October saw a number of changes at the PPC parking services, not all for the better.
TrafficZ upgraded its service from version 4.0 to 4.1 on October 22 – just before the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Hollywood, Florida. They added the ability to control keywords and menus separately. The “Keywords” item will control the search suggestion seedings, and the “Menu” item will control the menu section of your template (if it exists on that template). TrafficZ also announced that they are working on PPC templates to help you monetize dotMobi domains. This will be tricky, since these domains must meet certain requirements in order to be easy to navigate on a cell phone. They also added thumbnails to many of their non-adult one-click pages (after adding these to adult pages in September). These new thumbnail pages don’t use their usual Yahoo feed, so clicks may not pay as much. The fact that people click more often may make up for this.
DomainSponsor is in the final stages of beta testing their newest features that will allow you almost complete control over the look and feel of your domains. When this change is rolled-out you will be able to choose from a number of stock photos to customize your templates, and you will even be able to upload your own photos. DomainSponsor is highly recommended.
Parked.com has added a traffic analysis page that gives you information on your traffic breakdown by country, by keyword, by referrer hostname, and by referrer. Go to Reports | Traffic 
Analysis after you login. The report covers the last 15 days and is helpful in giving you a good overview of where your traffic comes from. SedoPro and ActiveAudience have similar tools, but Parked.com’s tool is easier to use (possibly because it is less complex and less flexible – sometimes a good thing). They also offer you a setting for traffic from countries that they don’t monetize.
Fabulous has a Graphical Headers Gallery which allows you to see all of their graphical headers. This is a nice way to get a feel for the type of landers that you can build there.
ParkingDots was upgraded to a recommended site again in October. Their new control panel finally allows you to control the look and feel of your domains. You can even choose one- or two-click landers, but these are still subject to a possible override if they don’t meet Yahoo’s criteria. ParkingDots is highly recommended and pays 80% – probably the highest payouts of any of these services.
Sedo and SedoPro continue to do well for me and for many others. They are probably quite content with their current Google Feed. The other services that we currently recommend – ActiveAudience/GoldKey and DomainSponsor – all use Yahoo feeds. Sedo and SedoPro are highly recommended.
GoldKey disqualified some clicks and some accounts in early October as September numbers were analyzed in detail. They issued the following statement: “Folks: A reminder that our terms and conditions expressly forbid incentive-laced traffic. Specifically: 1.12 Sending any type of incentivized traffic which includes, but is not limited to PTR (Paid to read), PTS (Paid to Surf), and PTC (Paid to Click). If we determine that you are intentionally sending visitors that you know will have no interest at all in our advertisers, we have the right to terminate your account at any time and forfeit your payments.” A similar message appeared on ActiveAudience and I imagine that accounts were deleted there too. I have heard from several services that the major PPC players share information on who has been caught using click fraud. In the past it might have been possible to move from service-to-service when you were caught – but this is no longer possible. (ActiveAudience and GoldKey continue to be highly recommended.)
Remember to never click on your own paid links with any of these services. These paid links are ads are which are paid for my businesses who want to gain customers for their goods and services. If we all remember that, then the pay-per-click model will be around for a long time.
Read more about attempts to control click-fraud, and the effects of Yahoo’s income slump in the most recent issue of the Name Monetizer newsletter – archived at Parkquick.com.
Thanks again to Andrew for this space…
Leonard Holmes
A lot of great stuff going on in the parking world…thanks for the update Leonard.
One nice thing about all of these domain conferences is that it gives domain services companies deadlines for product updates and new releases. The parking companies say “we need to push out our new features in time for TRAFFIC”.
Hi,
What about iMonetize.com?
Have you had any good results?
I can’t tell about iMonetize yet. The system seems to work like it is supposed to – but the domains that I have placed there don’t seem to get enough traffic to give me a good sense of how they are doing. I had to move one of the best domains to Moniker to be in the TRAFFIC auction (and it did not sell).
I like their security features. I actually got a “snailmail” from them to verify my account. I will put some better domains there and I’ll be sure to include them again next month.