Its been a over 3 years since I ran a parking company. I remember the early days when we were basically the only parking firm around. They were long hours but I enjoyed every minute of it. That’s because I was able to speak with other domainers, like myself, 24 hours a day. We spoke the same language. We understood what need to be done and did it. One of the most of favorite stories is how I helped one domainers life change around. This person had just got divorced and was about to lose his house. I had just met him and saw that he had an amazing portfolio that he was doing very little with. Remember, there was very few options for domainers back then. I asked if he would like to sell his names. As a typical programer / domainer, he said he’d rather lose his house first. I told him the possibility existed that if i parked his names with us, i thought he could make at least $ 2,000. He couldn’t believe it but tried anyway. His first payment was not $2,000 but over $20,000 for the month. His life changed for the better. It was a great feeling as people we worked with became good friends.
I hear many things today about parking firms, mostly negative. These range from no transparency to reduced revenue. It’s definitely a changed environment from the time Ari and I started until today, however there is no reason why there cant be more done to explain to the domainer the reasoning behind what is happening and what can be done.
I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts on what you needs to be done in the industry.
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I submitted, to Sedo, a domain, but Sedo’s ad provider deemed the name as adult.
Now this is a name that is NOT smutty at all, but the ads consisted of links that led to live streaming sex videos.
Anyone who knows me knows that I do NOT want to be associated with the adult industry, so this has caused me a great deal of stress and anxiety.
After begging with Sedo to PLEASE undesignate my domain as adult, they hemmed and hawed, and said it was up to the ad provider.
Huh???
I thought it was up to me! Now if I had a smutty name, I would expect it to be designated as adult, but not a regular generic name.
So I changed parking companies, one that allows ME to decide what keywords work best. I set up my account and changed the nameservers, which have not changed over yet (which I don’t understand–shouldn’t they change immediately?). Meanwhile, Sedo must have had the designation changed because now the page shows ordinary ads.
Well, too bad. Too little, too late. It’s goodbye Sedo. I’ll be moving my other domains away from them. They are a bit too sleazy and hypocritical for my taste.
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In think back to SmartName in 2005-2007, what made that Parking Company different from all the rest was the approach you and Ari had with domainers. From my experience, the participation in SmartName was a collaborative effort and there was a shared feeling of building something that was truly special. There wasn’t a layer of bureaucracy where all ideas were put into a queue forever. If it was a good idea worth trying, you tried it, there was a sense of camaraderie not found anywhere today. Besides, whether you were on a plane over the Atlantic coming back from Europe, or late at night, you always answered the phone and gave the true feelings of friendship. The disconnect with today’s parking companies are easy to see when there is no feeling of a collaborative effort, whether or not successes or failures are shared. At least when you and Ari were running SmartName, everyone felt like they had a say and….guess what…they actually did.
Hugh,
Thank you for those kind words. I think you put in words the essence of what we tried to do. It was a true team effort.
larry
“I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts on what you needs to be done in the industry.”
No1) get UDRP/WIPO to acknowledge parking as a legitimate use of a domain (assuming there is no TM issue with the name)
Ref Sedo parking, I would like to be able to have the choice to “choose or refuse” which ads are shown on my domains.
I beleive (if its possible to do) that this would be a benefit to both parties and would provide less risk from potential TM problems occuring and domainers loosing generic domains…eg like the chillibeans.com scenario http://domainnamewire.com/2008/11/20/frank-schilling-loses-his-first-udrp/
..its nice to see he still owns it so I guess he sorted them out in the end. 🙂
Another option that may be usefull for some when using the likes or sedo who deal in both sales & parking would be to have a nice for sale page without first landing on a PPC page.
PPC is’nt what it used to be and sometimes its not worth taking the risk of PPC links showing on a valuable name…..especially since UDRP seems to think (sometimes) that parking is not considered a legitimate use of a domain.
Larry
You guys were domainers first.
Your guys were never just a couple of suits.
and if you wanted to talk to the boss you were only a phone call away.
It was a special company at a special time and no one has or will ever fill the void.
Thanks Michael. If it wasn’t for Smartname I wont have met such wonderful people like, Judy, you and Bandit 🙂 .
Larry,
Thanks for Howard Huffman, I was introduced to you guys in 2005. I loved when you and Ari ran smartname.com. I remember you guys really helped me monetize my spanish domains and my income really went up. I took over 300 names out of Sedo and moved all to Smartname within 1 week.
