Leonard Holmes of ParkQuick updates us on the latest in domain name parking.
April saw signs all around that Yahoo and Google are pressuring parking services to delete the accounts of poorly performing domain owners. Parked took the lead deleting suspected click-fraud accounts some time back, and their numbers seem to be improving for accounts remaining there (so much so that we are now recommending them highly). The general trend in PPC income seems lower for most services. The long term implications of these trends are unclear. Culling some of the “bad apples” certainly may be a good thing. Yahoo and Google make a lot of money off domain parking page ads, and it is in their best interests for the current PPC system to continue. Advertisers want to sell their ads to people who will not only visit their site but will also buy their product or service. Conversion tracking software is more widely available than ever before, and some advertisers are quick to equate traffic that doesn’t convert with click fraud.
Some Name Monetizer readers have asked whether they can send paid traffic to their pages. Most services forbid paid or incentivised traffic because it generally does not convert well. Some sites (Parked is one example) do allow you to buy AdWords or Overture ads and send that traffic to your site. This is rarely cost-effective, however. Unless you are very careful you will end up paying more for the ads than you will make off the parking. Second and third tier paid traffic is more likely to include automated bots or other clicks that will not convert, and you are likely to be banned from any of these services if you buy that lower quality traffic.
Parking services I am currently recommending include Sedo and SedoPro, ActiveAudience and Gold Key, Parked, and TrafficZ. Find out more about which ones are best for you at ParkQuick.com.
Other signs of a backlash? People usually don’t like to land on parking pages. There are still a number of people who equate domain parking in general with cybersquatting. This term originally referred to the practice of buying trademarked domains in order to sell them to the trademark holder. Not too many people continue that practice, but the term survives. On a recent episode of the DL.TV video podcast, Roberrt Heron refered to parked sites as “squatter sites.” Expressing a similar sentiment, a person responding to Jay Westerdal’s DomainTools blog stated that “If you don’t have a bona-fide need for a specific domain name (E.G. You’re going to actually use it as opposed to park it), you shouldn’t be touching it.”
Why such animosity? Read my thoughts on this in the May Name Monetizer newsletter. Thanks again to Andrew for allowing me to use this soapbox.
Leave a Comment