PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[TOXX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[Donny]

Why would we offer something special for .asia domains? Do they have dumb rules like .mobi that I don't know about?

"Earth Hour" won't affect anybody tonight. But the "Kid's Choice Awards" on Nick will. Sorry I've been rewiring my home theater cluster all day.

Donny

 

[Varon]

.asia seems like a complete flop idea. Not worth it.

 

[PowerUp]

Does Parked have any special guidelines when choosing custom pictures for adult names? I'm thinking of downloading some pics from porn sites and put some blur screens over their private parts and uploading them to Parked.

 

[johname]

Does Parked have any special guidelines when choosing custom pictures for adult names? I'm thinking of downloading some pics from porn sites and put some blur screens over their private parts and uploading them to Parked.

I guess when you go to those porn sites you will see that those pictures are copyrighted.

 

[Dr. Anthony]

has anyone had any problems with stats?
At sedo.. I used to get about 300 uniques on any saturday.
yesterday, with parked... 9.
yes.. 9 uniques.

Looks like they didnt give me ANY revenue from when their 'stats were down'
anyone notice this?

 

[sihar07]

has anyone had any problems with stats?
At sedo.. I used to get about 300 uniques on any saturday.
yesterday, with parked... 9.
yes.. 9 uniques.

Looks like they didnt give me ANY revenue from when their 'stats were down'
anyone notice this?

i believe the 300 traffic at sedo most are from bots (i.e: search engine bots). At parked, bot traffics are not counted. i was a member at sedo too back in 07.. so i know..

 

[Dr. Anthony]

i believe the 300 traffic at sedo most are from bots (i.e: search engine bots). At parked, bot traffics are not counted. i was a member at sedo too back in 07.. so i know..

no, i have a very high type in referr (78%)

 

[Sleepys]

has anyone had any problems with stats?
At sedo.. I used to get about 300 uniques on any saturday.
yesterday, with parked... 9.
yes.. 9 uniques.

Looks like they didnt give me ANY revenue from when their 'stats were down'
anyone notice this?

There are some stats that won't show up other than bot traffic. I know that Parked does not show any RSS traffic at all. It shows up as 0.

Since you mention that it is type in traffic, I did just notice today that I have something similar going on in some of my names. I registered three names at the beginning of November. I moved one to Parked and the other two to Sedo. The one at Parked significantly outperformed the other two. They got similar visits, but more clicks at Parked. I moved the other two over to Parked in the beginning of January. I actually just tried to re-add the 2 names, because Parked is showing 0 visits for the past 30 days and I thought maybe they did not add properly in my account (they did). One of the names has had 4 visits and 5 clicks since I added it (only seems to show visits on days it gets clicks), the other has had 0 visits. Both of these names did about 15-30 uniques a month at Sedo (2 clicks each), pure type-in. Obviously my CTR/RPM at Parked is high on the name that is only showing visits on days it gets clicks (earnings are the same as at Sedopro), the other one has no stats (It also had 2 clicks at Sedo). It makes me suspicious of my CTR/RPM numbers when I know that these names had more visitors than is reported. I don't think I have ever seen a name get more visitors at Parked than at Sedo or Namedrive, ever. I even once had a name that had more clicks at Sedo than it had visitors at Parked, which with the whole multiple click thing should be impossible.

That all being said, I would like to stress that I have many names that outperform at Parked on strictly an earnings basis (not factoring CTR/RPM for anything). I keep these at Parked and they will probably stay there forever. I also love Parked support. So, before any of you think I am trying to bash Parked, let me say that I am just reporting things I have noticed in my account.

 

[Donny]

Dr. Anthony - We only count unique visitors. That could also be your problem. One other thing is if you just moved the domain from Sedo, it takes about 2 weeks before their nameservers completely stop resolving your domain. You can always send me the domain and I can look at it.

Sleepys - We don't show any 404 traffic currently. That could be the issue.

