Mike expressed these concerns about parking a decade ago

by

Domain Parking

Whether You Park Your Domains Or Not, You Better Hope Parking Stays Around

Michael expressed the following:

It troubles me that so many people so willing to causally write off the parking industry.

Whether you park your domains or not, domain parking has a huge impact on the domain industry in many ways.

Live domain auctions have gone from over $10M in sales to under $2M in less than a couple of years, and has at its root cause, the drop in parking revenues.

If parking goes away, the domain resale market will continue to dry up.

You can read the comments which devolved into something of a debate between those making good money with good names and those who did not make any money with parking. David Castello has a comment in there that’s worth reading.

I think Mike’s take about how the lack of parking would affect live auctions was pretty spot on.

How has the lack of parking revenue affected you?

About Raymond Hackney

Raymond is a writer, domain trader and consultant based in Pennsylvania. Raymond is the founder of 3Character.com and TLDInvestors.com.

Comments

  1. page howe says

    unless we stop depending on an outdated solution controlled by the same company that has robbed society of the benefits of direct navigation.

    • Michael Anthony Castello says

      Hear, hear. Exactly Page.

      We use to get 70% direct navigation in the late 90s to our generic domain names. IMO, Google hijacked one of the 5 tenants to the internet- Gopher. That should never have been allowed to happen.

      Who took over the URL, foundation and platform for all domain names? Google

      They now dictate how we use the internet. They now rule the distribution network of our ambitions and efforts.

    • John says

      I think about this quite a bit myself, and especially within the past few days. Google has been allowed to virtually control the Internet and practically kill the livelihood and opportunities for countless people – NOT merely domain investors, but much more so countless end users just trying to make a living, support families and causes they care about. Google is now effectively the gatekeeper of almost all Internet traffic and commerce. This monopoly is nothing less than the purest embodiment of “disgusting” one could imagine for the global Internet, and at home in the US it doesn’t get any more genuinely “un-American” and “anti-American.”

      Although Google leans to the (fake) left in terms of the great deceptive divide-and-conquer left/right paradigm by which society is deceived, distracted and divided, overall this is nonetheless clearly what the “PTB” on all sides of the aisle want and are happy to continue to allow to the detriment of everyone who is not part of the “ruling class” and the puppet masters above and beside them.

      • Snoopy says

        You can either be a winner or a whiner. Complaining about things you can’t control won’t get you anywhere.

      • Michael says

        Corbett Report has a great little expose on that and the actual history of how Silicon Valley came to be

        • John says

          I’m in a state of shock. Good shock.

          Thanks for posting that. You may be only the second person I’ve ever seen in domaining who is even capable of posting such a thing, or even knowing who and what James Corbett even is.

          James Corbett is one of the great grandaddy’s of all the truth seekers and truth tellers, a brilliantly gifted man who deserves multiple Nobel Prizes and Pulitzers as far as I’m concerned, or the better equivalent thereof. All of them and all of us are flawed in some ways, prone to biases, etc., but he is one of the best of them all. (Everyone subscribe to his channel, please, and click the bell icon or you won’t receive notifications of new videos.)

          If you happen to lean strongly to “the right,” you may not like this one as much as I do (FYI I’m independent, neither left nor right, neither red nor blue, none of the above, all of the above, some of the above, and some besides and in between – get my drift?), but this person is also one of the best of them all and also deserves multiple Nobel Prizes as far as I’m concerned: Caitlin Johnstone (dot) com. And like all of us, she too is flawed and imperfect in her own way, and I don’t necessarily always agree with 100% of what she advocates by any means, as with any of them.

          The only other full bore seeker of truth I’m aware of in the industry is Rob Monster. And to some extent an infinitesimal number appear to also have genuine truth seeking inclinations, including some in this very thread, and even our host to some degree. Perhaps some of them are even hiding the full extent of it. 🙂

          I may love the topic of domain names and Internet publishing and commerce, but I’m *far* more interested in the truth with a capital “T,” and as I get older it comes out more and more in my blog comments.

          Please do keep up the good work, Michael. We need much more of it, and God willing perhaps it could also even benefit the industry itself as well. There is still the issue of flaws and biases in all of us, and none are perfect, but hopefully there will be more of what one can support.

          If you would like to see a fellow truth seeker’s perspective on .US, by the way, check this out:

          https://domaininvesting.com/us-town-hall-hosted-by-neustar/#comment-85069

          Thanks again for the post. In fact I don’t believe I caught that one (busy, life happens, you know), so looking forward to checking it out.

    • Jonathan says

      So true but looking at the ROI for adwords !! perhaps AI 2 AI algos will dictate the root domain rules again if your every told ?

  2. VR says

    Mr.Berkens had it right on live auctions, domain parking good they were good, domain parking down, they suck.

