Archive for the ‘Domain Parking’ Category
Long time DomainSponsor account manager moves to Domain Holdings.
A well known face (and mustache) in the domain industry is changing jobs.
Jim Grace has left Oversee.net, parent company of DomainSponsor, after over seven years. He will be joining Domain Holdings as Director of Monetization.
Grace will be responsible for growing the company’s Domain Power monetization platform.
Domain Holdings was founded by long time domainer Chad Folkening as well as John Ferber, co-founder of Advertising.com. A number of domain industry employees have landed in its stables over the past year.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Former Sedo broker Frank Aiello Joins Domain Holdings
- Sharing Domain Parking Stats is Easy with DNW Certified Stats
- DomainSponsor Speaks Common Sense
Marchex to no longer park domains for customers.
Marchex is officially shutting down its domain parking program for clients.
Wait. What’s that, you say? They have a parking platform?
Yes, but they’ve been in the process of scaling it back since at least 2008. In the first half of 2008 it grossed $5 million in revenues from its parking platform called SiteBox. It anticipated revenues of only $500,000 for the fourth quarter of 2008. I’m not aware of anyone who currently uses them.
The company sent a notice to clients today informing them that the domain parking program will shut down on May 1.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Sharing Domain Parking Stats is Easy with DNW Certified Stats
- Marchex tests domain parking service, full of trademark typos
- Marchex Scales Back Domain Parking Service
Domain parking company resolves stats issues.
Domain parking company Sedo was hit with a DDOS attack on March 9. This caused a few hours of downtime, and then some difficulties with monetizing “related links” on its parking pages.
Today the company announced that it has fully resolved the problems and compensated publishers. Customer parking daily statistics from for March 9th-19th have been updated. Customers have also been compensated for the three hours of downtime during the DDOS attack.
I’ve heard of parking companies being hit with DDOS attacks, but this one appears to have caused collateral damage with Sedo’s system. It’s good to hear everything is fixed and customers have been compensated.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Sedo hit by DDoS Attack, Adds New Listing Feature
- Sedo Auction Woes Were Caused by Denial of Service Attack
- Google Desktop Gadget Updates Domain Parking Stats
Retargeted ads increase the relevant ad inventory on parked domains.
Over the past 6-12 months I’ve notice a sharp increase in the number of Google Adsense ads I see that are retargeted. Instead of being related to the topic of the page I’m viewing, the ads are for a site I previously visited.
The same thing is happening with parked domain names. Retargeted ads are starting to pop up on them more and more.
Here’s an example of a parked page I landed on today. The red blocks represent retargeted ads.
(This particular domain is parked with the hosted Google Adsense for Domains program, which is being shut down.)
You can see that four of the ads have nothing to do with the topic of the domain. They’re all targeted to me based on sites I’ve visited in the past.
This will help increase domain parking revenue, especially on domains that have low click values. Why show penny click ads when you can show higher value ads targeted to the user?
But be warned. There’s also a downside to retargeted ads on parked domain names. It makes it easier for trademark holders to complain that ads on your parked domain are infringing their trademarks.
Don’t believe me? Ask the owner of AlamoClub.com.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- 5 Ways to Boost Domain Parking Revenue at Parked.com
- Yahoo! Change May Hurt Domain Parking Revenue
- Warning: Retargeted Ads a New Way for Trademark Holders to Go After Your Domains
DevName helps domainers develop their domain names.
Winged Media, the company behind domain auction and expired domain tool ProTrada, has released a new domain development system called DevName.com.
Like many auto-web site developers, DevName takes the theme of your domain name and pulls in related content to create a web site. The company claims to have a superior semantic engine to better target this content. [Update: DevName tells me that, while automatic technology is used for parts of the process, ultimately the sites are put together by a development team.]
An example site is AccidentsLawyers.org.
The service costs $20 per domain per year for a basic site. A site with two unique articles is $50 per year. Publishers can keep the ad revenue their site generates from Adsense and Amazon affiliate accounts.
Winged Media has another domain development service called Parklings.
DevName has also been integrated into the ProTrada interface.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Epik Acquires Domain Development Company DevRich
- Microsoft releases tool to squash typosquatters
- DomainPeers.com Helps You CrowdSource Web Development
Company settles on a CEO.
That didn’t last long.
Oversee.net’s co-CEO arrangement with Debra Domeyer and Scott Morrow is over. Domeyer has been promoted to (sole) CEO and Morrow is leaving the company.
Oversee.net’s co-president and then co-ceo set up had many people scratching their heads. The only times I’ve seen a co-CEO situation is when two companies merge, and one CEO ends up leaving soon thereafter. In other cases it shows that the company can’t make decisions.
During DOMAINFest, when bloggers asked the pair about the interesting set up, the two said it was not meant to be a short term arrangement and that it was going fine.
In stepping in to the CEO role, Domeyer will relinquish her role at Chief Technology Officer.
Most domainers would have been interfacing with Domeyer anyway, as she was heading up the monetization side of the business. General reaction I heard during DOMAINfest about Domeyer was positive.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
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Don’t just consider your click revenue.
Too often as domainers we focus on how much money our parking company pays us for clicks. But that doesn’t take into consideration the whole value stream of parking.
What other value do you get from your parked domains?
Let me give you an example.
I recently sold LinkDetective.com for $1,400 through Afternic. The domain also happened to be parked with the company.