Donny

 

[Sleepys]

Donny - PM Sent :D

My post was meant to imply that I feel anything is up at Parked, just that I feel like I cannot trust the unique stats at parking companies, because they are all so different. I also tend to feel like I can't I rely on RPM/CTR, so I just use earnings, plain and simple. Sometimes Parked outperforms, sometimes other places do. It would be nice to have a better grasp of exact unique numbers, but when even fresh regged names show such a discrepency in uniques, we have to just rely on who is making us the most money on each particular name.

 

[pdga2007]

I have about a dozen names at Parked.com. One of them has 1-click lander and that page makes about $15 a month. I love it!

 

[Dr. Anthony]

Donny: the clicks also drastically dropped. I average about $20 comission on a weekend at sedo.. at sedo, I made $176 until March 26 (when i moved it to parked) I let it sit at parked for a few days.. I put in a request to have it moved back to sedo last night after the results.

 

[kemjika11]

Donny: the clicks also drastically dropped. I average about $20 comission on a weekend at sedo.. at sedo, I made $176 until March 26 (when i moved it to parked) I let it sit at parked for a few days.. I put in a request to have it moved back to sedo last night after the results.

you know there are multiple reasons why domains perform differently at different parking providers, so you might have to do more research into EXACTLY what is causing your clicks to drop from 1 provider to another.

 

[Dr. Anthony]

you know there are multiple reasons why domains perform differently at different parking providers, so you might have to do more research into EXACTLY what is causing your clicks to drop from 1 provider to another.

I've noticed the traffic drastically dropped.
i'm sure theres a direct corelation

 

[Broker]

I've made 2 cents in the last week. Very depressing whatever is going on with all this parking stuff. This is not just parked either I'm told. Parking and my adsense seems to be absolutley dead anymore.

 

[Dr. Anthony]

I moved back to sedo.. and the clicks are almost back to normal. not sure whats happening

 

[Seabass]

There is NO doubt something MAJOR is going on with earnings and lower reported traffic from Google and Yahoo

How many of us here know a foreign language, other than English?

I know many, many of you guys and gals do speak other languages - just look at the names. I speak three languages also, and three others I understand and can speak brokenly.

How hard would it be, for example, to get a group of guys/gals in Brazil to knock out mini-sites for us, especially if we brought consistent, volume work? Brazil is loaded with talented programmers, an educated population, that is underemployed ( I know a Brazilian banker here in the U.S. cleaning houses, for example, b/c of no work in Brazil). They would LOVE the work.

Andrew over at DomainNameWire.com said that he has turned $1 a day parked domains into $15 a day using XsitePro to develop out the domains. He even gives site examples and the example pages suck in appearance, but they make him $15 a day. Here's a link to the story - it's pretty neat :

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/03/18/how-to-develop-your-domain-names-fast/

Ron Jackson’s NameNewbie is an XsitePro site too - http://www.NameNewbie.com

Now imagine if you had five Brazilian guys/gals developing your sites out using easy software like XsitePro, each getting a mere $50 a day, or $$? per site, (which is feasable, I think, knowing what I know about Brazilians - pay extra and they love working for you :bingo, just cranking out the mini-sites one after another. How long do you think it would take to start making some real money so that you could buy even better domains to develop out? And, here's the key, eventually - "your own sales team" selling ads direct to advertisers. All this while you continue to do what you do best - find domains.

I've just had the lowest two days I can remember in the last year or so with Parked.com - and FAB, Sedo, DS, etc... are not doing well either. The same thing is happening everywhere to everyone. AND, this is HIGH SEASON folks - traffic and earnings should be rocking. Just wait until summer if you want to see the dead walking in the desert - if the trend continues. I truly believe this is Yahoo's/Google's doing. But if this continues I am moving a chunk of my domains out of parking and into development to stem the losses. I used to make more money this way and I'll do it again if I have to. It's so easy to pick up the phone and get advertisers on your site you would not even believe it until you tried it. I cold-called advertisers to advertise on my sites starting in 1997 and did it for years. It was EASY sales. Honestly though, my passion is finding domains not developing them. I prefer a prospector's heart to having a builder's grit. But you must follow the money to stay in the game.

