PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[ZOX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[texasgamer]

Thanks Seabass. Very insightful post. I am going to hunker down and hope for the best!

 

[Seabass]

Thanks Seabass for providing the wisdom of your years of domaining experience. I didn't start parking until after arbitrage, so I don't know if some domainers are comparing the revenues back then against what is being made today. Since my only point of reference is parking for the past six months or so, PPC and RPC has been fairly steady for the 1,000+ domains I have at parked and not bad at the other parking sites as well. I have seen periods where 10 days will go by and a group of my domains will drop in traffic like a ton of bricks, only the come back up again. I'm sure that's related to Google and Yahoo indexing that you mentioned. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

John, I never did do arbitrage....not even once.....so I can't make any comparisons to that. It would not make sense to anyways since normal parking and arbitrage are two different animals.

I think most domainers are comparing earnings now to say two months ago. But, there is a second comparison many domainers make at Parked, and that is when there was an Ask feed using Google ads that drove earning upwards. That feed was yanked by Google in early March 2008.

 

[ebatcave]

John, I never did do arbitrage....not even once.....so I can't make any comparisons to that. It would not make sense to anyways since normal parking and arbitrage are two different animals.

Thanks for the clarification. I haven't experienced much of a drop, but it may be that some focus on keywords with high PPC rates, and those advertisers have been pulling out for now. My PPCs have typically been lower, but I get about 1,500 a day, so it adds up.

 

[Donny]

Seabass - I couldn't have said it better myself.

Donny

 

[ZOX]

Ray, I at first was shocked to see the lower numbers/lower RPC and I almost thought there was a bug in the Parked system....so I understand your concern.

However, upon doing some homework/thinking over the last week or so I think I found the main reasons that earnings are down. Here is my conclusion:

1. I have been following three certain markets online since, really, 1996..... and I know who 95% of the advertisers are. And I have spoken to about 70% of them on the phone at one point or another.....many were customers of mine. Well, I did a bunch of spot checks on certain domains' keywords that match those markets...... and guess what? Many of the BIG players have pulled out of PPC for now......they can't be found on Yahoo or Google. These are folks/companies that have had PPC running for six or more years continuously. To see them not advertising is very telling. I'm sure they will be back b/c their business depends on it. Right now there are scared as hell......like everyone else, including most domainers. "Cash is king"..... and that is surely what they are thinking. They are probably trying to accumulate a cash pile to hold them through any more sh*t that may be coming. BUT.....they must return to advertising or it is their demise. When? Who knows..... until then we suffer.

I also suspect that many of the remaining advertisers lowered their CPC's if the market softness did not do it for them automatically in their ad accounts.

2. Google de-indexed me to the point of negligible traffic coming from them. I was hovering b/t about 9% to 12% G referrals, then it dropped to .92%. It has recovered to 1.7% the last few days, and now is at 2.01% ....I don't know what that means, if anything. But, maybe it will rise again.

Some other domainers noticed the de-indexing also. It happened around the 21st or 22nd of October. Check your Google referrals to see if things look normal....it could be part of the reason. Yahoo indexed sites dropped some too....not sure why.

3. I can only think of about three or four folks I know (not in domaining) that have not seen their incomes get worse. Almost everyone is feeling it.

That is why CTR was horrible in October, and I suspect folks are frozen up like ice and won't click. They are paralyzed mentally b/c of all the bad news on the TV, Net, radio, friends, neighbors, and possibly in their own family. Some may actually be window shopping b/c they are depressed....but don't have and desire to make actual purchases.

It seems that CTR is rising now a bit, maybe being "forced" upwards b/c of the coming holidays, maybe b/c the initial shock of the collapse has worn off a little..... who knows.


I'm sure many other forces are at work here too..... advertisers opting out of parked pages; search hijacking by G, Y, MSN, and Micro's Explorer ; smarter surfers realizing what a parked page is, etc........... these side issues keep growing in importance as well, and are now influential add-ons to the list of items which contribute the downward spiral of income.


