RPC, RPM, etc. mean nothing when comparing parking services.
I came in to the “Domain Monetization 101 & 201” session at DOMAINfest today near the end. But I caught a couple questions, one of which was “what three statistics should I look at most for my parked domains?”
I was surprised when the first couple answers had to do with revenue per click, revenue per thousand (RPM), etc. A couple years ago I thought that too, but I now know it’s not the case.
Thankfully, Donny Simonton from Parked.com set the record straight: the number that matters is the revenue number. That’s it.
The reason the other stats mean little is that each parking company counts visitors, clicks, etc. differently. So you may get a $100 rpm at one parking company and $200 at the other, but it’s because the second one only counted half of the visitors that the first one did.
There’s another reason RPM doesn’t mean as much as total revenue. Some parking companies manage to get your domain names into search engines. If you get a $100 RPM with one company and $50 with another, but the latter manages to get your page into the search engines and deliver five times as much traffic, you’re better off with that one.
Now, when working within one parking company, the other statistics are important. But when deciding which company to use, just look at the revenue number.
Make sense and that’s what I always believed in.
Total revenue matters, especially monthly revenue “month after month after month……”.
I have to admit – that’s true. Only the revenue matters in the end. That’s the best benchmark.
Do you still see “revenue” in parking? I think I’m at least 50% down and continue to sink. I’m moving away from them and slowly developing.
It will take time but for the long run.
I am confused by the fact that promoting parked pages is against the policy of most parking companies. Isn’t it better for the parking company to have more visitors and more clicks on parked pages?
@Andrew – “when deciding which company to use, just look at the revenue number”
I think this is the old adage: “See the forest, not the trees”. I’ve never been one to hyper-analyze the stats. I do expect some counterbalancing of the downtrend seen in PPC. If it corrects, fine. If not, many other options await.
im not so sure this is the case. domains have higher values assigned from parking.
i think the important number is total number
of uniques. take men.com for example getting 40k uniques per month 500k annually when sold you already had 500k users. so any men magazine ie: playboy for example would have an immediate built in audience of readers.
and this is exactly what playboy is looking for.so if men.com was earning 25k a year on domain parking so what…visitors is the important number.i could be off the mark but this is the way i see it.
Of course revenue is the only thing that matters and not any of the made up stats that the parking companies have come up with over the years.
Parked domains do not belong in the search index… If you are lucky enough to land a spot there within the top 10 results for whatever keyword, it is just temporary and sooner than later it will be gone. Google is anti-parking… I mean, what good is a parked domain as it has nothing but sponsored links.
No relevant information whatsoever.
Best,
Mike