I've heard of DomainSponsor and Sedo but haven't heard any reviews on them.
We also rarely run "voting" or "review" threads, as stated in the Domain Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com] since voting threads often serve as "thin cover for promotions", but once in a great while - maybe once a year - we loosen up a bit to cover a topic of interest to many who are interested in domains.
Sooooooo . . at the risk of a small and short-lived spamfest I'm going to let this run and see where it goes.
I'm my case I've parked my domains-awaiting-development with DomainSponsor (DSp) and Fabulous (Fab).
I started with DSp about 3+ years ago. At the time DSp was popular with many mid to larger volume domainers and looked to be leading the way with their lander optimization technology. I liked their tools. They offered a selection of landers. They allowed you to hand pick keywords for your landers IF you were a trusted operator.
DSp isn't known amongst domainers for being overly generous with their revenue share. Depending on the volume and quality of your traffic you can negotiate a non-standard higher rev share. However, rev share alone isn't the only basis for picking a parking firm. Some parking firms promised higher shares and either never delivered OR only paid for a short while before problems cropped up.
CAVEAT: Some companies may promise a higher share BUT that share may work out to lower net revenue to you since the parking company lacks the portfolio to negotiate a better share with the feed providers. In other words, 70% of $.80 is better than 85% of $.50.
It's darned near impossible to tell exactly who is getting what cut. The parking firm won't tell you their Google share. They may tell you your share but how do you know when they won't show you what Google is actually paying them. The only real way to guage pay-out is to see what your parking net is over time.
I had a number of issues with DSp during my tenure with the company, ones that I won't get into right now, which lead to me making a move to Fabulous after a dinner business meeting last autumn with the real "Mike Fabulous". (If there's a nicer person, who is also a consumate professional and communicator, I haven't met him. In the interest of full disclosure I haven't gone out of my way to meet others but I know quite a few professionals. ;) )
Fab, like DSp, offers lander customization and keyword link customization options, which presumably you get to play with only IF you're trustworthy.
Both Fab and DSp employ a Google feed. Others offer a Yahoo feed.
According to my lazy arsed ;) fellow parking buddy domainers it is wise to test domain performance, under both Google and Yahoo, at some point. I have yet to test Yahoo.
I strongly suggest that anyone who is going to park quality domains take the time to research their domain's likely traffic and "domain related searches" - and the relevant PPC - and optimize the domain for the most likely topical searches. For example, if you hold BlueWidgets.com you should likely optimize for "Blue Widgets Sale", "Cheap Blue Widgets", "Wholesale Blue Widgets", etc. Anything that provides a quick visual clue likely to elicit a domain-relevant-click, one likely to fulfill search intent and drive clicks that convert for advertisers, is good for you, the parking company, the feed provider and the advertiser. That makes everyone happy. :) :) :) :) (<- Everyone)
There are other parking firms I haven't tried. Many have their "fan boys" and "fan girls". I tend to be impressed by the quality of the domains that the parking firm attracts. IF you see junk consistently being pointed to certain parking firms that, to me, is a fair indication that quality is missing somewhere in the mix. I think it's reasonable to infer that higher quality traffic (better domains) puts the parking firm in a better position to negotiate with the feed providers, but I could be mistaken. :-P (Maybe the world isn't as rational as I might infer.)
My "advice" is to move your domains around, testing their performance at various parking firms. I would give them at least 3 months before moving them again and I would jump right on optimizing any domain that gets decent traffic AND had a decent PPC rate for that traffic.
I've got a fairly diverse "commercial intent" portfolio, i.e., I don't do humor domains, gossip domains, celebrity domains, "I'm bored and don't know what to do" domains, etc. The quality as well as the quantify of your domains will ikely, in the near future, determine what doors will be closed or closing for you and what doors will remain open.
[edited by: Webwork at 7:15 pm (utc) on May 30, 2008]
Sorry, wasn't aware request for reviews was against policies. My bad. I'll keep that in mind next time.
Thanks for the advice and info. Very helpful
I also have several dozen domains with Fabulous (plus I use them as a registrar) Their landing pages are absolutely beautiful, and while there are some customization options available (and more coming) I have found that their own inhouse optimization staff does as well or better than I can do.
Both companies are fairly selective in what types of domains they'll take. Fabulous mostly wants keyword-rich .coms, .nets and .orgs (no other tld) and Parked requires at least 10 (I think) and some indication of where your traffic is coming from.
In both cases, what these companies really need more of are bulk management tools, both for parking and for registration issues (in the case of Fabulous) I have just under a thousand domains, and it's very time consuming to make changes to optimization, layout, or registration one-at-a-time. The first company that comes up with a spreadsheet/csv upload for bulk changes will be my hero(s).
SEDO is good if you're in the market to sell, but they typically don't pay much, and they also report a lot more visits, because I don't think they filter out bots, which makes traffic numbers a little misleading. No bar to entry for their regular program; you have to have 200 domains and/or earn $200/month from parking to get into their Pro program.
Finally, I've had a pretty good history with Namedrive for certain types of domains. Again, no restrictions as far as quantity or quality of domains. They have a Google feed, their landers a reasonable (a few are gorgeous) and pretty good traffic stats.
Hope some of that helps.
