PARKED.COM - Official Thread!

[TOXX]

Hi,

Welcome to the OFFICIAL PARKED.COM thread!

 

[Varon]

For which layout Varon?

The account default standard layout. Now, it seems to be working fine.

 

[TOXX]

The account default standard layout. Now, it seems to be working fine.

Good to hear Varon
...
Donny, any "Part 2" of the future of Parked.com?
...
Or...is the future of Parked.com, WhyPark.com??

 

[Varon]

...
Donny, any "Part 2" of the future of Parked.com?
...
Or...is the future of Parked.com, WhyPark.com??

lol..I think "Part 1" by Donny, was brilliantly exhaustive and laid the future path. Imo, in the end, the future is what we make of it. I mean, how we plan our portfolio and diversify- consolidate & innovate our domain assets.

But..if there is a "Part 2".. it would be very interesting.

 

[Varon]

Are your domains up and running? Looks like all my domains are down.

 

[Donny]

Everything is up now. Trying to find out who this affected.

Donny

 

[bmugford]

My Parked pages appeared to be down when Varon posted that. When I just checked again they seem to be back up, at least the few I tested.

Brad

 

[tonyfloyd]

has anyone else noticed a significant number of clicks "disappearing" when the final stats come in?

 

[GoPC]

OH YES... LOTS of mysteriously vanishing clicks.

About $11 bucks worth one day. Mini-Blinds.com routinely gets good, high paying clicks and one day, for no apparent reason, ALL clicks from this consistently paying domain were deleted.

Why?

Some? Might pass by me without to much concern but... ALL?

There isn't enough transparency in the CPC biz anyway, I moved to Parked because they seemed to be more above boards than most others, but... now... Not to sure.

Scott

 

[upbeat]

Traffic down, clicks down, everything in this parked account almost at a dead stop. And, the few clicks that I get, get adjusted down to almost nothing. Quite a change from just a couple of months ago. Very disappointing.

 

[Domagon]

A lot of traffic is crap, as in bots and other nonsense.

And add to that the downturn in the on-line advertising market; advertisers are paying less and expecting more.

And then on top of that, some feeds, are not doing well and squeezing out whatever they can, which not only hurts domainers, but Parked itself too. Parked can adjust their take percentage up a bit to cover some of the loss, but not all of it, if they seek to remain competitive ... puts Parked in a tough position. And other parking companies that rely on the same feeds are in the same boat.

Donny in "part 1" of his thoughts about parking (scroll back a few pages) explains that Parked is working on various new innovative features, as well as, seeking out direct advertising relationships to somewhat reduce the reliance on feeds.

Rambling on, but anyways, in my view, Parked is an excellent, all round, performer for most domains - and very importantly, Parked has good communication - Donny, as well as the account reps, are always accessible even for folks with a small number of domains; very good at troubleshooting issues / keyword adjustments.

Ron

 

[netmeg]

The main question is - is the traffic still there, and is it good traffic?

 

[xylon]

Rejected by Parked

Hi,
I own 140 domains and want to get some return from 100 of them. I just got rejected by Parked and wonder why.
This is what I got:
____________________
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.

Sincerely,
The Parked.com Traffic Quality Department
____________________
So what are the standards? Most I have owned for more than a couple of years and many were from projects where the funding dried up. All are currently with BulkRegister. If I have to get some traffic running to them first I may as well just set them up under one of my hosting accounts and post AdSense ads (I have an account with them and I am a site developer). Since Parked takes a percentage it seems like an ok deal for us both; or is it?

What do I have to do to get approved? I did only list about 20 on the application but I am in North Carolina and have a domain specific email - although not for any I will run through Parked ( I could set one up if that helps)
thanks.

 

[BizBot]

Hi,

What do I have to do to get approved? I did only list about 20 on the application but I am in North Carolina and have a domain specific email - although not for any I will run through Parked ( I could set one up if that helps)
thanks.

I would suggest listing all (of the 140) domain names you own when applying. You can always send a PM to Donny and ask him to take a look at your names and your Parked application.

 

[GoPC]

Another $.70 cents just disappeared from Mini-Blinds.com from yesterday when it resolved. Took me from $1.53 to .83 cents.

