Parking domains a joke

[VisionEdger]

this has to be the ultimate scam pulled off by these companies! What a waste of time and energy. I realize domains can generate some traffic and uniques while waiting to be developed (if at all) but this has to be one of the biggest scams on the web today in this business!!

ppc fraud is a self perpetuating scenario due to the terms and conditions laid out by the parkers.

This must be one of the biggest jokes on domainers in the history of domaining.

In time we wil look back at this ludicrous methodology in domaining and wonder wtf was i doing?

whos fed up with the limited options we as domainers have in making $$ with our domains? there must be another alternative. I know of a new domain stock exchange where they will sell shares of youre domains.

 

[Mike]

Ian, thks for shedding some light on this. I am pretty thick headed and slow to "get it" sometimes. Even with your helpful viewpoints I am still bedazzled by the parking magic show.

...and there's a good and simple reason for it.
In EVERY business venture i may be subject to being audited. This may be by the IRS or in terms of an "indirect audit" towards my shareholders, profit sharing employees, etc.
Parking companies seem to enjoy one of the last havens that exist in regards to working without having to disclose anything. As i mentioned in a different thread; Domainers are subject to accusations of click fraud, squatting, infringements, etc. All these beautiful terms are built into the TOS of just about every parking provider, we're about as transparent as a piece of tracing paper, parking companies on the other hand, are the 21st century Houdinis. Our revenue/payout/clicks may disappear or disintegrate and no one really knows why. The magic show is going to continue until Domainers stand up collectively and demand disclosure of the numbers.
No explanation has yet been given as to why it is impossible to disclose numbers. Although, some say "our feed providers don't allow us to disclose numbers." Or my all time favorite: "We don't understand the algorithm ourselves to a 100%, we can (once again) guess what Google, Yahoo, etc. are doing, but we're not really sure..."
All we get to hear are excuses and statements that I have not once heard before in the "financial industry" - 'We're guessing/guestimating your revenue until it's adjusted'.
That's pretty creative, unfortunately, since it's my domains and my revenue we're talking about, i'm not after the most creative answer, but the most concise calculation and proof of numbers.
So, "Karmaco", i'm right there with you. I understand what we're being told, but my brain seems to have a problem computing the circumstances and understanding the statements as they have zero validity to an educated and inquisitive mind.

IB

 

[kriss05]

Imodo,

I appreceiate your explaining parking from the providers standpoint, but I am a bit tangled in the terms. What exactly is rfp? Also you are using the search engine perspective of why they don't want to be transparent, stating if they were transparent about certain keywords and the price paid for them, that then domainers would be jumping on board with that certain term, if I understand what you are saying correctly.

Isn't that what is being done today?. Afterall its in Googles keyword tools how to find the high paying search keyword. How many of us have poured over the tool looking for those high paying keyword domains and registered dozens of them.

Maybe its because you have more experience, the terms you are using are confusing here, but I cannot see the connection you are making about the parking company being paranoid that domainers may find out the secrets and get past the cliche terms such as, .01 cent clicks which make no sense but all domainers get buckets full of them. Maybe its a bit illegal to be passing on .01 cents when they are supposed to be paying 70 to 100% of the clicks money? If its the upstream providers doing the hocus pocus, then maybe they are not doing the right thing and we should be demanding more transparency from them.

Are the upstream providers so insulated from taking responsibility for proper payouts that nobody can police them?

How many millions of dollars are put in parking companies bank accounts with the difference of monies they get for the click and the penny they pay us?. How do we know that the penny click was not really .85 cents? Then this new trend, clicks with no payment?

I can see the value to a parking company of direct navigation traffic and the click money paid for that as the best case for parking advertisers. I am concentrating my comments on the domainer getting the screw at that moment in time.

Seems to me some kind of software can be produced to show the domain owner the balance sheet is not a magic act.

The way I see it I wonder at times if the parking company at certain times tweaks the payouts because they want more profits for new projects and cutting out the domainer for a period of time is a quick way to get it.

I am going to use my new account at bodis as an example. Two months ago I place a few names in their "new" system. Boom clicks right away and I made several dollars in a weeks time on a few names. I jumped in and placed dozens of names in their parking program. Its been a month and a half and I have made less than a dollar for ALL the names parked there during that time. This trend is the same I have noticed at Trafficz, first I made good money with my first dozen names parked, then for a year and a half I have placed hundreds of names with them and I am making less than when I had less than a dozen.

