Parking has died, long live parking...

[Mike]

This thread is dedicated to the all NPers that have domains parked, to collectively stand up and introduce their "how to fix it" ideas, their concepts, praise, blame.....

Let's pool our posts rather than have them scattered all over the place.
Take this chance to make your voices heard, i'm sure that as the thread grows, that we may get the attention of some of the decision makers.

This is YOUR one-stop-thread concerning Parking is dead, Long live parking!

Let it rip....


IB

Addition:

​

I moved my post from the Parked.com thread into here to give this thread a start. The parked.com thread has become a bit too diluted with general parking issues... So, here goes:

This post is in regards to withdrawing our domains from being parked for a set amount of time. You may call this: The virtual strike
Opposing to us, the domainers, the "esteemed" advertisers have other opportunities that we can't touch. Traditional advertising is still alive and won't go anywhere , anytime soon. Thus, withdrawing our domains from being parked, even collectively pausing our arbitrage campaigns isn't going to do a thing. Thinking about the big dogs, the Rick Schwarz's of the world , Marchex, etc. to be on our side, is a wet dream at best, they'd be losing too much to associate with our small time domains. They're playing in a different class...

Since the domain market in regards to arbitrage and parking has turned as volatile as the stock market, it's equally difficult to gauge, predict and analyze. Therefore, what we need is a model that is Disclosed, Enforced, Controlled.
Unfortunately, that's just another dream that won't come true anytime soon. I don't think that any parking company is ever going to voluntarily disclose their numbers, much less that Google, MSN, Ask, etc. aren't going to disclose what the true value per ad word is.

So, let the best guess scenario continue...

IB

 

[exponent]

Its an easier fix that people think. We don't need big names, we just need equal opportunity. Why should the larger sites get better ads? All ads should be equally relevant on a first-come first-served basis.

1.) Value-pricing clicks only hurts the person showing the ads. Limit clicks to 2 per Unique IP per day rather than reducing all valid clicks for the day.

2.) Allow publishers to daisy-chain backlinks within their own sites.

3.) Establish absolute minimums for click pricing. $0.02 per click is unacceptable under any standard.

4.) Better trend analysis. Being able to compare sites you own to others in the same niche would be helpful.

 

[bradskid]

If you think .02 cents per click is bad, I had a 0 cent click yesterday on parked.

Here are my honest thoughts on the situation. I think we, as a community, should band together and start creating themed templates for each other. Everyone should pick certain topics and layouts, and develop a couple mini-site templates according to it. We start sharing them, compiling them, and creating an open database for the community to use and improve upon. Then, we just use these for our own site which we will run adsense or yahoo feeds on, and make 100% of the revenue and know the exact stats and numbers.


Sounds good in theory, right?

 

[ZuraX]

If you think .02 cents per click is bad, I had a 0 cent click yesterday on parked.

Here are my honest thoughts on the situation. I think we, as a community, should band together and start creating themed templates for each other. Everyone should pick certain topics and layouts, and develop a couple mini-site templates according to it. We start sharing them, compiling them, and creating an open database for the community to use and improve upon. Then, we just use these for our own site which we will run adsense or yahoo feeds on, and make 100% of the revenue and know the exact stats and numbers.


Sounds good in theory, right?

I had that thought before. If I was good at designing sites I would do it.
Heck if a good designer did this and the only "payment" he or she asked for was a link back to one of their domains... Just think of all the backlinks that could be had...

 

[CoolMark]

I need to see proper stats. I want to see exactly how many visitors I'm actually getting, where my traffic is coming from (i.e. the exact URL), and where it goes to from my pages.

 

[evilopinions]

and the conditions with parking companies that you cant adword,cant do this and cant do that and sometimes they simply ban some domains without letting us know....

there has got to be a better way

 

[exponent]

I'm working on a solution for this parking fiasco. Its #$*@! stupid that it only took me 4 days to make $11 Parked.com but now, I've been there for a lot longer, and received more and more clicks.. and yet I'm just below $12.

