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August 2006 Name Monetizer #13 |
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formerly Domain Parking News
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Why the New Name?
Domain Parking News was first published one year ago this month.
We've been keeping domain
 professionals
up-to-date on how to monetize their domains through
various pay-per-click parking services for a full year. In
that time a number of changes have taken place in the industry.
Pay-per-click is still king, but click-fraud looms as a future threat to
this model. New ways to monetize names are emerging.
We will continue to keep you up-to-date on changes in the PPC services,
but we will also explore tools for developing your domains and new
monetization models. Stay tuned for another great year!
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Coverage initiated on Parked
Several readers have written to ask about the new parking service
called Parked.
They pay out twice monthly, a feature that is attractive to some
domainers. I had a little trouble signing-up. I
applied and waited, but nothing happened. I sent a ticket via
their trouble ticket system, and the only response I got was a
suggestion that I apply again. A PM to the right person via
DNForum got things moving. Their templates look nice.
Example sites include
EbbFlow.com and
Psychologist.in.
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News from the Parking Services
Active Audience has been upgraded to "recommended" status at
ParkQuick.com, along with their sister site
Gold Key. Both of these services provide above-average
search engine retention. Active Audience is a bit more
selective, and they offer more services and a better choice of
parking pages.
NameDrive has an interesting feature that is easy to miss.
If you view your domain portfolio settings ("Domain Portfolio" tab,
and "Settings" tab) you will see small magnifying glass icons toward
the middle of the page (between 'keyword' and 'header'). Click
on one of these and you will see a preview of how your domain looks
- along with a number of different options of how it might look.
You can change the settings and see the result in real time, then
apply the changes for real if you like them. Traffic and
income seem steady there.
Parking Dots has added video to their site! You'll either
love it or
hate it. Their homepage has a video of an attractive woman
telling you all about their service. It is a flash video that
does not slow things down at all, and it is easy to silence.
You won't find it on the sign-up page, you'll have to go to the
home page. They continue to offer 80% of their income for
parking, and 100% if they lease the domain.
TrafficZ reported that they added even more graphic banner
selections. They didn't mention what category they are in,
though, and I can't find them. They had a few database
problems in July, stating on 7/23: "Uniques and searches are not up
to date in your Domain Manager at the moment. All traffic and
revenue is being tracked on our system....You will begin to see this
backlogged data updating as we continue our database maintenance." I
take this as a sign that they are continuing to grow.
They remain one of the few services that allow you to include your
links and content on their parking pages.
DomainSponsor reported that they "experienced some problems with
the optimization system" over the July 22-23rd weekend. They
continue to pay quickly.
Services like Moniker's Traffic Club will split your traffic and
send it to different companies. Did you know that you can also
do this yourself? One feature of
Domain Spa is that they allow you to enter account information
(not passwords, of course) for other parking companies into your
account at Domain Spa. Any traffic that comes from a country
that DomainSpa doesn't monetize will automatically go to the other
service(s) you enter. I'm having pretty good luck splitting
this traffic between Domain Spa and
Domain Sponsor. Domain Spa was having a problem with
payments that they made through PayPal at one time, but this has
been cleared-up.
Sedo's Pro service is providing steady income, thanks in part to
their more attractive parking pages. The "regular" Sedo
program is still a good bet for holders of smaller domain
portfolios, especially if they have international traffic. The
Pro Service requires an invitation from a current member, so
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Traffic Parking switched email providers during July and a lot
of email sent to them got filtered as spam. Rumors began
concerning their financial health, but were quickly quashed when the
email glitch was identified. They report that they are sound
financially and they continue to do especially with UK and other
European traffic.
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Beyond Parking - Tools for Developing Domains
Why do many domain professionals use pay-per-click parking services?
They are easy to set up. With a few clicks you can have an
attractive landing page that generates income. Developing a
domain is generally much more time-consuming, but also potentially
more rewarding. I've found several tools to aid the process of
developing domains, and I will share what I discover.
In the
past I have used FrontPage and DreamWeaver to develop domains into
websites. The end result is not always pretty, but some of
these domains with content do generate more income than if they were
parked at a PPC service. I recently purchased
XSitePro on the promise that it would help me create sites
quickly. This software is marketed as "The Web Design Software
for Internet Entrepreneurs." It is designed to quickly create
mini-sites or even full-blown sites that look professional.
I found the program fairly easy to learn. Rather than starting
by designing a site, you start by creating a "project" and entering
keywords for it. You can then use templates and graphics that
come with the sortware to create a site, or use your own.
There are also sites that will sell you
XSitePro templates. My first effort with this software was
the domain
healing-touch.com. It took me around 2 hours to learn the
software and create this basic one page site. Future sites
should be quicker.
XSitePro costs $197, so it's not an impulse buy. If you
are serious about developing domains into websites you should have
this tool in your toolbox.
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Current Recommentations:
* If you
have at least 50 - 100 domains:
Apply for accounts at
Active Audience and
Parking Dots if you expect your domains to make over $50 a week.
They pay the highest percentage. ActiveAudience may improve search
engine performance of your domains if you use their nameservers.
Apply at Domain
Sponsor if the domains are likely to sell a product Online.
SedoPro is also a strong choice, and is highly recommended for
international domains. (Send an
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
to get an endorsement code for SedoPro.)
Consider
Traffic Z for nice looking and flexible parking pages.
Check out other pages of this site for more on the strengths and
weaknesses of these services. ActiveAudience and Traffic Z
have the best parking pages, but others are catching up.
* If you have less
than 50 domains:
Park your
domains at Sedo
and/or NameDrive
for almost instant results. Apply for a
Gold Key account and try some domains there too. Some
domains do dramatically better at Gold Key. As mentioned
above. Sedo is best for International traffic. Sedo and NameDrive
use Google/AdWords ads, while Gold Key uses Yahoo/Overture.
Gold Key can provide search engine traffic, and their parking pages
look better. Their site takes a while to learn.
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I will send this newsletter out monthly or when there have been
significant changes in the domain name monetization industry. I
do not anticipate sending it more than once a month unless there
is a huge change in a service that warrants your immediate
attention. Back issues are available at
NameMonetizer.com.
Leonard Holmes, Ph.D.
CEO, Healing Sites Network, LLC
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the end of every
issue.
ParkQuick.com - Make Quick Money on Dormant Domains
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Parking Service Reviews 
