Tag Archives: parking

Tue 28th April 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Parked.com Acquires WhyPark - Domain name parking company acquires parking alternative. Domain name parking company Parked.com has acquired WhyPark, a domain building service. Financial details were not disclosed. Yesterday WhyPark announced it was scrapping its $99 set up fee and moving to a free model. This is part of the transition to Parked.com. “Now that we have Parked.com’s expertise in monetizing traffic as part of WhyPark, we were able to change our business model to allow free ... read more ...
Wed 8th April 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Paid $825,000 for RevenueDirect - Acquisition was small in monetary terms, but important in its signal. According to public company financial reports, Sedo paid $825,000 for its acquisition of RevenueDirect in February. The purchase price included the customer base, RevenueDirect brand and all respective software. The transaction price was not announced when the company was purchased in February, leading to speculation about the value of the deal. Many considered it small, and this is true from ... read more ...
Thu 2nd April 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Name Administration Looks to Direct Advertisers - Name Administration to offer direct ad placement on its domain names. Perhaps in a bid to counter falling pay-per-click revenue, Frank Schilling’s company Name Administration is soliciting direct advertisers via a banner on some of its parked pages: The service will be called LinkBox. The description at Linkbox.com reads: Welcome to Linkbox.com. Direct advertising opportunities will be available soon with prices from less than $30 a month. If you would like to ... read more ...
Wed 1st April 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yahoo Delays Domain Parking Stats - Delay affects all Yahoo partners. For the second time in as many months, a domain parking statistics delay from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is making domainers wonder “just how much have I earned this week?” Apparently Yahoo hasn’t been able to provide final stats to domain parking companies since about March 25. The company provided some stats but then called them back, saying they weren’t accurate. Although it may be a minor annoyance for some, the problem needs ... read more ...
Thu 12th March 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Adsense for Domains, Three Months Later - Looking back on Google’s AFD Direct move. It was three months ago that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) dropped a bombshell: it would start offering domain parking services directly to Adsense clients. Now that a few months have passed, I’ve had more time to reflect on this move and what it means for the industry. The short term effect has been more of wonderment than actual impact. What are Google’s long run plans? Does it intend to cut out the middleman? We won’t ... read more ...
Mon 9th March 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Park Domains? Enter a Parking Judge Contest - If you’ve tried three or more domain parking services, enter the Parking Judge contest. It’s been over a month since I launched Parking Judge, a web site that lets you review domain name parking services. I’m a bit surprised that fewer people have submitted reviews on the site than Registrar Judge had a at the same point. So I’m going to give you an incentive. Here’s how it works: -Submit three thoughtful and complete reviews at Parking Judge before ... read more ...
Mon 2nd March 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: Parking Revenue Down, But Not Out - Many domain owners see a drop in income, but few take big plunge. With all the horror stories out there of domain parking revenue down 50%, self-reported results from the 4th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey show parking revenue isn’t that bad. To be sure, 45% of people said their domain parking revenue was down in 2008 and only 16% reported an increase. But 40% said their parking revenue on a domain-by-domain basis was stable, and only 13% saw a decline of 50% or ... read more ...
Thu 26th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Comwired Geo-Optimizes your Domain Traffic - Service sends traffic to best parking company based on visitor’s location. It’s no secret that certain domain parking companies perform better with traffic from different countries. Some do better with U.S. traffic while others do better in Germany, India, etc. But splitting domain traffic amongst domain parking companies has always been a challenge. Most people end up sending all traffic for each domain to one parking company. That’s where Comwired, a new ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Toys ‘R’ Us, Frank Schilling Among Bidders to Pay $1.35M or More for Toys.com - 6 companies to bid in Friday’s Toys.com auction. In a review of qualified bid documents, Domain Name Wire has discovered some familiar faces in Friday’s auction of Toys.com: Frank Schilling, National A-1 Advertising, and Toys ‘R’ Us to name a few. It’s clear that the press coverage of the original auction brought more bidders out of the woodwork. Most of the bidders submitted an initial bid of $1.35M, as I predicted. But it’s clear the auction will ... read more ...
Wed 25th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: Sedo and Parked.com Top Domain Parking Companies - Sedo and Parked.com selected as top domain parking companies. For the third year in a row, Sedo has topped Domain Name Wire’s survey for best domain name parking company. Here are the top 7 vote getters including percentage of the vote: 1. Sedo/SedoPro 33% 2. Parked.com 17% 3. NameDrive 11% 4. Fabulous 6% 5. GoDaddy 5% 6. Google Adsense for Domains 4% 7. DomainSponsor 4% Compared to last year, Parked and NameDrive switched places, Fabulous jumped up a spot, and ... read more ...
Tue 24th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Acquires RevenueDirect and Why It Makes Sense - Sedo has acquired RevenueDirect, Dotster’s domain name parking service. Sedo has acquired domain name parking company RevenueDirect. For established domain parking companies, acquiring another domain parking company usually doesn’t make sense. Parking companies rarely have long term contracts with customers, so the acquirer risks seeing acquired customers leaving the ship after a takeover. But this acquisition makes sense for a couple reasons: U.S. Dominance: ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Q&A With Sam Nunez about Sedo and RevenueDirect - Sam Nunez explains the RevenueDirect acquisition and the potential for future acquisitions. Sam Nunez, VP of Product Management for Sedo, answers some questions about the companies acquisition of RevenueDirect. Domain Name Wire: When did Sedo first enter into discussions with RevenueDirect/Dotster about acquiring the parking company? Nunez: The successful round of negotiations started last December. We had some on-off discussions with Dotster for more than a year ... read more ...
