'Net Features : domain parking

Domain Parking for Charity with Rikimu

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Those actively buying and selling domain names (for profit, of course) have a new option for parking those assets - Rikimu.

Domain parking has really fallen out of vogue as Google openly admitted to penalizing parked sites almost two years ago. While that will dissuade many from parking domain name assets that aren't in active use, those with hundreds or thousands of domains still need a solution - and it's still to parking services to which they turn. On the whole however, there's been little in the way of true innovation in this sector. With new gTLD's arriving this year, the problem only stands to get worse.

There's no shortage of domain parking services available today. Registrars typically provide the functionality but there are a whole host of other dedicated parkin services including Skenzo, Bodis, and Sedo to name just a few, but none that I have come across that are antyhing like Rikimu. Where this new domain parking platform differentiates itself is in it's charitable nature. At Rikimu, 5 percent of every click is donated to charity.

That actually needs a little clarification. The five percent actually comes out of Rikimu's revenue share on clicks that occurs on a parked domain. For example, if Rikimu's revenue share from the advertisers is 1% of every click, then 5% of that 1% goes to the charity the domainer (the group or individual parking the domain) selected. Pretty cool, but it get's even better. Rikimu also works with some of the biggest advertising providers there are on a variety of revenue models, including CPC, CPA, and CPM.

Google Retiring AdSense for Domains

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:00:00 GMT

The end of domain parking is near. Google last month indicated that parked domains were in their crosshairs and would be deprecated on the search results pages. And the fight waged against domain parking is continuing as Google has now indicated that its AdSense for Domains (AFD) will soon be going away.

Google published a list of key dates related to the hosted domain product retirement within AdSense. Starting this week (February 22), AdSense publishers will no longer be able to start using the product, and by March 21, existing publishers will no longer be able to create new hosted domains. By April 18, hosted domains will become inactive, and the service will be removed entirely from AdSense accounts by June 27.

A guide to migrating domains to new domain parking providers was put together by Google and is available here.

Cash Back Program from Afternic (Domains)

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:00:00 GMT

Domain name marketplace Afternic (a NameMedia company) announced a "Cash Back" program for domain name owners who park and sell through their Domain Listing Services (DLS).

Domain names parked for a minimum of 14 days become eligible for a payment of 5% cash back on the final purchase price. For those selling high value domain names the program may just offer an added incentive to use Afternic services.

“We are pleased to offer this unprecedented cash back program to our members. Afternic DLS has long been the domain owners’ most profitable sales option,” said Jason Miner, senior vice president of Afternic. “By integrating parking and offering the industry’s lowest commissions we are providing even greater value and simplicity.”

The Evolution of Domain Parking

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:39:00 GMT

NameMedia launched a content site development option for domain name developers (domainers) through its online publishing platform at SmartName.com.

Publishers now have access to a more than 20,000 sources of content (e.g. articles), more than 150,000 keyword-related topics, more than 100 content-rich themes, over 2 million produts and reviews pre-built into each site’s “Store” tab and streamlined integration with NameMedia’s BuyDomains.com and Afternic.com sites for marketing domain names. There are no setup fees – regardless of the number of domains.

“Today’s launch means SmartName customers have a proven, compelling method of fully developing their domain names into content-rich sites that provide a compelling experience for consumers—and can do so easily for one domain or hundreds of thousands of domains,” said Kelly Conlin, NameMedia Chairman and CEO.

Domain name owners can also add their own content from any existing publishing platform, simply by adding an RSS link to their sites.

“Domain name owners now have a single platform to turn their sites into user-friendly eCommerce stores, content-rich sites, or keep them as parked pages,” said Kirsten Frederick, product manager for the SmartName platform. “And for the first time, domain publishers have all the reporting and statistics they demand in one dashboard, regardless of what type of site they’ve published. That makes it easy to optimize a portfolio of names across the full variety of publishing options.”

CPXpi for Domain Portfolio Holders

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:24:00 GMT

Online ad network CPX Interactive has developed a software solution that offers domain monetization and service providers the ability to offer their client domainers URL-level performance and revenue insight into their domain portfolios. The solution, called CPXpi - Portfolio In-site, will begin beta testing with some of the industry's largest players.

CPX Interactive has been serving display ads across the URL portfolios of domain service providers for quite a while. The issue is that these service providers must then track the revenue for the hundreds of thousands of URLs owned by each of their (often thousands of them) portfolio clients. This process, as you might imagine, can be extremely resource intensive.

The company's new CPXpi - Portfolio In-site solution is essentially a tool to provide better insight into this process. CPX's VP of publisher acquisitions, Mike Zacharski, explains the reasoning for releasing the service: "Our goal was to give domainers real tools to let them better understand the value of individual domains."

A Few Good Domain Parking Solutions

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:18:00 GMT

I've been on a domain buying rampage the past few weeks and have been investigating a few domain parking solutions. A few are pretty standard in that they simply offer paid advertising links on the domain, usually with a direct line to the domain owner if it's being sold. Good, but not great.

Many of the domain in my domain portfolio are being listed currently at Sedo, perhaps the most popular solution for the domain management trinity (buying, selling, parking) for professional domainers (there is no cost for Sedo parking) but there are many others worthy of note. GoDaddy's CashParking service offers a basic plan for $3.99 a month and a premium plan for $9.99 a month with a 60% and 80% ad revenue split respectively; RevenueDirect and Parked.com also offer exceptional domain parking services. While my personal preference is to develop custom content on domains and feature some lead generation or straight affiliation programs, those who are strapped for time should look into managed domain parking services if splitting the revenue is not a real concern.

The one domain parking service that caught my attention recently however was WhyPark.com - a service which essentially adds actual dynamic content to parked domains. The rationale is that instead of advertising being displayed on the site (which visitors are quickly becoming used to and avoiding), WhyPark lets domain owners optimize their domains with keyword rich content. Content is updated daily and an automated XML sitemap is created for submission to search engines. The price for this customization is a one-time fee of $99.95 and you are only allowed 100 domains but for those looking for alternative parking solutions, this may be the best of the bunch.

What domain parking solutions do you use?
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