Massive drop in revenue

[tetrapak]

Donny is looking into it for me.... If it turns out this is the way it's going to be and other parking companies are paying the same, this will be the driving force behind developing my domains.

The driving force should be that parking money will soon close to be nada, zero, efes; and also that if domainers don't start developing their valuable domains in time (e.g.:the ones that used to bring the most in parking), then there will be a problem. Development takes months minimum to start to pay off, and development does not mean building minisites, hence it also takes a lot of time.

 

[Raider]

Blog article 3 weeks ago about TQ: http://davidgreen.com/the-saga-of-nonsensical-traffic-quality-scores/

Nice write up David, It's nice to see I'm not alone in this and that others feel the same way I do.

Those TQ images you posted look real close to my scores... And like you, I don't see the justification for my TQ score dropping.

The driving force should be that parking money will soon close to be nada, zero, efes; and also that if domainers don't start developing their valuable domains in time (e.g.:the ones that used to bring the most in parking), then there will be a problem. Development takes months minimum to start to pay off, and development does not mean building minisites, hence it also takes a lot of time.

The quote I posted from Donny about Bing goes to the point your making about revenue dropping to nada.. This is obviously where it's headed with Bing, not sure if I can say the same about Google or Adsense though.. Maybe somebody can give some insight on that.... I developed some paid web sites many years ago so I'm quite familar with the time it takes to establish them.

Out of the 300 domains I have parked, only about a dozen are bringing in PPC.. So I would focus on developing those and for the remaining I'd probably put up mini sites.

 

[ukbackorder]

I really think these are the final days of domain parking. I used to make around $1000 per day from parking. Now I'm lucky to hit 10. The market has been poor for a good while now, mainly due to google cutting payments almost daily. However Bing are just as greedy and ultimately will **** the very same people whose traffic they are using to persuade suckers to buy advertising. I think we're headed for a new era in the industry and I wouldn't be surprised to see places such as sedo, parked etc closing down or rapidly changing their parasitic business model. Remember your traffic is potentially worth FAR more than $0.01 per click.

 

[Gerry]

I really think these are the final days of domain parking. I used to make around $1000 per day from parking. Now I'm lucky to hit 10. The market has been poor for a good while now, mainly due to google cutting payments almost daily. However Bing are just as greedy and ultimately will **** the very same people whose traffic they are using to persuade suckers to buy advertising. I think we're headed for a new era in the industry and I wouldn't be surprised to see places such as sedo, parked etc closing down or rapidly changing their parasitic business model. Remember your traffic is potentially worth FAR more than $0.01 per click.

Ditto. Well stated.

 

[DomainsInc]

as far as im concerned parking is dead. i don't even bother to check stats anymore. ever since the last quarter of 2008, things have never been the same.

 

[katherine]

I like revisiting older threads and I have the feeling things have only changed for the worse.
http://www.dnforum.com/f294/why-domain-revenue-falling-thread-266696.html

 

[A D]

But past that, revenues are down with the Bing migration, yes about 50% in most cases. I would LOVE to say it's because we are spending all of the money on sponsoring events, but it's not. Hell, most everybody knows that we used to be million dollar domains at auctions, I don't remember the last time I bought a domain for more than $1k.

I have to give Donny props, he is the only guy that comes into the forum and just tells it the way it is. That's why I leave my domains at parked.com regardless of the decline.

If the revenue is going to be dropping anyways, it's better to be told the truth.

-=DCG=-

 

[Gerry]

...he is the only guy that comes into the forum and just tells it the way it is.

And Matt, Shytkicker. :0

---------- Post added at 11:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

I like revisiting older threads and I have the feeling things have only changed for the worse.
http://www.dnforum.com/f294/why-domain-revenue-falling-thread-266696.html

That was a good revue. And I still am with Bodis. For January, they have more than doubled my Sedo parking.

Which leads me to this question: the incentive for parking at Sedo for quite some time was they only charged 10% of sales as a commission. Folks that did not park at Sedo but sold via Sedo had to pay a minimum of $50.

Now, if Sedo's new policy is $50 minimum for all sales, then why leave names at Sedo?

I can still list my names at Sedo, get offers at Sedo PLUS get offers directly from the potential enduser at Bodis. And Bodis charges no commission.

Here's the point...list all your names at all parking services to increase your exposure but place specific names at specific parking companies that pay the best for a particular name. Yes, it may be a lot of work in determining which pays the best (I have used DomainSponsor, NameDrive, Parked, Sedo, Bodis and perhaps a few others) to test CTR, Traffic, and PPC.

 

[south]

I have to give Donny props, he is the only guy that comes into the forum and just tells it the way it is. That's why I leave my domains at parked.com regardless of the decline.

If the revenue is going to be dropping anyways, it's better to be told the truth.

-=DCG=-

Exactly.

 

[David G]

Agree to a good degree and that is why I still have names there since parked.com in my view is still #1 overall. However. whenever I ask Donny's support about the wild gyrations with TQ scores all they do is repeat the same old bolier plate stuff that it's truly the result of non-converting poor quality traffic.

The problem is I know with certainty that's NOT the case, yet they persist in always saying that same thing, which I imagine is what Bing.com likely wants them to say, imo.

They also can't explain why when the TQ score suddenly skyrockets how that happened when the domains and traffic are basically the same as when the score was a 1 or 2 and said to be poor quality conversions at that time. Makes no sense at all.

I have to give Donny props, he is the only guy that comes into the forum and just tells it the way it is. That's why I leave my domains at parked.com regardless of the decline.

