In my early domaining days I was simply pointing my domains to a web form for visitors with an interest in purchasing, to leave their contact information. This went on for several years and I can easily say I lost several thousand dollars this way. In 2004 I shyly started using the parking service of Sedo.com, slowly adding more names until my account was upgraded to Sedo Pro.
Now, I sometimes have the reputation of an outspoken guy in online forums. That’s true; I will stick to my guns until the battle smoke clears up, but I always strive to be objective and accurate to the circumstances surrounding my point of view.
Sedo’s services and interface have substantially improved over the past four years. They offer a variety of templates with a customizable image and the editing is quick. There are some drawbacks that I should mention first – just to get them out of my system.
- Sedo does not support meta tags, such as description and keywords. It really hurts a domain in the long run, especially one that competes in Google for term relevancy. Sedo made a statement that Google asked them to do that and I simply cannot believe this statement.
- Adding domains is easy as long as the WHOIS info matches that of the account. For the most part, it works well. Sometimes, especially on a Friday afternoon, the domains will be delayed and added to the account the following Monday. Unless that Monday is a public holiday in the US, the UK or Germany.
- Changing the domain keyword is a pain; it takes up to 3 days for that to happen as they are manually approved.
- Google feed. Sometimes payments are extremely low, sometimes they are decent. Fluctuation has earned Sedo the term “yo-yo revenue”.
In mid-2007 I started using Parked.com right at a time that their feature list exploded: Custom templates, full-featured meta tag customization, addition of custom content including images & video. The guys at Parked.com really listen to what domainers need. Did I mention that their keyword parser – the code that splits a domain name into intelligible words – has no close competitor? I fed it the domain NATIONWIDEMORTGAGELICENSINGSYSTEMANDREGISTRY.COM and it properly split it into “Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System And Registry“. By the way, this is my longest domain and it does get type-ins.
Parked.com has some negatives, so I will list them here:
- Yahoo feed seems a bit sketchy after they implemented the “TQ” factor, some oddball quotient that pretends to judge the quality of traffic, awarding accordingly more or less money per click. I branded “TQ” as “Thieving Quotient” and it’s one Yahoo feature I clearly dislike.
- Template flavors seem to alternate unpredictably between single-click and two-click; the former awarding more money per click than the latter.
- Downtime. Sometimes it’s unplanned or with short notice, but it happens more often than necessary. Compensation does occur though.
- Donny’s special attention to all things Parked seems to backfire when criticism reaches a certain critical mass. He just takes things personally and the various such threads, mainly on DNForum.com become true battlefields. Still, he said once he’d buy me a beer so I think he’s a cool guy after all.
- No escrow services.
The things I like about Sedo include their unified approach as a company: nobody takes things personally, they do care about the customers despite certain complaints. They are very cordial on the phone – and trust me, I am not always the most soft-spoken person on a business call. Sedo offers great escrow service that almost never fails to deliver for both parties. Anonymity is implemented but for obvious reasons of not bypassing them, but why would one bypass the security of an affordable escrow service? Once one gets the hang of what keywords work best, it’s easy to change multiple domains via forms. Sedo pages load fast and certain template schemes seem to be really popular with visitors.
The things I like about Parked include the exquisite template customization, ability to add content and images, the intelligent keyword management and the visibility it provides in search engines via the meta tag management. Addition of domains and keyword modification is instant! Customer service is prompt and quick as well.
So, to recap: Sedo or Parked? I use both and it seems that domains that get lots of visits but few clicks at Sedo can be customized and perform well in Parked. One should try both PPC companies and preferably, split their domain portfolio among both. Currently, Sedo has a great geo-auction that will last for a total of 7 days, aptly titled “Around the World in 7 Days”. I have listed two of my domains there, Constantinople.com and Aegean.info – both with a reserve that matches the quality of the domain.
Now let’s go out and make some money!