I am not saying bodis or trafficz is crooked, but something is sure as hell wrong. Too me the 'WRONG" is we have no way of knowing what the hell the "wrong" is.

My only parking company that revenue seems to go up with new names imported is Fabulous. So in my case it is not my names. It is reporting revenues that seem suspect to me.

Anyone else agree with me that we are getting taken for a ride and the common understanding of parking is too much information is protected and to much is slanted toward parking companies hiding behind the " upstream provider is doing it" terminology?

How in the hell are we going to know if those companies are giving us the shaft with the secret society parking providers have, and or the upstream providers passing the non buck.

Without transparency we will not know for sure what the hell is going on and will continue on in the dark. In the dark many bad things happen. It may be ok when it happens to others, but in this case its domainers who get the screw.

Goodkarmaco,

I completely agree with you. And IMO all you are talking about is really new concept. So far "modern" ("past day" IMO) parking companies are concentrated on domainers with huge portfolios of type-in domains. Those domainers really know about revenue share and so on as much as they want. If parking company doesn't show much transparency to them, they will simply go to another company. And that company will loose hundreds of thousands or millions. And the number of such domainers is not high - so the chances other "Big" domainers will come. They don't want that and will be transparent. Unfortunately, they don't really care about the rest, 90 % of domainers with "ordinary" domains. Not because they are evil people, just because it is a business. Domainers with low paying domains have much less choices to earn money with their domains so they have nothing to do but park domains and don't get any transparency. If you can pay less and if you can hide some of your earnings without any future troubles - why not to do this??? OK, dozens of domainers will leave that parked company but same dozens will arrive - because all parking companies do the same thing generally.

Thus, there is huge niche so far wich is as big as 90% domainers. If some smart gay creates parking company which considers its primary clients as being those 90 % domainers, this company will really care about those domainers and will give enough transparency to them. And I am 100% sure this company will get as many clients as no one parking company wouldn't ever dream. So, guess now, which parking company will be in more profit? The company which has some small amount of domainers with high paying domains or company with very-very huge number of domainers (because such domainers will leave ALL parking companies of first type) with low paying domains?

And this will happen because traffic from SEPR is considered as natural one. This new company has to develop some strong SEO tools that allow to get highly-targeted traffic from SEPR and specialize on this kind of Natural traffic. With every year we see the dramatical increase in internet advertising market - but the number of type-in domains is stricly limited! How many times you type-in domain name for services you are interested in and how many times you use search engine? And how high competition in internet is for most of highly popular services and stuff? The answer is clear: internet advertisers will spend more and more money and much more new advertisers will come. So, it is domain Klondike - to create parking company which is specialized on traffic from SEPR and, thus, is transparent for their primary clients, which number is, as IMODO Ian said, is 90 %.

Probably, it will happen not so soon, but I don't see other direction but that one. The example of proof for this is that now even NameDrive is looking at something like to offer the possibility to add keywords to title tag.

...and there's a good and simple reason for it.
In EVERY business venture i may be subject to being audited. This may be by the IRS or in terms of an "indirect audit" towards my shareholders, profit sharing employees, etc.
Parking companies seem to enjoy one of the last havens that exist in regards to working without having to disclose anything. As i mentioned in a different thread; Domainers are subject to accusations of click fraud, squatting, infringements, etc. All these beautiful terms are built into the TOS of just about every parking provider, we're about as transparent as a piece of tracing paper, parking companies on the other hand, are the 21st century Houdinis. Our revenue/payout/clicks may disappear or disintegrate and no one really knows why. The magic show is going to continue until Domainers stand up collectively and demand disclosure of the numbers.
No explanation has yet been given as to why it is impossible to disclose numbers. Although, some say "our feed providers don't allow us to disclose numbers." Or my all time favorite: "We don't understand the algorithm ourselves to a 100%, we can (once again) guess what Google, Yahoo, etc. are doing, but we're not really sure..."
All we get to hear are excuses and statements that I have not once heard before in the "financial industry" - 'We're guessing/guestimating your revenue until it's adjusted'.
That's pretty creative, unfortunately, since it's my domains and my revenue we're talking about, i'm not after the most creative answer, but the most concise calculation and proof of numbers.
So, "Karmaco", i'm right there with you. I understand what we're being told, but my brain seems to have a problem computing the circumstances and understanding the statements as they have zero validity to an educated and inquisitive mind.

IB

IB,

Another great post!

