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Domain Parking Payments Per Click: I am getting .01 CPCs. What should I expect?

Moderator's Note: Let's Talk Parking and PPC but keep it factual & educational

         

peoplebot

6:41 am on Jan 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi everyone - I am relatively new to domain parking. I just started with a service run by one of the largest domain registrars. I'll refer to them as G. They charge me a fixed fee per month for their domain parking service and in return I just set my DNS server to their service. When I started, I got $.20-$.50 CPCs on my parked domains from G, and I made $10 or 20 per day from it, but lately I have seem CPCs go down to $.01 clicks. Has anyone seen this happen to their domains?

Please post your average CPCs. I would really like to compare, because .01 per click seems very very low. Should I be worried that G is not reporting all the clicks?

Has anyone been successful at boosting the CPCs?

Also, when you park your domains, do you usually select the default template from the provider or do you customize?

I am considering switching to another domain parking service. I know there are some big ones out there, but before trying anything new, what should I look for in a domain parking service? Who are some of the more reputable ones?

Webwork

2:47 pm on Jan 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Hello there peoplebot and welcome to WebmasterWorld. Bad enough we have software bots. Now you're telling me we have - or you are - a people bot? Me to sometimes. ;0)

Alrighty, this one is going to fall under "moderator discretion" to make exceptions to the rules for the benefit of whatever educational value can be extracted from a once in awhile discussion of an issue.

Folks, if you care to speak to this issue the forum is open. One Caveat Posts by new members, by which I mean someone with less than 10 posts to their credit or who has signed up in the last 30 days will be scrutinized for promotional efforts. Don't go there. Keep things factual and educational. Thank you.

[edited by: Webwork at 4:10 pm (utc) on Jan. 9, 2007]

Webwork

3:05 pm on Jan 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



As best I can tell the amount that anyone is paid for traffic generated by their domains is a function of all of the following:

  1. The subject matter of the domain: finance (loans), product (toys), service (lawyer, plumber)
  2. The robustness of the domain (Loan.tld versus INeedALoan.tld)
  3. The national market targeted by the TLD or the domain (May draw more traffic from one country with lower PPC yield)
  4. The demographic profile of your traffic (Rich adults versus kids)
  5. The IP origin of the click (US vs Malaysia click source)
  6. The domain holder's bargaining position with the PPC feed provider (Large portfolio, excellent converting commercial traffic magnets versus a collection of typos of existing sites)
  7. Domain smart pricing (Is there evidence of active bidding for your domain's traffic which might correspond to happy recipients of the traffic)
  8. Advertisers opting in and opting out of domain traffic in general
  9. Advertisers targeting traffic specific to your domain portfolio (This assumes the parking company offers this option, instead of run-of-all-domains, an option that would make great sense)
  10. The domain parking provider's feed source (Google, Yahoo, second or third tier traffic providers)
  11. How well your landers are populated with 'on domain topic' keyword links, the links that pulled ads related to the keywords (not just the domain subject)
  12. The time of year (Travel bids tend to go up after the holidays)

Above are a few items that come to mind quickly. I'm certain there are more to be added.

The questions you asked will not really elicit answers to your fundamental question(s), which I take to be (a) which provider pays the most; and, (b) how to get the most from your domains, which are two very distinct questions. You can have access to the highest paying feed and still do a poor job of optimizing for the eyeballs of the traffic your domain evokes.

In answer to my question (a) your interests are best served by moving some domains around to different providers, allowing time for their systems to optimize your domain landers and then comparing the outcome, allowing for seasonal variations and other factors. Indeed, to address this very circumstance, there are now companies that offer to optimize revenue by automatically redirecting your domain's traffic to different providers based upon their existing traffic monetarizing data and your domain's accumulated earnings history.

As to (b) you should do whatever is within your control: Choose lander designs that work. Optimize for keywords related to the subject matter of your domain. Choose the best possible traffic domains, which can be measured by volume of traffic, PPC value of traffic or other factors.

To answer your question squarely, yes, my RPC (Revenue Per Click) is better than $.01 but I've been at this for awhile, my domains are highly commercial, all generic industry words or phrases, and many of my landers have been optimized with on-domain-topic keyword links.

One thing to consider - and likely an issue on the mind of many advertisers - is how often I come across domain landers that are populated with keyword links that are designed to pull the highest paying PPC ads (loans, lawyers, etc) BUT which keyword links on the lander have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter of the domain (children's games or pop culture icon posters) and therefore click-grasping efforts have no relationship to the likely motivating intent or demographic of the direct navigator that typed in the domain name. I see this persistant issue, of off-domain-topic keyword links on domain landers, as a black-eye to the industry and as a disincentive to more advertisers entering the marketplace. What mortgage lender wants to pay for clicks arising from a domain that has everything to do with blemish creams for teens? So why allow or enable high value PPC keywords on landers for domains that have absolutely nothing to do with the domain? It's just bad policy in my book. Don't do it and you will be doing all of us a big favor in the end.

As an aside, since domains are highly transportable, the domain parking firms that wish to survive will need to offer their clients the highest revenue share - that still allows the company to be profitable - and the best customer service, or the domain holders will simply move on.

As a hedge against the transportability issue a number of the larger parking providers, in order to built a sustainable enterprise, has wisely been making portfolio acquisitions. I see this trend continuing apace in 2007.

[edited by: Webwork at 4:36 pm (utc) on Jan. 9, 2007]

freelunchfriday

5:44 pm on Jan 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



keywords & user's country or origin are the two main factors in determining PPC payouts to domain owners.

There are cheap keywords (games, adult, etc) and expensive KWs (mortgage, car insurance quote, etc) then you factor in the visitors country of origin, you get to the RPC value. Advertisers only want traffic form certain countries.

Even if your parked domain is related to say 'credit cards' most landers allow a user to search for anything, and users can search for low RPC terms like "porn", which if you're from a non-core country will genrate the low $.01 RPCs you're seeing.

peoplebot

4:26 pm on Jan 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks for the responses. They really help me get going.

I have a few domains that get several impression per day but the click thru rate is near 0 on them, so I don't know why it happens. I see it everday. People visit but no clicks. That is what is getting me so frustrated. That's why I started wondering whether G is actually counting my clicks accurately - and why I am looking for some suggestions on where to go if I don't just use G.

<Snip> <Moderator's Note: It's best that you visit each parking company's website and read their FAQ when it comes to who offers what. There only a handful of parking companies and it's a good idea to review their FAQ and other statements. Also, by policy we avoid using the forum space for making specific company endorsements as such use encourages begets spamfests and promotional memberships. Thanks. Webwork >

Freelunch - You mention that the geolocation of the user and the keyword are very important for determining CPC. Can you care to elaborate on that?

[edited by: Webwork at 9:10 pm (utc) on Jan. 11, 2007]
[edit reason] Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

freelunchfriday

6:19 pm on Jan 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



no problem.

the PPC market is largely driven by US/Euro companies as the buyers of the traffic. they're the ones paying google (adsense) and yahoo (ypn) the cash to get qualified traffic. these companies also specify which countries they will accept traffic from and many don't want customers from smaller or less developed countries for a myriad of reasons.

As a basic example:

Visitor A from the US lands on parked domain #1 and clicks on "auto insurance". IP mapping determines the visitors geo-location

In the US auto insurance is a conpetitive market with lots of insures competing for this kind of traffic. For argument sake, lets say 20 companies are actively bidding on these kinds of clicks.

competitive market = higher bid values (lots of well funded companies competing for a finite set of customers looking for auto insurance) A click from Visitor A on one of the auto insurance PPC ads will generate a healty RPC of say $x.xx

Visitor B from Jamaica also lands on parked domain #1 and clicks on "auto insurance"

Without any real insight here, let's assume that the PPC market for car insurance in Jamaica is less developed than in the US and there are fewer companies set up online to process applications etc. Let's surmise that only 4 companies are bidding on clicks for "auto insurance" clicks from Jamaicans.

Thus the amount each insurance company needs to pay for each visitor (click) is significantly less. Thus a click from visitor B might only generate an RPC of $.XX or even $.0x

So visitors to the same parked domain can have wildly varying RPCs attached to their clicks, simmply driven by where the visitor is located.

No offense to jamaica or jamaicans with this, I just picked a random country as an example.

hope this helps

callivert

10:41 pm on Jan 12, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I registered several domains that I thought were good, but they just don't pay as parked sites. I don't want to just write this off to experience, so I've decided to pay for hosting and develop them.
Some I'm turning into fully-fledged sites (though small, obviously), a couple of others that get traffic I turned into glorified parked pages. I figured I could optimize them myself better than the parking site software, that has a limited number of template options. Whether this actually pays off remains to be seen.

wmuser

12:17 am on Jan 14, 2007 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Nice points webwork.

Peoplebot its a good diea to try a few parking service,find out the best one for your name(s) and stay with that service.
Each parking service may have its own advertisiers which maybe topic specific and thus how high do they bid on a particular word depends on a concrete service.