PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[TOXX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[Red Rock]

Wow Donny,
What customer service!
you are quick!
Who needs a customer service rep,
when you reply to this thread almost immediately!
LOL
You are the man.
Yeah, I was just reading the last few pages of this thread
and see the amount of identical stories.
I should really keep up with this thread.
Thanks alot, for your time.
Lets hope it doesn't happen again,
that's gotta be a huge headache for you guys at Parked!
Take Care,
Red Rock!

 

[TOXX]

Wow Donny,
What customer service!
you are quick!
Who needs a customer service rep,
when you reply to this thread almost immediately!
LOL
You are the man.
Yeah, I was just reading the last few pages of this thread
and see the amount of identical stories.
I should really keep up with this thread.
Thanks alot, for your time.
Lets hope it doesn't happen again,
that's gotta be a huge headache for you guys at Parked!
Take Care,
Red Rock!

Yes, Donny's service is second to NONE...BY FAR! :tu:

 

[ArtfulWebSites]

Parking No Longer Profitable!!

No, visitors but no clicks in 5 days. Usually I'll get atleast a couple. Been a bad week for me in many ways, not the end of the world.

same here! i'm goign on my 6th day with no clicks. lol. uh oh..........

I have you all beat! 8 consecutive days with no clicks!

In the past 11 days at Parked, I have had 164 visitors, 1 click and $.04 revenue!! :td:

I think something has dramatically changed behind the scenes in the parking/PPC world lately. Parking domains has become unprofitable since mid February - and NOT just at Parked.com.

Donny, any comments on what is causing all this?

 

[Seabass]

I have you all beat! 8 consecutive days with no clicks!

In the past 11 days at Parked, I have had 164 visitors, 1 click and $.04 revenue!! :td:

I think something has dramatically changed behind the scenes in the parking/PPC world lately. Parking domains has become unprofitable since mid February - and NOT just at Parked.com.

Donny, any comments on what is causing all this?

I can't imagine how you are not receiving any clicks for eight days unless you only have a handful of bad domains at Parked. I'm still getting lots of clicks at Parked, but about 20pc less all of a sudden. I assume that is the loss of Ask and Yahoo paying out .01 on foreign much of the time.

I think Yahoo changed too recently, b/c now it seems that even if you have a primo English generic, but a person shows up to it from Portugal or Chile, etc... you get .01 or .02, or something similar. It seemed in the past that Yahoo payed more for this, unless I am mistaken and actually the foreign traffic on that same domain was being sent to Ask.

However, I will say that some funky stuff does seem to be going on beyond Parked and Ask with domain parking, yet if you check most of the boards nobody is talking about it. Very strange! But, over in the Google Adsense camp folks have been bitching for awhile. Theories abound with the Adsense'rs, and easy to subscribe to any of the ideas put forth.

With Parking it is as if no one wants to admit there is a problem, or everyone is taking a wait-and-see approach.
.
.

 

[netmeg]

I have over 500 domains at Parked, and I really don't think they're *all* crap, yet, I don't get but one or two clicks a day, and that's on a GOOD day. Often I don't get any clicks at all. When I go look for my domains in the search engines, they rarely appear anymore. They're indexed, but they don't show up in the first 1000 results for searches, and that's whether or not they have content. They used to, but they don't anymore. My US traffic (which used to be 80%+) has dropped down to less than 1% according to the traffic analysis.

I'm having the exact same experience at Fabulous, Revenue Direct, Bodis and pretty much anywhere else.

I think the main thing that has changed is that there's really no (legitimate and/or approved) way to gain and maintain traffic anymore, unless you have really good type-ins. And it's *hard* to get really good type-ins.

There are other changes that have been made at the Yahoo and Google level as far as their advertising programs that I'm sure are affecting the domain industry as well. (Google just allowed its advertisers to exclude ads from parked domains on the search and content network, and from what I hear, many advertisers did just that)

The forces here are pretty much all beyond my control; all I can adjust at this point are my expectations - I originally bought the domains for their future resale value, not so much to monetize with parking, and also as a write-off against the income from my developed sites, and that's what I have to keep reminding myself. If I make a little money on parking now, that's great. But I no longer expect to.

 

[Seabass]

netmeg, maybe when advertisers see the conversion go down they will come back to domains?

Truthfully, this may just be "traffic seasickness" of all parties involved, meaning advertisers having most arbitration traffic yanked as a traffic source, Ask being pulled, Google changing clickable area, Y & G overreacting in favor of advertisers with overzealous click removal, bad economy lowering CTR, consumer jitters or indecisiveness with discretionary income causing them to freeze-up at the purchase stage thus lowering advertiser conversions and subsequently PPC price paid out, etc..... Everyone from the domainer to the advertiser to G & Y have to be a little confused on what to do next, thus inaction takes hold and we get a stagnation in the market. This is my best guess.

Yes, you are right netmeg...... all we can do is adjust and maybe start trying new ideas instead of placing all our "domain eggs" in one basket, so to speak.

I'm afraid it could be next winter or year before this storm looks any better.
.

 

[netmeg]

netmeg, maybe when advertisers see the conversion go down they will come back to domains?

That WILL NOT HAPPEN until or unless Google provides the advertisers with reports that actually show conversions from parked domains.

Google apparently has a new Content Network evangelist, and from what I understand, his job consists of promoting how "cleaned up" and profitable the content network now is, and to entice advertisers back to Content. And one of the hooks they're using is that parked domains (on both networks) can now be excluded.

Take what you will from that.