So, now, major ad dollars have been flowing to G and Y the last couple of years and G and Y are pushing our click prices into the dirt, AND I would SWEAR that they are now cutting back our reported traffic. It's just a hunch though - nixing Uniques in the Name of Fraud, and in the Name of ......... Just look at some of your generic type-in domains (no expired traffic domains) that have been at Parked or FAB or wherever for 2 + years and look at the uniques reported. There was a sudden crash in uniques reported starting last last year (you have to look closely at long term - graph preferably). You have to look at individual domains not your portfolio, b/c if you keep adding domains and your uniques stay the same or rises a bit, but it does not mean you are not "losing uniques".

After countless 15 + hour work days for years finding these domains and now they tell me they are worth much less and now suddenly get less clicks and lower RPC value. I say, "not true", you can not buy better domains in the niches I bought into. Better domains don't exist - if they had I would have bought them already in my niches. Click prices have not fallen, as far as I can tell using the tools available to check prices.

Some day's earnings seem to hold some sunshine for a brighter future, but then things just turn worse again. It's up and down with earnings every day and that makes NO SENSE. It has never been like this ever before in parking.

Even with a TQ of 10 at Parked I am getting beat into the ground. So, what's the point of Yahoo publishing the TQ score? It would seem a meaningless, scare tactic that you worry about when it drops. It also seems it has no correlation to your earnings, even though they say it does. Yahoo did not think this through well. Transparency is the only thing that will alleviate the animosity and mistrust between domainers and G/Y. So, if they are going to be clear about what our domains are worth by reporting lower payouts, then they need to open up their books. If we can't get this then development is the key, with eventual salesmen/women selling ads on our sites - not G/Y.

Anyone else interested in trying to look into outsourcing mini-sites (mini-sites sounds cheezy - they should be called sites) to begin with, in foreign countries whereby we all "buy-in" or buy directly (I'm want no interest/profit from this)for a certain amount of developed sites per domainer? Maybe one of you living in a foreign country can look into it in your own country and report what it might entail to get started. Me, personally, I will be looking into it. How fast can I get it together? I have no idea since I never attempted this. My guess is that this will only work well with mid to upper tier domains, but who knows.

It would be great if Parked.com did something bold and shocking like this, or some other mechanizations for the greater good at this juncture in time. I would be elated to see it. Maybe it's in the works as Parked has always had sweet surprises for domainers. But I can't sit and wait without knowing - I'm too fidgety when my earnings are lower at every parking company.
.

 

[cybermonkey]

Preach it, Seabass!

 

[mwzd]

The problem with xsitepro is that its kind of limiting with what you can do with it. I know its great seo out of the box, but then so is wordpress. Add an seo plugin and it takes off.

But I think seabass has put into words what the big boys have been saying for a while - develop, develop, develop.

Better for people like me though

 

[netmeg]

It's definitely rough. Over 800 domains at Parked (and another couple hundred scattered around various places) and I have virtually no search engine presence anymore. If I get impressions (visits), I get clicks, but most days I don't get but a handful of visits. And just about all of my domains used to be in the search engines, and in some cases, ranking with PR. A lot are still there, but won't come up in the first 1000 results (all you can search for) for any reasonable phrase. I am absolutely convinced that all the search engines are systematically deprecating parked domains, permanently, from the SERPS. Not sure I entirely blame them for that - seven times out of ten, it's probably not what people are searching for - but there should be *some* kind of a solution, short of full scale development. Advertising makes the world go round, after all. People want to buy stuff, and advertising tells there where it is and how much it costs. Maybe Seabass is on to something.