Not to be overly gloomy, but as the Obama love affair wears off and the reality of the economy sinks back in, things will get worse - IMHO. I suspect many domainers will leave the business. I don't see us climbing out of this hell-hole that the financial system has us in any time soon.

Net advertising is still slated to grow at an incredible pace, and many new companies/individuals are joining the fray, but I suspect if the sh*t hits the fan, then all those advertisers will adjust their CPC bids down..... a total market adjustment, so to speak. The advertisers will all be there, just not paying worth a damn.

I do know one way out though if everything collapses b/c I did it from 2000 to 2002...... create tons of pages and then cold call folks and sell them on your domains, $50....$100, whatever, just so that you can keep your domains. If you have killer generic domains with traffic many will want to be on your site. You may make less than what you did in parking, depending on your sales skills, and you may even have to find some alternative ways to make some money, but when the dust settles you would be ready to ride the earnings surge in parking again. It's not easy but it can be done.

Who knows, nothing has happened in this industry for so long now, maybe a new form of monetization will arrive and save the day. Something should give here soon.....there is too much potential in all these millions of domains to overlook.

Lastly I would say, without some hope a person is relegated to failure brought on by himself, or herself. If you give up you get no rewards. That is why I held domains for seven years before parking even existed......hope. :yell:

I'll try to write more next time.

Very true Seabass...but let's try to stay on a POSITIVE note for Parked.com and Parking overall! :tu:

 

[DnPresident]

I was just wondering if 1 Click vs 2 Click Lander effects your Quality Score. Yahoo tries to give the 1 click landers to the best domains for the most part so I wonder if a 2 click lander that let's say get's 100-150 visitors per day 5-7 days per week got a 6 on Thursday what would a 1 click lander using the same keyword have? Does Yahoo look at it as the 1 click lander is a better name so we'll allow it more traffic?

I don't really like using the word hate as a feeling but that's pretty much the word I think of when thinking about the term "traffic Quality Score"

 

[Donny]

A 1 click lander will always have a lower TQ, at least based on what I have found.

Have him signup and send me his info.

Donny

 

[Seabass]

Very true Seabass...but let's try to stay on a POSITIVE note for Parked.com and Parking overall! :tu:

Okay.....well then let me start by saying I had a pretty good earnings surge yesterday. Many domains with a high RPC. :bingo:

Today is not looking too shabby either.

 

[Seabass]

Wow.....talk about fast updates of the final stats.

 

[ebatcave]

Very fast indeed. Donny, you're going to spoil us

 

[ArtfulWebSites]

Getting Out of What?

I'm pretty much down to nothing, zip. Not just at Parked, all over. It's why I'm getting out.

Netmeg,

Say it isn't so, Netmeg!! Getting out of what - Parked.com, all parking, all Domaining??

You have been the one shining star and beacon of light - our guru of parking and Domaining.

 

[Donny]

All of our providers have been reporting their stats very early for months now except for one of them. And now that one has a new system so they are quicker as well. So we are finalizing much sooner than before.

Donny

 

[fatter]

Any one else with excessive clicks today, I emailed my account rep with names in question, one had 26 clicks with one visitor, the other showed no clicks with 1 visitor this morning but now shows 11 clicks. usually on update these things are corrected just curious if anyone else has a similar situation

 

[Seabass]

Any one else with excessive clicks today, I emailed my account rep with names in question, one had 26 clicks with one visitor, the other showed no clicks with 1 visitor this morning but now shows 11 clicks. usually on update these things are corrected just curious if anyone else has a similar situation

Yes.....but give in a couple of hours or so and it disappears......at least they all have for me today.

It seems Parked is getting on top of this better now.

 

[Varon]

edited...

 

[DnPresident]

I've yet to understand the problem with excessive clicks and why a parked.com account holder would complain about having too many clicks.

 

[henniemeijer]

I've yet to understand the problem with excessive clicks and why a parked.com account holder would complain about having too many clicks.

It is not so much complaining, but reporting. When I just joined parked I got 40 clicks in 1 day on 1 domain, did not think that made a good impression and that parked.com might think that I asked someone to click on the ad and kick me out. Reported it, parked asked me to report it again if it would happen more often and the domain never got more than 2 clicks a day anymore.

