Survey shows domain parking is still a key to the domain business, even if much smaller than before.
Rook Media’s acquisition of DomainSponsor proves that the domain name parking market is still alive and kicking. Just not like it was many years ago.
Despite pessimism and declining earnings, domain parking still makes up a big part of the domain investing market.
39% of survey takers reported an RPM (revenue per thousand) below $10, with 56% reporting below $20. Interestingly, these numbers on the low side are almost exactly the same as when I ran this survey for the first time in 2006.
An interesting tidbit from that 2006 survey: 65% of respondents thought they’d earn more from parking in the next five years than from selling domains. I bet that has changed now.
Although more reported sinking revenues than growing revenues this year, nearly half said it was unchanged from 2012. 10% reported a drop of 50% or more.
Still, domain investors are not optimistic about future earnings. Half think parking revenue will be lower in 2014 than 2013 while 19% think it will be higher.
63% of respondents are considering trying a new parking company in 2014.
Joseph Peterson says
I was wondering just now … Have I ever clicked on ads within a parked page? Maybe, but I can’t remember ever having done so; and it wouldn’t occur to me even read what they say.
Obviously some people do click on those ads. Maybe I’m biased against them because I visit so many parked pages when investigating the domain itself.
But clicking on AdWords ads in Google is something I do regularly. So I expect there’s a psychological difference at play — not just with me but with other people as well.
When someone sees PPC ads in a search engine, that’s acceptable because they’re consciously searching. But when someone sees PPC ads on the other end of a link or a type-in, they’re disappointed. Ideally, they would be arriving at a website with human-produced content. When they fail to see that, I’m guessing they reach for the “Back” button in a hurry.
Parked pages of 2014 resemble primitive link directories from many many years ago. Back then, the differences between a parked page and a website were less marked in appearance. By now, however, they have deviated drastically from one another. That, I expect, plays a role in visitor behavior.
Of course, updates to the Google algorithm play a major role. If traffic overall is down, then that would be the primary cause. Honestly, I don’t know whether click-through rates themselves are down. I’m simply wondering aloud.
James D. says
I looked back on my DNS/InternetTraffic parking revenue since I first moved some domains there in December of 2012. Now virtually all of my domains are parked there. While they are performing much better than they did at Sedo, I have noticed a steady decline in clicks and revenue starting this year, even though I have twice as many domains in my account there, and the keywords have been improved. I think it is safe to say that parking is a tough business getting tougher.
DR.DOMAIN says
Nah…domain parking is wearing cement shoes at the bottom of a reservoir with Jimmy Hoffa.Never to be seen again. Develop,lease,or sell.
Dave Mead says
@Joseph Peterson
CTR for ads on Google.com is often in the low single digits. With parked domains, it’s not unusual to see domains with 30-50% CTR or higher. New parking companies have optimized further on CTR as well.
The problem is that traffic and RPC is lower. Traffic is down mainly because of a shift in browsing habits. The public is now much more reliant on search engines rather than direct nav. Also, the uptake of Chrome and its autocomplete feature has driven a lot of direct nav traffic to search queries. Google algorithms don’t really affect parking traffic because parking pages aren’t ranked anyway.
RPC is lower for a variety of reasons, but I think the biggest is decreased competition for tier 1 traffic. Frank and Kevin Ham both moved from Yahoo to Google a few years back, so that says a lot.
Joseph Peterson says
@Dave Mead,
Thanks for contradicting me. I’m always happier to be wrong than right, since I get to learn something in the former case.
What you’ve said sounds accurate. Parking — as I think you can tell — isn’t really my turf.
Efty (@eftycom) says
Interesting results Andrew. We made a little bit of a bolt statement saying that parking is dead. What we mean with this is that parking as a core revenue generator for domainers is dead. Parking companies such as Rook will continue to be part of the domaining ecosystem for a long time, mainly because of the combined volume of domains they have under management.
Here’s our thoughts on the topic: http://blog.efty.com/post/83511257405/parking-is-dead-how-efty-solves-it