Tue 17th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameMedia Upgrades Parking Platform - NameMedia improves stats and landers for its three domain parking programs. NameMedia, parent company of BuyDomains and Afternic, has released several improvements to its three domain name parking platforms: GoldKey, ActiveAudience, and SmartName. The improvements span three areas: 1. Reporting – improvements to reduce timeout issues and site downtime and improvements to data discrepancy reporting. This includes a move to a new data center as well as database ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yahoo Stats Delay Hits Domain Parking Companies - Delay in revenue stats hits major domain name parking companies. A domain name parking stats delay from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) has hit a number of domain name parking companies, preventing them from providing final parking stats to customers for the past few days. Yahoo is one of the biggest domain name advertising feed providers. The outage appears to have started late last week when parking companies started to notify customers of stats delays (or simply not update ... read more ...
Thu 12th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
HotKeys: The Domain Parking Service You Don’t Know Yet - Demand Media parking company is worth checking out. I’m familiar with just about every domain name parking company out there. Whether it’s someone pitching me on a story about their services, reading about it in a forum, or hearing about it through the grapevine, I have a pretty good handle on the competitive landscape. About a month ago I e-mailed back and forth with a big player in the domain industry. He’s big enough to have had his own Yahoo ad feed at ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interview: Donny Simonton of Parked.com - Leonard Holmes interviews Donny Simonton. In a recent post Andrew questioned the value of internet video for many purposes.  I don’t completely disagree.  My own pet peeve is pages that start playing the video as soon as you land on the page.  Give me a play button.  I know how to use it. I do believe that interviews can be a great use of video, however.  I personally get a lot more out of a video interview, because the person’s personality often ... read more ...
Mon 9th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Fabulous Follows a 80/20 Rule - Parking company moves to invite only model. Domain parking company and domain registrar Fabulous is no longer accepting web applications for its domain name parking services and wholesale registration accounts. It will only accept referrals going forward. In fact, the sign-up button at Fabulous.com has been removed. (Fabulous customers who wish to transfer domains to buyers can send them a link to open a retail account). You’re going to start seeing more of this ... read more ...
Wed 4th February 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameDrive Breached, Less Than 1% of Accounts Affected - Breach exposes e-mails and passwords. E-mail addresses and passwords for a limited number of NameDrive customers were obtained and posted in a hacker forum this month. The security breach just came to light today. NameDrive has responded by instituting new security measures including password resets: We were alerted of a possible security breach affecting less than 1% of our accounts, although we have no indication that any unauthorized access was gained, we have ... read more ...
Thu 29th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google: We’re Committed to Domain Channel - Google’s Hal Bailey discusses domain parking at DOMAINfest. In what can only be described as an awkward session, Google Adsense for Domains’ Hal Bailey discussed the future of the domain channel at DOMAINfest Global today in Los Angeles. The good news for domainers is that Bailey said the company is committed to the domain channel and believes it adds value to domainers. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will not exit the domain channel “any time soon”, he said. He ... read more ...
Wed 28th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Only One Statistic Matters for Domain Parking - RPC, RPM, etc. mean nothing when comparing parking services. I came in to the “Domain Monetization 101 201″ session at DOMAINfest today near the end. But I caught a couple questions, one of which was “what three statistics should I look at most for my parked domains?” I was surprised when the first couple answers had to do with revenue per click, revenue per thousand (RPM), etc. A couple years ago I thought that too, but I now know it’s not the case. Thankfully, ... read more ...
Thu 22nd January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
IAC’s Ask Acquires Sendori - Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of IAC, acquires direct navigation company Sendori. Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), has acquired direct navigation monetization company Sendori for an undisclosed amount. Sendori offers an alternative to domain parking that automatically redirects type-in traffic rather than requiring a user to click on a sponsored link. For example, if you type in a car insurance domain name that would typically show ... read more ...
Thu 15th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Google Squeeze: How Google’s Black Box Affects Partners’ Revenue - Google’s black box of ad pricing makes it impossible to understand if partners are getting a fair share. When Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) offered a “direct to consumer” domain parking option last month, many cheered. “Finally, we can cut out the middleman!” they exclaimed. But others worried about potential downsides. Specifically, domain owners realized that they have little bargaining power with Google compared to parking companies that aggregate significant ... read more ...
Wed 14th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SedoPro Increases Eligibility Requirements - Minimum requirement to apply increases to 1,000 domains or $300 monthly revenue. Domain parking provider Sedo has increased its minimum requirements to apply for SedoPro, its advanced parking program. The new requirement is 1,000 domains or $300 in monthly parking revenue. Meeting these minimum requirements does not guarantee acceptance into the program; Sedo also considers the quality of your domains and traffic. I’m not sure when this change happened, but I ... read more ...
Tue 13th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ParkingJudge: Rate and Review Domain Parking Companies - Site gives domainers chance to rate domain name parking companies. I’ve met one of my New Years Resolutions thanks to the launch of ParkingJudge, where you can rate and review domain parking companies. The site works just like RegistrarJudge.com, which now has nearly 200 reviews of domain name registrars. Currently, there are very few quantified resources to figure out which domain parking services to use. There are forums, where people complain or pump up their ... read more ...
Thu 18th December 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Frank Schilling Tests New Domain Parking Templates - Schilling’s Name Administration tests new parking templates. Mike Cohen of WannaDevelop.com has made some interesting observations about Frank Schilling’s parked domains. It seems that Schilling is testing some new designs. Here’s what a typical Name Administration (owned by Schilling) domain that I come across looks like: You have a relevant graphical header, 5 keyword tabs along the top, a section of either direct ad links or related keywords, related keywords ... read more ...