Interview: Donny Simonton of Parked.com
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Leonard Holmes interviews Donny Simonton.
In a recent post Andrew questioned the value of internet video for many purposes. Â I don’t completely disagree. Â My own pet peeve is pages that start playing the video as soon as you land on the page. Â Give me a play button. Â I know how to use it.
I do believe that interviews can be a great use of video, however.  I personally get a lot more out of a video interview, because the person’s personality often shines through much better than in a text interview. Take the example of this Donny Simonton Interview, fresh from DOMAINfest Global.  Donny lets us know that PPC (pay-per-click) numbers are down around 20% across domains in their system.  He tells us that financial domains are hit even harder than others.  He puts a bright face on all this by telling us that Parked has been able to make some design changes to tweak a few more clicks out of people in some cases, so in those cases income may be flat.  He also shares that Parked will now allow you to include TemplateMonster templates on your domains within their system. Â
This rote description pales in comparison to the video interview. Â Click below and see if you don’t agree:
Leonard Holmes
ParkQuick.com
(If the video doesn’t load you can view it here.)
Further Reading:
Tags: donny simonton, Parked.com
Just a quick plug for the joy of internet video…just produced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_y5J1jVYz4
Watched the full video… Pretty much a waste of time.
Donny speaks and addresses as if Leonard is a 13 year old newbie who doesn’t know the first thing about domains and traffic / development in general.
That is funny.
I wish Donny would tell us the REAL information we need to know and provide useful insight — instead it’s always the same canned responses which I’ve heard and read about too many times over the years from him.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Donny a lot and I think he is one of the best guys around from the Domain Parking biz as he has been an innovator and leader…but come on !!
Mike
I wish I would have had my eyes opened, damn sun!
Mike – None of that was canned, I didn’t even know what the questions were going to be until he asked them. If you think anything is canned please let me know what it is and I’ll try to respond better. Also remember that the interview was with Leonard, but the people watching it could be anybody. I’ve actually had people who were interviewing for a job with us watch some of these videos.
Donny
I didn’t come away from the interview feeling that way. I think he was trying to address a wide audience that included newbies.
Personally, I think it’s cool that Donny talked percentages. It’s been hard getting anyone to go on the record about that, and it shows a level of openness from Parked.
I personally love the way that domainers doing media is like domainers doing development. Wind the clock back to the 80′s, takin it old-scool, the production reminded me of the MFA sites we love to build.
Passing the mic back and forth is classic. Did they film it on their cell phone??
Hey – I’m learning. Does it really look like it was filmed on a cell phone?
To clarify – I take responsibility for Donny squinting. That was a newbie error – I positioned us where he was facing a sunny wall of the cabana. The “filmstrip” effect is from iMovie 2009 and I plan to use it consistently across these three interviews with parking company executives. With time I will probably simplify things.
I see Julia’s point about the similarity to MFA sites – but I also see value in getting these things out there. Like MFA sites, they will get better with time (and I will get less defensive).
Last I checked, Leonard wasn’t a professional videographer. But this is better than any other video coming out of the event, so I don’t think it’s right to criticize him over it. Other than passing back the mic, I think the quality is good.
Damn….just found this article.
Why all the hostility?
How many other parking companies even say ANYTHING?
Give Donny and Leonard a break…..at least he put something together for us all to watch.
My hat’s off to him!
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