Has domain name parking hit bottom?
How much are your parked domain names earning? If you make $20 or more RPM (revenue per thousand visits), consider yourself lucky.
The 5th Annual Domain Name Wire survey shows that 60% of domain name owners are making less than a $20 RPM, and a whopping 40% are making less than $10 per thousand visits.
The good news? Those numbers are in line with last year. Perhaps domain parking revenue has bottomed out? 35% of respondents said their parking revenue in 2009 was similar to 2008. Still, 53% reported a drop in revenue and only 13% an increase.
Nevertheless, domainers remain mildly optimistic about domain parking prospects in the coming year. About 30% think parking revenue will rebound in 2010, a couple percentage points more than think it will continue to drop. 42% think 2010 will be similar to 2009.
To read reviews of domain name parking companies, visit ParkingJudge.com. To read more results from the 2010 Domain Name Wire Survey, visit DomainNameWire.com/survey.
Ace says
Thanks for this. Do you see any correlation between number of domains and revenue.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Ace – good question. Bigger portfolio owners appear to earn more. When looking only at people with 1,000 plus names, here are the stats (roughly):
< $10 16%
$10-$19 12%
$20-$29 20%
$30-$39 9%
$40-$49 6%
$50-$59 5%
$60-$69 2%
$70+ 4%
Steve says
I think a lot of us are really waiting for these new solutions that are suppose allow “rapid semi-automated development” of domains rather than the old single page parking.
Having a full blown Parked Site should give web users a better experience. IF search engines don’t blacklist the IP’s, these kind of parked sites might actually show up in serps and develop long term traffic.
And, with what amounts to Legalized Domain Theft increasingly taking place through UDRP/WIPO, these kinds of services might help domain investors keep their properties safe.
So far, the only service like this I have found that you can sign up with and get to work is Devhub. The search engines don’t seem to be giving these sites any love …at least not yet.
It would be interesting to see an in depth story about some of these services that we can start moving to ASAP. DomainAdvertising and SmartName were a couple that were suppose to be offering something, but so far it doesn’t seem like you can just sign up and start testing.
Andrew Allemann says
Steve, here are a couple options similar to DevHub:
https://domainnamewire.com/2008/01/29/auto-generated-web-sites-part-2/
SmartName released its product:
https://domainnamewire.com/2010/01/24/smartname-launches-content-site-system-upgrades-accounts/
Also try SmartName shops.
Belmassio says
Sheesh…..I had no idea it was this bad for other domainers! You’d need a ton of traffic to stay in business at those rates.
I’ve been upset at how low my RPM is now for my main portfolio after it used to range $120 to $130 before the big parking crash. Now it runs about $50 to $60 RPM .
David Harry says
Andrew,
We are launching KeyRPM 2.0 in the coming weeks with ‘traffic control’ (the ability to split domain traffic) and keyword optimization and our clients have been averaging around $30-$50 RPM so anyone wanting to have a free trial can register today @ http://www.keyrpm.com
Shameless plug I know…. but we are here to help domainer’s increase their RPM across their domain portfolios.
bernard says
I am satisfied to see that the RPM are about the same as for real content websites, when compared to my portfolio of developped websites.
Thus, the poor content effect (or 404 syndroma) doesn’t pay anymore 😉
@ Steve: Any mass development framework will imply a mass content duplication, and I can give you really tons of those services which are miserably failed.
The thing is: anybody who has built up a software to develop domains rather quickly will have it with agregation thus duplicate content. He or she has no real interest to share it with domainers, coming with their infinite junk domain collection to spam the Internet.
On the opposite, if you do with a limit number of domains, and domains with backlinks, it may works pretty well. I speak from my own experience.
As a conclusion, I seriously think that any hope for a turnkey solution for the dummy domainer will end up unsatisfied.
Snoopy says
“I think a lot of us are really waiting for these new solutions that are suppose allow “rapid semi-automated development” of domains rather than the old single page parking.”
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In terms of something that actually does better than parking for most names I think it will be a very long wait.
Cyril says
@Steve You can sign up on DomainAdvertising.com now. If you haven’t already then please do.
I’ll keep a lookout but would need some indication – which Steve to look for 🙂
Gazzip says
“parking revenue will rebound in 2010”
Why would it rebound in 2010 if
Google earnings, revenue, clicks and price per click were all higher in 2009 according to the following article.
http://www.thedomains.com/2010/01/21/google-earnings-revenue-clicks-and-price-per-click-all-up-stock-down/
It looks like Google got greedy and slashed out earnings dramatically for no justified reason other than to make more profit, I would be very surprised if PPC ever reverts back to where it was.
(the above opinion is assuming it was’nt the parking companies that slashed out revenue)…but without any transparancy from either of them how will we ever know ???
Matt says
Auto site development doesn’t work.
If that’s what you guys are relying on, good luck! haha