PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[TOXX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[netmeg]

There's no set earnings per click in any niche. None of the PPC programs work that way. I do advertising in some very competitive niches, and sometimes I pay .05 for a click and other times I pay 2.00 for another click in the same campaign and ad group, because the conditions that existed for that first click are not necessarily the same that existed for the second. Way too many variables, and Google has just added another one when they announced last week that they were going to start calculating keyword QS 'on the fly'- and if they're doing it, Yahoo probably won't be far behind.

As I always say, clicks are like snowflakes, there's no two alike. In one finance type niche where I have 36 or so domains I get clicks every day anywhere from .08 to $5.00, sometimes on the same domain. It's normal.

 

[Seabass]

Here is one of my "loan domains" at Parked averaging $1.93 a click for past eight days.

2008-08-25 3 1 $710.00 33.33% $2.13 $2.13
2008-08-24 1 0 $0.00 0.00% $0.00 $0.00
2008-08-22 4 7 $3,450.00 175.00% $1.97 $13.80
2008-08-21 1 5 $9,999.99 500.00% $2.23 $11.14
2008-08-20 3 0 $0.00 0.00% $0.00 $0.00
2008-08-19 3 1 $1,246.67 33.33% $3.74 $3.74
2008-08-18 6 11 $3,138.33 183.33% $1.71 $18.83
2008-08-17 1 0 $0.00 0.00% $0.00 $0.00
2008-08-16 2 1 $275.00 50.00% $0.55 $0.55

TOTAL 24 26 $2,091.25 108.33% $1.93 $50.19

 

[tonyfloyd]

ok...thanks netmeg.....just drives u crazy in trying to figure out WHY this happens....

 

[Seabass]

............ and Google has just added another one when they announced last week that they were going to start calculating keyword QS 'on the fly'- and if they're doing it, Yahoo probably won't be far behind.........

netmeg, I had read that but I don't understand what they mean by "on the fly". Don't Google and Yahoo do that already with Smart Pricing and TQ score.

Do you know what they mean exactly by "on the fly"?

ok...thanks netmeg.....just drives u crazy in trying to figure out WHY this happens....

Sadly, back before Ask was booted from Google those kinds of clicks were a lot rarer.

I have some great domains that for whatever reason don't get good RPC like the one I listed with stats......I guess it is like netmeg says.

 

[Kenny]

2008-08-21 1 5 $9,999.99 500.00% $2.23 $11.14

Gotta luv dem multi clicks

 

[netmeg]

netmeg, I had read that but I don't understand what they mean by "on the fly". Don't Google and Yahoo do that already with Smart Pricing and TQ score.

Do you know what they mean exactly by "on the fly"?

They've never admitted it outright, but I've always believed that Smart Pricing occurs 'on the fly'. On the fly means that the value of the click is not pre-determined, but calculated based on the set of circumstances occurring at the exact time of the click. Nobody but Google or Yahoo knows what all of these circumstances are, but we can guess about some of them. Smart Pricing is only applicable for the Content Network (and possibly the Search Network which includes parked domains); it does not encompass ads found on Google's own search pages. I don't know enough about Yahoo to know much about TQ, but it's probably somewhat similar.

Smart Pricing is the the "break" that Google gives to the advertiser, recognizing that not all traffic is created equal, with an equal likelihood of conversion. It most likely takes into account any number of things - source of traffic, location of traffic, average CTR and/or conversion rate for the site where the ad appears, average CTR or conversion rate for *similar* sites to the one where the ad appears, publisher history (over all sites they own) and who knows what all else. To some degree, it's predictive.

Quality Score refers to the combined relevance of the advertiser's keywords, ad text, and landing page. It can also encompass account history, keyword history, CTR, and other things as well. There's more than one kind of Quality Score - Content has a different type than Search, ads have their own QS and so do accounts.