I have some idea: how about creating the domainer trade union?

kriss05

 

[NPKJB]

Just a thought.....Can the lower payouts and CTR have to do with click fraud?

Check out this recent report about click fraud and I start to wonder if the whole parking game is going down hill a little bit.

*********************************************************

Click Fraud Rate Hits 16.2 Percent
On October 18th, Click Forensics released pay-per-click fraud figures for the third quarter of 2007 from the search advertising industry's leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index[TM] which showed that click fraud was on the rise, increasing from 13.8% in the 3rd quarter of 2006 to 16.2% for Q3 2007.

For the large search engine content networks like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher the news was even worse. The reported average click fraud rate continued to climb from 19.2% in Q4 of 2006, 21.9% in Q1 2007 and 25.6% in Q2 2007 to 28.1% in Q3 2007.

Other interesting facts revealed by the report were as follows:

- Over 60 percent of traffic from parked domains and made for ad sites was click fraud
- the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from France (4.2%), China (4.1%) and Germany (3.7%).


Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, made the following comments:

"Click fraud activity continues to grow especially on made for ad sites, parked domains and on the content networks. Advertisers, publishers and search engines need to take notice because content networks are becoming the fastest growing source of click fraud. Ensuring their quality is essential for the pay per click advertising market to continue its growth."

The growth of click fraud is not a surprise to industry insiders. The writing has been on the wall for some time. The real question is whether the PPC industry will devote less time to spin control and more to transparent reporting and click fraud prevention. The "trust us" approach to doing business could drag the entire industry into the junk bin of once great ideas.

 

[GILSAN]

That's a really interesting article NK and not very good news for the rest of the honest Domainers

GIL

 

[Badger]

You say they need to guess what the click thrus we get are, then they pay us that guesstimate.

Well quessing what click thrus to pay out is not the agreement we all have with them. The agreement is supposed to be a certain percentage. Isn't that a legal binding contract to pay us what percentage they agree to pay us?
.

Im not sure which, if many, actually publish the revenue share.. I know parked.com does, but im not aware of many others. If they do publish the revenue share they can legally report and pay you the revenue percentage of the total income a domain earns, for thats all they have to go on.

Im not sure how publishing the numbers they receive from the root providers actually works? For wouldnt the next accusation simply be "how do we know theyve reported it correctly and not falsified those numbers?"

 

[mbwill]

i have to agree here.

 

[Mike]

For wouldnt the next accusation simply be "how do we know theyve reported it correctly and not falsified those numbers?"

While i tend to agree with you as well, in the end that would cut the variables and questionables at least down to only ONE accusation left to be made.

Right now we have multiple things to wonder about, rev share, accuracy, disclosure and validity thereof, etc.
If all the above is done and only an accusation for "falsified numbers" is left to be made, that's easily legally enforceable and would definitely also be of interest to the feed providers. Proven Falsified numbers would also indicate corrupt accounting/book keeping and would definitely be subject to review by the IRS and other authorities. I guess, what i'm contemplating is a parking scenario similar to a publicly traded company.
Disclosed, enforced, controlled. These are 3 of the main keywords that could easily solve this ENTIRE thread.
From a financial perspective as well as ethically it would be the right thing to do. So, who's going to take the plunge and be the first parking company to go for it?

IB

 

[goodkarmaco]

Partnership with respect

Right on everyone.

It is very encouraging to see so many informative posts here about parking. It shows this is very high on minds for our self interest in domaining. All excellant points and it goes back to the first post of being mad as hell as to why we are getting the run around.

Ian your comment is probaby the number one reason why this has not happened. My answer as to "how" can we get such transaprency is the next question asked, " how do we know they reported it correctly and not falsified those numbers"?

In business many industries had to make changes because rip offs were finally challenged.

Maybe lawsuits were filed and books wee opened. I am sure parking companies and upstream providers would go along only with much kicking and screaming though.

It is fraudelent to "cook the books" or keep a set of books to show certain people and have the real books only for the companies eyes only. Every parking company would say we don't do that. But how do we know? Maybe in the end it is a legal matter to get compliance with transparency.

We see many stepping up to the plate to form domainers awareness groups such as protection for reverse hi-jacking of our domains and we support them with money and membership as in the end we are all better off. Maybe instead of Traffic conventions only concentrating on speakers talking about profits for domainers, parking transparency should be a high priority.

That guestion of parking transparency is probably more of a legal one, as in any reporting the data must be availble to the partners, regarding us that is not happening.