WTF is that? My revenue has dropped off faster than a viagra fueled geriatric at a swimsuit competition. (sorry for the graphic analogy). Its just sad that I was making well over $1 per click, sometimes over $2 per click.. and now, I'm lucky to see $0.06 per click with one site getting $0.02 clicks (down from $0.25). I haven't engaged in arbitrage, haven't clicked or asked anyone to click anything. I get thousands of uniques a month...

So... enjoy the thread. I invested the NP$ in highlighting the thread for all to see because parking companies are running the greatest legal scam ever.

 

[Badger]

Man, you guys are nuts... Of all the parking companies out there, Parked.com is one of the most trustworthy.. What exactly are you saying about them???

Ive said this before and its been misconstrued, so im wary, but why do people think that parking companies owe them so much money? Where did it say this in the contract? If buying any domain and parking it equated to two or three times renewal fee (or as some say two or three hundred times renewal fee) per annum, then I'll register every combination of every single 6 or 7 letter combination there is left..

As a domainer first and foremost myself (and also someone with a premium relationship with Google and Yahoo) Im confused by these continuous conspiracy theories.

 

[.X.]

I know i have said this a million times before, But one huge solution is , LANDING PAGES! Let me give you a small example, I had one name on a certain landing page, the name produced decent CTR, I made some keyword adjustments, changed the lander, and my CTR went up 36%, and HAS NOT reduced, It only gets more CTR, never less.

The likes of NameMedia's three parking companies offer such landing pages, that will produce high CTR, One problem, getting accepted into any one of three services they own, I have been turned down by all three, As has a good friend of mine, Both of our portfolios bring in a decent monthly revenue domain parking, So as to their reason why, I have no clue.

All i can say is, Website looking landing pages! Full page landers, categorized nicely, and web surfer friendly, that is all will take, for most any one to increase their CTR and revenue, Mine went up 36%, just by changing to another landing page, and it has never gone back down, that being over 3 months now!

Man, you guys are nuts... Of all the parking companies out there, Parked.com is one of the most trustworthy.. What exactly are you saying about them???

Ive said this before and its been misconstrued, so im wary, but why do people think that parking companies owe them so much money? Where did it say this in the contract? If buying any domain and parking it equated to two or three times renewal fee (or as some say two or three hundred times renewal fee) per annum, then I'll register every combination of every single 6 or 7 letter combination there is left..

As a domainer first and foremost myself (and also someone with a premium relationship with Google and Yahoo) Im confused by these continuous conspiracy theories.

I feel much the same way as you, Ian, Parking companies do not owe domainers any thing, Until the domainer EARNS IT.

There is no conspiracy going on, that is crazy, If a person EARNS parking revenue, Google Adsense, Or YPN, they will be paid what they have earned,

I agree, Parked.com and Donny, Are a great company, Parked.com doesn't pull any punches.

 

[evilopinions]

No one is pointing fingers....neither anyone is conspring or discrediting parked.com or any other parking company....

we just want it to be fair...show us how much a click is worth and we will never argue...

if google asks .xx cents as a minimum bid why do we get .xx/5 times the money ... why does it always start with 2 $ a click when a parking company starts and goes down to .03 to .04 cents a click....did my domain just turn infertile..

I know i have said this a million times before, But one huge solution is , LANDING PAGES! Let me give you a small example, I had one name on a certain landing page, the name produced decent CTR, I made some keyword adjustments, changed the lander, and my CTR went up 36%, and HAS NOT reduced, It only gets more CTR, never less.

The likes of NameMedia's three parking companies offer such landing pages, that will produce high CTR, One problem, getting accepted into any one of three services they own, I have been turned down by all three, As has a good friend of mine, Both of our portfolios bring in a decent monthly revenue domain parking, So as to their reason why, I have no clue.

All i can say is, Website looking landing pages! Full page landers, categorized nicely, and web surfer friendly, that is all will take, for most any one to increase their CTR and revenue, Mine went up 36%, just by changing to another landing page, and it has never gone back down, that being over 3 months now!



I feel much the same way as you, Ian, Parking companies do not owe domainers any thing, Until the domainer EARNS IT.

There is no conspiracy going on, that is crazy, If a person EARNS parking revenue, Google Adsense, Or YPN, they will be paid what they have earned,

I agree, Parked.com and Donny, Are a great company, Parked.com doesn't pull any punches.