Also, I really miss Ari’s sister who I talked to a few times on the phone. When she passed away at such a young age that was really sad.
I consider you and Ari friends and I can’t wait to party with you again until 5:30 am like we did at domainfest:)
Thanks, Jim
Jim,
partying with you at Domainfest made me realize how much i missed the constant contact with other domain professionals. Sorta makes me want to come back into the game. Howard’s a great guy and yes, we all miss Leora.
all the best
larry
Well, I think you have spelled out the problem in this sentence:
“He couldn’t believe it but tried anyway. His first payment was not $2,000 but over $20,000 for the month.”
Don’t you think there’s some kind of fundemental issue that existed if a guy that couldn’t believe he would made a 5 dollar bill went to make $20,000/month over night?
I don’t think you guys are understanding. Bubbles are born about every 6-10 years. The domain industry was a bubble. Just like the dot com boom. Every company back then was worth hundreds of millions over night.
Bubbles are everywhere. The industry is still a great place to be and an easy way to make millions. The laziest people have and still are becoming the most successful domainers. This is actually still a bubble within a bubble.
There is absolutely ZERO transparency in this domain name industry. I am beginning to hate being part of it. I park a name N1 at parking company P1 and it earns $X. It receives traffic from God knows where. They will never, ever, ever tell me.
Why? I guess if I knew where the traffic was coming from I’d understand many things and begin to tear down the veil that separates the parking companies from domainers. Traffic metrics are key to successful both PPC and domain sales. Parking companies do not really have a vested interest in me selling my name NOR me earning a great deal – though that may *sound* like its against all logic. Its not. What they dont want me to see is all of the hands that are in the pie. All of the pumps that are siphoning water out of the PPC river, to put it another way.
Getting back to PPC, if I move name N1 to parking company P2, the revenue drops to a fraction of $X and the traffic is also a fraction. Why? No one wants to show me the traffic. No one can answer that question (or more likely, doesnt WANT to).
God help me if I want to sell a domain. Buyers back out ALL of the time. I tell real-estate people that I know, of that, and they laugh at how the process works. Basically, domaining has turned into a joke with no set rules or regulations. Ms Domainer’s experience seems to be par for the course. Until her new parking company decides to pull the rug from under her, she’ll do OK.
Until the domain name industry (as a whole) becomes more transparent, and more standards are created and accountability becomes THE standard, we’re never going to accepted as anything but a shady industry.
There was always some disconnect between the ppc companies and domainers. Smartnames was one of the exception.
The disconnect is even worse today. Years ago, we knew everyone involved at DomainSponsor. Today, who really knows anymore. Same thing with NameMedia and Sedo.
Parked, Trafficz and Namedrive are still small enough that we know the internal players.
The ppc category is dying a slow death for a number of reasons.
1. Google and Yahoo are not our partners but a supplier.
And, they want to keep as much (or all) of the revenue as they can which is easy since there is no transparency.
2. The ppc companies saw the writing on the wall. They know the best days for ppc are behind us. So, they are diversifying by becoming more of our competitor than in years past.
3. The search engines do not list ppc domains anymore in a search category unless someone explicitly enters that domain. Therefore, the only traffic a ppc domain will receive is basically direct navigation.
4. Years ago, the average domain visitor would at least look at the links on a ppc page. And, maybe click a few. Today, the visitor immediately leaves a ppc page in search of another answer to their initial interest.
I guess we are getting old when we start saying
“do you remember in the good old days …”
Larry, thanks for creating the thread.
@PPC FAILURE: Re: Parked.com …. they’re a joke. They are basically DirectNIC.com and, well, we all know the games those people are involved in. I wouldnt give them a penny my money or a second of my time.
Over saturation of the market, naturally it has become corporate and made less personal. Also as a result the top earners are the only ones deemed important enought to acknowledge. Just my opinion.
It all started with having Google enter the domain parking business.
Then, here comes their Google Chrome. They merged the address bar with the query box to not misled end-users. If Google eventually kills the address bar(http://www.conceivablytech.com/5746/products/google-may-kill-chrome-url-bar) and Microsoft follows suite with IE, then it’s a huge problem for parking sites. End users won’t notice since it works as before…but not for domainers.
What I’m saying is, it is for Google’s benefit that they kill the direct navigation from their Chrome browser and have every user go through their search engine which is very good at giving search results and giving them more opportunity to display ads…and hence, more money. Because every move of Google is copied by Microsoft, and Microsoft as we all know has a major share of the browsers worldwide then that’s it.