Parked.com is grabbing attention as a new alternative in the crowded field of domain parking.
I recently asked Donny Simonton, CIO of Parked.com, a few questions about what makes the service different from the competition. (The parking service was created by directNIC.)
1. It seems like a new parking service opens its doors every week. How will Parked.com stand out from the crowd?
Unlike some of the new companies that are coming out we have been in the parking business for over almost 6 years now. [Donny is referring to the parent company’s private parking.] For the first few years we did nothing but have static html pages. Once Applied Semantics was purchased by Google, we asked Overture if we could create our own system and use it if it met their approval. They agreed and we have been going strong since.
Most of the new companies that are starting up get a feed from Yahoo or Google and basically use the system they are provided with. For example,
they have no way of changing the related terms associated with a search and their systems can’t learn from mistakes that you find or mistakes that are provided to them. It’s a domain parking system in a box, and the only people that suffer in the long run are the partners/affiliates.
I have never liked the look and feel of most of the parking pages that are available to people. You go from the plain templates to the big cuddly dog
that takes up 75% of the page. I’ve always looked at it from the standpoint that if my wife would get to a parked page and she would click, then
that was a great parked page. I consider “what are the demographics that we are targeting?†and develop everything from there…a nice unique page layout and a picture that is relevant to the main topic of the domain. And the same thing goes for the results page as well, because in the long run this is really the most important page. We have already created hundreds of templates and we have thousands to go. We have simple categories like cows, clothing, and computers to the more customized like some for grouse hunting, beluga caviar, and gummi bears.
And in the next few weeks we will be adding additional layouts, so by taking the same system we have now you will be able to choose from multiple layouts to make your domains even more unique that they are today.
2. Speaking of great domain names, Parked.com is a winner. When did you acquire the domain and did you always plan to use it for a domain parking service?
We purchased the domain a little over a year ago; we planned to offer a domain parking service around September of last year. But we had a
hurricane that came and caused us a few problems. So it got pushed back.
3. Parked.com pays out twice monthly. Other parking services pay monthly and about a month after the income has been earned. How is Parked.com able to pay out faster?
Our original concept was to pay out once a month on the 7th or the 15th, just like all of the other companies. One of our owners told me that we
should really try and pay twice a month, because some of the affiliate programs he is in pays twice a month. In the end in some cases we are
getting paid 45-60 days after we pay our partners out. This is something that we felt that was owed to the partners and something that made us a
little more unique in a room full of people doing the same thing.
4. You claim to offer the “highest partner payouts”. ParkingDots, another Yahoo-based parking service is paying out 80%. How does this compare to Parked.com?
I don’t know of any parking company that doesn’t say “highest partner payouts”. I just looked at about 6 of them and they all say they will pay
you more! How does anybody know that company A will pay them more than company B? In your example of ParkingDots offering 80%, what is that 80%? What is their cut from Yahoo? 90%, 59%, or 43%?…
…The bottom line is how much money did I make today, and from our testing we have found that in most cases we will generate the partner more money.
5. Parked.com’s landing pages are impressive. I see that you automatically select either a one-click lander or a two-click portal for domains. How does your system decide which type of lander to use?
Yahoo tells us what can go to a one-click or a two-click lander. We can ask them to change certain domains to one-click landers, but it’s not a really smooth process. And it’s rarely approved.
6. Some other parking services are helping domainers sell their revenue domains. How will Parked.com assist with selling domains?
Currently we don’t offer an option to sell your domain through us. We have watched and purchased some of the domains on the system that Namedrive created. But I found it crude in the manner things were done. We originally wanted to focus and providing the best parking solutions to domainers or even single domain owners. Then we would work on providing a method of selling their domains.
You can learn more about Parked.com by clicking on the banner below.
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