 

[Varon]

Its Google (PR 10 self awarded) who started this PR and Quality Index Algorithmic theories. Its they who act smart with their smart pricing and stupid algorithms. I wish that for 3 days we should instead ban/pause all adwords campaigns and let them know that we can smartprice their Mountain View algorithms.

If our entire community stopped Google adwords campaigns for 3 days, its enough to wake the mighty self styled internet dictator. This company has already turned the internet into a communist regime. And this is the same company that fell down on its feet and agreed to merrily censor its searches especially for the google.cn version. This honest company will go to any lengths to make its profits surge. A truly outstanding hypocrite company.

 

[Badger]

Believe me folks, there is such things as $0.01 clicks.. Cutting out parking companies, however remote that may be, doesnt remove the fact that they exist.

From our POV, one of our own directors received a $0.01 click just yesterday on one of his domains. The very same day in fact one of mine got a $8 click...

horses for courses, rough with the smooth yadda yadda yadda

 

[exponent]

Man, you guys are nuts... Of all the parking companies out there, Parked.com is one of the most trustworthy.. What exactly are you saying about them???

I'm not saying the parking company itself is necessarily to blame. However, the ad networks are hurting the market for publishers / parking because having a valid $2.29 click reduced to $0.18 is unacceptable. 90%+ reductions might occur early on, before estimated values calibrate themselves. However, consistent massive reductions theoretically show that:

A.) The advertiser has unrealistic requirements for quality-based pricing. (Ex. In order for a publisher to make $0.20, the advertiser must sell a $200,000 Ferrari)

or

B.) Parking companies further devaluate the clicks (but keep the difference).

I feel much the same way as you, Ian, Parking companies do not owe domainers any thing, Until the domainer EARNS IT.

Do you think all domainers are looking for easy revenue? Some spend hours upon hours building links, experimenting with arbitrage, tweaking and readjusting keywords, etc. Speaking of EARNING IT, if you look at my domain portfolio, and its performance at your beloved Parked.com, You will quickly see that the traffic is relatively consistent, the clicks average out as expected, and the referrers have normalized (in consistency) however, you will find that the more money my sites make, the larger the adjustment has become. I'm running 48 sites with low CTR (3-5%), and 1 site with high CTR (30 - 40%). The reductions are insanely high.

I've gone from $2.29 to $0.53 to $0.14 to $0.05 with the same sites, same keywords, same traffic, and increasing CTR. I might earn $2 a day from some sites and only realize $0.18 of that. You can't honestly tell me that this is normal, when I've had my own YPN account for well over a year that has never seen a reduction of more than 15 or 20% EVER.

Call it what you will.. but something doesn't make sense here.

 

[evilopinions]

it is not just parked....i see downslide in bodis as well....so its not just yahoo,it is google as well...or is it the other way ?

I think i will just try Imodo for 2 months...if it does not pick up really well then i will just stick to sales...2 good sales a month can make better than a tensed full month of parking,customising,moving,removing,re developing and reparking

 

[Mike]

Its Google (PR 10 self awarded) who started this PR and Quality Index Algorithmic theories. Its they who act smart with their smart pricing and stupid algorithms. I wish that for 3 days we should instead ban/pause all adwords campaigns and let them know that we can smartprice their Mountain View algorithms.

If our entire community stopped Google adwords campaigns for 3 days, its enough to wake the mighty self styled internet dictator. This company has already turned the internet into a communist regime. And this is the same company that fell down on its feet and agreed to merrily censor its searches especially for the google.cn version. This honest company will go to any lengths to make its profits surge. A truly outstanding hypocrite company.

I wholeheartedly agree with Varon, pointing at the Google regime. Much as it is on the software sector with Microsoft, we have a similar regency with Google. Only difference, Microsoft is getting hit left and right with monopoly accusations & law suits. Frankly, and this statement has of course no legal validity whatsoever, it feels to me that Google has similar effects on the web world.
Can we collectively go on a "virtual strike" and bring the internet engine to a sudden stop? I doubt it since there's a lot more to it than just our few domains. Nonetheless, i agree - something should be done and it needs to be done soon.
I also absolutely agree that Parked.com, through Donny's representation, is one of the best companies to deal with in a parking world.
However, what applies to Sedo, Parked, 1plus, you name them, it applies to ALL parking companies and Google, Ask, MS, Yahoo alike - NON disclosure of numbers! As long as we're deliberately kept in the dark, these companies will ALWAYS have to fend off accusations, finger pointing, questions, distrust.

