HotKeys: The Domain Parking Service You Don’t Know Yet
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Demand Media parking company is worth checking out.
I’m familiar with just about every domain name parking company out there. Whether it’s someone pitching me on a story about their services, reading about it in a forum, or hearing about it through the grapevine, I have a pretty good handle on the competitive landscape.
About a month ago I e-mailed back and forth with a big player in the domain industry. He’s big enough to have had his own Yahoo ad feed at one point. But now he’s trying out the domain parking companies. He told me he was currently trying HotKeys.
HotKeys? I was ashamed to say I’d never heard of it.
HotKeys has actually been around for a while. It was bought by Demand Media and is now part of the Demand-eNom universe.
So is HotKeys any good? I think so. Will it outperform your current parking company? I have no idea. As I’ve stated before, and I don’t think any parking company will disagree, certain parking companies do better with different domain names.
But I can tell you what I do know about HotKeys. First, it has a simple and clean user interface. Second, the money per domain seems at least on par with other parking companies I’ve used. (Note that its terms state you will receive 50% of earnings; I’m told this is in there as a minimum and they really pay out more). Third, if you use eNom, it’s easy to switch your domains to HotKey’s servers (it uses the familiar name-services servers). And Fourth, the personal account management is good.
On the negative side, HotKeys doesn’t provide the same detail of stats (including referrers) that some of its competitors offer. You also can’t customize much about your landing pages. But let’s be honest, a lot of times the customizations we make lower our earnings. Finally, the sign-up form for HotKeys (not the initial one, but the one you fill out when approved) is very particular. I was cussing at my computer the third time I filled it out.
Overall, I think HotKeys is a viable competitor to consider. If you’ve used HotKeys, please submit a review at Parking Judge.
Submit reviews of domain parking companies at Parking Judge.
Related posts:
- Survey: Sedo Top Domain Name Parking Service
- Marchex tests domain parking service, full of trademark typos
- Park Domains? Enter the Parking Judge Contest
Tags: Domain Parking, hotkeys
Thanks for sharing Andrew, but I will pass this one.
Cheers,
Emil
We have been using Hotkeys.com around 2005 and were very pleased.
They given us access to the Google feed through XML so we were able to have our own sites showing sponsored links for the keywords we felt the most relevant.
After 2 years they said Google no longer authorize to offer XML to third parties and shutted down our account.
A pair of months ago I discovered the old Hotkey boss is now one of boss of a very popular registrar.
Really? You’ve been sleeping too much Andrew.
@ Adam – here’s my unrelated comeback:
Did you really wait until the last minute to book a plan ticket to New Orleans during Mardi Gras?
You ever heard of SiteLauncher.com ? That’s another obscure one.
haha wasn’t planning on going until last minute, but yeah. Could have made it for $600 and 7hrs travel time. Figured a 12hr leisurely drive with my dad would be better