In the past 60 days I made precisely $0 from parking the domain. (I don’t blame Afternic for that; the domain gets little traffic.)
But because it was parked with Afternic when it sold, I receive a $70 rebate on my sales commission. That made my effective RPM $2,333.
The domain also sold on BuyDomains.com, which means there’s a fair chance that the buyer found out that the name was for sale because of the “for sale” notification at the top of the page.
So the parking revenue was nil, but the value from parking was greater: the “for sale” banner may have led to a $1,400 sale, and parking it with Afternic helped me pocket another $70.
Is the message here to go park all your domains with Afternic? No.
The message is that you need to think about the value your parked domains deliver holistically.
Think about your goals. Do your domains get relatively little traffic? Then focus on putting “for sale” banners on them, regardless of where you park them. (Better yet — what if you get rid of those PPC links and just put up a sales pitch?)
You might even consider a parking company that can help you sell the domains. Afternic is an obvious one (especially on its DLS Network), but many others will help you. Some will even act as an exclusive broker for your portfolio. That adds value beyond the revenue you earn.
I used to make a couple hundred bucks a month on my geo domains at Octane360. That was nice, but the real value was in the search rankings the service provided. That resulted in a few strong sales.
What if a domain earns a lot parked? Then I’d focus more on that PPC revenue than other forms of value from parking the domain such as potentially selling it.
Take a good look at your portfolio. Is counting only your pay-per-click revenue holding you back?
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Sedo and Parked Still Top Domain Parking Companies, But Revenue Down
- Afternic Drops Basic Listings, Offers Commission Discount for Parked Domains
- Afternic Has Glitch in Internet Explorer, DNForum Hits Parked Page
That sinking feeling.
Domain investors continue to report falling domain parking revenue, and most people report earning less than a $10 RPM.
That’s according to greater than 1,000 people who answered the parking survey questions on the 7th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey.
While a lot of people reported neutral domain parking revenue in 2011 compared to 2010, and some reported greater revenue, this graph tells the tale:
Is this just a case of the small guys getting squeezed? Hardly. When you consider domainers with 500 or more domains, the number reporting a drop in revenue of 25% to 49% jumps from 31% to 68%.
57% of survey respondents reported earning less than a $10 RPM. Compare this to 2007, before the domain parking bubble burst, and only about 1/3 of people then reported an RPM of less than $10.
Domain investors are split on where domain parking revenue will head in 2012. 37% think it will continue to fall. Domainers with more than 500 domains are notably more pessimistic; 77% think parking revenue will continue to fall.
You can read more domain survey results here.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Survey: Parking Revenue Down, But Not Out
- Sedo and Parked Still Top Domain Parking Companies, But Revenue Down
- Sedo Ranked as Top Domain Name Parking Service
Sedo is top parking company, but many newcomers rank in the top 10.
Sedo and SedoPro are the top domain name parking companies according to respondents in Domain Name Wire’s 7th annual domain name industry survey. But a lot of new parking companies are challenging it.
In absolute numbers, Sedo was ranked top. Google’s self-serve Adsense for Domains program, which is closing, ranked second.
A good way to look at the parking rankings is to consider what percentage of people who have used a particular service voted for that service. Most people have tried multiple parking services so they have a good idea of relative experience.
Here are the top 10, ranked by percentage of people who have used the service that voted it as their favorite. All companies in the top 10 were used by 47 or more survey respondents.
1. Sedo/SedoPro 76%
2. Google Adsense for Domains 70%
3. InternetTraffic 61%
4. HotKeys 38%
5. The Parking Place 37%
6. NameDrive 36%
7. Voodoo 35%
8. Bodis 34%
9. Rook Media 34%
10. Domain Advertising 33%
Amazingly, four of these companies weren’t around during last year’s survey: InternetTraffic, The Parking Place, Voodoo, and Rook Media.
See more survey results here.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Survey: Sedo and Parked.com Top Domain Parking Companies
- Sedo and Parked Still Top Domain Parking Companies, But Revenue Down
- Sedo Ranked as Top Domain Name Parking Service
Program introduced in 2008 will be phased out.
Google is ending its Adsense for Domains program that allowed users of its online Adsense program to park their domain names.
The company recommends that customers migrate their parked domain names to a domain name parking company. A message sent to effected publishers this morning includes a link to a migration guide, although that link does not appear functional at this time. [Update: the link now works.]
Here’s how the program will wind down:
March 21: You’ll no longer be able to create new Hosted domains
April 18: Hosted domains will become inactive and it’ll no longer be possible to earn from them
June 27: Hosted domains will no longer be available in AdSense accounts
Google launched the self-serve program in 2008, much to the chagrin of Google’s domain parking feed partners.
Initial fears by these partners were unfounded, as the self-service solution never had the muscle to compete with the third party solutions. Its optimization was basic and parking domains with it at first required changing A records and CNAME records rather than simply changing nameservers. It also had limited templates, although it later added more.
[The original headline for this article referred to "Direct Adsense for Domains" program. The "Direct" terminology is actually part of the program that remains, so I have changed the title to reflect Google's term "hosted".]
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
Get Certified Parking Stats at DNW Certified Stats.
Related posts:
- Google Kills URL Forwarding as Yahoo Caps Some Non-.Com Domains
- Google Adsense For Domains Now Makes Parking Easier
- Google Adsense for Domains Expands Use of Keyword Hints
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