What's so difficult in disclosing numbers? What's the big risk? Other than letting the domainer know what the value of keywords are, what the parking company and subsequently the domainer is getting paid per click, etc.?
I don't see the problem OTHER than it's finally becoming a leveled playing field which is probably NOT in the best interest of parking companies and feed providers...

Again, i heavily advocate: Transparency, Disclosure and Regulations for Feed Providers and Parking Companies alike.
If it's done with publicly traded companies, it can certainly be done with parking companies.

What is a publicly traded company telling their shareholders at the annual?: "Sorry Folks, can't show you the numbers? We'd rather keep you in the dark, 'cause if you run around like chicken with their heads cut off, we're genuinely amused?" I doubt it.
They're forking over detailed documents with absolute validity and they're subject to be audited, whether this be an internal audit or a government regulated audit.
Why are the same standards not applied across the board, especially with companies that have global effect, such as parking providers?
I'm really interested in that answer as it would clear up a lot of misconceptions.

IB

 

[DnPresident]

Nothing against you badger but you also have a vested interest in hoping people keep directing their names to companies like imodo and there's nothing wrong with that..

There's also nothing wrong with domainers voicing opinions,concerns, and problems which include drastic revenue swings, stats going down, ctr dropping greatly, over all ROI dropping hugely and several parking companies that get together to discuss operations behind closed doors.......Owners of parking companies purchasing multiple domain names worth tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars each....While the honest domainer not running expensive bots, not spamming search engines, not hiring click farms and I could go on and on.....but paying top dollar for arbitrage/quality traffic from the most expensive companies in inexistance like MSN, Google and Yahoo at parking companies that allow it and see decreases of hundreds of dollars per day on our end.....

This isn't free money! many of us are at our computers for more than 12 hours per day working at keywords, comparing ROI, adding text and other content adding meta description, changing the colors of landers, selling,buying,reading industry news, networking.....believing,hoping, wanting,needing it to all work out. Yet week after week revenue is screwed up and no one knows why...But yet many of us keep paying out hundreds of dollars per day in advertisements just like the people on the other end of our landing pages paying for links are doing..

If domainers around the world stopped for as long as it took for things to get better, much better.........Yes there would be many many millions upon millions of dollars lost for parking companies, and all feed providers.

I'm just the little guy but like Troopscott said, it's really us joined that matters and joined as one voice would rule the industry of advertisement and Revenue flow.

As a domainer first and foremost myself (and also someone with a premium relationship with Google and Yahoo) Im confused by these continuous conspiracy theories.

 

[VisionEdger]

park.com

Man, you guys are nuts... Of all the parking companies out there, Parked.com is one of the most trustworthy.. What exactly are you saying about them???

Ive said this before and its been misconstrued, so im wary, but why do people think that parking companies owe them so much money? Where did it say this in the contract? If buying any domain and parking it equated to two or three times renewal fee (or as some say two or three hundred times renewal fee) per annum, then I'll register every combination of every single 6 or 7 letter combination there is left..

As a domainer first and foremost myself (and also someone with a premium relationship with Google and Yahoo) Im confused by these continuous conspiracy theories.

This site is owned by Park from what I can deduce.

I know i have said this a million times before, But one huge solution is , LANDING PAGES! Let me give you a small example, I had one name on a certain landing page, the name produced decent CTR, I made some keyword adjustments, changed the lander, and my CTR went up 36%, and HAS NOT reduced, It only gets more CTR, never less.

The likes of NameMedia's three parking companies offer such landing pages, that will produce high CTR, One problem, getting accepted into any one of three services they own, I have been turned down by all three, As has a good friend of mine, Both of our portfolios bring in a decent monthly revenue domain parking, So as to their reason why, I have no clue.

All i can say is, Website looking landing pages! Full page landers, categorized nicely, and web surfer friendly, that is all will take, for most any one to increase their CTR and revenue, Mine went up 36%, just by changing to another landing page, and it has never gone back down, that being over 3 months now!



I feel much the same way as you, Ian, Parking companies do not owe domainers any thing, Until the domainer EARNS IT.

There is no conspiracy going on, that is crazy, If a person EARNS parking revenue, Google Adsense, Or YPN, they will be paid what they have earned,

I agree, Parked.com and Donny, Are a great company, Parked.com doesn't pull any punches.

so the recent decrease in payouts this entire year starts at google yahoo then and NOT the parking companies? Seems like they both are working it to their advantage and using the domainers as their guinea pigs.

Its Google (PR 10 self awarded) who started this PR and Quality Index Algorithmic theories. Its they who act smart with their smart pricing and stupid algorithms. I wish that for 3 days we should instead ban/pause all adwords campaigns and let them know that we can smartprice their Mountain View algorithms.

If our entire community stopped Google adwords campaigns for 3 days, its enough to wake the mighty self styled internet dictator. This company has already turned the internet into a communist regime. And this is the same company that fell down on its feet and agreed to merrily censor its searches especially for the google.cn version. This honest company will go to any lengths to make its profits surge. A truly outstanding hypocrite company.

so what you are saying is they are like any megacorporation world wide that uses people for their own gain and profits??? sounds like good ol' capitalism to me, NOT communism!!!

 

[Domagon]

The search engines need domainers as much as much as we need them...

Google, Yahoo, etc stockholders expect advertising revenue growth - parking is among the most viable ways for them to do that at minimal expense; parking is here to stay.

In regards to parking RPC, I'm seeing drops too, but not everywhere - some keywords are still doing the same, if not even more.

While it's easy to assume the SEs can simply pay less and less, that will not work on the longrun ... because, again, the SEs need parking exposure to grow their advertising - as long as there's more than one major SE, there will be competition ... and parking providers, such as Parked.com, will adjust their feeds accordingly; parking companies have far more to lose than most domainers do ... it's in their best interest to optimize feeds, which helps them and in turn helps us domainers.

In the meantime, examine the categories / keywords that have substantially dropped ...

Then, for those with the funds and knowhow / time, try running ads in those categories / keywords and see what the CPC is ... if it's the same / higher than before (some domainers appear to suggest that's the case), then there's certain cause for action - compile detailed lists and then complain (perhaps as a group) to the SEs and perhaps forward such complaints to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (ie. for possible fraud / deception) and Securities Exchange Commission (lack of full disclosure of how advertising revenue is generated; risk of contraction, if domainers in masse pull their traffic).

Parking is here to stay, but facing some challenges at the moment - in my view, such issues can be worked though, especially if domainers work together along with parking companies to ensure we get our respective fair shares of advertising revenues.

Ron

 

[.X.]

This site is owned by Park from what I can deduce.



so the recent decrease in payouts this entire year starts at google yahoo then and NOT the parking companies? Seems like they both are working it to their advantage and using the domainers as their guinea pigs.




so what you are saying is they are like any megacorporation world wide that uses people for their own gain and profits??? sounds like good ol' capitalism to me, NOT communism!!!

They are not using us as guinea pigs, the decrease that people are seeing in PPC, Is due to the quality of traffic that their names receive, this wasn't a hidden secret, Yahoo announced it would be watching traffic, low quality traffic would bring a lower PPC, that article came out in May, i believe it was. I would assume Google has taken the same approach, Traffic Quality -VS PPC, If nothing is converting for the advertiser, then why should they spend their money to advertise? If you are getting alot traffic, from Russia, Your PPC isn't going to be good at all.

 

[evilopinions]

They are not using us as guinea pigs, the decrease that people are seeing in PPC, Is due to the quality of traffic that their names receive, this wasn't a hidden secret, Yahoo announced it would be watching traffic, low quality traffic would bring a lower PPC, that article came out in May, i believe it was. I would assume Google has taken the same approach, Traffic Quality -VS PPC, If nothing is converting for the advertiser, then why should they spend their money to advertise? If you are getting alot traffic, from Russia, Your PPC isn't going to be good at all.

well show us then that the person who clicked is from nigeria or afghanistan and so 0.03 / click....

a person who earned me .03 cent for a click is as much likely to buy a computer as a person who earned me a 10 $ click...if it is just the country that matters then why advertise globally...stay local....