The way to implement such a program is the daily stats coming to the parking program, ie parking company would be easily checked in the parking program as a separate analytics page. Then the partnership with the upstream provider would allow a cookie or such from each parking provider to be used to enter the upstream providers stats for the said parking provider and the member who has the cookie enabled for that member to access the data for his/ her individual report to make sure all is on the up and up.

No voodoo economics, no mutterings of guestimates, no terms we do not understand, just straight forward data with stats that can be used to keep all involved on the up and up.

Now all this is a easier to talk about then doing I know, but if we demand something like it then the parking leaders will see they may have the biggest advantage over other parking companies if they are the FIRST to implement such a program.

If we do not demand a better accounting method with full disclosure as commented on by Intel we will continue to be about the only industry that uses hocus pocus as the explanation to why we earned only so little.

I wonder then if the .01 clicks would still be the norm? I wonder then if after parking our names the clicks would not go down. I wonder then if certain companies would be able to say " we pay the most for parking" and mislead thousands of domainers who only wise up after years of parking with them if transparency was the norm.

If I partner with a wholesaler and he/ she states my cost for a certain product is one half the retail price, that is what I am going to pay. I am not going to support a wholesale company that states the price and then gives a price that is only going to make me pennies on the dollar. If I know exactly my price, I can get on with marketing my products.

Lets join the fastest growing marketing concept in the world with partnerships that are respectful to us the domainers. Let us make it known we want and are going to work toward a partnership where we have the ability to see what we earn.

Until then we are not getting what is deserved. We are getting what they want to give us. The shaft.

That is not acceptable to me as the stakes are to high. Continue to get impaled with spears of babble or join the internet marketing explosion that is stuffing the parking companies bank accounts with money. Money that more of a percentage they grab is supposed to be ours.

I have stores in Ebay and I can click a link at the end of the year and see exactly every penny I was charged for the year, every penny of money I earned, with correct data and id numbers to follow up or have proof for and all that is done in a fraction of a second.

Why do we not demand in our industry the same, complete transparency for parking our names?. The time is past for stupid domaining.

 

[cafi]

There's one thing that I don't understand from selltrib.

He Buys traffic to his parked pages and make profit.
But doesn't adwords cost more per click than what we get from the parked clicks even if is a 100% crt?

 

[selltrib]

There's one thing that I don't understand from selltrib.

He Buys traffic to his parked pages and make profit.
But doesn't adwords cost more per click than what we get from the parked clicks even if is a 100% crt?

I'm paying anywhere from 0.01c to 0.10c per click from Adwords and getting around 0.10c to 0.66c a click on YPN. and have an average CTR of between 35%-70%

Truly there is easy money to be made here

 

[goodkarmaco]

hocus pocus domain parking

The true profit in domaining is being hidden inside the magic show owned and produced by parking companies.

Lets say we are supposed to receive 90% from our parking company. Lets also say the truth is we are getting only 10% of what we have a contract for, losing out 80%. This scenario may be true or may not be. But lets see where it takes us ok?

So then we take a name that makes at least $30.00 a day and place it for sale. Adding up the math the name brings in roughly $900. a month in parking revenues.

Oh but wait, we are only showing the name with the 10% we are getting paid. If the true amount was paid to us, (90%) the name instead of making $30.00 a day really makes $270.00 a day. Instead of the $900. a month, The true parking earnings would have given us $8,100 per month!.

For simplistic sake lets say we decide to sell the name for only a years traffic income or so. If the above name would bring a sale price of $10,800 to maybe $12,000 because it was only showing the measly $900 a month as its earnings how much would the name sale for if its true pay per click partnership amount was paid to the domain owner? The price for sale then would be $108,000 to $115,000!

Multiply the higher earnings ratio by the thousands of domains sold based on traffic stats and we can see the big screw tightning down on the domain industry.

Now what does that say for the world wide value of domains being sold?

The domain industry is reporting all the domains sold not at market value, but less than market value if we are gettng the shaft. How much money is going somewhere else than in domainers pockets?.

Your guess is as good as mine because its a magic show!

 

[tubeBUCKET]

Interesting thread for sure.

Maybe instead of Traffic conventions only concentrating on speakers talking about profits for domainers, parking transparency should be a high priority.