Up till now, all of these things were more or less static - once your Quality Scores were established, they didn't get changed until Google came along and re-evaluated things. That would cause certain keywords to go inactive. Now they're going to calculate them 'on the fly'- meaning at the time they occur - so keywords won't be inactive anymore; while it might not be relevant enough for Search A, they might display it for Search B.

(There's a much better description of this at url: http://www.bgtheory.com/blog/dissecting-adwords-quality-score-changes/)

What I'm saying is that there is really no such thing as a static click price (anyone who does a lot of AdWords or YSM advertising can tell you that) anymore. The value of any given click is calculated at the exact time of the click, based on whatever circumstances (on both sides - advertiser and publisher) are occuring at the time of the click. Advertiser history, landing page, publisher history, competition, time of day, country of origin, budget - the list is too long to type in, and we'll never know the whole thing.

So it shouldn't really come as a surprise when clicks in ANY given niche vary wildly in price. There's a thousand different things being taken into account. The best you can do is work with averages and don't worry about individual clicks. That's probably why TQ doesn't kick in until you get to 100 or so clicks per day.

In my opinion.

 

[TOXX]

I'm still waiting for arbitrage to come back

 

[Donny]

Sleepys - DNZoom will have access to our full API when all of our customers have full access to our API. I have always had some concerns about providing full access to all of your data to a third party, who are domainers at heart. I like the guys from DNZoom, but would you want to look at the information?

About ReplyCycle, which is also brough to you by DNZoom and Bido, it's an interesting concept, but it's not really something they can't patent. I know somebody who was doing this same thing 5 years ago. The biggest problem with it is that you are making the spam problem even worse than it is today. But I'm sure we will look at it and see if we can offer it, if it works out.

Donny

 

[SpareDomains]

I have always had some concerns about providing full access to all of your data to a third party, who are domainers at heart.

Things can be secure or bank level security but things can go wrong as well which would be a lot of users information and passwords in the wrong hands. I guess each domainer has to decide their own risk level, personally I would always opt out of providing all of my registrar/parking info and passwords in 1 central location regardless of who is running it. Then again maybe I'm paranoid.

 

[Seabass]

About ReplyCycle, which is also brough to you by DNZoom and Bido, it's an interesting concept, but it's not really something they can't patent. I know somebody who was doing this same thing 5 years ago. The biggest problem with it is that you are making the spam problem even worse than it is today. But I'm sure we will look at it and see if we can offer it, if it works out.

Donny

Thanks Donny,

It seems to me a autoresponder letting them know the email was received or bounced and is a non-working email( with some links), instead of what they would get in their email inbox shown below seems fairly unobtrusive. They would not be getting two emails just a replacement email

“This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently etc.“

I think this will be the norm eventually and folks will adjust like always.

The nice thing about it, if controlled, is that it is not a search hijacking or error search, but a response to them having tried to contact the domain owner first.

Maybe you could develop something in-house instead of using this software? Just a thought, but I realize this is something that you are aware of already and have thought about.

They've never admitted it outright, but I've always believed that Smart Pricing occurs 'on the fly'.

netmeg, that was one hell of an answer. Thanks.

Rep. added.

 

[Domagon]

Domainers can already do custom email bounces with Sendmail and other similar programs or even via 3rd parties like ReplyCycle ... set CNAME records to cnames.parked.com and set MX records pointing to the MTA (one's own server, ReplyCycle, etc) for the bounces.

IMHO, Parked should remain web only. No email bouncing, no email redirection, no email ads. At most, only provide instructions on how folks, who want that stuff, can do so themselves and/or via 3rd parties, such as ReplyCycle. Though again, IMHO, email bouncing is asking for trouble and should be discouraged by parking companies.

Ron

 

[SpareDomains]

Domainers can already do custom email bounces with Sendmail and other similar programs or even via 3rd parties like ReplyCycle ... set CNAME records to cnames.parked.com and set MX records pointing to the MTA (one's own server, ReplyCycle, etc) for the bounces.