If the revenue is going to be dropping anyways, it's better to be told the truth.

-=DCG=-

 

[south]

Here's the point...list all your names at all parking services to increase your exposure but place specific names at specific parking companies that pay the best for a particular name. Yes, it may be a lot of work in determining which pays the best (I have used DomainSponsor, NameDrive, Parked, Sedo, Bodis and perhaps a few others) to test CTR, Traffic, and PPC.

Not worth the effort. With the time spent moving them around, optimizing, blah blah, you could have done a bunch of small sites. For me, parking is a temporary stop on the road to building a site. I use the stats to help me determine which ones to build first, what they are looking for, rpc, etc. There are certain exceptions, of course, where some will actually perform better parked than not, or if you want to use sedo's escrow, etc.

 

[David G]

Here's the point...list all your names at all parking services to increase your exposure but place specific names at specific parking companies that pay the best for a particular name. Yes, it may be a lot of work in determining which pays the best (I have used DomainSponsor, NameDrive, Parked, Sedo, Bodis and perhaps a few others) to test CTR, Traffic, and PPC.

Lots of work with dubious value. I once did exactly that and optimized names for 5 different providers, parked it at each for a while, then moved to the next etc etc etc and after all was said and done the EPC and bottom line between the parking firms was basically the same (as I suspected would be the case)., which made it all a huge waste of time.

 

[Raider]

I like revisiting older threads and I have the feeling things have only changed for the worse.
http://www.dnforum.com/f294/why-domain-revenue-falling-thread-266696.html

Nice post... It's funny reading what you wrote 1 to 5 years ago, It's almost like the feeling you get when looking at baby pictures.

Harold is a good guy, He's the one who got me involved in PPC in the first place so I owe the man a debt of gratitude.

Not worth the effort. With the time spent moving them around, optimizing, blah blah, you could have done a bunch of small sites. For me, parking is a temporary stop on the road to building a site. I use the stats to help me determine which ones to build first, what they are looking for, rpc, etc. There are certain exceptions, of course, where some will actually perform better parked than not, or if you want to use sedo's escrow, etc.

Well said... It was temporary for me as well and it became permanent. I've bee procrastinating for way to long, now is the time to act.

---------- Post added at 11:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 AM ----------

I have to give Donny props, he is the only guy that comes into the forum and just tells it the way it is. That's why I leave my domains at parked.com regardless of the decline.

If the revenue is going to be dropping anyways, it's better to be told the truth.

-=DCG=-

Absolutely... Donny has always been a straight up guy and nothing here should be taken personal, It's all business.

 

[Ulysses]

I really think these are the final days of domain parking. I used to make around $1000 per day from parking. Now I'm lucky to hit 10.

That's seriously bad news! You could understand that domain names had great value when you earn't $1000 per day but they must be worth a fraction of that value now that they are down to $10 per day, unless you find an end user.

Not good news at all!

 

[David G]

I really think these are the final days of domain parking. I used to make around $1000 per day from parking. Now I'm lucky to hit 10.

hmmmm.... is there more to the story since most domainers have reported drops in revenue of 65% to 75% vs several years ago, and never heard of as much as the 99% decline you are reporting! How is a drop of such magnitude possible?

---------- Post added at 03:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:14 PM ----------

It's funny reading what you wrote 1 to 5 years ago, It's almost like the feeling you get when looking at baby pictures.

Harold is a good guy, He's the one who got me involved in PPC in the first place so I owe the man a debt of gratitude.

I wonder what happened to hiosilver and a bunch of others who no longer post here? So many exclusives seems to be gone over the years!

 

[dmyre]

A few years ago, I was able to actually quit my day job.
The last year has been really rough, and I may have to *cough*cough* actually go back to earning a regular paycheck.
It's a tough pill to swallow.

 

[Donny Simonton]

When you look at the numbers back in 2007, the good old days. Today, what we bring in total revenue in a 24 hour period is in some cases like 20% of our highest days back then. There was no TQ system with Yahoo or Google in early 2007 and some people took advantage of it. But at the time there wasn't anything wrong with it. Those were some crazy days. But things changed. Google came up with smart pricing, Yahoo as always was about 6 months late to the game. And then the bottom started to drop out in 2008. There was soooo much traffic coming in and so many people gaming Yahoo's TQ system that they put a stop to arbitrage. As I told one of our employees at the time, I hope you enjoyed last years Christmas Bonus, because times are a changing. 2009, was rough for everybody. 2010, for the first 6 months of the year was kicking ass, then the Yahoo/Bing migration started to take effect. 2011, still has a long way to go.

But at the end of the day it's a game, it's all a game. We just always seem to be learning new rules to the game, but it's our job to always try and change them.

Donny

 

[scrsteven]

"Mean" and "average" are the exact same thing. Maybe you have a term mixed up and meant "median" (the middle number).

Here's my data for Sedo. I calculated the mean EPC (not average, the mean - that's important).

Yesterday: mean EPC was $0.16
January so far: mean EPC was $0.20
In December: mean EPC was $0.28

 

[Theo]

Correct, I meant to say mean as opposed to median. Thanks Steven.

 

[dmyre]

Too often I see the following advertisers:

http://www.infomash.org (over 2M uniques)
http://www.searchexplorer.com

I thought arbitration was dead, but it's obviously not.

Donny, is Parked.com affiliated in ANY way with infomash.org?
Are these ads published by Bing, or an internal/private advertising network?