 

[VisionEdger]

They are not using us as guinea pigs, the decrease that people are seeing in PPC, Is due to the quality of traffic that their names receive, this wasn't a hidden secret, Yahoo announced it would be watching traffic, low quality traffic would bring a lower PPC, that article came out in august, i believe it was. I would assume Google has taken the same approach, Traffic Quality -VS PPC, If nothing is converting for the advertiser, then why should they spend their money to advertise? If you are getting alot traffic, from Russia, Your PPC isn't going to be good at all.

so how come it took this long for the payouts to drop 75%+- ?

plus why are many seasined domainers with quality parked names are getting hit?

so what you are saying is over time parked pages burn out and quality traffic eventually drains away due to limited traffic?

so then parking names was a system designed to fail for the domainer UNLESS they have decent keyword domains?

So the millions of crappy domains that are parked are simply taking up space and making $$$ for the reg companies that sold them to the sucker creator who thought they had some chance at making a few $$ by parking them.

Now parking seems like its only for the premium keyword domains.

So whats happening then is culling of the internet via parked companies by google and yahoo. They want the crap gone from the system over time so they reduce the ppc payout, the domainers get fed up , the domain names lapse and the internet is honed down to a better experiece without all those crappy parked pages wasting space and taking up time to handle?

 

[.X.]

well show us then that the person who clicked is from nigeria or afghanistan and so 0.03 / click....

a person who earned me .03 cent for a click is as much likely to buy a computer as a person who earned me a 10 $ click...if it is just the country that matters then why advertise globally...stay local....

Here is the problem, Russians can not get PayPal, Nor do they have credit cards, How can they possibily make a purchase on the net? the same goes for many other countries, No credit cards, No PayPal = No sales = Low Quality Traffic

Quality Traffic, comes from the USA, Canada, And the United Kingdom. Traffic targeting is a must, if you want good PPC.

 

[Badger]

The problem is, domainers believe because they spend hours optimizing, checking keywords and customizing domains, this has to be worth something. Says who?

No-one asked domainers to do this, the reason this option is available in the first place is because domainers asked for it. The same reason why parking companies allow domainers to write some custom text and add photographs. Not because parking companies have a penchant to stand behind some garbled, mostly copy/pasted text from another web site, but because 2 yrs ago this is what domainers were asking for. Supply and demand.

Monetizing traffic from undeveloped domains was meant to be clean, was meant to be natural, beyond reproach and not because of any of the reasons stated in the paragraph above. Domainers themselves have created this sub-industry. We are the people who have bought up domains with no chance of a direct type in, have optimized them, added text and have seen it slowly become monetized because we got listed, albeit temporarily, in the SE's. In this scenario, we have offered nothing, nothing at all to the advertiser.. The traffic conversion in this case sucks. And forget ye not, advertisers are the only reason why we exist, period.

Reason being. Lets say Im an advertiser, someone finds an optimized parked domain on page Z of googles index and visits it, going on to click a link. Now, was that surfer looking to buy or was that person simply browsing the web...? Now take the very same surfer looking to buy a camera and types in cameras.com into their browser, they see a page of ads and choose the most appropriate.. Which has the best chance of conversion for the advertiser?

Our vision is clouded, we overplay our play and we overplay the importance we have, to coin one of Jeff's phrases, in the whole search marketing ecosystem.

So lets take the scenario every domainer wants, fhdsfhsafhsjfhsdlf.com gets the same click PPC as cameras.com... Which traffic do you think would the advertiser prefer? Just because you buy an unregistered domain and spend some time optimizing and working your stock means nothing. Google's search listings have promised you nothing, parking companies have promised you nothing and no-one ever agreed that if you bought any said domain this would end in a positive return for you.

There are 2 ways to make a domain earn money for you, natural/repeat traffic or development. Grey hat techniques notwithstanding, or withstanding only for a brief period of time before its analysed and then served the well reported low paying PPC.

I also dont subscribe to parking companies showing you their accounts. You sign up to parking companies under your own volition, what rights do domainers have in asking a company, who never coerced them into joining, to show them their audited accounts? What other supplier / customer relationship anywhere in the world has this relationship?

