PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[ZOX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[ebatcave]

Same Experiment:

17.41% Revenue Increase
9.35% RPM Increase
3.75% CTR Increase

I also tried it on 20 consistently producing domains using the same time periods L2 gave. Since the number of visitors increased 11% during the period as well, I performed a ratio calculation to make the number comparisons a little more fair. Here's what I got:

17.9% Revenue Increase
3.06% CTR Increase
5.48% RPM Increase
15.07% RPC Increase

I hope they gave Donny a raise (or at least a new ski boat) coming up with this! :kickass:

 

[Donny]

The numbers are looking even better this week than last week. Hope everybody is seeing the same thing we are as well.

Donny

 

[ZOX]

The numbers are looking even better this week than last week. Hope everybody is seeing the same thing we are as well.

Donny

Who would've thought such a small change in reality would have such profound effects!
...
I'm lovin' it though! :kickass:

 

[mdesigner125]

Yahoo Changes

Just got this from Yahoo on the advertising end, will be interesting to see how it translates to the parking side....

"Dear Advertiser,

As you know, when you advertise with Yahoo!, your traffic can come from both Yahoo! sites and partners' sites in our distribution network. As part of an ongoing effort to strengthen our marketplace, Yahoo! plans to soon expand the adjustments we make to click charges based on our assessment of the performance of traffic coming from sources within our distribution network. This will include deeper discounts on click charges for lower-performing traffic, and potential premiums on click charges for higher-performing traffic. We expect to launch this enhancement in late August or early September 2009.

This change is designed to further align your click charges with the performance of the traffic that you receive.

How this Affects Your Account
These adjustments will be based on our assessment of the performance of the traffic source, and will not be affected by the quality of your ads. Based on our analysis, we expect that most advertisers will see click charges drop or remain unchanged, while a small fraction of advertisers may experience an increase in click charges.

As always, you will never pay more for a click than the amount you specify as your bid (including any bid adjustments you may make for desired audiences).

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo! Search Marketing "

 

[Donny]

I was first told about this about two weeks ago and I still don't have much information. But the only thing I do know is that if you have a low TQ, you will probably be paid much less than before.

Donny

 

[mdesigner125]

What I find interesting about this whole thing is that the folks at Yahoo and Google have everyone believing that the lower payouts are the result of a bad economy, poor quality traffic, etc. I have the unique perspective of being able to look at it from both sides. I manage a PPC campaign for a company that spends several million dollars per year on PPC with the major search engines and in categories where I am being charged anywhere from $2.50 to $3.50 per click, the payout coming in on some very generic, keyword rich, US traffic, parked domains has been in the $.08-$.10 cent range. I know that as an advertiser, I would buy that same traffic by the boat load if I could get my hands on it for anything less than about $1.50. Hopefully this industry starts to make the shift towards partnering directly with the people who want good quality traffic and are willing to pay fair market value for it. That will keep domaining alive and cut out the massive search engine middle men who are currently drawing margins of up to 90%. For the most part, the whole "quality" click discounting thing is just a cover for the search engines to drive more profit. I know that as an advertiser, I am seeing no discounting on my traffic regardless of whether it converts or not, while my Adsense earnings as a publisher have fallen off a cliff on a revenue per click basis. I know anyone who does any serious domaining has also seen this. Donny and the folks at Parked have done an excellent job of trying to look out for our best interests but they are really fighting a losing battle right now. We need direct partnerships with quality advertisers if we want to stop the cycle of being robbed blind for quality traffic by the big engines. Regardless of what the news is telling you, people are still spending money on PPC, we just need an effective platform for directly matching up buyers and sellers. Imagine the possibilities if an advertiser could sign up for a PPC account directly with Parked and then choose which domains they want to advertise on?

 

[exsedo]

What I find interesting about this whole thing is that the folks at Yahoo and Google have everyone believing that the lower payouts are the result of a bad economy, poor quality traffic, etc. I have the unique perspective of being able to look at it from both sides. I manage a PPC campaign for a company that spends several million dollars per year on PPC with the major search engines and in categories where I am being charged anywhere from $2.50 to $3.50 per click, the payout coming in on some very generic, keyword rich, US traffic, parked domains has been in the $.08-$.10 cent range. I know that as an advertiser, I would buy that same traffic by the boat load if I could get my hands on it for anything less than about $1.50. Hopefully this industry starts to make the shift towards partnering directly with the people who want good quality traffic and are willing to pay fair market value for it. That will keep domaining alive and cut out the massive search engine middle men who are currently drawing margins of up to 90%. For the most part, the whole "quality" click discounting thing is just a cover for the search engines to drive more profit. I know that as an advertiser, I am seeing no discounting on my traffic regardless of whether it converts or not, while my Adsense earnings as a publisher have fallen off a cliff on a revenue per click basis. I know anyone who does any serious domaining has also seen this. Donny and the folks at Parked have done an excellent job of trying to look out for our best interests but they are really fighting a losing battle right now. We need direct partnerships with quality advertisers if we want to stop the cycle of being robbed blind for quality traffic by the big engines. Regardless of what the news is telling you, people are still spending money on PPC, we just need an effective platform for directly matching up buyers and sellers. Imagine the possibilities if an advertiser could sign up for a PPC account directly with Parked and then choose which domains they want to advertise on?

Hi,
just to confirm, an advertizer pays $2.50, the domainer gets 10c, the parking company gets 10c,
and the search engine gets $2.30 ?