(Although that's Google, and this is the Parked thread, I think it's somewhat indicative of the state of affairs in general)

 

[Seabass]

I have over 500 domains at Parked, and I really don't think they're *all* crap, yet, I don't get but one or two clicks a day, and that's on a GOOD day. Often I don't get any clicks at all. When I go look for my domains in the search engines, they rarely appear anymore. They're indexed, but they don't show up in the first 1000 results for searches, and that's whether or not they have content. They used to, but they don't anymore. My US traffic (which used to be 80%+) has dropped down to less than 1% according to the traffic analysis.

I'm having the exact same experience at Fabulous, Revenue Direct, Bodis and pretty much anywhere else. .............

I have about 2,700 domains, I believe, right now with Parked.

I'm not going to say how much, but I have thousands of clicks per day, mostly from type-ins. I have bought maybe 30 expired traffic domains in total over the last few years, most of the rest were bought b/c they had never been used as a site or any other fashion, and were totally generic in nature.

Yet, I still have taken a dive. CTR is down, PPC is lower as a whole, and yet I am a TQ10 with Yahoo. It's true that Ask being removed has played a part in that, but it obviously seems there is more going on than just Ask.

I have noticed the dive at other parking companies as well. The main thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of .01 clicks from these companies on marginal, yes, but also good domains. It would seem that if you owned Diamonds,com and you got a visitor from Chile, you still get a click lower than .10 cents, even though that same click would have gone for a $1 upwards if it had been a U.S. click.
.

That WILL NOT HAPPEN until or unless Google provides the advertisers with reports that actually show conversions from parked domains.

Google apparently has a new Content Network evangelist, and from what I understand, his job consists of promoting how "cleaned up" and profitable the content network now is, and to entice advertisers back to Content. And one of the hooks they're using is that parked domains (on both networks) can now be excluded.

Take what you will from that.

(Although that's Google, and this is the Parked thread, I think it's somewhat indicative of the state of affairs in general)

Oh, wow...... I did not know any of this.

I thought advertisers could track conversions by domains. I'm not sure where I picked that up. But, being as uninformed as they are and with the "Evangelist" pushing the "correct" direction, I see your point clearly.

I always have thought they see us as competitors and know we're getting big. Just look at all the domain shows. They are thinking Domainers + Ask + IAC + TRAFFIC + Demand Media + Marchex + Parked.com/Fabulous.com + Sendori/LeaseThis all getting together, or some other concoction, is a potent adversary. It may just happen anyway if they keep trying to squash us.

I tell you where there is a whole pot of gold that can be had: Lead generation. I wish Parked.com would come up with a method for inserting certain domains into these models. For example, car domain traffic, going to car sites at .50 cents a redirect, regardless of conversion. I have personally set up these kinds of deals, but a plug-and-play version by Parked would be fantastic. I'd like to see a lot of categories - hotels, cars, boats, trips, etc......
.
.

 

[John Doe]

I have my best pay period at Parked. Up in uniques, clicks and RPC as well. Despite some domains managed to get even $0,005 clicks (2 clicks with total revenue $0,01... sic!) and CTR is down to around 4%. February was under water. Go figure.

 

[Seabass]

I have my best pay period at Parked. Up in uniques, clicks and RPC as well. Despite some domains managed to get even $0,005 clicks (2 clicks with total revenue $0,01... sic!) and CTR is down to around 4%. February was under water. Go figure.

How does one only get a 4% CTR? Even with Brittney Spears domains or mistypes of YouTube, should you not be getting higher?

I had been up to 70% at one point. These days jumping between 30+ to 50+ CTR.

 

[netmeg]

I thought advertisers could track conversions by domains. I'm not sure where I picked that up.

For most actual developed sites, they can. But a lot of sites (and all domains) get lumped into either the "Other Sites" or the "Domain Ads" category. Moreover, some parked domains are on the Search Network, and some are on the Content Network, depending on their feeds/deals. You can exclude on both networks. But you can't see where your ads are appearing, nor where specifically they are converting. I posted a thread about this here, but it kind of died.

 

[John Doe]

How does one only get a 4% CTR? Even with Brittney Spears domains or mistypes of YouTube, should you not be getting higher?

I guess there are some bots involved.

 

[digitalfog]

And one of the hooks they're using is that parked domains (on both networks) can now be excluded.

Take what you will from that.

(Although that's Google, and this is the Parked thread, I think it's somewhat indicative of the state of affairs in general)

That's a big hook indeed. A casual observer would look at all of this and reasonably declare that the "parking" industry is unraveling.

Sure, the guys who own the big value domains will probably feel a little pinch, but I'd wager dollars to donuts that the average domain holder will have his/her lunch handed to them.

 

[galt]

Sorry about this basic question. I did a search and couldn't find anything.
In the "my account information" then "domains for sale" I want to create a message for all of my domains. I put in
This domain for sale
http://{DOMAIN}
and the error was the URL you entered does not appear to be properly formatted.

 

[Donny]

Run, Run, Run!

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/03/13/google-lets-advertisers-opt-out-of-domain-parking-sites/

Donny

 

[netmeg]

I said that already!

 

[Donny]

Oops, I guess it's been a long week.

Donny

 

[Mike]

I can't put in words how much i despise Google.
Easy to go after the little guy and practically disable the majority of domain owners with one swift kick to the ... "DNS".
What's next? Having to ask Google whether i'm allowed to register a domain or what i'm allowed to do with it?!
Oh, hold on. We already can't do what we want with it and expect revenue, because the Gods at Google dislike the parking decisions.
Amazing how quickly my day can be ruined.

Back to the parked thread.
M.

 

[DomainNameWire]

That WILL NOT HAPPEN until or unless Google provides the advertisers with reports that actually show conversions from parked domains.

Google advertisers can see the conversions from parked domains now.

 

[Sameh]

Google advertisers can see the conversions from parked domains now.

In the long term, i think this will be excellent for the domains with pure "type-in" traffic.