 

[aarh33]

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY CONCUR!!
...
Sometimes I wonder how Donny does it to provide such EXCEPTIONAL service!!
EVERY email or post is always answered.
And ideas are put into reality.
Wow!
...
P.S. Namedrive works well on low quality domains.

what do you mean by low quality domains? like low traffic...?

where would you park a higher quality domain?

 

[DomainAuction]

when we "optimize" our portfolio on parked.com ... under the keyword area may we put more than 1 keyword.

for example if i own a site called "cakes.com" may i put "cakes, cake recipes, types of cakes" etc?

please help

 

[netmeg]

when we "optimize" our portfolio on parked.com ... under the keyword area may we put more than 1 keyword.

for example if i own a site called "cakes.com" may i put "cakes, cake recipes, types of cakes" etc?

please help

You'll do much better if you stick to just one. Don't confuse the targeting.

 

[DnPresident]

It is not so much complaining, but reporting. When I just joined parked I got 40 clicks in 1 day on 1 domain, did not think that made a good impression and that parked.com might think that I asked someone to click on the ad and kick me out. Reported it, parked asked me to report it again if it would happen more often and the domain never got more than 2 clicks a day anymore.

woW! 40 clicks and 1 visitor, that bot wanted answers. I've never been misfortunate enough to get 40 clicks from 1 visitor but I can see why someone could get 11 clicks from a serious consumer wanting as much info as possible before buying the product or service. That would just mean they shopped all 10 links then going back to the one they liked best.

I like parked pages, they are a good resource of information for consumers letting them compare up to 10 companies on one easy to use page.

 

[Varon]

As mentioned by DnPresident, I see no issues with getting multiple clicks per visitor. This in fact, is Parked's best feature over other parking providers. I am sure that Parked's fraud filters can easily pinpoint a member clicking his own ads and a visitor doing it. They have been in business for more than a decade. We certainly don't want the day to come when Parked stops counting multiple clicks and puts in filters to allow just 1 click per visitor. So why not just take it easy and make your cash in these troubled times?

I mean its tough to make revenue anyway, and in this scenario, do we need some more extra cuts to our revenues?

 

[fatter]

I am having trouble optimizing a few domains even though yahoo has plenty of adds for the keywords I use when I input them in parked system on 2 word domains parked takes one of the words and bases the whole ad page on the single word when it needs to take both words together, heres an example not my domain. but if you put
"commercial fisherman" as keywords they show adds for tv and use commercial only. I have tried many different scenerios and cant get relevant adds, assuming you arent able to do it does parked eventually optimize the layout by searches and clicks
Thanks in advance
Joe T

 

[Seabass]

I am having trouble optimizing a few domains even though yahoo has plenty of adds for the keywords I use when I input them in parked system on 2 word domains parked takes one of the words and bases the whole ad page on the single word when it needs to take both words together, heres an example not my domain. but if you put
"commercial fisherman" as keywords they show adds for tv and use commercial only. I have tried many different scenerios and cant get relevant adds, assuming you arent able to do it does parked eventually optimize the layout by searches and clicks
Thanks in advance
Joe T

If they are appropriate keywords for the domain contact your rep and ask him to hard code it into the domain. He or she should be able to do that for you. I have ran into that quite a few times.....it should not be a big deal.

I think what happens is that Yahoo is showing ads for that exact match of keywords, but that does not mean those ads are syndicated onto parked pages. The advertisers may have opted out of ads for parked pages and therefore the two word combo won't work, so the Parked.com system keys off of one keyword to be able to have some results. At least that is my understanding of it.

FYI, sometimes when it gets hard-coded it will not have appropriate ads b/c there were not advertisers for that keyword combo, and that is why you cold not get the keyword combo to work to begin with. Other times it seems to work out ok. I'm not sure of the reason for the latter.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I think that is fairly accurate.

 

[DnPresident]

Looking at the example commercial fisherman on goog and yahoo there's very few ppc advertisement.

Look up the one your trying on yahoo and google and see if there are advertisers