Schilling shakes up domain parking — and that’s not all he wants to do.
Last year domain name investor Frank Schilling signed a domain parking contract with Google and opened up a new domain parking company, Internet Traffic.
The service instantly attracted some of the largest domain name investors. There are two key reasons people rushed to try the service:
1. People know, like, and trust Frank.
2. Frank gave a very high revenue share.
Although people were willing to try it out for the first reason, many of them stuck around for the second. And this simple twist rattled some of the other large Google domain parking companies.
Why the high revenue share?
Most domain parking contracts have a scalable revenue share. Frank has his own portfolio of 400,000 or so domains. Bringing on clients boosted his overall revenue with Google, pushing the company into a higher tier and increasing payouts for everyone — including him.
For Schilling, the move from being an owned-and-operated portfolio owner to working with clients was a huge shift. After working with just a core team of a few people, Schilling’s jump into domain parking meant hiring more staff.
And he wasn’t done yet.
Next, he opened up his Domain Name Sales platform to more people (who used his parking service) and introduced a new app for managing sales inquiries.
This fall he opened up the platform so clients could choose who they wanted to field inquiries on their domains. Domain Name Sales will even broker them for you.
Next year Schilling’s client base will increase even more. His Uniregistry is an applicant for 54 top level domains.
Schilling’s shift from working solely for himself to working for clients must have been dramatic for himself personally. But it has also had a big impact on the industry, most notably domain parking.
Although it began in 2011, I definitely think it was one of the Impact Stories for 2012.
Had my portfolio accepted yesterday. Will be shifting 650+ domains from Sedo over to InternetTraffic. I’m anxious to see the results.
In fact there was 3 more reasons that motivated the changes.
3) Perfect timing: There was an horrible ambiance, PPC revenue has dramatically fall down these past years and overall optimism was at the level of my shoes.
4) Phenomenal media support: from top domainers and domain media sites (I have my little part on this).
5) The highly visible “buy it now” link at on parking pages giving the possibility to domain owners to sell tehir name without have to pay a commission to a parking service (who do not deserve it).
Chapeau! Frank has do the impossible:
It’s very difficult to have people change of provider in mass and so fast.
Great idea to create a saleable company as an exit strategy.
@ JamesD – interesting point. I think his portfolio itself could be sold (it’s happened before with others) but this will be more valuable.
@James: Can you let us know how it works out in comparison to sedo?
@JamesD: I think his portfolio stands on its own if he wanted to sell it. Hopefully he’s in it for the long haul, increased competition in this area would be nice.
@Chris
I’ll be sure to, if the comments are still live.