Sometimes domainers need to redress the angle, look at their/our domains with a clear head and say "does my domain really offer anything to the advertisers displayed therein"... For this is the quandry that google and yahoo have to wrestle with. Your domains have gone from $2 to $1 to $0.50 to $zilch.. Well, guess what, somebody somewhere has decided that for your traffic, which good dollars have been paid out for, is not worth the investment.. Plain and simple. Not shaving, not conspiracy, not fat cats making money from you, not nothing... The only people controlling the ads that get served on your domains are the root feed providers, not the parking companies..

Shoot me down as being one of them if you so wish, I only speak the truth and sometimes someone has to give out the tough love when people get carried away.

 

[DnPresident]

So if you call a parking company with a yahoo feed provider and they check your score.....It's a ten, perfect, then what's the next excuse or reason?gotta know since this is the case.

, the decrease that people are seeing in PPC, Is due to the quality of traffic that their names receive, this wasn't a hidden secret, Yahoo announced it would be watching traffic, .

 

[hitchhiker]

Badger, I see your point and agree with you that conversion is what it is, we should just suck it up if our traffic is truly not converting . . . but its still telling that about a year ago when you just started 1plus, you would have never these words below

The problem is, domainers believe because they spend hours optimizing, checking keywords and customizing domains, this has to be worth something. Says who?

No-one asked domainers to do this, the reason this option is available in the first place is because domainers asked for it. The same reason why parking companies allow domainers to write some custom text and add photographs. Not because parking companies have a penchant to stand behind some garbled, mostly copy/pasted text from another web site, but because 2 yrs ago this is what domainers were asking for. Supply and demand.

Monetizing traffic from undeveloped domains was meant to be clean, was meant to be natural, beyond reproach and not because of any of the reasons stated in the paragraph above. Domainers themselves have created this sub-industry. We are the people who have bought up domains with no chance of a direct type in, have optimized them, added text and have seen it slowly become monetized because we got listed, albeit temporarily, in the SE's. In this scenario, we have offered nothing, nothing at all to the advertiser.. The traffic conversion in this case sucks. And forget ye not, advertisers are the only reason why we exist, period.

Reason being. Lets say Im an advertiser, someone finds an optimized parked domain on page Z of googles index and visits it, going on to click a link. Now, was that surfer looking to buy or was that person simply browsing the web...? Now take the very same surfer looking to buy a camera and types in cameras.com into their browser, they see a page of ads and choose the most appropriate.. Which has the best chance of conversion for the advertiser?

Our vision is clouded, we overplay our play and we overplay the importance we have, to coin one of Jeff's phrases, in the whole search marketing ecosystem.

So lets take the scenario every domainer wants, fhdsfhsafhsjfhsdlf.com gets the same click PPC as cameras.com... Which traffic do you think would the advertiser prefer? Just because you buy an unregistered domain and spend some time optimizing and working your stock means nothing. Google's search listings have promised you nothing, parking companies have promised you nothing and no-one ever agreed that if you bought any said domain this would end in a positive return for you.

There are 2 ways to make a domain earn money for you, natural/repeat traffic or development. Grey hat techniques notwithstanding, or withstanding only for a brief period of time before its analysed and then served the well reported low paying PPC.

I also dont subscribe to parking companies showing you their accounts. You sign up to parking companies under your own volition, what rights do domainers have in asking a company, who never coerced them into joining, to show them their audited accounts? What other supplier / customer relationship anywhere in the world has this relationship?

Sometimes domainers need to redress the angle, look at their/our domains with a clear head and say "does my domain really offer anything to the advertisers displayed therein"... For this is the quandry that google and yahoo have to wrestle with. Your domains have gone from $2 to $1 to $0.50 to $zilch.. Well, guess what, somebody somewhere has decided that for your traffic, which good dollars have been paid out for, is not worth the investment.. Plain and simple. Not shaving, not conspiracy, not fat cats making money from you, not nothing... The only people controlling the ads that get served on your domains are the root feed providers, not the parking companies..

Shoot me down as being one of them if you so wish, I only speak the truth and sometimes someone has to give out the tough love when people get carried away.