Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Shane Cultra’s post about increased domain inquiries at Frank Schilling’s Internet Traffic outfit, clearly shows something that Sedo and other parking companies need to take note of.

The increased number of inquiries and offers aren’t due to the beautifully crafted landing pages that Frank offers. Actually, I’m being sarcastic about the look of those headers but that’s not the point here, as we’re not discussing PPC conversion rates.

There is one single thing that contributes to the increased number of inquiries, and that’s the large, bold, in-your-face line at the top of the domain that says:

This domain has recently been listed in the marketplace at domainnamesales.com. Click here to inquire.

It can’t be any simpler reason than that.

Meanwhile, Sedo’s “For sale” links in order to place an offer are hidden at various locations, sometimes below the notorious “fold” and in small print. And yes, this costs a lot of missed opportunities.

In the pre-PPC era, I used my own landing pages to promote and sell domains; a simple PHP script would parse the domain URL and create a contact form pre-populated with the domain in question. I received considerably more inquiries this way, which I would then convert into sales, mostly by utilizing Escrow.com

If you’re not concerned about the loss of PPC revenue due to moving your domains away from parking pages such as that of Sedo, creating your own landing pages with a contact form is the way to go, in order to achieve more direct sales.

There is also VooDoo.com that allows for custom placement of the “Domain For Sale” line, including my preferred top of the page.

A few days ago I let one of my domains – Greek.in – cross its expiration date.

The domain is with Name.com and I simply “ignored” the reminders on a busy week.

While in the process of renewing it, I noticed that the domain was displaying a standard Sedo ad page, with the minimal, greenish text against a white background. There was no contact information regarding a sale on that page.

Checking the DNS I noticed that it was still that of Voodoo.com where I park some of my domains. I assumed that some type of DNS wizardry was occurring in the background, so I contacted Name.com support.

I was told that per the terms of use, Name.com reserves the right to park and monetize my traffic while I don’t renew my domain.

Since the domain was already listed for sale in my Sedo account, it was obvious that Name.com was forwarding it to a landing account of their own at Sedo.

After contacting my account manager at Sedo I was told that all URL forwarding has been ended for Sedo customers, at the request of Google. To use Sedo parking and monetize traffic, one must use the Sedo DNS.

So what’s going on here? Is Sedo giving “elite” customers such as Name.com a different ad channel to monetize domains and pile them up onto one account? Or is Name.com oblivious of the fact that this method of forwarding reaps no monies from traffic?

Within 4 hours of renewing my domain, it was pointing back to Voodoo.com but the mystery still remains.

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.