Here's the thing I don't get...

I use adwords for my business. I know what I am PAYING when someone clicks my ad. I also have parked pages in the same market as my business and I know what I get PAID when someone clicks and ad on my page.

There is a HUGE difference.

Someone, either Google or the PPC company, is making BANK on our pages. It certainly isn't us.

Scott
-------

 

[Donny]

GoPC - Remember that what you are looking at is estimates. So for today, we are estimating what you will be paid. I can tell you that all of your clicks on Mini-Blinds.com were paid for by our providers. Also remember, that people don't always click on the top ad. In your case yesterday you averaged rank 5.2, so people were more interested in the ads in the middle of the page than the top.

Donny

 

[GoPC]

In your case yesterday you averaged rank 5.2, so people were more interested in the ads in the middle of the page than the top.

Donny

Thanks for the reply... that's more than alot of companies do.

Can you please explain more on this "rank" thing?

Scott

 

[johname]

Can you please explain more on this "rank" thing?

Scott

rank just mean your clicks are not coming from the top of the ad list. but on average the 5th advertiser. If your rank was 1-2 you would probally be making alot more money. As you know from being an adword customer, you have to bid more to be on the top of search results list.

 

[GoPC]

So, is there a way to promote higher ranking clicks?

also, the rank doesn't really explain why the estimates are always so far off from the actuals. What does ranking have to do with that? Are the estimates based on the HIGHEST possible clicks and then scaled back from there?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Scott

 

[netmeg]

Ok, let me whip out this one again, as far as differing click prices.

(And no, you can't promote higher ranking clicks - for one thing, you don't know which will rank where at any given moment, and second of all, you can't manipulate the feed in that way - I'm reasonably sure that'd be against Yahoo's TOS)

(And estimates, as far as I understand it, are based on recent history. So if you get a click worth $1.50, then the next time you get a click, they'll estimate it somewhere close to that, until they find out what was actually paid on it)

You have to kind of understand how the PPC works. There's a lot of calculations and variables that go into the value of a click (one of these days I'm going to do a post on that, both from the publisher and the advertiser side)

Just because you get 1.50 for a click on a domain with a particular keyword doesn't by any means you will always get that, or even NEAR to that.

For one thing, advertisers are always fluctuating. Some drop out, some join up. Some notice how much they're spending and suddenly drastically reduce their budgets, some increase. Some use up their daily budgets by noon their time, so other, lower paying advertisers take their place until the next day and the original advertiser's daily budget restarts.

Moreover, if your domain had something to do with music, but you're suddenly putting an entirely different keyword on it - if that keyword isn't directly related to whatever brought that user to your domain in the first place, it doesn't matter WHAT it's worth - they aren't likely to click on the top ads on the page.

When someone searches on your parked domain, they are presented with around 10 (I think) ads on a page. For Google feeds, the top paying ads are usually the first few at the top of the page - it's probably the same for Yahoo feeds, but I don't know for sure. But assuming it is - maybe that top ad *is* paying $1.50, but what if that's not the one your visitor clicked on - for whatever reason, he was more interested in ad #8 which only nets you 14 cents. Or five cents.

There's also the way search engines broad match searches. You may have picked a keyword that somehow can have multiple meanings (and trust me, you wouldn't believe some of the weird ways search engines can match up searches to keywords) So your keyword might be spot on for some people, but it's kind of far fetched for the visitor that happened to land that day.

Another thing that affects the value of the click is the value of your traffic. If I'm running keywords about loan consolidations in North Carolina and I get a bunch of clicks from Spain or India, the search engines are going to discount the amount the parking company (and thus I) get paid; if they didn't, the advertisers would have kittens about paying for traffic that probably won't convert for them. Yea, they should be better about geo targeting, but that doesn't always work either. As far as I have seen, US traffic simply pays better (at least here)

There's some other factors that go into all this, but I haven't got time to post them here; I have a busy day ahead.

But it's not at all unusual for me to run the gamut on a single domain of .02 clicks up to $4 or $5 clicks. There are a lot of variables in play on *every single click*.

Hope that helps.

 

[tonyfloyd]

are today's stats slow?