you feel ND is taking off the top percentage-wise, and I can assure you it is smaller than you think, it is a number coming from Google which we cannot do anything to increase. If these clicks persist, it is clearly a keyword whcih doesn't work well on our system and is better tested elsewhere.
There's not much more I can add to the debate. I don't feel it is a failure in our core management that we are not the best for every domain as this would then be a collective failure in every parking company's management. We simply provide a platform to take advantage of Google's feed which works best on our system.

Ed

 

[goodkarmaco]

Domain parking is as mysterious as the top magic shows. Just when you begin to figure it out, poof, the landscape changes!. Seems that parking providers have pretty much the samefeeds, why the differences in performance?. It would be nice if some stability for certain keywords were the norm as regards payout from each place.

 

[harkster]

A bit off topic but I think relative to the general PPC 'subthread' here.

My friends, we are operating in a free market (capitalism) system where competition is the keyword (pun intended). This free and open competition always provides the best product or service at the best price. In no way does this imply that any single entity will offer the best price on every product or service. That is why we compare prices before making purchases. Also, when making purchases the lowest price is not always the ultimate best deal as such things as service and customer relations must be considered.

In this case the PPC companies are selling us a service by providing a method to monetize our our properties. Just as when shopping for any other product or service to find the best deal we should be shopping the PPC companies to get the best deal on each of our properties. You don't think companies are spending their resources designing pretty pages or providing better tools etc. etc. just to be 'cool'. If you do it is time to dump all your domains and try something else.

While ND is doing ok for me right now I am always looking for ways to do better and for any particular name if I can do better elsewhere or by developing a mini I am gone. I also have no problem closing a site down and going back to parking it that is the best option.

If you think it is as simple as buy a domain, park it and watch the $$$ roll in you got no business being here because it isn't going to happen unless that name is a big time keyword. It is hard work and at times frustrating but also rewarding (in both a monetary and personal sense).

Yes, I am a hard core big time capitalist and damn proud of it.

 

[linker]

Hi, i moved 50 domains from domain sponsor had no traffic at all,put them at name drive and 15 of them now geting better than 4000 hits a month,names like popfernandez.com at domainsponsor "o" is now brining in .25 a day at nd, just keep moving untill they get right.
nd has good service i like them and i'm still at domain sponsor,looking for a place to put my other 30 domains now.

I do agree with you about the traffic thing... I have names that get a lot more traffic when parked at ND, I think this is because they count the Asian traffic... So you have a bit of a catch 22, more traffic but lower CPC...

 

[yoshine]

ya watch out for 1and1!!!! i noticed sometimes they switch out your adsence account with their own

 

[dan_Vt]

ya watch out for 1and1!!!! i noticed sometimes they switch out your adsence account with their own

Are you kidding? That's despicable. Try to get some proof of that, that's clearly unethical, and frankly, should get them in legal trouble.

 

[harkster]

Are you kidding? That's despicable. Try to get some proof of that, that's clearly unethical, and frankly, should get them in legal trouble.

I think if you read closely at 1plus it is clearly stated that they insert their ads every 10th display. Else how do they pay the bills.
They get it for free and still bitch about getting cheated.

 

[johnny6]

It's too bad the accounting on parking companies isn't public domain..... I'm a cynic by nature when it comes to business, and I've generally found that domainers and domain related companies and products are less than trustworthy perhaps more frequently than they should be...so I'd love to see evidence of splits backed up by physical evidence.

Who says I'm getting a 60% split somewhere? Or a 50% split? Only one party - the company providing a parking service. And when you see 2 cent clicks for $3-$4 keywords, I don't particularly care what your feed arrangement or split is with google -that SIMPLY DOES NOT ADD UP. It seems to me it IS that simple.

 

[tipsfromthetop]

Who says I'm getting a 60% split somewhere? Or a 50% split? Only one party - the company providing a parking service. And when you see 2 cent clicks for $3-$4 keywords, I don't particularly care what your feed arrangement or split is with google -that SIMPLY DOES NOT ADD UP. It seems to me it IS that simple.

Very well said.. It does not add up but i guess we put up with because most parking programs are free even though its technically not free we are doing them a service they get paid because of our names.. they wouldnt be in business otherwise so in a sense we are doing them a favor so we shouldnt really get shafted.