Parking died in 2007, transparency is not going to fix the revenue drop, not now, not ever.
In this industry all the top guys get sweeter deals than the regular guys, I guess we’re all well aware of this fact. Top domainers get sweet deals from parking services and they in turn get sweeter deals from their feed provider based on volumes.
Which is why what you earn at one parking company might not be the same as another, assuming revenue share is constant, for the simple reason that one parking company might actually get a higher revenue share from their feed provider.
Google doesn’t disclose revenue share, not even with adsense users beyond the signup stage. Neither does it allow adsense users to share cpc details, I assume it’s the same for parking companies. So there goes the ‘audit the upstream’ thought process.
Beyond that, parking companies are aggregators of traffic, so more likely to earn much more than individual / corporate portfolio owners. You can’t blame them for having a business model that is better than that of investors.
And while parking used to be a necessary evil, now unless the domain is earning a substantial income parked, which very few do in any case, parking it might actually be a liability with all and sundry coming after domains and the attitude of some panelists to parked pages.
Development, even a minisite, offers way more protection, higher revenues and the ability to deal directly with the feed provider, even though you’re liable to actually earn even less revenue share, the total revenue is usually higher due to higher traffic volumes.
Backstory: This article is my perspective of the various blog posts around the web, or at least the domain name blogosphere, caused by the launch of Frank Schilling’s new parking service. I don’t see why the conversation is
Off topic: I’m not sure what to make of this parking service’s use of an uber retro 1996 design. Is it meant to signify a ‘closed club members only’ environment or a desire to present themselves as absolutely no frills? In this day and age its pretty much inexcusable to use such a design when you can knock out a decent website in days, if not hours.
Addendum
Left this sentence incomplete in the Backstory – “I don’t see why the conversation is… so vitriolic, not like you can differentiate a parking service in a few weeks”.
Just conventional parking is dead!
That’s why we have developed BenePark.com
Contrary to all other domain parking services, we make attractive, trafficable sites with your
parked domains. While a conventional parking service kills your domain traffic and popularity, our service rise them!
To earn with us, customers have to give their ad codes obtained from Google Adsense, eBay Partner Network, Commission Junction, LinkShare and ClickBank. No one is mandatory, but the more codes are provided, the more profit customers earn.
90% of participating domains earn from $5 to $30 per month per domain with us.
We are so sure that our parking solution is better that Sedo and Google Parking for the new domains, so, if you are interested, you can establish an independent competition of domain parking services. We can pay you for 4-5 domains so he can park park them with, f.e. Sedo, Google Parking and some others, and one domains with our service. If will be interesting to compare the results and get your
unbiased, professional decision.
I’d love to see some demo’s and test drive your system. Am quite familiar with all parking services including sedo / parked and stuff like whypark / smartname so will be interesting to see what else is out there.
I really don’t see the benefit of parking, you are getting minimal revenue, you are not providing any benefit to the internet users. Development is always the final step for any good domains.
I agree, but people with huge portfolios cant really afford to develop everything at once.
Shaun Bonk has written a nice article refuting what I’ve said above.
Worth a read and I’ll probably be trying out the ClickMillions program too, sounds pretty interesting.
Here’s the article: