Ad providers continue to change rules.
If you thought the death of Yahoo arbitrage and the Ask.com feed was the end of the upheaval in domain parking, think again.
It appears ad providers are now changing rules for landing page formats and content. Sedo has been testing adding non-paid, organic search results on parked pages as apparently mandated by Google. So far it looks like this only applies when someone clicks on a “related search” link on parked pages, not on the first landing page.
Sedo has escaped this year’s turmoil thus far and seems to be well positioned. It just released a new feature to automatically rotate landing page designs to find the highest paying layout for each domain (I know, better late than never). Sedo claims an average 20%-30% earnings increase when implemented across an entire portfolio. You can turn it out by choosing the “Auto-Select” option on the Domain Optimizer page.
If you’re interested in the SedoPro program, I can send an endorsement code to you. You must have at least 200 domains or earn $200 a month in parking revenue. Just send an email to editor -at- domainnamewire.com.
Elsewhere in domain parking, DomainSponsor is really pushing its March bonus program. I received a postcard in the mail yesterday about the promotion. I’m a DomainSponsor customer, so I’m not sure if this postcard only went out to existing customers or if DomainSponsor purchased a list of domain parkers for its mass mailing. If you are not a DomainSponsor customer and received the postcard, please comment.
Competition in domain parking is a good thing and results in a higher share of revenue to domain owners. But will this be enough to overcome changes by the ad feed providers?
Andrew,
Maybe you can discuss the background or reasons why the parking companies are not effectively:
1. Selling ads directly to advertisers.
2. Using AdBrite, BlogAds, etc. type feeds.
I am aware at how lucrative the Parking Industry is – but I am blown away at the amount of money that can be made by a reasonably successful advertising platform. Why not combine the two?
Thanks!
Interesting post there – especially the post by Andrew.
@ Chris, I think the problem is the massive scale that Google and Yahoo have for ads. Compare the click prices they received (and payout) and the long tail of keywords they have and it would be difficult to challenge.
Think of some of your more obscure domain name topics. I doubt anyone at Adbrite is advertising on those. And even for more popular topics, the click prices just don’t compare.
There is one inkling of hope, and that is from Marchex. They bought Enhance and are trying to ween off of Yahoo’s feed. They also have a great local search network and advertising force through partnerships, which may help.
As for us domainers, I’d look into creating real sites around key domains and sell ads direct once traffic justifies it. It’s a lot of work, but most things that make money do take work.
One additional point, look at Ask.com for comparison. It’s “home grown” feed compared to what Google had would probably deliver 5%-10% of the revenue of Google’s feed. Ask.com has a fairly big advertiser base.
@Andrew – Thanks and understood.
My thoughts are pretty simple still:
1. Any advertising platform would have to start somewhere. Google and Yahoo started from scratch.
2. Although a new feed would have less CPC, this would be a huge benefit to the new advertiser base; bolstering the parking company’s new advertising platform.
3. Since the parking company is the advertising platform, it finally has insight behind the curtains regarding conversions and ROI. Needless to say, the revenue is direct.
4. The parking company would have 100% discretion on how much revenue to share with its domain parking customers. The margins are high enough where one aspect of the business could subsidize the other.
5. Incomplete feeds could still be supplemented by Google or Yahoo.
6. It’s good to see that Marchex looks like it is marching down this path.
@ Chris – I think there’s potential here, and we’ll see how Marchex progresses. You probably need to have the search numbers to get the advertisers. Advertisers are still wary about advertising on domains — they just don’t understand it.
But I’m hopeful
Andrew, though I’ve never used DS, I also received one of their mailings.
@ Steve – Thanks for the confirmation
Hi Andrew,
When Oversee bought Moniker.com, Traffic Club went bye-bye and all parked domains were transferred to Domain Sponsor.
Thus any Traffic Club members would have received the same email.
I am one of them.
Patrick
@ Patrick – good point, anyone who has ever used an Oversee service including SnapNames, Moniker, or attended DOMAINfest would be in the company’s database.
Steve, have you ever used one of their services?
Curious how Sedo Parking stacks up to Name Drive and Parked.com.
I just put 10 domains in both Namedrive and Parked.com with pretty dismal returns as a test so I’m looking for options.
I have a couple hundred domains I want to park to recover reg fees or I’ll dump them.
I’d be interested in a comparison as well if it is available somewhere on this website. I’m not happy with the money I’m making.