Issues with Parking - Traffic = ??

[recordweb]

Guys, I've always a lot of domains but never parked them until the last few months. One of the sites I'm parked at shows me getting 17310 impressions, 2739 searches and 35 clicks for a grand total "THIS MONTH" only of $.59 cents. I do not pay for traffic. But getting .01 or .02 doesn't seem like the way to get ahead if you know what I mean. Just 4 of my domains of the 100 listed at this site have gotten 50% of the traffic and I do believe I've optimized them as best I can. So two questions, I'm getting shorted? 2nd question, should I move them and where?

[zangief]

There are a lot of parking firms , I guess your parking provider does not pay some of the traffic from different regions.Test other parking firms.

[fcdoms]

Not sure who you're with now but a lot of parking companies are in the same boat.

There are a lot of reasons for PPC on a name. If the keyword is in a saturated market area (like computers), the domain is broad in meaning (not targeted or niche) then you may get a million views but a few clicks of low value. However if this domain name is specific or targeted to a niche, you might only get 5 views and 3 clicks at 30c PPC. Some small property related names I've got seem to do best, less views and clicks but higher RPM.

I've only parked less than 200 names, but it's the same accross the portfolio. Any names getting more views but less clicks = lower PPC.

Low click rates can be the main reason, no matter how many views you getting, the advertisers are paying peanuts for clicks because there are so many to go around. You are under their thumb. Look for good names targeting markets in high RPM areas.

I hate it when I add a name, see it getting more views than other names and then finding the click rate takes the wind out.. then I find advertisers from low RPM areas advertising on that feed - double whammy.

There's a good reason people pay good money for good names. Someone I look up to recently rammed that message home to me.. I'd agree at this point: why not spend the same amount to buy a few decent proven names for the year, rather than registering swathes of new untested names.

If your names are not making you happy at one parking company, you could try another out - but give a few months also. Some names only get a good mix of optimisation and search coverage after they've sat with the new parking page for a while - unless they're top notch type-in names, which should be the goal for your parking portfolio over the longer term.

Also consider developing names that are not returning investment on parking.

Typical me, long post, but hope it helps.. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong about the PPC etc - much appreciated.

[recordweb]

Thank you for the feedback. I've got a few names here, a few there but this one parking site does a nice job of setting up the pages so far. I used to get decent ppc payment. Not now.

[fcdoms]

You're welcome recordweb.
There's a squeeze on with the way feed providers assess quality of traffic. I think a lot of parked domains have been hit by the same wave. The effects will probably ripple through for a while but I don't think it's all bad.

Advertisers are bidding higher (and demanding more) for their page rank for their search ads, and engines are allowing them to choose not to display ads at all on parked pages = some chaos for all.
The down side of this for the engines is that domainers who have a considerable amount of traffic are slowly moving away from search engine dependency and testing out multiple new forms of revenue. This is great for new ad serving companies etc of course and hopefully lower revenue will be a temporary situation for those who prefer parking. Meanwhile the engines can go on with the PR notion that they're looking after the user and the advertisers. I think they'll max revenues for a while but eventually, they'll need to woo big domainers back somewhere down the line. Both things are co-equal parts of the internet and can't simply ignore each other forever. Engines can claim to have 'encouraged' domainers to develop genuine content sites and star bloggers do address this regularly - but I don't think that's really exactly what's happening. It's forcing domainers to swap to affiliate marketing and providing template content. Many developed sites are still obviously auto generated, content with scraped feeds - still someone else's content, still duplicate penalties at the engines. Loads of developed sites might just as well be parked instead, let's be honest. How do you win? There are real problems to solve here at both ends.
There are some interesting new hybrid park/develop services coming online and a lot of parking companies are putting efforts into the next generation of parking solutions.
I personally like where I park too but do recommend developing other names. It doesn't have to be expensive. Hope that all makes sense
Best of luck !