Domain Name Wire » Domain Parking

Jim Grace jumps from DomainSponsor to Domain Holdings

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:25:32 +0000

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.

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Marchex shutting down domain parking program

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:47:46 +0000

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.

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Sedo updates stats and issues credit from DDOS

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:17:20 +0000

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.

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Retargeted ads will boost domain parking revenue

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:30:11 +0000

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.

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Company behind ProTrada releases web site development tool DevName.com

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:38:23 +0000

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.

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Co-CEO shakeup at Oversee.net: Domeyer is CEO, Morrow out

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:16:28 +0000

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.

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How I made a $2,333 RPM on a parked domain

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:43:53 +0000

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?

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