|
Welcome to the first issue of Domain Parking News. We've been signing-up subscribers for some time, but this is the first issue of an infrequent newsletter that will keep you up to date on PPC (pay-per-click) domain parking services.
|
July
saw a number of changes in the domain pay-per-click field. Early in
the month TrafficZ announced
their new TrafficZ 4.0 service. The site has a
new look, and you no longer have to choose between pay-per-click
and pay-per-impression. Their MaxPay program will pay you both
ways. This alone may be a reason to try TrafficZ, or to return
some of your domains to their management. You can also create a
custom banner for your site. This allows better "branding" with
the same look and feel throughout your domains. Their new
system uses java for a fresh look, but the stats server was
still running slowly as of 8/1. The pie charts on first page
may be slowing things down - and they don't really make sense.
Pie charts show pieces (portions, percentages) of a whole pie,
while the data used in these charts (landings, searches, clicks)
are not this sort of data. If these are pieces of a pie, then
what is the pie? Bar charts would make more sense. There has
been a link at the bottom to "Login to V3.0" that gave you back
the old interface (and restored the speed). As of early morning
on 8/1 this link was still present, but by the time you read
this the link may have been removed.
Gold Key
has
emerged from the pack recently as the top paying
service for type-in domains and true keyword domains. Gold Key
uses Yahoo (formerly Overture) to power their service.
In some cases you can more than double your income on these high
quality domains. Some people make a lot of money here. There
are special tools available for high-traffic domain owners.
(Mediocre names may do better elsewhere, and names with
trademark issues may be rejected.)
July also
saw the introduction of new themed graphic templates for
Gold Key sites. Examples can be seen at
NurseJobFind.com,
LastingErection.com and
TreatmentCenters.us. It
It is very easy to change the themed graphic that displays for
your site. For a time Gold Key domains did not appear to drop
from search engines the way that domains do at some parking
services. The developers had worked to make the domains look
like real websites to search engine robots. You can see where
your visitors came from, and you can see details about all robot
visits to your site. We saw some instances where Gold Key
actually improved a domain's search engine rank, but after a few
days this traffic burst seemed to die off. Gold Key encountered
more serious problems due to heavy traffic volume
toward the end of July. They responded in a very
generous manner, issuing the following statement: |
|
"During the week of July 17th, we experienced some unstable network connectivity. Despite warnings over a month ago, our hosting company and their upstream provider were not able to keep up with our bandwidth requirements. On Sunday, July 23rd, we will be moving to RackSpace.com where we have virtually unlimited bandwidth at a datacenter with several upstream providers.
|
This hosting solution should be able to keep up with our network demands regardless of our growth. To compensate for the unstable network, GoldKey.com will be providing an additional 15% revenue to all partners for the entire month of July. For example, if your July revenue is $10,000, you will get an additional $1,500 for a total of $11,500 for the month of July." |
How important is it for parked pages to show up in search engines?
Most search engines focus on providing relevant results for their users. Someone searching for information is usually looking for a true content-based site. Search engines consider parking pages to be a poor substitute and rank them low. It's not unusual for a domain to drop completely off the search engines when it is first parked at a service like DomainSponsor or Gold Key. For a time Gold Key appeared to be "tricking" search engines into considering their parked pages to be "real websites." Their strategy no longer seems to be working quite as well.
It's probably unrealistic to expect much search engine traffic to go to parking pages. If you need a domain to retain search engine traffic it's probably better to develop it into a real website. |
Traffic Valet looked like it would be a great alternative for people who did not have the gazillion pageviews that Google requires for its AdSense for Domains program. Initial returns were well ahead of
Sedo, but it has since cooled-off. The developers of that program are blaming changes at Google - and it does look like income at most Google-based services is down some. We still prefer it to Sedo for the short-run, but keep domains in Sedo's sales system.
Domain Sponsor remains an exception to the Google-based cool-off. They have negotiated independent deals with some advertisers, and this keeps them ahead of other Google-based services on many keywords.
|
Newsletter Issues 
