 | | | | | | | Quiet December before a Busy 2007?
December saw no big announcements at the major PPC parking providers. Companies seem to be taking a break before resuming their race to provide new services to domainers in 2007. Models continue to diversify, with companies such WhyPark offering alternatives to domain parking.
What can we expect on 2007? Domainer's Magazine will begin covering the domain industry with a print magazine. It appears that this magazine will initially be free-of-charge, supported by advertisers. More detail is below, and full details should be available later in January.
Vote in our poll. A poll is still available in the right-hand column of all pages on ParkQuick. So far 137 people have voted. iMonetize and Sedo/SedpPro are barely in the lead. Visit ParkQuick today to vote for the service that has worked best for you. Please vote today for your favorite parking service!
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| | | | | | | News from the Parking Services
The Boston building housing the U.S. operations of Sedo had an electrical fire on December 8th. A notice on Sedo’s web site stated that all Sedo employees escaped without serious injury. Sedo is headquartered in Germany, with servers located in several different locations. The fire did not affect any of Sedo’s web operations. A Boston television station reported that more than 50 people were injured in the fire. The 17-story building is owned by MIT but reportedly had a number of tenants. Nearby roads were closed and the Boston transit system’s Red Line was temporarily halted.
 Sedo announced a partnership with Dotster to offer Dotster customers one-click access to Sedo’s domain marketplace or brokerage service when the domain they searched is already registered. According to Sedo, this marks the fifth such integration of its secondary domain name marketplace at a major registrar this year. In Q3 2006, Sedo reportedly sold more than 1,200 domain names through the registrar channel, resulting in significant new revenue for Sedo’s registrar partners and more transactions for Sedo’s domain sellers. Sedo and SedoPro are highly recommended. TrafficZ announced new images in their image bank: - business: freight, moving company, vending machine, criminal justice, justice
- geography: Boston, Florida, Hong Kong
- health: AIDS
- misc: bathroom, bright flowers, celebrity, curtains, fall, grocery store, lightning, lingerie, lingerie 2, men shoes, men shoes 2, night club, old film, plus size fashion, women shoes
- sports: boxing, wrestling, street fighting, badminton
- technology: desktop
TrafficZ also reported in Mid-December that "landings, uniques and searches have not updated properly in your Domain Manager ... however verified revenue data is being accurately reported. Our network engineers have isolated the issue and are currently working hard to resolve it.... Please be assured that all traffic and revenue has been and will continue to be accurately tracked on our system." Income does seem to be holding fairly steady.
ParkingDots appears to have stabilized their stats problems, but they still have a disclaimer on their site warning about delayed or incomplete stats. Our income has been stable, and they still pay top dollar at 80%. If things remain stable they will again be a highly recommended site in the future. If you have domains there that are doing well, I don't recommend moving them.
DomainSponsor continues to hold back their planned customization platform. As we reported last month, this interface will eventually allow you almost complete control over the look and feel of your domains. DomainSponsor continues to finalize plans for DOMAINfest Global. EuroDNS, Circle ID, and Name.com have sighed-on as sponsors. DomainSponsor is highly recommended. After announcing in late November that it has purchased Afternic, NameMedia, the company behind ActiveAudience and GoldKey, followed-through and replaced DomainSponsor with ActiveAudience as the preferred parking provider on Afternic. Expect to see GoldKey get a face lift in 2007, with many of the features currently on ActiveAudience migrating to the GoldKey platform. I personally hope that they keep some of GoldKey's simplicity when they do the face lift. ActiveAudience and GoldKey are both highly recommended.
Parked continues to pay out twice a month. I don't know of any news from Fabulous or Dotzup (which we are still in the early stages of testing). IMonetize is working pretty well for us, but not in the very top tier. Others apparently disagree, as it remains one of the top choices in our ParkQuick poll.
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| | | | | | | Why Park?
Some of you have written to ask about the "Why Park" system of domain "non-parking." This service charges a fee of $100 and then allows you to easily create content-rich sites while keeping all of the AdSense and other revenue. I have not personally tested this system, but I'm not overly impressed with the look and feel of the sites that are created. Their sample site. PCViruses.net looks pretty generic. It does include relevant content and it appears that this program will generate full-blown multi-page websites with little work on your part. It may be a good compromise if you are looking to generate more money than from a parking service without taking the time to fully develop 100 domains. If you have tried Why Park, please write with your thoughts. (You can just reply to this newsletter.)
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| | | | | | | A Print Magazine for Domainers!
 Andrew at Domain Name Wire broke this story (at least for me) at the end of December. The domain industry is getting its own print magazine! The magazine will be called "Domainer's Magazine" and the first issue should be out in late January, in time for DomainFEST Global. It appears that it will initially be advertiser-supported and free-of-charge - so leave your address a their website if you are interested.
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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. Compare PPC Parking Services at ParkQuick.com
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