 

[mdesigner125]

I'm sure it varies across different search terms and categories but yes, I have seen examples of where as an advertiser; I am bidding on "keyword phrase x, y, z" and it is costing me $2-$3 per click and I also own the domain "keyword phrase x, y, z" and my parking revenue using that exact same keyword phrase is as low as $.08-$.10 per click. With that being said, please don't make the mistake of thinking that I am suggesting that the parking companies are cashing in on this spread. It is the search engines who are "discounting" payouts to publishers calling them "traffic quality adjustments" while not passing on the savings to the advertisers. My point is that there are a lot of advertisers out there who would be willing to pay far greater than the $.08 for your visitor that Yahoo or Google may give you (provided of course that it is a legitimate and well targeted click). The search engines are playing the exact same game with advertisers telling them that they are paying $2 to $3 per click because Google or Yahoo doesn't happen to like the landing page and thus decides to hand out a low quality score. Net result, the advertiser is excessively overcharged for the traffic and the publisher sending it is under paid for the traffic. As an advertiser, if I am being bent over the table by the major engines for my traffic, I'd much rather go directly to a parking company, set up a direct PPC account and get me traffic for say $1.50 vs. the $2 or $3 I am currently paying. It would be a huge win for domainers because even after Parked took their cut, the domainer would end up getting very close to market value for the click. The actual demand for the traffic from your domain would set the price per click instead of just whatever Yahoo and Google decided to give you for it.

 

[Donny]

We have been recently doing some testing ourselves at least on Yahoo to see how accurate we are being paid and I can say that based on the tests we have done they are within 1% of what we were charged as the advertiser. We are talking about 100 clicks so it could possibly be a little bigger spreading on millions of clicks. But from what I have seen it is fairly accurate based on our tests. But this was Yahoo, not Google.

The numbers this week were up every day compared to the week before, Wednesday and Thursday were over 10% higher than the week before.

Donny

 

[ebatcave]

I think the estimated stats have been frozen for about an hour this morning.

 

[bmugford]

I just noticed that a bunch of my 1 page landers have disappeared today. Now they are all standard 2 page landers. Any idea what is going on there?

Brad

 

[johname]

Is the Yahoo feed down? I'm not seeing Yahoo ads on any of my Yahoo feed sites, not just Parked. Anybody seeing that or is it just me?

L2

Edit: For a few minutes it appeared normal, then they "weirded" out again.

L2

Looks normal to me

 

[bmugford]

I have had one page landers on the same sites for months and months. When I just checked 4-5 of the sites that were one page landers they are all now standard landers. Not sure why that is.

EDIT: Just checked again and they are back to the 1 page lander. Something is going on.

Brad

I've seen'm - I believe those one page landers are called "D2R" sites. Yahoo dictates who has'm and who doesn't, not the parking companies....

Something weird is definitely going on, I can't quite figure it out - yet.

L2

 

[Donny]

From my understanding the new TQ launch will be on September 9th.

Stats were behind yesterday for a completely different reason.

Donny

 

[sinex]

Rejected

Just got rejected by Parked.com - my domains are currently parked with Fabulous, WhyPark & Noomle but Parked after several days rejected me with this BS reason ...

In order for Parked.com to pay industry leading payouts we have to ensure traffic quality for our network is of the highest standards.
Our traffic quality department has analyzed your application and has determined that it does not currently meet the standards we are looking for in new Parked.com partners.

I have decent traffic and some pretty good CTR and Earnings from some domains - just have to keep them where they are - Parked.com loss ... won't be trying anything with them again ... :bah:

 

[Donny]

Seabass - Yes we have looked at the Sendori model in the past. The biggest issue with the 0 click model, is that you normally receive about 50% of the revenue as the top click on the page. The other big issue is that it only works in the US.

There are quite a few options that a lot of people use today, 0 click, 1 click, 2 click, and content based (kind of like Sedo). We are looking at a bunch of different options that we want to offer. Maybe I'll just go buy adbrite and call it a day.

Donny

 

[bluename]

Dony
just sent pm
Thanks

 

[Giode]

You know, I'm starting to see some higher $ clicks consistently as well. I hope it's a sign of things to come!

 

[Donny]

Finalized stats for 8/21 and 8/22 are delayed right now as we are waiting the final numbers from Yahoo. I don't currently have a ETA on when they will be available.

Donny

 

[johname]

08-21 is begining to finalize

 

[Donny]

It's finished at this point.

Donny

 

[johname]

08-22 is finalized

 

[DnPresident]

I'm looking for someone very experienced with the parked.com Custom Layout Feature and can setup nice custom sites.

Interested Please PM Me.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[desiredname]

Well, I signed up using your link and was, surprise, approved quickly after having been turned down in the past. I have submitted about 650 of my names and have started changing all my nameservers over; we'll give it a try; here's hoping for the best. I was getting around 120,000 visitors per month on SEDO parking total, but only made any real money on a couple of the lower traffic domains (one related to cheese has been giving me around 3-4/click and I left it there, lol). Not including the cheese domain, I only made 62.00 off 123,000 visitors the last month with SEDO. Hopefully my traffic isn't just complete junk; I don't really ever do much development... I just buy and sell names most of the time. Anyway, thanks a million and Best Wishes to all.

 

[Donny]

Dave - I have experience with the custom layout, unfortunately I can't design myself out of a wet paper bag.

Donny