Parking issues were a topic at the recent T.R.A.F.F.I.C East 2007 conference. link

I mentioned in another thread here about a month ago how advertisers quite often fail at conversion. I'm not convinced domain owners should be held to task just because an advertiser can't, or does not know how, to make a sale. By 'advertiser' I mean the person writing the check to AdWords or whoever to ply his goods.

If domainers & parking companies send advertisers filtered targeted traffic and they botch up the sale it's the advertisers problem. NOT the domain owner. Other than fraudulent trash traffic and/or mislead traffic the whole 'traffic quality' BS simply doesn't wash.

Back to transparency; Why trust anyone who won't let you use your own tracking snippet? Or include a 1x1 pixel image served from your own server? I've seen and heard all kinds of paper thin excuses for that one.

 

[wiseguy_75]

I am sure there is money to be made with domain parking... making money on the internet in any field is a simple numbers game. If you can buy visitors and convert them to a sale or commission for cheaper than what the traffic costs you... you have then figured out a simple money making formula. Now just get creative and maximize that opportunity. I know it's a little more complex then that... but that is the basic formula.

SellTrib... maybe you should consider writing a book on what you are doing... and show others how they can duplicate your success. If you really are successful at Domain PArking, you could make a killing selling that book.

My 2 cents...

 

[NPKJB]

I'm paying anywhere from 0.01c to 0.10c per click from Adwords and getting around 0.10c to 0.66c a click on YPN. and have an average CTR of between 35%-70%

Truly there is easy money to be made here

So....Basically your purchasing cheap Google Adwords to drive people to your sites. Then you use YPN on your sites to cash in on the higher EPC. Hmmmmm.... I have to look into thie strategy a little further.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[cantstop]

hard to get to upset

about low park pay when they pay more than google does direct to publisher.either google is too low or parking pay is to high.Advantage of being outside of parking is oportunity to drive traffic through various techniques.THAT YOU MUST DO or pay for like adwords arbitrage.more effort can equal more money,or it may not.

 

[domainerd1]

So....Basically your purchasing cheap Google Adwords to drive people to your sites. Then you use YPN on your sites to cash in on the higher EPC. Hmmmmm.... I have to look into thie strategy a little further.

Thanks for the tip.

Do parking companies allow placement of PPC ads on their pages? I was under the impression that this could not be done.

 

[NPKJB]

Do parking companies allow placement of PPC ads on their pages? I was under the impression that this could not be done.

Well, I use WhyPark which allows me to use my own PPC Google Ads.

 

[cantstop]

for purpose of discussion

why park must be considered not actually parking since the customer controls there own ads .as far as i know this is the only park company like that and resembles regular website operation more than parking in which the park company controls the ads an splits the revenue with the park customer.

 

[Agent-007]

I have the same concerns as you guys with the payouts we receive and all of these mysterious estimate to actual adjustments with Yahoo feeds that occur everyday. When I did Adsense arbitrage Google were very speedy with actual data it was almost real time in most cases.

There is a TEST you can do to see the share of epc you actually get paid. It's very simple. You do need a Yahoo PPC account first to test this.......or maybe a friend with one can help.

1. Pick a niche that doesn't have many Yahoo ads in it......if you cant find one.....look deeper in a niche to find a fairly quite segment. As later you want your ad to be clicked on the most.

2. Buy & park a domain with your service for that selected niche.

3. Start a Yahoo content campaign for that niche or keyword. Send them to a related CPA offer or something related to the niche. Really doesnt matter too much as any money will be a bonus to pay for this test. Bid high enough to ensure that your ad starts to appear on your parked domain most of the time. Hence why I would chose a quite keyword for Yahoo ads.

4. Then (only then) start the Adwords campaign to this parked domain. If you can send traffic to a specific keyword focussed page & add a tracking url, even better. If you can't do this and your parked domain has too many other Yahoo advertisers on it this test will become less reliable. So pick a very very small niche, OK

5. Let this run for about a week. Keep checking to make sure your not spending too much on the test....whatever you're comfortable with.

6. Look at the results when you have at least 30 clicks on your ads. Then compare the actual bid (CPC) in Yahoo to the EPC you actually receive from your DP service.

Remember there are 3 middle men between the Yahoo advertiser & the Domainer (is that what we are called? :D )

Usually Yahoo, upstream provider & our DP service who will all get a cut of the advertiser's revenue to them. So take that into account when you see what share of the funds you get. Should be interesting.....and hopefully all will be good.

When I have time I will do this test too. Just so busy at the moment.

If anyone does it please post your results. I'll post mine when they done.