Parking is Dead? Why ParkingCrew's Founders Say You Can Cancel the Funeral

[Ron Jackson]

How many times have you heard that domain parking is dead? If that is the case, then you have to ask why so many new competitors have entered a supposedly dying space - and why are their clients giving them good reviews? ParkingCrew's founders chime in on that in our latest newsletter: http://www.dnjournal.com/newsletters/2013/february.htm

 

[espo702]

Interesting. Thanks for the read

 

[Ronald Regging]

Why would so many new "competitors" enter a dying space? It's called asset protection and it doesn't negate the fact that it is still a dying space. A better analogy would be where one of the pallbearers jumps in the coffin along with the dead in order to get a free ride from the other pallbearers...

That's essentially what all of these players are attempting to do. They all have assets which generate monthly revenues, however, these revenues have been consistently drying up over the long term. So, you start a parking service and attempt to convince other people to join up so that you can attempt to negotiate better terms with the ad companies as well as offset your loses with an additional percentage from your members... Your returns increase, you dampen the losses... Every little bit helps, right?

However, this still doesn't say anything to the benefit of the parking industry... Just that a few key players are using their leverage to cover their own asses. But, I've been away from the scene for a long while, so what do I know? I was just providing a plausible alternative answer to your question.

 

[AlejandroGarcia]

what else would they say?

 

[Kate]

I am not surprised that there are more small players entering the arena.
This is an industry that has been dominated by a few companies, and I think there is room for innovation in this business.

Even if it's in decline (I don't think it is), there is still money to be made. Your position is better when you are on top of the food chain.

Also, some of the new companies are in fact reincarnations of previous ventures
ie Parked.com -> Voodoo

Interesting that the 'switch' took place as they were hit with a massive lawsuit from Verizon.

In a way, this is a fly by night industry. So from time to time you see new faces popping in or out. The faces may have changed, but not the bodies.

 

[Name Trader]

I park my domains and let Above.com optimize them I use 4 parking companies. Voodoo, Domain Sponsor, Bodis, Parking Crew. Parking Crew only creates about 5% of my revenue. If they were so great they'd be competing with Voodoo and Domain Sponsor for a 40% share of my revenue. So I think their claims are a little bit excessive. IMHO, everybody should have a Voodoo Parking account.

 

[smurge]

Actually Parked is not "Voodoo". Parked is actually DomainApps.com .


Donny, who used to work over at Parked.com left and started his own parking company.

Just wanted to clarify that.

 

[Kate]

Correct, Smurge.
But it's the same key people.
Donny bought voodoo if I remember well. Not up to date on the current ownership though.

At least one current executive from Rook also used to work at ND (if I remember correctly).
It's a small world.

Also, I have been spammed by several if not most of the new PPC companies, not all of them but most have failed to impress me.

In recent years, there have been several PPC companies that looked promising but didn't last: parking panel, the parking site etc
Some shut down without notice and without settling customer accounts.
Of course, domainers have short memories :gl:

 

[johname]

I would put it as craig at whypark ended up with the parked.com "software" and made DomainApps.com out of both,.

 

[angel69]

The trend seems to be towards InternetTraffic but it's not easy to get in, I'm still waiting and it's been weeks (Frank Schilling's new venture, along with DomainNameSales.com, the aftermarket on the same site)

ParkingCrew and RookMedia are the new cool guys on the block, very similar comments I find for both. I have a bit of a problem w/RM since they capitalize the 1st letter and I won't go for that (Nameyourprice.com does not look good, neither does Ygh.com for an acronym, and there's no option to do all caps or all small letters, I also wish you could choose your template) ParkingCrew lets you choose up to 4 rotating landing pages and at least with them domain names appear as all lower case

RookMedia has some guys who were at Namedrive, Ed for example is at RM now and was the ND rep for DNF. Not sure about PC, they look European and I believe are based in Luxembourg. Voodoo is still mentioned as one of the new alternatives, and Donny uses the Google feed for this one, it's different from the old Parked.com which, as someone mentioned, merged with WhyPark and they're now called DomainApps, and still using Yahoo/Bing

I actually thought Donny owned both DomainApps and Voodoo until recently. The real bad news was that the old Parked.com technology/UI/API (no matter how your names performed there) was unparalleled, and still is, and DomainApps doesn't have it anymore, the new site looks exactly like the old WhyPark. I wish DomainApps were still using that technology, no one else even comes close and what you could do there you simply can't do anywhere else. I don't like the single template format DomainApps has though, which is unchanged from Parked.com (the double-click, rarely were you assigned the single-click), they have one single platform which is actually a single template where you can pick the pic and colors

I haven't tried Above.com but should. Apparently their system chooses which parking service is best for each domain, I had never seen a company do this

 

[W1ZZ]

I've been using Rook for a little over a week now and I'm sorry that I left Voodoo. My views just never turn into clicks anymore and I have a feeling it's with their weak layout. I like the auto-optimization (because it takes the work out) but it doesn't turn clicks ha--so I guess I don't like it.

 

[HeyNow]

I've been using Rook for a little over a week now and I'm sorry that I left Voodoo. My views just never turn into clicks anymore and I have a feeling it's with their weak layout. I like the auto-optimization (because it takes the work out) but it doesn't turn clicks ha--so I guess I don't like it.

If Voodoo was so wonderful you wouldn't have left it in the first place, right?

 

[Venga]

On a provider / host level it seems to be around more than ever, taking advantage of clients 404 and unused domain traffic. A matter of volume.