IMHO, Parked should remain web only. No email bouncing, no email redirection, no email ads. At most, only provide instructions on how folks, who want that stuff, can do so themselves and/or via 3rd parties, such as ReplyCycle. Though again, IMHO, email bouncing is asking for trouble and should be discouraged by parking companies.

Ron

I realize the full terms are not disclosed as of yet but as of today I lean to agreeing with you and think this idea in general is a slippery slope.

I'm not quite sure someone sending an email to a dead or wrong email address qualifies as...

"A "transactional or relationship message" – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act."

If not it would need to contain an opt out link and a physical address of the sender as it will be a commercial email, parked domains can face some challenges as it stands so I think this would only add gas to the fire and could lead to some legal challenges as well, donny if you do add this make sure my control panel has an opt out button.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm

 

[Sleepys]

Thanks for the quick answer Donny :great:

+ Rep

 

[SebastianJu]

@Seabass

>“This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently etc.“

So they answer spammails with this? That doesnt work. I tried this some years ago with a software. The problem is that a spammer doesnt use its own email-adress. So they never know that you sent this email and dont delete your email.

I think too it would increase spam. Because they use email-adresses from other people as the originator and so the owner of the wrong email will get this messages. My Email-Adresses are used from spammers too. So I sometimes get messages that I have sent mails to a couple of persons that cant be reached. Spammails that I know of because I got them too...

Its spam. Only a spamfilter will help... Thunderbird has the best tested so far for me.

Greetings!
Sebastian

 

[Donny]

The problem I have with ReplyCycle or other software that is similiar to this concept is that it's the way it could potentially cause more spam. Today if somebody sends an email to a domain that is parked with us, there is no mailserver on our end, so if somebody tries to contact the MX record nothing is there, no actual email is sent. If there were a mailserver and somebody tried to send an email to [email protected] and that email didn't exist then the mailserver would tell the other mailserver that the email address didn't exist.

The problem is that I think we all agree that any email address that is more than 6 months old receives at least 50% spam. So if you used a system similiar to this basically you would be sending a "targeted email" back to whoever sent you the original email. Which you are basically just helping in the spam problem.

Now if it was me and I had my black hat on, I would also be scanning all of those emails for different things. Maybe I would use them to create some type of spam filtering software or if I was being really bad I would be scanning for renewal notices, passwords, etc... But that's me.

I do still think ReplyCycle is an interesting idea and I'll definitely be interested in seeing the full system once it's available.

Donny

 

[netmeg]

As someone whose company makes and markets a couple of high end spam filtering services, I'd have some pretty strong reservations about it as well. (I've had my email address since 1994; you can just imagine how many lists I'm on, but I refuse to give it up)

(hey, this is my 1000th post!)

 

[Seabass]

Thanks for the answers everyone...... I suppose it is more complicated than I had initially realized. I had forgot all about the CAN SPAM Act.

I think this will happen anyhow as third party companies will hunt down these bounced emails. You just know most/all the registrars will begin to take advantage of this as an easy income source. Maybe watch how TuCows does with it - you know they'll jump on board.

I could see the service getting a black eye b/c of black hats, especially on expired traffic domains, but like Domagon said, you can already set up a domain to receive emails so really it is already available for abuse. Maybe this will just facilitate it.

Sigh...... there is just something so powerful in the thought of getting money for doing nothing.

 

[Donny]

Seabass - One thing to remember about Tucows they would never use a third party like ReplyCycle, they would spend 6-12 months building their own.

*** Disclaimer ***
*** I do own Tucows stock. Poor me! ***

Donny

 

[Varon]

(hey, this is my 1000th post!)

Congrats on becoming old Meg... Welcome to the seniors club.

 

[netmeg]

Congrats on becoming old Meg... Welcome to the seniors club.

Heh, thanks. I was born old.

*** I do own Tucows stock. Poor me! ***

I don't follow this particular stock - is it down to OneCow now?