  | | | | | | | NameMedia buys Afternic
NameMedia, the company behind ActiveAudience and GoldKey, announced on November 28th that it is buying Afternic. This probably explains the recent Afternic push to eliminate adult domains from their system. NameMedia is a privately-held, venture-backed company headquartered outside Boston in Waltham, Massachusetts. Afternic is an auction-based marketplace for buying and selling domain names.
Afternic’s in-house parking service has used DomainSponsor as a preferred partner. They will be replacing DomainSponsor with ActiveAudience in the near future. Roger Collins of Afternic reported that they have been testing the new ActiveAudience feed and have seen higher revenue results that they believe will translate into higher payouts. Domains that were using DomainSponsor will be automatically switched to “Afternic House parking powered by ActiveAudience”. If you want to continue using DomainSponsor, then just sign-up for an account and send your traffic there rather than to Afternic.
This move places NameMedia in direct competition with Sedo, and they will now be offering the same range of services. NameMedia will have two very different sales platforms - with BuyDomains primarily selling their own portfolio of domains at fixed prices, and Afternic selling their own and third party domains using an auction format that kicks-in after an initial bid had been made. (ActiveAudience and GoldKey are both highly recommended.)
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| | | | | | | News from the Parking Services
Which service has worked best for you in the past 3 months? A poll available in the right-hand column of all pages on ParkQuick is asking this question. So far iMonetize is the surprise winner, with 21% of the votes, while ActiveAudience, Domain Sponsor, Sedo and SedoPro, and Parked are tied at 11% each. Visit ParkQuick today to vote for the service that has worked best for you. We've moved more domains to iMonetize in order to test them more completely - but their system takes at least 30 days with every domain in order to fully optimize them. It also requires deleting the domains from accounts at almost all other services in order for their system to work. Apparently it is working well for many of you. Please vote today for your favorite parking service!
Some Overture-based parking services had stats problems in November. Hardest hit was ParkingDots, with incomplete stats and missing stats for several days. An error message was all that appeared over the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend for most users who wanted to see their stats. These problems still appear to be occurring, so we have again dropped our recommendation of this service for now - based solely on the fact that their stats are flaky. Income still appears strong, so we do not recommend pulling your domains from this service - but new users should be aware that they may not get timely stats or stats that are initially accurate. TrafficZ also reported some problems over thanksgiving weekend, but with stats from one of their CPM providers.
Sedo's SedoPro service sent printed users manuals to its members in November. The manual goes a long way toward helping people navigate its comprehensive (but sometimes confusing) interface. Sedo also continues to send confusing emails to customers that refer to "wire transfers" when they are really intending to refer to electronic funds transfers. (Sometimes abbreviated ACH or EFT). Many banks charge a fee for incoming wire transfers, while ACH transactions are almost always free. In the past Sedo has mistakenly used wire transfers at times even when your account is set up for ACH transfers. It appears that this problem has been fixed, but that the canned emails still refer to the old process. Sedo and SedoPro continue to be highly recommended.
DomainSponsor still does not have their new customization platform working. This interface will eventually allow you almost complete control over the look and feel of your domains. Their Google-based service had a few hickups this month, but things were generally running smoothly. Look for more DomainSponsor news in the section on DOMAINfest Global. DomainSponsor is highly recommended.
Parked continues to impress, with some hefty clicks at times. They pay out twice a month, so this is a good service to try if cashflow is important to you and your business. Fabulous has changed the structure for their FabulousDomains domain business, based on the article on domain valuation featured in last month's issue.
Remember to check the Getting Started page at ParkQuick.com for the latest recommendations if you are just getting started with domain parking.
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| | | | | | | Coverage of Dotzup Initiated
Dotzup is a fairly selective PPC parking service that creates custom landers for domains that are expected to generate high traffic. They also have automated systems to handle other high quality domains, but they do not work with adult domains, trademark or typo-trademark domains, or even astrology domains, domains "derogatory to a specific race or religion", drug related domains, and gambling/casino domains. Dotzup has a program where they will guarantee that they will beat your current income for a given domain. It appears that these domains are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but it is a worry-free way to try this service with some of your better-earning domains. We are just beginning to test Dotzup and we don't have any revenue figures at this time. Examples of Dotzup landing pages include 5b.com and YogaMedicine.com.
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| | | | | | | DOMAINfest Global - by Domainers or by DomainSponsor?
There's a new domain conference scheduled for early February in Los Angeles. DOMAINfest Global is using the slogan "The conference for domainers. By domainers." The cost is $395 before January 1, $795 after January 1. DomainSponsor members may receive a rebate up to 100% of the cost if your account earns at least $1,000 during the period from December 1, 2006 to January 31 2007.
So is the conference really "by domainers" or is it "by DomainSponsor"? DomainSponsor appears to be walking a fine line. To their credit, they have opened the conference up for all to participate. This is in contrast to the "T.R.A.F.F.I.C." conferences that are by invitation only. While it's not hard to get an invitation to T.R.A.F.F..I.C., the concept is a little unusual. The open-to-all approach of DOMAINfest may truly be the future of domain conferences. It will be interesting to see if Sedo or another parking company will come aboard as a sponsor, since DomainSponsor is obviously organizing this event.
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| | | | | | | One Reader's Experience
A visitor to ParkQuick wrote the following in November: "Nice to know that there is a website specially dedicated to paid domain parking. I am very impressed with its contents. The reason I am writing to you is to share my experience and frustration with major parking service and Google Adwords. I have close to 50 domains parked at a major parking service. 99.99% of the traffics come from Google Adwords as I invested heavily in Google Adwords to advertise my domains. About 3 weeks into this domain parking business, and to my surprise Sedo blacklisted my account. Reason being, the traffic to my domais are of inferior quality.
Frankly speaking, I am bit frustrated with that remark. How could traffics from Google Adwords be of an inferior quality. Is it possible? I sent SOS to Google Adwords. They replied and decided not get involved with my problem. I sent various SOS to the service and even sent Google Adwords invoices to proof my case. Well, they accepted my explanations and reinstated my account. They also agreed to reinstate my parking earnings but at a much lower rate. In this domain parking business, are advertisements through Google Adwords or even other PPC services allowable? How best could I promote my domains? Appreciate it if you could shed some light on this matter and share some of your valuable experience.
It sounds like you are doing a form of "click arbitrage" - buying traffic for "cents" and hoping to sell if for "dollars". People do this all the time using Adwords together with AdSense. I haven't heard of it happening that much with parking services. It may be that the traffic was flagged as being "low quality" because people didn't purchase products after clicking on the ads. Some services don't allow any "incentivized" traffic - but buying AdWords seems legitimate to me. You might do better buying AdWords and the selling in a Yahoo-based service such as ActiveAudience or ParkingDots. This might not work as well with a 2-click lander, but the payouts per click may be better.
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| | | | | | | | | | Beyond Pay-per-Click - Azoogle Ads
As Pay-per-click models continue to evolve, we will present some of the better alternatives here. Azoogle Ads is a highly regarded pay-per-performance network that can be used to supplement your income on developed sites. With their system you are paid when the user takes an action on the site that they click through to. This action might be a sale, but it might also be simply providing their email address. It may take 100 clicks or more to get an action, but the payout per action is much higher than the payout per click on PPC services. There are a number of these networks out there, but Azoogle Ads has a reputation for honesty and good payouts. They are a good place to start exploring pay-per-performance |
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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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