  4. Michael Gilmour says

    Domain parking has always been an incredibly scalable business model that required relatively little input from the domain investor to access. It’s only logical that Google would continue to take a greater and greater share of the revenue….in fact, they are obligated to do so by their shareholders. What it doesn’t mean is that we all need to do the same thing and pray for a different outcome.
    Around 8 years ago at ParkLogic we began to aggressively engage the global advertising networks for two reasons:
    1. Increase domain investors earnings.
    2. Defray risk away from Google.
    The end result is that our clients earnings have risen and roughtly 35% of traffic is still monetised by Google. If Google exited the domain monetisation industry then our clients would now be fine. In addition, I recently wrote on my blog about a completely new approach to monetisation that we are adopting that is very different from traditional monetisation. To me the key is to continue to innovate….because that’s where the gold lies.

  5. BullS says

    There are too many damn Parking services and all of them are not transparent.
    They give you 5% or less back and they pocket the rest.

    • Michael Gilmour says

      I beg to differ…..at ParkLogic we publish the actual earning results of your domains. In the accounting information you see exactly what our commission amount is each month. We try to be as transparent as possible.

  6. Domo Sapiens says

    If your # 1 objective is selling X premium domain name and you choose to park the domain in exchange for a few pennies even for a fistful of dollars, IMO you are an idiot.

  7. Robert McLean says

    domain parking companies are as crooked as Google

    Parking domain names is wrought with corruption and Google is complicit.

    Google has waged a war on domaining for years

    Google has fucked search and is an out of control behemoth bully.

    hear hear Mr. Berkens

  8. Snoopy says

    Looking back the people saying “parking is dead” were mostly right, it has continued to decline. It was off 50% in 2009, now off 95%. Only parking companies will claim otherwise.

    Look for other revenue source and assume parking will continue to spiral down.

    Unlikely the domain auctions will ever come back either, the parking “funny money” is gone. It got to the point in 2007 where wholesale values where were often higher than what an enduser would ever pay, that is why those auctions went so high $2.1million for Computer.com, $850k for skiresorts.com, 185k for unclesam.com. All wholesale, all funny money.

    Nowadays domainers can’t rely on Google for an income.

    • Michael Gilmour says

      If you’re really found that traffic monetisation is down by 95% then give me a call……we have customers doing six figures plus per year in revenue from domain traffic.

      • Snoopy says

        Everyone I have ever heard of has seen this type of decline, I know you are trying to put a positive spin on it but any domainer who has been around for a while has the figures in front of them.

        • Michael Gilmour says

          I agree…..but if you keep on doing the same thing you always have an expect a different outcome then…..
          For the last 12 years we’ve been seeing exactly which parking provider/monetisation source is winning at any particular point in time. We then route the traffic to achieve the highest yield. It’s all about the mathematics 😉

  10. Robert McLean says

    Click fraud, with parking companies being complicit, is the bed, now, that the domain name business finds it’s self in.

    Parking domains anywhere, for anyone, short of the very large domain name portfolio holders, is a joke.

    Case: As an exercise in futility, I recently experimented in placing my 600 names on Sedo for sale. I parked the names and in the first week my names received over 1000 clicks. Income was less that $1.00, lol

    lol

    Now, of course, the trolls reading will attack the quality of my names, me not being one of the first to the circa 1995-1999 trough of one word .com domains.

    I don’t care what quality of names you cite, 1000 clicks generating less than a $1.00 in income, smells, smells bad, smells really bad!

    Click Fraud is why parking is suffering….

    Suffocating protectionism, the culture of the first to the circa 1995-1999 .com domain registrants, is at the root of declining domain sales, regardless of the rhetoric from the Kings of the industry.

    Berkens is as honest as it gets in the domain name business, bar none.

    Him selling out to Godaddy is a pretty good bellwether of the direction of the domain name industry, not to mention the cluster f**k new g mess.

    Click Fraud forces Goggle to check parking.

  11. Ojohn says

    The future of search is going to be AI to AI Networking, search will evolve to a higher level of awareness of exactly who is offering a product or service and who is looking for that same product or service and it’s going to be the AIs that are going to make those people aware of one another and in essence become the matchmakers between the buyers and sellers. For example imagine that you have a rare coin for a specific year that you want to sell and you tell your AI assistant to find you a buyer, on the other hand someone somewhere else in the World has told his or her AI to find that exact coin for sale and since all AIs are part of a Global Network and are in constant commination with one another they will put the buyer and seller in touch and help facilitate the deal. The same can also work for domain names as the CEO of a company tells his or her AI assistant to find a certain domain to buy and you happen to have that exact domain or something very similar for sale. I believe that in the near future instead of parking domains it might be better to build a website for them that offers some kind of product or service or some valuable info that your AI assistant can introduce in to the AI Network for the other AIs to find. IMO

    • Michael Gilmour says

      Yes. For the last 12 years at ParkLogic we’ve found that everyone performs at different points in time. If someone tries to defraud the clicks etc. then the traffic is automatically routed away from them. We display the actual earnings for domains in our interface and then transparently show exactly how much we are earning in the accounting records. We’ve always done it this way and see no reason to change.

  13. Ben pedri says

    I own about 2k domain,15 years ago I made more with 100 domains ,So I would have to say the 95 % drop is accurate ,Unless a parking company has a good link system to post the domain for sale ,it’s really not worth parking,you may as well just redirect to an afternic page.

