Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

When I met the Parked.com crew during TRAFFIC 2008 in Orlando, I had the opportunity to engage with some of the best people in the domain monetization business.

It was clear that Parked rocked during those times and the company did remarkably well; the people that worked for Parked were top notch and experienced professionals.

With Parked.com apparently gone from service, I’m left with sadness about the demise of a company that later on declined in performance, due to its use of Yahoo feeds that imposed the dreaded TQ domain rating.

As far as I know, the now former Parked employees are either at Domain Apps that acquired the Parked.com brand and infrastructure, or working at other companies.

It was great knowing you guys, I wish I had kept my Parked.com t-shirt but I donated it along with other clothing before Christmas.

If I could share my appreciation over a single business for 2010, that would be Sedo.

My relationship with the PPC provider started in 2004 and I must admit it started a couple of years late. Until then, parking my domains was something that I wasn’t considering. I lost several thousand dollars in revenue this way.

Lesson learned:  Despite the ups and downs of the industry, Sedo is for me the perfect combination of a PPC provider and domain sales platform. At some point, I asked Donny Simonton of Parked if they’d consider doing the same; he responded that adding a domain sales platform wasn’t in their immediate plans.

As time passes, Sedo becomes a mainstream, household name outside of the domain industry – something that is necessary in order to facilitate sales to end users. While PPC revenue fluctuates, the number of sales have increased for me and nowadays I use Sedo for roughly 90% of my domain sales.

This year, I had a record number of sales on the Sedo platform, without sweating much.

Sedo handles the sales process very efficiently nowadays; while I’ve slowed down my buying I’ve enjoyed the increased revenue from selling on Sedo, often involving targeted emails about ongoing auctions to maximize sales revenue.

After meeting with the Sedo staff in Boston, I was thoroughly convinced about the seriousness with which Sedo treats its  PPC business and sales platform. Recent improvements in the Sedo system have generated increased revenue, despite the financial straits the economy is still going through.

So thanks, Sedo – here’s to a splendid and equally successful 2011.

Who said domain parking is dead?

As I posted earlier this month, Sedo moved to a new, ajax-based ad delivery system.

Apparently, this has now met the approval of Google, the main advertising feed for Sedo; the end result is higher payouts.

Much higher PPC is now achieved at Sedo, bringing my November totals to 2007 levels, before the so-called collapse of the economy.

Fantastic.

After moving the remainder of my portfolio from Yahoo-driven Parked.com I witnessed a sizable increase in parking revenue as well.

Sedo cleaned out the bot/spam traffic junk and while less visits might be recorded, both PPC and total revenue more than make up for the loss in visitor numbers.

And that’s exactly what counts: the money that goes into our pockets from the performance of no-cost parking.

Just four days ago I wrote about how a controversial new indirect taxation would affect thousands of .GR domains and their cash-starved operators; most of them Greek entrepreneurs operating portals, news web sites and forums.

That indirect taxation – called “aggeliosimo” – was meant to be an extension of the current taxation implemented onto press (magazine, newspapers) radio and television advertising.

The good news is, that by some unexplained reasoning that particular article was removed from the massive law up for voting this week at the Greek parliament.

Therefore, aggeliosimo no longer applies to Internet advertising.

Surely the backlash was enough for the law-drafting pencil pushers to realize that the introduction of the aggeliosimo tax was not only unethical, but also impractical to collect: Good luck with collecting that 21.5% aggeliosimo from Google Adwords advertisers.

It’s unfortunate that a lot of things in Greece are done under pressure and without much planning, when it comes down to technological progress. This is a lesson in provisioning laws according to their impact to society and business, not simply to collect a few “drachmas” here and there.

What is worse than having inept leaders?

To answer that question, one has to take a look at the number of anti-social measures stacked together onto a gigantic law up for vote this coming week at the Greek parliament.

Hit by a ballooning debt that was inflated by financial games played upon the back of state-issued bonds, the Greek government – elected under the socialist flag and led by American born George Papandreou, son and grandson of prime ministers – has shocked the Greek social strata by introducing a number of changes Greece hasn’t seen since the era of Dracon, 28 centuries ago.

The introduction of multiple layers of taxation, pension cuts and elimination of benefits for the elderly and women with children is about to alter Greek society for good. Wages in Greece, already at the bottom of the European Union with a monthly 700 euro average, are about to shrink even lower, due to immediate and secondary taxation layers.

Those that accused Greece of “partying” with loaned money need to have their facts checked; Greece is at the bottom of fund-absorbing countries in the EU, due to the sheer amount of red tape and the ever-changing direction of every elected government; the primarily bi-partisan system often leads to changes of power, much like Democrats and Republicans in the US. Debt ballooned primarily through the raising of interest rates and the bidding of international hedge fund managers such as Goldman Sachs against the Greek debt. At the same time, tax-evasion became the national sport thanks to the ineptitude of the government to police its own tax-gathering system.

Surely there is a number of healthy elements in this ongoing chaos, where those working in the public sector – a large, bureaucratic beast – grew, fed and multiplied sapping the energy of the much healthier private sector and the entrepreneurs.

Since its introduction in the early 1990′s, the Greek Internet has remained a relatively untapped territory with regards to government intervention; with the ever-increased globalization of services and the proliferation of web portals serving news and information via blogs, the government is now seizing the opportunity to add yet another level of taxation – simply because they can do so.

Enter, the aggeliosimo.

Starting July 1st, a special taxation of 21.5% referred to as “aggeliosimo” (literally: announcement tax) will apply to all advertising that Greek-based web and Internet portals engage into. In other words, operators of web forums, portals, news or information web sites in the .GR realm will have to collect an additional 21.5% from their advertisers and submit it to a special fund set aside for the Social Security Fund of journalists.

It is not clear which government pencil-pusher is the brilliant inventor of this incredible manifestation of entrepreneurial strangulation. Effectively, the 21.5% taxation will immediately strip thousands of .GR sites that carry advertisements of their source of income, as it will surely lead advertisers to portals outside of Greece.

No entrepreneur or corporation in their right mind would want to spend 21.5% more for the same amount of advertising, just because the Greek government wishes to expand its reach into untapped territory, particularly when the funds collected would benefit a well-established Social Security fund.

At the same time, the same legislation forces web portals that present a constant feed of news and information to insure their personnel under new, more expensive pension groups that would increase the piece of the pie ending into the hands of the Greek IRS.

It is uncertain how this will affect PPC companies that appear on parked .GR web sites along with major other advertising channels, such as Google Adwords. It would be interesting to see how the Greek government would enforce the collection of a 21.5% fee from Google, for ads that are displayed on .GR web sites. The process is clearly impossible and it will lead to the collapse of advertising on .GR web sites.

Overall, the decision to stifle the entrepreneurial spirit and technological investment in Greece is a clear shot in the foot of a government and the nation it’s supposed to represent.

As the Greek Prime Minister, Mr. George Papandreou is clearly incapable of retaining a clear, honest and effective control of the situation and is leading the country into social unrest, financial turmoil and towards the technological Dark Ages.