  14. Ojohn says

    Parking might not be the same for everyone as it was before, but as some opportunities disappear some other opportunities might arise to present themselves that might be even better than Parking. As Autonomous websites built and maintained by AI become more advanced, you might be able to make a network of sophisticated websites for your domain portfolio that in essence makes each domain in to a full fledged online business, a task that perhaps is too expensive, too time consuming, and too difficult to do for a lot of domains at the present time. Until we we see what the future has to offer it might be best to hang on to ones best domains. IMO

  15. Don says

    Most domainers are super lazy when it comes to monetization of domains. We have names that are 5x of what was paid 10 years ago.
    Not all of them are like that but if you have not educated yourself about affiliate programs that will take your traffic then you only have yourself to blame. The outcome is CPA. 99% of domainers are at a loss. Sorry!

  16. Michael Gilmour says

    I must admit that I get tired of hearing that domain monetisation is all gloom and doom. If you are doing the same thing you have always done then don’t expect a different outcome. Just because Google is taking more of the pie doesn’t mean you have to accept it.

    I’ve been blogging (whizzbangsblog) about what my own company (ParkLogic) has been doing for the past 12 years and we do not see the gloom and doom because only about 35% of our client’s traffic is now monetised via Google based solutions. In fact, we dynamically route the traffic to the highest yielding monetisation source every 100 milliseconds.

    If you really want to understand domain monetisation then I have recently written a series of four articles on the topic of RPM. https://whizzbangsblog.com/article-archive/the-history-of-rpm
    If you wish to view some of the innovative approaches we are developing towards monetisation then check out this article: https://whizzbangsblog.com/article-archive/the-future-of-domain-monetisation
    You can also read in a four part series about how to run a structured traffic test:
    https://whizzbangsblog.com/article-archive/part-1-traffic-test-baseline-data

    Here’s the bottom line, domain traffic is UNBELIEVABLY value for advertisers. The secret is how to route the traffic to the correct advertiser at the correct point in time to achieve the greatest yield. This is NO SMALL task and involves tracking a huge amount of data. We currently traffic in excess of 500 million data points per day!

    To use the gold rush analogy, if you are still using a pan and the other guy is mining with modern machinery then guess who wins…..! Domain monetisation has moved on and I find the majority of domain investors are standing there with a gold pan in their hands wondering what happened.

    • Ojohn says

      Michael, Your Parking system might be the exception and what you are claiming about your clients doing very well with your system might very well be true, I guess people can give your system a try to find out for themselves, I don’t know either way since I have a very small portfolio of mostly average domains and I gave up on Parking a long time ago. You can’t blame everyone for being mad at Parking in general when clicks that paid ten to fifty dollars before are now only paying a few cents (sometimes just half a cent) and so it makes everyone kind of suspicious of those who are saying that they are still thriving with Parking. And this has nothing to do with you or your Parking system as I Already mentioned yours might be an exception, but as someone who runs a Parking company how do you explain the one or two cent per click that most people are getting with other Parking companies, is it that businesses are not paying for advertising like they used to or is it that the other Parking companies are keeping all the money for themselves.

      By the way is there a minimum number of domains or minimum traffic required in order to try your Parking system.

      • Michael Gilmour says

        You asked a number of really good questions…..hopefully I can answer them for you.
        1. ParkLogic is NOT a parking company, we are monetisation company. There is a big difference between the two of them. We are charged by our clients with getting the highest yield for their traffic, whether it is with direct advertisers, Google or any other solution.
        2. We have built a platform that is self-monitoring. What I mean by this is that if a parking company tries to “game” our algorithms and take the “money for themselves” as you suggested then the traffic to them is automatically reduced or stopped as another provider will pay more for the traffic for that domain. As I have often said to our monetisation partners, “You will get precisely the traffic you deserve, no more and no less.”
        3. We typically work with domain investors that do at least $250 per month in revenue. Just for the record, we classify a traffic domain as any domain doing at least 1 unique visitor per day.
        4. I don’t think any of the parking providers are fraudulent…..they may appear that way at times due to the lack of transparency by Google. What we leverage is the unique individual intellectual property developed by each of them. We then provide a suite of direct advertising networks in front of the mix…..which essentially means that Google is the floor price for direct advertisers to beat.

        • Ojohn says

          So is there a minimum number of domains required to try ParkLogic. How do I join ParkLogic if I don’t know if my portfolio is going to meet the $250 minimum requirement or not. Do you have a test or trial period for trying ParkLogic for those who don’t have top traffic domains and have no idea how their domains are going to perform.

  17. Timothy Davids says

    I’m just guessing that you probably need to have an amazing list of names to get into Parklogic. Once again “average” people wont get in like many systems, Namejet selling comes to mind.

    • Michael Gilmour says

      Not at all…..you just need domains with at least 1 unique per day. At our core, we are analytical junkies and traffic monetisation is our specialty. You can go to my blog at whizzbangsblog and read articles on some of our approaches to traffic monetisation.

  18. John says

    Ray – was wondering if there is any way to persuade you to allow links in comments without having to go into moderation first and just block individual users if any abuses or spam happens. Seems to work well over at Elliot’s, OD, and often at DNW too though his filter feature can be finicky and unpredictable. With the others moderation only happens if there are more than two links.